rd baked brick, about as large as
three of ours. They always had a smaller walled city inside the big one,
variously called the Imperial and Manchu city. But since the revolution
they are tearing down these inner walls, partly I suppose to show their
contempt for the Manchus, and partly to use the brick. These are sold
for three or four cents apiece and carted all around on the big Chinese
wheelbarrow, by man power, of course. The compound wall of this house is
made of them, and they have several thousand of them stored at the
University grounds. They scrape them off by hand; you can get some idea
of the relative value of material and human beings. I started out to
speak of the view--typical China, deforested hills close by, all
pockmarked at the bottom with graves, like animal burrows and golf
bunkers; peasants' stone houses with thatched roofs, looking like
Ireland or France; orchards of pomegranates with lovely scarlet blossoms
and other fruits; some rice fields already growing, others being set
out, ten or a dozen people at work in one patch; garden patches, largely
melons; in the distance the wall stretching out for miles, a hill with a
pagoda, a lotus lake, and in the far distance the blue mountains--also
the city, not so much of which was visible, however.

One of the interesting things in moving about is the fact that only once
in a while do I see a face typically Chinese. I forget they are Chinese
a great deal of the time. They just seem like dirty, poor miserable
people anywhere. They are cheerful but not playful. I should like to
give a few millions for playgrounds and toys and play leaders. I can't
but think that a great deal of the lack of initiative and the
let-George-do-it, which is the curse of China, is connected with the
fact that the children are grown up so soon. There are less than a
hundred schools for children in this city of a third of a million, and
the schools only have a few hundred--two or three at most. The children
on the street are always just looking and watching, wise, human looking,
and reasonably cheerful, but old and serious beyond bearing. Of course
many are working at the loom, or when they are younger at reeling. This
is a good deal of a silk place, and we visited one government factory
with several hundred people at work; this one at least makes out to be
self-supporting. There isn't a power reeler or loom in the town, nor yet
a loom of the Jacquard type. Sometimes a boy sits up to