h.

Chungking is an open port, which is not an open port. By the treaty of
Tientsin it is included in the clause which states that any foreign
steamer going to it, a closed port, shall be confiscated. Yet by the
Chefoo Convention, Chungking is to become an open port as soon as the
first foreign steamer shall reach there. This reminds one of the
conflicting instructions once issued by a certain government in
reference to the building of a new gaol. The instructions were
explicit:--

Clause I.--The new gaol shall be constructed out of the
materials of the old.

Clause II.--The prisoners shall remain in the old gaol till
the new gaol is constructed.

In Chungking the Commissioner of Customs is Dr. F. Hirth, whose Chinese
house is on the highest part of Chungking in front of a temple, which,
dimly seen through the mist, is the crowning feature of the city. A
distinguished sinologue is the doctor, one of the finest Chinese
scholars in the Empire, author of "China and the Roman Orient," "Ancient
Porcelain," and an elaborate "Textbook of Documentary Chinese," which is
in the hands of most of the Customs staff in China, for whose assistance
it was specially written. Dr. Hirth is a German who has been many years
in China. He holds the third button, the transparent blue button, the
third rank in the nine degrees by which Chinese Mandarins are
distinguished.

The best site in Chungking has been fortunately secured by the Methodist
Episcopalian Mission of the United States. Their missionaries dwell with
great comfort in the only foreign-built houses in the city in a large
compound with an ample garden. Their Mission hospital is a well-equipped
Anglo-Chinese building attached to the city wall, and overlooking from
its lofty elevation the Little River, and the walled city beyond it.

The wards of the hospital are comfortable and well lit; the floors are
varnished; the beds are provided with spring mattresses; indeed, in the
comfort of the hospital the Chinese find its chief discomfort. A
separate compartment has been walled off for the treatment of
opium-smokers who desire by forced restraint to break off the habit.
Three opium-smokers were in durance at the time of my visit; they were
happy and contented and well nourished, and none but the trained eye of
an expert, who saw what he wished to see, could have guessed that they
were addicted to the use of a drug which has been described in
exaggerated terms