VILLAGE LIFE IN CHINA.

Grey River Argus, 24 November 1910, Page 8

VILLAGE LIFE IN CHINA.

In a series of articles contributed •recently to a London newspaper Mr Frederick Moore gives some glimpses of ,the life and customs of the millions of peasants who form the bulk of China's great population. His description of life in a small seaside vallag-e near Peitaiho, the . mountain health resort of 'the European residents of Pekin, is particularly interesting. Mr Moore explains 'that he doos not live in the. village. No white maa of the type found in 'the Far East possesses sufficient fortitude for th*t. not even excepting missionaries. In common with all Chinese towns and villages' the one which Mr Moore describes suffers from the misguided notions of the Chinese regarding sani tary matters, and smells abominally on calm windless days. Yet the village has many attractions for the foreigner. There are picturesque little temples in every village, and 1 strange gods are worshipped by th c people. Also there are the haunts of the salt smugglers, many of whom, according to Mr Moore, bear so remarkable a resemblance to the American Indian type as to carry conviction that the man of the red skin went to the new continent by the way of Behring Strait. The staple industry of the villagers is the cultivation of kaoliang-, a variety of grain not unlike maize. The lower hill-sides • are covered with the crops, beyond which 'the mountains rear their heads, pine-covered to their summits. The villagers that one sees are always thin and always very dirty. The- men are attired simply in a pair of blue lin"n trousers, the boys still more simply in a kind of square napkin, suspended by one corner from the neck. The feet of all village women are bound, it being still the prevalent belief' outside -the cities that small feet make prolific mothers. The advent . of a European, in a Chinese village street is the, signal for all the "little boys 'to commencef a derisive chorus of ."Foreigners," quite in the manner in which little colonial boys salute the Chinese vendor of vegetables in their streets.