2 SHOOTING IN CHINA 



the adjournment of the court I asked for 

 an explanation. He said that as I had lived 

 in China but a short time he could readily 

 appreciate my difficulty, and gave me this 

 explanation : that as a judge of China was 

 prohibited by law from holding court in 

 his native province, it was necessary for him 

 to have an interpreter familiar with the 

 dialect of the province in which the session 

 of the court might be held. I then inquir- 

 ed if China had no national language that 

 was spoken and understood alike in all her 

 provinces. He answered, that it was pro- 

 bable China did have a national language 

 but that it was certain each province had a 

 dialect peculiar to it and different from the 

 dialect of any other province. I further 

 inquired, if there was not a dialect or lan- 

 guage a foreigner could learn and which 

 would enable him to make himself under- 

 stood in any part of the empire. He thought 

 that the nearest approach to a national 

 dialect was that known as the mandarin 

 dialect, and if a foreigner or native was 

 proficient in it the proficiency would prove 

 of practical use in nearly all the provinces. 

 I reminded the judge that the dialect he 

 had named, as more widely spoken, was the 



