APPENDIX. 283 



On each side of these nan-ow lanes are situated the native shops, 

 which are also manufactories and the dwellings of the people. 

 Shops for the sale of curious ivory carvings, medicine, coffin^, 

 dry-goods, groceries, and every conceivable thing which these 

 people use, were crowded together in every direction, as far as we 

 went. Restaurants and tea-houses are frequent, and occasionally 

 one comes to a temple or joss-house. In every corner is placed a 

 little booth for the sale of something or other. One of these we 

 noticed had a large stock of crickets or singing grasshoppers, 

 each one enclosed in a little bamboo-basket, and all were singing 

 in a shrill, piercing note, like that of the locusts and "katydids" 

 at home. We were told that they were great favorites with chil- 

 dren here, and it is said that the women also keep them as pets, 

 and amuse themselves occasionally by making one cricket fight 

 another, waging considerable sums upon the result. Upon the 

 whole, my first impressions of China are not very favorable ; no 

 fault of China, perhaps, but of my imagination. Another illus- 

 tration of the truth there is in the saying that there is more en- 

 joyment in anticipation than in realization. However, I may, 

 before leaving this country, have reason to change my present 

 imDressions. 



TEA CTTLTUEE IN CHINA. 



The methods followed in cultivating tea in China are almost 

 precisely similar to those pursued in Japan, a detailed account 

 of which was given in a previous letter. There is some differ- 

 ence, however, in the mode of preparation, and, indeed, this varies 

 considerably in China in different districts, which produce different 

 kinds of tea. The leaf, however, is essentially the same all over 

 China, and all the different varieties of black and green are pro- 

 duced by a difference in the curing and manipulation. In certain 

 districts, however, they are more in the habit of producing special 

 kinds, unless the market should so shape that some other va- 

 riety commands a better price; when it does, the production 

 changes at will from green to black or black to green. The great 

 tea-producing sections are in the interior of China, and more 



