A Suburban Residence 205 



a quarter of a mile back from the river-bank, is reached. 

 I was accompanied only by a coolie as guide. We knocked 

 at the door, which was opened by a woman, and entered a 

 courtyard filled with orange-trees in pots. A range of 

 buildings looking on to courtyards filled with flowering 

 shrubs in pots occupied the enclosure, and were thus 

 capable of affording accommodation to separate parties. I 

 sat down in one of the pavilions, where tea was served by 

 some young girls, daughters of the proprietress, who, with 

 their mother, their cousins, and their aunts, crowded round 

 and overwhelmed me with questions. There was a pleasing 

 absence of that painful shyness which precludes all inter- 

 course with respectable women on the part of a foreigner 

 in other parts of China, with, at the same time, no lack of 

 true modesty. It appeared that the proprietress was a 

 widow, her husband having died a short time previously, 

 leaving her with a large family of daughters, and little 

 beyond this property to depend upon. Her endeavour to 

 earn a living by letting out the place to picnic parties from 

 the city had not been over-successful. Times were bad in 

 Szechuan, as elsewhere, and the wealthy trading classes were 

 economizing — the same lament that I heard from the 

 Taoists at Lao-chun grotto. But, unlike these, the old lady, 

 far from being clamorous for money, resolutely declined 

 payment for her tea. She wanted to sell the property, how- 

 ever, and tried to persuade me to give a thousand tiao 

 (_;!^2oo) for it. How different is this " Zuvorkommenheit " 

 to the sulky reception a foreigner meets with upon 

 attempting td negotiate for anything of the kind in the 

 neighbourhood of the open ports ! Having enjoyed the 

 tea and the rest after the hot walk, I descended to the 

 bank of the river, which here forms a " t'o," or pool, where 

 the current is slack and the water wide and deep — a 



