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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



THE BEST DECORATIVE ARTISTS RECEIVE 

 THREE DOLLARS A DAY ( MEXICAN ) 



The unskilled wielders of the brush earn as 

 little as twelve or fifteen cents a day, however. 

 The men are paid not by the hour, but accord- 

 ing to the quality of their work and the number 

 of pieces finished. 



China. Technically, it is a town, because 

 it has no wall. In reality it is a busy in- 

 dustrial city of 300.000 people, two-thirds 

 of whom are engaged in the manufacture 

 and sale of porcelain. Romantically, it is 

 a citv to stir men's souls. Longfellow, in 



his "Keramos," speaks of it in these 

 words : 



''And bird-like, poise on balanced wing 

 Above the town of King-te-tching, 

 A burning town, or seeming so, — 

 Three thousand furnaces that glow 

 Incessantly, and fill the air 

 With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre, 

 And painted by the lurid glare, 

 Of jets and flashes of red fire." 



PORCELAIN HAS BEEN MADE HERE SINCE 

 220 A. D. 



Historically, it dates back to the Han 

 Dynasty, 220 A. D., during which period 

 we find the first records of the production 

 of porcelain in China, though earthen- 

 ware vessels were probably produced 

 some centuries earlier. 



Two main streets, about three miles 

 long and conforming to the contour of 

 the river, comprise the principal thorough- 

 fares. 



The city is about a mile wide. Fur- 

 naces, warehouses, shops, and homes are 

 crowded together in a hopeless tangle. 

 Great mounds of chipped and defective 

 porcelain, clay chips, and broken dishes 

 are piled high along the river bank. In 

 fact, we first noticed these pieces of porce- 

 lain in the bed of the stream several miles 

 below the city, washed down by high 

 water. These dumps must be 30 or 40 

 feet thick. They represent the accumu- 

 lated offcastings of the kilns for cen- 

 turies. From an eminence to the west I 

 counted 78 big yellow chimneys, this 

 number being about half the smokestacks 

 in the city. It is said that Ching-teh-chen 

 in her most flourishing days boasted 

 several thousand kilns. 



A CITV OE 300,000 POPULATION WITHOUT 

 A NEWSPAPER 



The most unusual feature of the City 

 of Porcelain is its conservatism. "Bu 

 k'ai t'ung" (not open to communications) 

 is heard on every hand. Although China 

 is the home of the printing-press, there is 

 not a single newspaper, either daily or 

 weekly, published in this city of more 

 than a quarter of a million inhabitants. 

 The reason given for this unprogressive 

 state of affairs is that the magistrates 

 have always opposed the press, on the 

 one hand because they are afraid of its 

 political influence, and on the other be- 



