'THE MAN IN THE STREET" IN CHINA 



417 



Photograph by Guy Magee, Jr. 



CHINESE WOMEN GREATLY RESENT BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 



Girls are regarded with disfavor by the lower classes in China purely from an economic 

 point of view. In the struggle for existence, the superfluous females of the family are felt 

 to be an encumbrance. 



twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, 

 and no "fool pidgin," but "straight 

 comedy" all the time. Some vaudeville 

 performers might well take heed. 



The selection of a location would do 

 credit to a seasoned fakir. When travel- 

 ing, the Chinese are well beforehand — 

 hence this performance before train time 

 on the packed station platform, where the 

 crowd, being thick and fenced in, cannot 

 melt away when the hat is passed around. 

 Also, on a "gala occasion" the travelers 

 are supposed to have a little extra change 

 and a liberal feeling withal. 



In the south especially, Chinese chil- 

 dren are very agile, as Witness their game 

 of battledore and shuttlecock, in which 

 the bat is replaced by either foot, striking 

 the shuttle with the inside of the instep 

 just below the ankle-bone. Practice 

 makes them so adept that many returns 

 are made without a miss. 



It is games such as these, centuries old, 

 that adapt a people to the easy mastery 

 of acrobatic feats. Probably the reason 

 so many vaudeville and circus acrobats 

 are Swiss is that as a nation the people 



have been trained for generations in col- 

 lective physical exercises. 



THE HIGH COST OF DYING IN CHINA 



Idle curiosity sometimes beguiles us 

 into reading a patent-medicine advertise- 

 ment, so it might lead us into having our 

 fortune told by the old gentleman shown 

 on page 412. However, provided we ten- 

 der sound silver in return, he is not con- 

 cerned with our reason for consulting 

 him. Superstition is so ingrained in the 

 Chinese people that its imprint appears 

 in their faces. 



Days for weddings, funerals, and bur- 

 ials are named by a soothsayer. In the 

 case of burials it might frequently be 

 worth while to employ a second diviner 

 to report on the veracity of the first : for. 

 until the burial finally takes place, the 

 soothsayer makes reports, for a consider- 

 ation each time, on the progress of his 

 divinations until, the patience of the fam- 

 ily finally becoming- exhausted, a dav is 

 speedily decided upon and the bodv laid 

 away, generally in a family plot in the 

 country. 



