Sufferers from chronic melancholia would, I am sure, benefit by
witnessing the nightly football scrums and speed-contests of these
Chinese ducks, for I defy any one to see them without becoming
helpless with laughter.
The river in the neighbourhood of Canton is so covered with junks,
sampans, and other craft, that, in comparison to it, the Thames at
Henley during regatta week would look like a deserted waste of water.
One misses at Canton the decorative war-junks of the Shanghai River.
These war-junks, though perfectly useless either for defence or
attack, are gorgeous objects to the eye, with their carving, their
scarlet lacquer and profuse gilding. A Chinese stern-wheeler is a
quaint craft, for her wheel is nothing but a treadmill, manned by some
thirty half-naked coolies, who go through a regular treadmill drill,
urging the boat along at perhaps three miles an hour. In addition to
their deck passengers, these boats have rows of little covered niches
for superior personages, and in every niche sits a grave, motionless
Chinaman, looking for all the world like those carved Chinese cabinets
we sometimes see, with a little porcelain figure squatting in each
carved compartment.
We had a naval interpreter on board, a jovial, hearty, immensely fat
old Chinaman.
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