Lawrence Dundas

“ They look to the past instead of to the future, and when the present generation considers the future at all, it is the vital necessity of raising posterity, not for the good of his country, but for the sole and all-important purpose of being assured that when he in his turn is numbered among the dead there shall be some one to pay him those attentions which he himself has lived to pay to some one else, that fills his mind. ”

“ The cost of the salt on the spot was, he said, about 13 or 14 cash a catty, plus a Government tax of 10 cash a catty. I was further given to understand that a well takes anything from one to fourteen years to bore. When a man has a little capital he starts boring, and when the capital is exhausted he perforce stops until he has accumulated sufficient to go on again—a matter sometimes of years. ”

“ How then (asks Dr Smith) , while the people are content to exist solely for the benefit of the dead, is it possible for them to lift themselves out of the slough of stagnation which has clogged their limbs for countless generations? Perhaps the white races, or some of them, have something to be thankful for on this very score. In Australia and America the pinch of Chinese competition has already made itself felt. ”

“ My informant objected that the cost of coal would render it too expensive; and yet the buffaloes employed cost at least £5 apiece to purchase, and 300 cash a-day to feed, and only last from one to five years.
During the evening I had a visitor in the shape of an itinerant dentist, who showed me with much pride a stock of false teeth (made in Japan) . He had been at Tzu-liu-ching, he said, for a month, and had inserted no less than 100 teeth in the mouths of the townspeople during his stay. I become more and more suspicious of round numbers as used by the Chinese every day. ”

“ But they are very far from being toys: they are, on the contrary, important adjuncts in the most important ceremonies connected with the strongest and most universal religious doctrine of 400,000,000 of Chinese—the worship of ancestors. All these things are burned on the dead man's grave in order that in the spiritual world he may be provided with the spiritual essence of such things as he has been accustomed to in his materialised state. ”

“ The number of wells in the Tzu-liu-ching district is given as "over a thousand," and the fire wells as about a score; while the cost of raising the brine is placed at from 12 to 14 cash a catty, and of evaporation from 2 to 4 cash. [3] "There are altogether forty districts of Ssŭch'uan producing salt, and withered grass, lignite, wood, coal, and gas are all taken advantage of, each as the others are unavailable for fuel." The total output for the province, including "illicit" salt—i.e., salt that escapes taxation—is estimated by Sir Alexander Hosie at not less than 300,000 tons a-year. ”

“ Memorial arch in Ssŭch'uan.
Chinese feet. [2] In a shed a short distance from the boring, four buffaloes harnessed to an immense drum were being driven round and round by running attendants. The rope was thus wound up, and at the expiration of about a quarter of an hour the "baler," a cylinder of bamboo, 80 feet in length, with a valve at the bottom, was brought to the surface. The brine was emptied from this into a small tank, from which it was conveyed by pipe to a reservoir. Close by the brine well was a gas well. ”