bamboo chow-chow" means the same thing to the
Chinese boy as "hickory tea" to an American boy!

A Scotch fellow-passenger was telling me the other day of the saying
that "The Scotchman keeps the Sabbath day, and every other good thing
he can lay his hands on." Now, the Chinaman, unlike the Scotchman,
doesn't keep the Sabbath, but he does live up to all the requirements
of the second clause of the proverb. Nothing goes to waste in China
except human labor, of which enough is wasted every year to make a
whole nation rich, simply because it is not aided by effective
implements and machinery. The bottles, the tin cans, the wooden boxes,
the rags, the orange peels--everything we throw away--is saved. And
the coolies work from early morn till late at night and every day in
the week. Their own religion does not teach them to observe the
seventh day, and this requirement of Christianity, in China as well as
in Japan, is regarded as a great hardship upon its converts.

Buddhism in China, as in Japan, it may also be observed just here, is
now only a hideous mixture of superstition and fraud. As I found
believers in the Japanese temples rubbing images of men and bulls to
cure their own pains, so in the great Buddhist temple at Canton I
found the fat Buddha's body rubbed slick in order to bring flesh to
thin supplicants, while one of the chief treasures of the temple is a
pair of "fortune sticks." If the Chinese Buddhist wishes to undertake
any new task or project, he first comes to the priest and tries out
its advisability with these "fortune sticks." If, when dropped to the
{152} floor, they lie in such a position as to indicate good luck, he
goes ahead; otherwise he is likely to abandon the project.

Let me close this chapter by noting a remark made to me by Dr. Timothy
Richard, one of the most eminent religious and educational workers in
the empire.

"Do you know what has brought about the change in China?" he asked me
one day in Peking. "Well, I'll tell you: it is a comparative view of
the world. Twenty years ago the Chinese did not know how their country
ranked with other countries in the elements of national greatness.
They had been told that they were the greatest, wisest, and most
powerful people on earth, and they didn't care to know what other
countries were doing. Since then, however, they have studied books,
have sent their sons to foreign colleges and universities, and they
have found out in what particulars China