The celebration of the birth of the Republic was held as usual, but a very interesting conversation serves as a commentary on the celebration. This was reported to me by a native of the city. Two men were talking about the putting up of the flags of the schools being closed, and wondered what it was for. One said: "Oh! Yuan Shih-kai occasion." Many others had forgotten the day and wondered why the flags were put up, which would seem to point to a lack of interest in things Republican.
The recent rebellion has quite passed into history and there seems to be little doing now in a very direct way to catch more of the ex-soldiers and others who were interested in the affair. There are still rumours that robbers and ex-soldiers are making trouble in the Taochow district.
The dry weather here has made the farmers grumble a little, for the sweet potato crop will be short. The rice crop was only about seven-tenths of a crop and with prices on foreign things soaring, many are predicting hard times for the winter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.