Jan. 5.
Tue letter from our up-country correspondent in Friday's issue of our paper called attention to the appalling condition of roads in this country, and his severe reprobation of the apathy of those responsible for the condition of the highways must have been echoed by all who have been unfortunate enough to have experienced the toil of plodding through the miry sloughs misnamed roads in China. A missionary once journeyed over one of those terrible roads and at the end of the day arrived at a little tumble-down village, covered with mud, wet to the skin, and exasperated in temper. The village bore took occasion to lecture him on the excellencies of "our ta tsing kwoh—great pure country."" The phrase was repeated so often that at last the traveller lost his temper and replied, ''Great pure country indeed! It should be called the ta tsang kwoh—great dirty country, for your roads are dirty, your inns are dirty, you are dirty yourself and now I am as dirty as everything else."
China is increasingly becoming the focus of the world's attention, and business men and diplomats visit her shores to learn for themselves the true conditions of her people and the prospects of trade development in the near future. The Chinese entertain these visitors generously and pass them on from one city to another showing them, with patriotic zeal, places of historic interest and public buildings, such as Provincial Assembly halls built on modern lines, or some of the many creditable industrial-factories now so rapidly springing into existence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.