Chinkiang, March 2.
The business places in Chinkiang have now just about resumed normal conditions again after the New Year holiday. To one who knew China before 1911 it would seem that this city and district had got right back to the old style off celebrating the New Year. The shops were decorated whilst sundry bands, that is—drums and gongs being beaten by the employees of the shops, who paraded the streets day and night followed by a crowd of boys left no doubt that it was holiday season. Sleep was almost an impossibility on the night of the fourth day. It was a bright moonlight night and the noise of drums, crackers and such like things to greet the God of Riches kept up a constant din till nearly daylight. From early morning till late in the afternoon there was a constant stream of pilgrims to the famous Golden Island temple and many thousands of people went there to prostrate themselves before the idols.
The weather was unusually fine for this time of the year, in fact there has seldom been a finer holiday season. The Feast of Lanterns was also very much in evidence, ea several evenings there were torchlight processions and not a few of the lantern effects were quite good. The old dragon lantern used in former processions was missing but. the modern style of lantern is an improvement.
There was another boating fatality last week where a pussenger junk capsized and a number of people were drowned.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.