JiI—Anking, Threatened by the Little Gods By Gretchen Fitkin in the yamen of the Civil Governor in honour of the_ son's union with his bride. Foreign wines were being served' with the feast. So it is that the old clashes with the new. The walls whose gates are so carefully locked every night are being hattered down by modernism.
Fascrnation UNDEFEATED.
These changes, however, have not removed the fascination of the old city. As you walk down the principal street, you can look beyond its risings and fallings as it conforms to the slopes of the hills upon which it is built to the corner around which it disappears in a tangled maze of the colour of street signs and banners. The city is spread out over large territory and is not so densely packed as most Chinese cities. You can see that this is true more clearly from tha top of the old pagoda so famous in Anking history.
From that point of vantage, you can look over the surrounding beautiful country to the big lake which lies at the foot of Big Dragon Mountain and which is connected to the city of Anking by a clear, winding river. It is over this that foreigners go in canoes for evening picnics and suppers in the spring. and there.
The port is protected on the north and west by ranges of hills, but the east and south are free and open with the river stretching out wide and muddy as far as you can see with clear bodies of water along the edges that look like tributaries but really are not, which fact accounts for their clarity. The straw-vhatched huts and tiled-roofed, plastered houses of Anking are crowded on the very bank of the river and look very much like any other native city in China, the solid picture broken here and there with a church spire or the red roof of a mission building and the curved roofs of Chinese temples.
Our Famous Pagopa.
The outlying country, cut with streams which are in turn fringed with willows, and blocked into rice-paddies, bears witness to the fact that we are still in the rice country, that cereal being the chief export from the uncommercial port of Anking. We climbed' down the steep steps of the pagoda again which descend into the Buddhist temple in the centre of which the pagoda stands. This tem)le is the cleanest I have yet seen in China. The images of gods are not so mutilated by time. There is a pleasant smell of incense through it all and every now and again a big iron bell sounds as the priest who sits beside it reading eternally knock it with the gong. The ring echoes and re-echoes to the last vibrations. On the front steps we saw the huge anchors which legend tells are placed thera to keep the ship city from floating farther down the river in the same manner in which it came to its present site. The pagoda is a beautiful mast indeed for such a legend, every corner hung with a tinkling bell.
From the pagoda, we went back again through the narrow streets, this time by ricsha, through the west gate to the Dah Kuan Ting or Pavilion of the Grand View. Here we had Chinese tea and water. melon seeds on the verandah of this public pavilion where the people of the city can come to rest in the shade of the broad eaves. We saw from here the old yamen grounds where the provincial mint turns out, great quantities of coppers. In same enclosure are the electric plant and telephone company headquarters. Farther away are the grey soldiers' barracks and on another side and by itself in the centre of a green plain is a curved temple roof which marks the centre of a public park built by the city for the pleasure of the city folk. There are boats to be had there for use on the lotus lily pond and there are zig-zag bridges and tea pavilions.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.