I am just back from a 20 days' absence. If I were asked what two things made most impression on me as to China's condition up here, I would say her relapse (if it is a relapse!) into the old style, and, more markedly, her relapse into opium. In regard to the vst: I spent New Year at Mien-chub, a hsien some 60 miles from here. The old-fashioned style of visiting card decorated every door as plentifully as they did 18 years ago. It is true foreign goods were not so plentiful then. In regard to opium: I waited one morning for more tham an hour while two of my three chair bearers smoked opium. Yesterday as I came back I saw what you can now see everywhere, namely, open doors and opium smokers within lying in rows on the bees.
There has been fighting at Shihfamg between here and Chengtu, and a ringleader, half brigand and half soldier, has been killed.
I mentioned recently how our oficial puts out proclamations against opium. He is also putting out the same against foot-binding, and he says if anyone offend they will be fined $30. 5
As a sagacious observer remarked to me to-day; "What good will it do? If he would really come down on one or two families, and carry out his threat, and make them pay $30 there would soon be very lo of it." The common man, or rather, perhaps, woman, seems to hold as strongly as ever that "if we do not bind her feet, nobody will want her." This is what the people ~s-Ily say.
Maniza, Feb. 20.—The transfer of the Olongapo naval station to Cavite which wae ordered some time ago by the Navy Department, has been postponed temporarily. Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.