Life in a Chinese Country Town:
Cigarettes and Oil Advertisements all that is Modern From Our Own Correspondent, Wuchang, Feb. 24.
1 have been spending the Chinese New Year holiday in an old walled city not so very far from Hankow. These old country towns ave verity able backwaters in the stream of progress. Life seems to go on very ranch as it must have done for centuries and centuries—ever since the Golden Age of Yao and Hsuen, and of Huang Ti. Except eftes which may bought on its streets, and the big) ugly modern advertisements for oil which decorate its ancient wall, the influence of the West seems hard te have penetrated, It is interesting to find how each place has its own Jocal practices and superstitions. Here, it is the stem at New Year to throw sand in front of the threshold. No one stems to be quite sure of the origin meaning of this custom, but every one docs it. Some say it is for the sake of cleanliness. Others that it is to keep away demons. Evidently, the demons do not like sand, though nobody is quite clear why. In any case, the custom ig a profitable one for the coolies, who carry the sand from the river and receive 40 cash for each load. See-rug there are some 2,500 households, the amount of money which thus changes hands must be considerable, Other superstitions are probably held in much the same form as_ in all other regions of China. How far there may be local peculiarities in the following observations, the writer ig ignorant.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.