Chungking, Jan, 24.
It is interesting to watch a modern city like this swing back to old customs for a few days. Three days ago the streets were alive, with motor cars, rickshaws, and every other kind of conveyance and the shops. were open and active. To-day the place Is dead.
In most parts of China there has been a decided tendency during recent years to give up the customs connected with the old New Year.
In some places only a three-day Spring Festival holiday is granted. It is "quite different in Szechuen, Schools close for a full month, banks for five or six days, shops for a varying length of time and even the hospitals close for four or nve days, maintaining only a skeleton staff'to care for the ward patients and emergency cases, Merchanis and others have been very active during the past few days collecting accounts in order to meet their own obligations. Every one who owed even a few dollars was pressed for payment. Extra rood sluts were purchased and prepared, including fuel, rice and salt. And everyone who' ever worked for you, carried chits, delivered goods or came in contact with you in any other way, has been around for his cumshaw.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.