This could be multiplied every day in a thousand different ways. If the scales are right the rate is if the rate is right the purity of silver is different; if the silver is right, there is levy or something else on silver being into the provi and rly, the loss is always with] the traveller. One may spend a happy week making one-day back and forth between boundary each time and buying the currency of the province he enters leach day, and see his fortune liter-lly become "wind in the ear" as the Chinese have it.
Some foreigners are wise in the ways of China's money changers, have made it a habit to mark each To illustrate further, it might be assumed that a traveller starts from Shanghai with one hundred taels, This money will be in sycee or silver, The traveller will be careful to know that it represents exactly one hundred tael—no more less. He will then proceed the Yangtzekiang to Hankow, up the railway to Peking, down again through one or two interior pro vinees. On his way he will exchange this money, scrupulously husbanding the little wad and not cent. Upon his return to however, he need have no further care for he will have nothing left but the common paper in which the sycee was wrapped.
My own experience on one of the) arent trade routes in inland China will better illustrate practically the exchange standards than could, perhaps, a technical discussion of the subject.
At that remarkably prosperous central mart of Hankow, 600 miles from Shanghai, I obtained a hundred pieces of silver. In the native city wont through the exchange transaction with the courteous. banker and watched his tiny scales record the weight of each piece of sycee with astounding precision. 1 watched the begoggled—shroff mark the exact weight on the face of each piece—3.5, 4.2, 6.59, and so fon, and gave devout praise that at Inst 1 had discovered something in China that could be relied—upon. None would then be able to dispute my money in travelling in the interior, at all events. The banker himself assured me that T had then 'a given amount of money all small convenient weights that could be exchange at any market town for smaller currency for personal purchases aa I proceeded over-
Troubles Begin My joy was, I admit, complete when the banker offered to me as a little souvenir of the business association the very scales that he used, tiny beautifully polished, unique, consisting of a small ebony stick and a piece of lead attached 4o a string, and not particularly easy to manipulate by the uninitiated Should there arise any dispute, therefore, on the weight of any of the hundred pieces of silver, T should have my own scales with me and would be able to a: once convince disputants, Then I started on my journey. 'But immediately I got into Szechuan province and found it necessary to change my money my troubles at once began.' Proceeding to a recoginied money changer, I produced apiece of silver marked 3.5—three and one-half tenths of an ounces oF ta "Bat this is only 3,3," declared the exchange..man, and deaf to all piece of silver and sew it into the Tining of their Chinese coats, taking fut piece by piece as expenditure demands and weighting the same before buying "small money." But it is rare indeed for one's scales to agree with those of the wary money changer.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.