Atier entering Kiangsi one passes through "fine mountain scenery, a quite thickly populated country with Picturesque' villages nestling under the hillsides, The Red armies only passed through this district and never actually held it, so that little damage was done to the villages. The only reminders -of the anti-Communist campaigns are the blockhouses erected along the road on every commanding point, and Red slogans that had been rubbed out on the walls and often replaced by anti<Communist propaganda, This part of Kiangs! is, however, by no means free of bandits, and the country to the north of the and was said to be unsafe, The hotel was built at the time when Gen. Chiang Kal-shek had his headquarters here and when great hopes were being placed on the future of the city, The saying "Ils an il-wind that blows nobody any good" applies very aptly to the Communist inva sion of Kiangsi, "For in consequence of this invasion Nanchang became not only the Generalissimo's headquarters But also the concentration point of largo Government armies who brought much money into the place. In those days Nanchang. grew and Mourlshed exceedingly.
With the end of the anti-Communist campaign the armies and liead-'Quarters were withdrawn, and Nanchang was left high and dry. For a time. there was a great slump. in rents and house property. To-day the city makes a rather forlorn and athetle impression, with its fine brand streets, its. ambitious lights signal boxes, its bricked-in lakes and imposing modern shops, It reminds tone of a stout person who has suc cessfully undergone a reducing cure fand whose garments. In consequence bhang loosely about him, Hesldents are Optimists Nevertheless, despite this une deserved setback, the people of Nan-large crowds collected outside any shop 1 entered, while in the main street at all hours of the day a large crowd stood listening gapingly to a loud-speaker that had recently been installed in a shop. Lack of communications probably accounts for the backwardness of the place which lies ina mountainous district with few roads and many bandits. Until the motor-road was opened within the Fast two years, the only safe method of travel to the large centres, such a5 Nanchang and Kiukiang, was 2 seven or eight days journey by boat 'That the city lives for and by the potteries is at once obvious; If one fakes a stroll through its narrow Janes, up and down which, at. all hours of the day, there pass steady: streams of coolies carrying baskets with clay' bricks, fire-wood, or bowls of baked and unbaked porcelain,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.