Kueiyang, the, capital, is at first sight an impressive city, with its four broad, well-paved main streets, with many' well-stocked shops. But as. oon as one turns out of one of these up a side street, one is once more in the narrow, tortuous lanes] of a Chinese city of 1,000 years Little seems to have been done ferly by the new administration in the way of further street-widening and other civie improvements. The leettie lighting, for instance, is dis Linetly poor. it is undoubledly question of finance.
Tu a large square at the end of one' of these modern main streets Stands a bronze statue of Governor: Chow Hsi-chen, a native of Kucichow, who ruled the province with affirm, but progressive hand from Tors to 1926. "Tt is a curious looking piece of statuary, as the head is bout four times as large. in proportion, as the body. This is not Gue to, what F believe, is the moder~ rust principle of emphasizing a par-_ ticular faculty by enlarging that part fof the body, but to the simple fact that the head was cast in Germany and the body in China.
'Anyhow the citizens of Kueiyang fare very proud of this statue, having! Subscribed for it out of their own pockets, and when a later governor Wanted' to remove it, there was such fan outery that the idea was promptly dropped. 'There Governor Chow stands to-day, one hand in his trouser pocket, in a free and easy, and assur-€d_ pose, looking down' the main Street of modern Kueiyang. as if he felt that this work of his was good.
From all accounts he seems to have! been a very remarkable man; entirely self-educated, but one of those commonsense people to whom an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory. a benevolent autocrat who forced' upon an at first unwilling population his modern ideas, with Such determination and success, that the end he became the most popular ruler the province has ever had. Innumerable are the stories still told of his direct. but unconvenional, methods. of forcing through his reforms. And it was certainly a great disaster for Kueichow, that afer a short, but fruitful, rule only four years, he fell in one of the ever-recurring civil wars with which that province has been cursed ever since the fall of the Manchu dynasty.
"To-day the Central Government has complete control of the province, vil, at any' rate and the province enjoys internal peace for. the first time for nearly 20 years. It is true that banditry still seems very rife. 'There is, therefore, needless to say, a Bandit' Suppression Commissioner, in the person of Gen. Yang Sen. a former Szechuen warlord, who until a few weeks ago had his
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.