To the Editor of the "Norrn-Curna Dairy News."
Dear Sir,—In your issue of the 2nd instant, you state that a certain firm of booksellers' in Shanghai notifies its clients that as "Shanghai no longer enjoys the U.S. domestic rates of postage the publishers are therefore charging foreign postage on all magazines sent to China.
I have been a subscriber for many years to a number of American publications and I have always been charged full foreign postage rates and never benefited by any domestic rates. I- also know that my friends throughout the interior of China have paid the same rates as myself, hence I fail to see why you blame the Chinese Post Office for a thing that has been in force through China for the past 20 years.
The Chinese Post Office seems to be.the butt of your unfair and partial criticism of late but if you and your disgruntled correspondents lived in the interior you might sometimes find occasion for unstinted praise for the work of this wonderful and efficient institution. We have a mail service to and from our remote station every two days carried by rail, steamer, rail, and thence by foot courier over distance of 1,500 miles from your wonderful city and despite every possible hardship and unavoidable obstructions we daily bless this much maligned Postal service. Thanking you for the courtesy of inserting this in your next "issue and apologizing for taking you to task because I think you might give honour where honour is due once in a while.
I am, ete., J. B. Lanopsn.
Kiukiang, March 4, 1993.
If our correspondent would kindly refer again to the paragraph he cites, he will see that there is no comment or expression of blame by us but a mere quotation of a statement of fact by a bookselling firm who may be presumed to speak
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.