The corners of the walls of Tsung Hua Chou were as they were first built, rectangular, and the watch-towers at those corners and over the four gates from the distance looked imposing, all that they should be, but close at hand I saw that they were tumbling into ruins, the doors were fallen off the hinges, the window-frames were broken, all was desolate and empty.
“Once the soldier she watch here,” said my boy, whose pronouns were always somewhat mixed.
“Why not now?”
“No soldier here now. She go work in gold mine ninety li away. Gold mine belong Plesident.”
Tuan had got as far as the fact that a President had taken the place of the Manchu Emperor, but I wondered very much whether the inhabitants of Tsung Hua Chou had. I meditated on my way back to “Missie's inn” on the limitations of the practical Chinese mind that because it is practical, I suppose, cannot conceive of the liberty, equality, and fraternity that a Republic denotes. The President, to the humble Chinese in the street, has just taken the place of the Emperor, he is the one who rules over them, his soldiers are withdrawn. That there was a war in Mongolia, a rebellion impending in the south, were items of news that had not reached the man in the street in Tsung Hua Chou who, feeling that the soldiers must be put to some use, concluded they were working in the President's gold mine ninety li away.
A foreigner went to a Chinese tailor the other day to make him a suit of clothes, and he found occasion to complain that the gentleman's prices had gone up considerably since he employed him last. The man of the scissors was equal to the occasion, and explained that, since “revelations,” so many Chinese had taken to wearing foreign dress, he was obliged to charge more.
“You belong revolution?” asked the inquiring foreigner, anxious to find out how far liberty, fraternity, and equality had penetrated.