[312] The Chinese term used throughout is “star-man.”
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[313] Chinese official life is divided into nine grades.
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[314] Prostrating himself three times, and knocking his head on the ground thrice at each prostration.
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[315] The retinue of a high mandarin is composed as follows:—First, gong-bearers, then bannermen, tablet-bearers (on which tablets are inscribed the titles of the official), a large red umbrella, mounted attendants, a box containing a change of clothes, bearers of regalia, a second gong, a small umbrella or sunshade, a large wooden fan, executioners, lictors from hell, who wear tall hats; a mace (called a “golden melon”), bamboos for “bambooing,” incense-bearers, more attendants, and now the great man himself, followed by a body-guard of soldiers and a few personal attendants, amounting in all to nearly one hundred persons, many of whom are mere street-rowdies or beggars, hired at a trifling outlay when required to join what might otherwise be an imposing procession. The scanty retinues of foreign officials in China still continue to excite the scorn of the populace, who love to compare the rag-tag and bob-tail magnificence of their own functionaries with the modest show even of H.B.M.’s Minister at Peking.
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[316] A land journey of about three months, ending in a region which the Chinese have always regarded as semi-barbarous.
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[317] This use of paper money in China is said to date from A.D. 1236; that is, during the reign of the Mongol Emperor, Ogdai Khan.
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[318] This contingency is much dreaded by the Chinese.
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[319] A yojana has been variously estimated at from five to nine English miles.
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[320] The patra and khakkharam of the bikshu or Buddhist mendicant.
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[321] It is not considered quite correct to take a concubine unless the wife is childless, in which case it is held that the proposition to do so, and thus secure the much-desired posterity, should emanate from the wife herself. On page 41 of Vol. XIII., of this author, we read, “and if at thirty years of age you have no children, then sell your hair-pins and other ornaments, and buy a concubine for your husband. For the childless state is a hard one to bear;” or, as Victor Hugo puts it in his Légende des Siècles, there is nothing so sad as “la maison sans enfants.”
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