'Have you any English friends living in China?'
'No.'
Ping Wang gave a slight sigh of relief.
'Then, if you will promise not to repeat what I tell you,' he said, 'you shall hear my story.'
'I promise,' Charlie answered. 'But I hope that you are not going to tell me any anti-European plots.'
RICE-PAPER.
Chinese rice-paper is a thing which we frequently hear of, but do not often see. It is very curious and pretty, but far too frail for most of the uses to which we put our English paper; and, for this reason, it has no commercial value in European countries, and is only brought away by travellers and traders as a curiosity.
The rice-paper which I have seen was cut into small squares about three by two inches, each of which had a beautiful coloured picture of a Chinese man or woman. The paper was very white and thin, slightly rough, like blotting-paper, stiff and brittle. It was impossible to fold it, as the least effort to bend the sheet broke it in two. The pictures upon these little sheets had evidently been painted by hand, and were very beautiful and interesting. The surface of the paint was bright and clear, and the paper was transparent enough to permit the picture to be seen from the back, with all its colours and details only a little dimmed, as if seen through a thin sheet of ground glass.