Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1895 — In Chinese Villages. [ARTICLE]

In Chinese Villages.

Mr. Weldon and I often went into the villages, walking between the Helds of shiv.euing rice, but far ofteuer the villagers came to see us in our houseboat—men, women, babies, dogs and all. Always some little side canal, the offshoot of the main waterway, was the only street between or before the village houses. There was always the towpath, but the best route was by a second path leading behind the houses. By following that we passed through the farms and yards. We saw the men and women thrashing the rice by beating a log with liaudfulls of it to scatter the kernels on the ground. We saw the farmers turning the soil over and breaking it up laboriously, or punching holes in the thick clay, dropping seeds in then*, and then smearing the holes over with a rake. We went into the inner courts of the better houses, and •noted how the men, and even the tiniest baby boys, thrust themselves forward to greet us, while the women and girls slunk behind or merely peeped through the doorways and open windows—the latter being Elizabethan contrivances, framed for little panes of oiled paper or the enamelled inner coating of seashells. White goats, wolfish dogs, com-mon-sense chickens, hump-backed cows and nose-led buffaloes make up the animal life that is so painfully missing in Japan and so abundant in China.