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Every street in China Town has its joss-house or temple, and however low these Mongols are as a race, they never fail to give heed to their professed religion and its various forms. It is also a fact that crime is less frequent in China Town than it is in other parts of the city; and drunkenness, except insensibility from opium, is scarcely known among the Chinese in California.
The Chinese joss-house here is considered very fine, and I made a drawing of it. It has some good stone carving and figures, but is very inferior to that of Ningpo.
The joss-house is hard by, heavy with incense, packed with quaint carvings and the paraphernalia of a foreign ceremonial. All these you behold, crowded together in the narrower arteries of the city, cool, sunless, a little mouldy, with the unfamiliar faces at your elbow, and the high, musical sing-song of that alien language in your ears.
The owner of the humblest dwelling almost invariably offers to the foreigner who enters it the hospitable tea-cup, without any apparent apprehension that his guest, by using, will defile it; and priests and worshippers attach no idea of profanation to the presence of the stranger in the joss-house.
A little higher up, fronting on a parade ground which looks from the distance like a huge green rug spread in the sun to air, are the government offices, low structures of frame and plaster, designed so as to admit a maximum of air and a minimum of heat; the long, low building of the Planters Club, encircled by deep, cool verandahs; a Chinese joss-house, its facade enlivened by grotesque and brilliantly colored carvings; and a down-at-heels hotel.
And at last, when nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house place got a bit too shadowy for their taste all these here savages are afraid of the dark, you know and I started a sort of 'Moo' noise, they built big bonfires outside and left me alone in peace in the darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a bit and think things over, and feel just as bad as I liked. And Lord! I was sick.
After walking over the whole town, we proceeded to the principal joss-house: this was very handsome; but I was sorry that it had been selected as a barrack, and was occupied by a company of sepoys. The altar was converted into a stand for arms, and the god Fo was accoutred with a sheath and cross belt.
A few yards from the signal station, though still on Mount Nanzam, there is a picturesque red joss-house with a shrine in close proximity to it. The story goes and the women of Cho-sen find it convenient to believe it that a visit to this particular joss-house has the wonderful effect of making sterile women prolific.
Presently we came to a spot where a stone bridge spanned the torrent, with a temple on one side and a joss-house on the other. It was apparently a particularly holy place, for our men had all brought quantities of joss-sticks and sacred paper with them to burn. There was a sort of eating-house close by, where they remained whilst we climbed higher up to get a view.
Among the other noticeable things in the Joss-House were two immense lanterns, as much for ornament as for utility. Then I saw a big drum and a bell, used in some of the processions of the Temple; for the Chinese take special delight in noises, indeed the more noise the better satisfied they are.
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