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Updated: May 10, 2025
The Lord Wang attempted to stop him, but he broke loose, and soon the drums and bells were sounding to do honor to the magistrate, while the bonzes formed in two ranks and bowed as he passed along. He entered the temple and burned some joss-sticks; after which the Superior made him a low obeisance and begged him to come and rest himself for a moment in the reception hall. Tea was served.
A bed consists only of a mat and a mosquito-net. There are all the usual joss arrangements, and time is measured by the burning of joss-sticks. Several rain-cloaks, made of palm leaves, were hanging up. These, and nearly all the other articles consumed by this large population are imported from China.
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.
The costume gave her a kind of boyish charm; yet she remained entirely feminine. A kind of bronze mist seemed to envelop her head, as the dull-tawny sunset light fell on her from those broad windows. Near her riding-crop stood a Hindu incense-holder, with joss-sticks burning.
When not otherwise engaged, they sew, make Joss-sticks, slit bamboo, or do something or other, the baby being strapped on the mother's back that her capacity for work may not be interfered with; and her stepping backward and forward as she sculls must be a soothing lullaby, for we haven't heard a child crying yet in China.
The shadowy streets were now full of incense or rather joss-stick smoke, for every house and every shop has a large altar inside, and a small one without, before which joss-sticks are burnt more or less all day long. The streets seemed more crowded even than usual. Each of our bearers struck out a line of his own, and it was not until we reached Shameen that we all met again.
There is a recess outside each shop, and at dusk the joss-sticks burning in these fill the city with the fragrance of incense.
Into this hive poured the suffering, mounting from the street, load after load, in the swiftly flying cages; their visit made, their joss-sticks burned, they dropped down once more to the chill world below, where they must carry on the burden of living. The attending physicians arrived at nine. The "shop," as they called it, opened at ten; Lindsay was due at eleven and departed at three.
At this point, the person who is now concluding his obscure and commonplace history, having spent his last piece of money on joss-sticks and incense-paper, and being convinced of the presence of the spirits of his ancestors, is inspired to make the following prophecies: That Tieng Lin, who imposed upon him in the matter of picture-making, shall come to a sudden end, accompanied by great internal pains, after suffering extreme poverty; that the one who sits in an easy-chair, together with his lesser one and all who make stories for them, shall, while sailing to a rice feast during the Festival of Flowers, be precipitated into the water and slowly devoured by sea monsters, Klan-hi in particular being tortured in the process; that Pel-li-Chen, the father of Tien, shall be seized with the dancing sickness when in the presence of the august Emperor, and being in consequence suspected of treachery, shall, to prove the truth of his denials, be submitted to the tests of boiling tar, red-hot swords, and of being dropped from a great height on to the Sacred Stone of Goodness and Badness, in each of which he shall fail to convince his judges or to establish his innocence, to the amusement of all beholders.
True, the German Lüger is larger.... "Tell them," I said to the policeman, "that this gun will shoot through twenty millimeters of pine. Tell them that they had better dispose of their property and burn a few joss-sticks before they start to argue with it. And tell them that, no matter what happens, the car is to keep going."
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