As to the minor orthodox states grouped along the Yellow River, they seem to have shifted their capitals on very slight provocation; scarcely one of them remained from first to last in the same place. To take one as an instance, the state of Hu, an orthodox state belonging to the same clan name as Ts'i. The history of this petty principality or barony is only exactly known from the time when Confucius' history begins, and it was continually being oppressed by Cheng and Ts'u, its more powerful neighbours; in 576, 533, 524 and onwards from that, there were incessant removals, so that even the native commentators say: "it was just like shifting a village, so superficial an affair was it." The accepted belles _lettres_ style (see p. 78) of saying "my country" is still the ancient _pi-yih_ or "unworthy village": the Empress of China once (about 190 B.C.) used this expression, even after the whole of China had been united, in order to reject politely the offer of marriage conveyed to her by a powerful Tartar king. The expression is particularly interesting, inasmuch as it recalls, as we have already pointed out, a time when the "country" of each feudal chief was simply his mud village and the few square miles of fields around it, which were naturally divided off from the next chief's territory by hills and streams. On the Burmo-Chinese frontier there are at this moment many Kakhyen "kings" of this kind, each of them ruling over his mountain or valley, and supreme in his own domain. That there were walled cities in China (apart from the Emperor's, which, of course, would be "the city" par _excellence_) is plain from the language used at durbars, which were always held "outside the walls." In the _loess_ plains there could not have been any stone whatever for building purposes, and there is little, if any, specific mention of brick. Probably the walls were of adobe, i.e. of mud, beaten down between two rigid planks, removed higher as the wall dries below. This is the way most of the houses are still built in modern Peking, and perhaps also in most parts of China, at least where stone (or brick) is not cheaper; the "barbarian" parts of China are still the best built; for instance, CH'ÊNg-tu in Sz Ch'wan, Canton in the south. Hankow (Ts'u) is a comparatively poor place; Peking the dingiest of all. Chinkiang is a purely _loess_ country.