The inns in China are various in size, but similar in style. You enter through a wide doorway which is in fact the middle of a long, low house fronting on the street. On the one side of this door, or passageway, is the kitchen, which is usually furnished with one or two kettles, a large water jar, and a few dishes, with a meat-chopper and chopping block. Usually there is a little room partitioned off at the far end, which serves for office and storeroom. On the other side is a wide, raised platform about two feet high, made of mud brick. It answers for the muleteers and humbler guests, to sleep on. Inside of this front building is a court or yard with a long shed at one or both sides, and troughs for feeding mules and donkeys. At the further end of this court, and sometimes at one side, are rooms for guests. These rooms contain no furniture but a table and a bench or two, and sometimes a chair, with a rough board bedstead, or a raised brick platform to take the place of a bedstead. No towel, soap, or other toilet necessaries are furnished. They usually have one washbasin, which is passed round, and is used besides for washing the sore backs of mules, and for such other necessary uses. There are no stoves or other means of warming the rooms. Sometimes they build a fire of straw under those brick bedsteads, which invariably fills the room with smoke. Or, you can order a pan of charcoal, which will fill the room with gas. The houses are all one story and have no ceiling. The rafters are smoked as black as ink, and are always festooned with cobwebs. The rooms never have wooden floors. In the more stylish inns the floors are paved with brick, but in ordinary inns the floors are simply the ground. In the summer fleas and mosquitoes are superabundant, and they attack all comers without respect of persons. Every night there is in the courtyard a musical concert which continues at intervals till morning, and is free to all the guests. The tune is carried by the mules and donkeys, and the scolding and swearing of the muleteers make up the accompaniment. Voices of great excellence are often heard in America, but for real pathos and soul-stirring effect there is nothing like a dozen or two Chinese donkeys, when they strike in together and vie with each other for the preëminence. No common table is set, but meals are prepared to order and served to guests in their rooms. They are generally charged for by the dish. Unfortunately Mateer and Corbett had selected for their first itineration a time of year when the mosquitoes and fleas and other vermin are at their worst, and they suffered accordingly.