When a visitor enters a Yamen, he realises that his manners must be those of a most polished diplomat. Before him walks a servant, holding aloft his visiting card. One really ought to have special Chinese cards printed on beautiful sheets of red paper with queer-looking characters on them setting forth one's rank and name. However, in these days of admiration of the West, our poor little white cards are considered adequate. The Viceroy or official meets the visitor, enthusiastically shaking his own hands--the Chinese salutation--and bowing low; the particular door at which he meets his guest marks the amount of respect he wishes to pay him, and is therefore of some importance. In my case, when my host was favourable to higher education, I was received in the outer court. At every door there was a polite contest as to who should go through it first, and at last we found ourselves in a room where tea, dessert, champagne, and cigarettes were offered, although of the two latter I was unworthy. Then began the conversation. I found less stiffness once I had explained that I came to gather opinions about a scheme for education. After the stately interview was over there was an equally ceremonious leave-taking. Though the methods of the Chinese in doing business may be exasperating to a Western whose time is money and who wants them to come to some immediate decision, they are invariably delightful and courteous in all their negotiations. This courtesy is all the direct result of Confucian teaching. Stress is {72} laid there on courteous behaviour, perhaps even to a degree which may strike the Western traveller as absurd. This courtesy, I understand, extends even to those of lower degree. Your servant in speaking to another calls him brother, and nothing makes the servant despise his master so much as seeing him lose his temper: it is to his mind a mark of our savagery. The Chinese have higher virtues than courtesy. They are essentially industrious. You have only to look at a Chinaman's garden to realise the extent to which he possesses this quality. I am certain that those people who are proud of the culture of their kitchen gardens would be surprised and ashamed if they could compare them with those of a Chinaman. One passes garden after garden with rows of plants placed at even distances and every plant exactly the right distance in those rows, with never a weed to be seen all over the whole plot. Again in handicraft there is the same industry; you buy Chinese embroidery for a song in such a place as Changsha. No one will tell you that Chinamen ever object to length of hours; they are ideal men for work that needs care and accuracy.