Again, the Shanghai municipality has no Chinese representatives upon it, though the great bulk of the population is Chinese, with the result that from time to time they come across Chinese prejudices and quite unnecessarily irritate the population which they govern. The Chinese have a principle that a woman shall be publicly punished only for adultery and open shameless theft; her "face" or dignity must be preserved; and therefore she should never be made to answer for her offences in open court, her husband or her father being held responsible for her behaviour and for her punishment. The right way of dealing with any woman who is charged with an offence is to do as we do in England with regard to children, to summon {103} not her but those responsible for her behaviour. I was assured by a Chinese official that the trouble which culminated in the Shanghai riots originated from disregard of this principle. The refusal of the Shanghai municipality to have Chinese representatives upon it is the more remarkable, as I was informed at Hong-Kong that they have such representatives, and find them most useful in assisting in the government of the Chinese. It is not surprising that Shanghai is a town to which it is diplomatic to make no reference in conversation with a Chinese gentleman. There is more to be said for the mistrust of the Chinese Post-office and for the continuation of the curious system by which each nation has its own post-office. Nothing is more annoying to the traveller in Shanghai than the trouble he has to get his letters. If it should so happen that he has correspondents in many countries, he has to go to every one of the many post-offices in Shanghai, and they are situated in different parts of the town and in places very difficult to find. There is the Imperial Chinese Post-office, to which he first repairs, and where he will find letters from any correspondent in China; then with the greatest difficulty he reaches the English Post-office; after which he remembers that some of his friends may be on a holiday in France, therefore he must go to the French Post-office, and so on. When he asks why the Chinese Post-office cannot be trusted, he is told that the Chinese themselves will not trust their {104} post-office unless there be a European official in control, and that the old Chinese system by which letters are forwarded by private companies still continues in many parts of China, although they possess branches of the Imperial Chinese Post-office. Still the traveller wearily thinks at the end of his day's journey that without undue trust in another nationality, or any loss of national prestige, an International Post-office might be arranged in a town like Shanghai, with its vast travelling population.