Pekin, though still not exactly the place Europeans would choose to live in, is now comparatively civilized, and in the spacious rooms of the European ambassadors the foreign residents dine, sup, and dance very much as they would in the capitals of their own countries. Thanks to the seclusion of the sedan-chairs, even ladies can go about without attracting notice, or having to pick their way through the ill-smelling rubbish which still encumbers the streets. No traveller in China with the slightest self-respect goes on foot, and any foreigner who attempts walking lays himself open to every insult. "A chair," says a writer who knows China well, "is far more effective than a passport," and the ambassadors and ambassadresses, the secretaries of legation, the consuls and their wives, employ large numbers of coolies to carry them to and fro. There is something truly wonderful in the way in which a mere handful of Europeans live their own lives, following their own customs, in the midst of a population of three hundred thousand Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus, not to speak of the four hundred thousand Chinese citizens, and the hundred thousand soldiers forming the garrison. [Sidenote: THE PEKIN MARKETS] Pekin now actually boasts of two bakers who make bread of fine American flour, and are largely patronized by the foreign residents; and in the markets, the native cooks who cater for the Embassies, find plenty of variety for the tables of their employers at a very reasonable price, including two kinds of pheasant, the grey and the red-legged partridge. Wild geese and wild duck, the hare, the boar, the antelope and the roebuck are also all plentiful, and mutton can be had as tender as that of Wales, Normandy, or the Ardennes. Not so very long ago, visitors to Pekin had to go to wretched inns where they were far from welcome, or to ask hospitality from the foreign residents, but now there are two hotels where travellers are as well treated as in the West. One, called the Hôtel Français, is kept by a jovial Chinaman, who was at one time cook to an English diplomatist; the other, called the German Hotel, is managed by a burly native of Frankfort, who reminds me of nothing so much as of a Heidelberg tun. In these two inns the rooms are big, with wide chimneys and good windows, so that really it is possible to be quite comfortable in them, even in winter, if one can avoid the streets, with their deep mud or dust, as the case may be. [Illustration: FIG. 48.--A STREET IN PEKIN.] It is to Pekin that thousands of students who have already won the second degree of rank, as literati, flock to compete for the distinction known as the Tsen-Sze, which corresponds to some extent with that of a doctor of law in England. The scholar who comes out first in the examinations is considered for the current year the most learned man in all the eighteen provinces of China, and is privileged to choose a post in the very highest department of the Government.