Shopping has been done by a tedious system of bargaining extending over days, the contract concluding with a shout of “Mai Te” (sale attained), which corresponds with our stock exchange phrase of “Bid taken.” Doubtless the modern Chinese will adopt the Anglo-Saxon method of saving time and coming to a decision quicker. Healthy competition will bring this about. Many guilds and Chinese merchants continue the old custom of sending letters from city to city by messenger or trusted traveler. Hongkong has attacked this competition with the government post-office by fining those who deliver private letters from out-ports, though Hongkong permits private delivery by the excellent “chit-book” system within the city. China is finding that she can knit her own goods, and she will soon import yarns mainly. I shall instance the Wei San factory as a sample of five factories in Hongkong. Canton has ten factories, and Kwangtung province has many more, not to speak of the immense number of hand-knitting machines which the Japanese and the Germans are supplying. Tientsin and Shanghai have several knitting factories, and much foreign machinery will be needed throughout the land, especially in the Yangtze valley. Up to Viceroy Chang Chih Tung’s régime in Hupeh in 1906, China scraped and raked the whole world for cargoes of old horseshoes and iron scrap, but since the blast furnaces at Hanyang have been a success, China is doing considerable smelting of ore, of which she has beds almost as rich as her coal and lime beds. The largest iron mines now worked are at Phing Ting in eastern Shansi province and Tayeh in eastern Hupeh province. The Hanyang smelters supply the rail mills of Hanyang, and also ship pig iron to the Wakamatsu iron works on Kyushu Island, Japan; 40,000 tons of pig to the Western Steel Corporation of Seattle, and to the eastern seaboard of America, as well as to Hongkong, on occasions. There is iron ore in more than half of the provinces, notably in Kiangsu (near Nanking); Nganhwei and Kiangsi, besides the provinces mentioned. China is already turning out 400,000 tons of iron ore a year, largely by primitive methods. The Han Yeh Ping Iron and Coal Company at Hanyang, Hupeh province, has three German blast furnaces, eight Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnaces, a rolling-mill of one thousand tons a day, blooming mills and a foundry. The cranes are run by electricity. The iron ore and limestone are secured at Tayeh eighty miles down the Yangtze from Hankau. Here a whole range of hills is full of hematite ore. A railway of fifteen miles brings the ore to the Yangtze River, where it is loaded on junks and towed by steam launches up to Hanyang.