Not long ago, a weekly at Hongkong appealed to its public for a new name. I quote some of the names to reveal what the Far East thinks of itself in a humorous or serious light: “Bird of Freedom”; “Bubbles”; “China Answers”; “Cathay’s Looking Glass”; “Chop Sticks”; “East of East”; “Fragrant Waters” (the translation of Hongkong); “Fire Crackers”; “Murmurs and Funnosities”; “Mixed Pickles”; “Peak and Praya”; “Topical Tropical Times”; “The Griffin” (a beginner in the Orient); “The Gong”; “The Hit”; “Humming Top”; “Imperial Outpost”; “The Lantern”; “Merry-Go-Round”; “The Palm”; “The Pearl”; “Sun of Cathay”; “The Typhoon”; “The Ferret”; “The Colonel”; “Maskee” (the Chinese way of saying “never mind”); “Puckee” (the Oriental way of saying “O.K.”). The Chinese newspaper is a success, commercially, patriotically and educationally. Millions now read it every day. It gave the best and earliest news of the October, 1911, revolution. There are Chinese newspapers in San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, Singapore, Penang, Hongkong, Sydney, Paris and London. Chinese plays recite the history of the clans and early states. Even the boatman and laborer are familiar with them. Every hill, valley, and reach and fall of a river north of the Yangtze has its hero and story. This would seem to prove that the race first came through the Tarim and Kansu gates to the new land. The rich, who aim to control trade routes and privileges depending upon popular tolerance, in Roman fashion give free theatricals to the village folk. The acting is excellent and spirited; the feats of memory remarkable, and the costumes gorgeous. “Once an actor always an actor,” they say, regarding the custom of youths being bought or apprenticed by the traveling troupes. Guild halls and some monasteries have theaters in connection with the compound. A restaurant is run during the long series of plays. You hurry out to dine when the play you are least interested in is rung in by cymbal. Bets and lawsuits between the guilds and villages are often settled by the loser paying for the visit of a theatrical troupe. Beautiful specimens of the blue and gold gowns of the emperor-actor can be secured at the silk shops of the treaty ports, and in some of the Oriental shops of New York, San Francisco and London. The American and British college graduate wears a hood; the Chinese wears a yellow panel on his breast and back (it may be changed under the republicans to blue). When Yuan Shih recently took the oath of office as provisional president, two bonzes of the famous Lama Temple at Peking stepped up, and presented him with honorary panels of yellow silk.