Not only the Japanese are conspicuously in evidence; Russian droshkes are pulled at the gallop and trot along the Meridian Street of the Drum Tower. The unique tall shop signs are carved on pole and capital not unlike Alaskan totem poles. Differently from the cities of South China, many ponies and mules are seen on the street, and man is not here, as in Middle and South China, the beast of burden. The best frozen game, pork and mutton, and fish shops of China are in Mukden. Outside each angle of the walls is a Lama monument. Mukden is famous for its black pigs, many of which, frozen, are shipped to Liverpool and London markets. The Japanese have erected fine railway, administration, bank, school, etc., buildings in their settlement. The city has telephone, telegraph, electric light, mail and water service. Wen Hsiang, the most enlightened Manchu prince connected with international dealings with China at Peking in the Victorian age, was a Mukden man, and is buried near the east gate. The foreign settlement has the usual clubs and churches, a brewery, and a large modern concrete factory of the British-American Tobacco Company, for when opium went out the cigarette came in, in disgusted Cathay! The Chinese hotel is the Hai Tien Chun, near the entrance to the west gate. There are horse-tram railways, electric trams, a Chinese provincial mint, and great fur, skin and coal markets. Mukden will yet be a leading center for land, mine, agricultural, machinery, food and clothing interchange of the world, for rich, black-earth Manchuria is destined to be the granary of more soil-impoverished countries of the Pacific than China. XXII NATIVE CITIES OF CHINA Singan or Sian (meaning “Chinese”), the capital of Shensi province, dates back to the twelfth century, B.C. The whole valley is full of the monuments, mounds and relics of kings of many ancient dynasties. As its name appropriately shows, Singan was the original capital of China, when the tribes first united in mutual recognition of kinship, and it is a shrine, therefore, appealing to antiquarians. Out on the plain the Emperor Tsin, builder of the Great Wall, “burned the books” of China, and buried the scholars under mounds of contumely. The most remarkable pyramidal pagoda in China lies beyond the south wall. It has seven stories, surmounted with a turban, and temple buildings with rich screens are attached. To this city the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi retreated from Peking in a springless cart over sunken loess roads before the march of the European allies and the American column in 1900. Its walls and large forts, filled with ports, are the oldest and best preserved of all Chinese cities.