Even the recent changes in dress wrought by the Revolution have shown the enormous demand there is for re-dressing the Chinese; with the passing of the queue they decided against the little round Manchu hat, an article made almost exclusively in China. Immediately there came a cry for the foreign hat; at once a trade was created, into the country there came all kinds and conditions and shapes of foreign head-gear--felts, cloth caps, and all sorts; they sold in hundreds of thousands and had to be supplied by some one. China, at all events, could not make them; to her it was something quite new; they had to come from outside. Japan was watching. She collared the trade, and in two months she had practically re-hatted China. But this is merely an instance; many more might be given to show the rapidity with which commercial {23} changes come. In over seven thousand miles of travel in China, mostly far away inland where the effect of the treaty port is least felt, the writer some time ago made a study of the commercial aspect of things and how far the modern spirit had penetrated the interior, with a view specially to ascertain how the British merchant stands in the business life of the nation. This chapter, therefore, should have especial interest so far as it embodies correct data, gleaned in two years and a half of travel in many parts of the Chinese Empire where the traveller is still to the Chinese a wonder of wonders. In China, even in far interior places, one finds life, business, prosperity--a strange commingling of Western ideas with Eastern. Four hundred millions of people have to all intents and purposes become civilised. They are anxious to swing into line and want the equipment. Their needs are making China the greatest market in the world. They want everything--railways, machinery, tools, guns, ships, and much else. That there is an unprecedented large trade to be done must at once be granted. During the last decade, without thinking for the moment of the Revolution, China's foreign trade has doubled; in the next decade, if peace prevails, it must be trebled, and although one cannot ignore the fact that under ordinary conditions of progress China must ultimately become a serious rival to Western countries as an industrial nation, that day is not yet at hand. She must be a stupendous buyer before she can hope to become a serious competitor.