Dr. Heyworth took me for an excursion by rail up to the town of Chao Chow, stopping on the way to visit a Chinese family, who have beautiful ancestral halls and some of the finest modern stone carvings in the architecture of these buildings. The stone is green, and the effect of the carving is heightened by cunning touches of green and gold paint. We went by chair across the ricefields from the railway to the village, about two miles distant. The rice was being hastily cleared from the stone threshing floors where it had been husked, on account of a lowering sky, and the village was humming like a busy hive of bees. Mr. Tan and a cousin met us on his threshold, and it was a revelation to see this perfect type of a Chinese country house. The restrained beauty of detail was great; for instance, a large courtyard had an orange curtain as a canopy, casting a subdued golden light over the tall earthenware tubs, from which stately lotus blossoms and leaves reared themselves. The ancestral shrine faced this courtyard and the tablets were of choicest lacquer, surrounded by handsomely carved furniture. Mr. Tan’s grandfather built this family shrine, and it took ten skilled sculptors thirty years to accomplish it. There were bronzes and a wealth of artistic things reflected in the marble floors, the only jarring note being the European lamps and chandeliers. After being introduced to the ladies of the family we were taken to call at two houses, where we made the acquaintance of other members of the family. The most noticeable feature of these houses were the porcelain decorations of the roofs. All sorts of blossoms, rose and white and other colours, stood out in delicate tracery against the sky. These porcelain decorations are a speciality of southern Chinese art, and on the ancestral temple at Canton are most elaborate groups of figures and even landscapes. Panels of open-work pottery are let into the walls. Mr. Tan took us to see a school supported by his family where a hundred bright smart-looking boys were hard at work. He has a large business in Singapore, and it is a curious fact that from Swatow and district goes forth a continuous stream of colonists to the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong and elsewhere. They always return with accumulated wealth. Swatow itself is the fifth largest trading port of China, and has a population of some ten millions behind it, for which it is the natural outlet.