The rules of the workhouse seem good, and the inmates can earn money (five dollars per month) so as to have something in hand when they leave. The women’s department is in another part of the city and we had not time to visit it. It is very noticeable how the temples are being everywhere used for such useful purposes, for the housing question is here, as at home, a serious problem. No doubt it would be good from a practical point of view that these buildings should be replaced by new ones, built for the purpose, but the loss of beauty would be incalculable. The temple of Heaven and Hell has glorious turquoise-blue roofs and handsome tiles and large medallions of green pottery on the walls. It is the most beautiful of all the temples, in my opinion, though the Imperial Temple, where the Dowager Empress stayed on her historic flight to Sianfu, is also very fine. This is now used as a school for the teaching of the new script, which is a simplified form of the Chinese character. It was devised in 1918 by the Ministry of Education in order to make literacy easier for the population. The ordinary Chinese boy takes three or four years longer than the Western boy to learn to read. When the old system of education was abolished in 1907 a new one had to be devised, but it is an extremely difficult thing to carry out such a reform throughout so vast an empire. Governor Yen Hsi-Shan is an ardent promoter of the scheme, and he has established the school for the express purpose of promoting it. Every household in Taiyuanfu is required to send at least one member to study the script; in order to make it easier, there are a few characters, with their equivalent in the old script, put up outside many of the shops, so that people may learn it as they go about their business. Not only so, but all over the city may be seen notice boards with the two scripts in parallel columns, and these boards have generally some one studying them, not infrequently with notebook in hand. Many of the schools are teaching it, but it is difficult to add this to an already well-filled time-table. It may be of interest to know that it is “a phonetic system containing thirty-nine symbols (divided into three denominations, viz. twenty-four initials, three medials and twelve finals).”—_North China Daily News._ This is one part of an important movement for the unification of the language, the importance of which can only be fully realized by those who have travelled widely in China. Not only every province varies from every other province, but also every district from every other district. There are sixty-four dialects in Fukien alone. The unification of the Empire would be greatly promoted by the unification of the language, and this has been frankly recognized by the Ministry of Education, which has issued a notice to that effect: