It is said that the natives of the Fukien province are among the most superstitious of the Chinese, and Bushell[251] sees a reflection of this religious temperament in the nature of the Tê-hua wares. If this is so, they must have had exalted opinions of their European visitors, whom they often furnish with the attributes of Chinese divinities, representing them in positions and poses which seem to caricature native deities and sages. There is, for instance, an ornament in form of a mountain retreat with a shrine in which is seated a figure in a three-cornered European hat and a Buddha-like attitude. Another group consists of a European mounted on a _ch’i-lin_, posing as an Arhat, and another of a European standing on a dragon’s head which would symbolise to the Chinese the attainment of the highest literary honours. There are, besides, in the British Museum collection figures of animals and birds, the Buddhist lion, the cock, the hawk, or the parrot, mostly fitted with tubes to hold incense sticks; and there are a pair of well modelled figures of Chou dogs. As for the vessels of Tê-hua porcelain, they consist chiefly of incense vases and incense burners, libation cups shaped after bronze or rhinoceros horn models, brush pots, wine cups, water vessels for the study table and the like (often beautifully modelled in the form of lotus leaves or flowers), boxes, tea and wine pots, cups and bowls, and more rarely vases. An extensive trade was done with the European merchants, whose influence is apparent in many of the wares, such as coffee cups with handles, mugs of cylindrical form or globular with straight ribbed necks in German style, and “barber-surgeons’ bowls” with flat pierced handles copied from silver models. Indeed, the superficially European appearance of some of these pieces has led serious students to mistake them for early Meissen porcelain and even for that nebulous porcelain supposed to have been made by John Dwight, of Fulham, at the end of the seventeenth century. Père d’Entrecolles[252] incidentally mentions the fact that some Ching-tê Chên potters had in the past removed to Fukien in the hope of making profits out of the European traders at Amoy, and that they had taken their plant and even their materials with them, but that the enterprise was a failure. Conversely, the influence of the Tê-hua wares is obvious in many of the early European porcelains, such as those made at Meissen, St. Cloud, Bow, and Chelsea, which were often closely modelled on the Fukien white. There is, indeed, a striking similarity between the creamy soft-paste porcelain of St. Cloud and the creamy variety of the _blanc de chine_, both having the same mellow, melting appearance in the glaze. [Illustration: Plate 86.--Fukien Porcelain, Ming Dynasty. Fig 1.--Figure of Kuan-yin with boy attendant. Ivory white. Height 10¼ inches. _Eumorfopoulos Collection._