Produced by Charlene Taylor, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Bolded text is marked with ='s, =like this=. | | | | In the original text, Hai-tzu is spelled with the | | letter u accented with a breve, for the purpose of this | | e-text that has been changed to u. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * LIFE AND SPORT IN CHINA LIFE AND SPORT IN CHINA BY OLIVER G. READY, B.A. _SECOND EDITION_ LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED 1904 [Illustration: PAGODA, NEAR HANKOW. _Frontispiece._] AUTHOR'S NOTE The British public is greatly handicapped in forming an intelligent appreciation of happenings in China by a lack of that initial experience which can only be gained by residence in the country. In this little work I have endeavoured to place before readers a sketch of things as I saw them, and to convey to their minds an idea of how Europeans live there, of their amusements, of their work, and of those things which are matters of daily interest to them, so that my book may serve as a kind of preface to that enthralling volume, the current history of China, as it is daily revealed in the press, in magazines and in learned works. While confining myself herein to the lighter side of narrative, I am not unconscious of those intricate problems and deep studies connected with the Far East, but to which profound research and matured judgment must be applied, though information thereon, even when collected and published, would appeal mostly to the narrow circle of experts on matters Chinese.