When on a shooting trip far up the River Han I saw a large buffalo with four boys on his back, grazing by the side of a water-ditch, which lay between him and a steep bank some ten feet high. The grass being very soft, my close approach was unobserved, until a hare getting up I fired off my gun. Instantly the buffalo dashed through the ditch and up the bank, when the boys, having nothing to hold on to except one another, were shot off backwards into the water, where they formed a perfect heap of struggling arms and legs, to my great amusement. Chinese farm-houses are very different from the substantial, comfortable dwellings obtaining in this country, being primitive clay hovels with no upper storeys, having tile roofs, windows of oiled paper, and mud floors, while the furniture is home-made and of the roughest description. No walks or gardens surround the house, which stands in the centre of the farm-yard, outbuildings and cesspools, with the threshing-floor, as a rule, immediately outside the front door. Pigs, dogs, fowls and goats roam at will through the dwelling and about the premises, while the two or three buffaloes and oxen used for ploughing and threshing are tethered to neighbouring trees. [Illustration: A TYPICAL FARM-HOUSE. _To face page 177._] Although wheat, maize, barley and millet are largely cultivated in the north, rice is the principal crop wherever it can be grown, much water being necessary. It is first sown in quite a small, dry patch, to be subsequently transplanted, and comes up as thick as grass and of a most brilliant green. The fields, which rarely exceed half an acre, and are generally very much less, are now tilled. First, they are flooded by a careful system of irrigation to a depth of three or four inches, and when sufficiently soft turned over with a primitive, wooden plough, shod with a small iron blade or tip, and drawn by one water buffalo. After this they are harrowed, the farmer standing on the harrow and driving the buffalo as it wades along, until they are masses of rich, liquid mud. The young plants are now pricked out by hand, about six inches apart, and the fields kept just flooded by a constant stream of running water. When ripe the crop stands about two and a half feet in height, and the water having been cut off some time previously, reaping commences with the sickle.