And what will be the outward aspect of the China of those days? Great industrial cities there may be; harbours thronged with ocean-liners and with great battleships flying the Dragon flag; miles of factories, barracks, arsenals and shipping-yards; railway trains, motor-cars and airships coming and going incessantly from province to province; warehouses, banks and stock-exchanges full of myriads of buyers and sellers, each straining every nerve to excel his neighbour in the race for wealth. And where, in this picture of China's possible future, are the thousands of ancestral temples where to-day the members of every family meet to do homage to their honoured dead and to renew the bonds of kinship one with another? They are to be seen no more. In their place stand thousands of village police-stations. FOOTNOTES: [65] See p. 98. [66] _Society in China_, p. 107. [67] _Kuei chia shih shih yang yen i ta kuan ssŭ wei lo shih._ [68] _Ta-jên._ The term _Ta Lao-yeh_ (see p. 15) is more correct for a "father-and-mother" official, but _Ta-jên_ implies higher rank, and the Chinese finding from experience that nearly all European officials are foolish enough to prefer the loftier form of address, wisely make use of it in addressing a foreigner whom they desire to propitiate. [69] _Ta-jên tuan shih ju shên._ [70] See p. 2. [71] See below, pp. 264 _seq._ CHAPTER VII VILLAGE LIFE AND LAND TENURE To enter into a detailed description of Chinese village life would take us far astray from the immediate purpose of this book, which is to place before the reader a picture of Weihaiwei and the manners and customs of its people. Many such manners and customs are indeed common to the whole Empire, and in describing them we describe China; others are, or may be, peculiar to eastern Shantung or to the districts in proximity to the Promontory. Indeed, the student of sociological conditions in various parts of Asia will perhaps observe how much there is in common, with respect to village organisation, between the people of Weihaiwei and those--for example--of many parts of the Indian Empire. Far apart as the races concerned are in origin, traditions, and geographical and climatic conditions, it is yet a fact that the village communities of Weihaiwei at the present day are, in some important respects, identical in structure with those of Burma, especially of Upper Burma as it was before the annexation to the British Empire.