Such a thought never occurs to a Chinaman, or if it does, it is at once rejected as heterodox, or as treason to the original designer. A profound sense of the benefits conferred upon them by the man who had the brain to devise such a boat, though an Englishman would have the daring to think that any idiot could devise a much better one in five minutes, will prevent this nation from ever venturing to think it possible that any change could be made in it that would improve it in one single respect. The fishermen are absolutely content. They spend their lives on these boats. Men are married upon them, and children are born upon them and grow up to be men and women, and men lie down and die upon them, and from them they are carried to their long homes on the shore, which during their lifetime they have looked upon as a place where they had no inheritance, but which perforce would have to give them a narrow space when they had finished with life, in which to hide them away from the world. The boats I have described are but a sample of the multitude of ways in which the Chinese are circumscribed and prevented by forces greater than the enactment of special laws from making progress in their national life. There are signs at the present moment that China is awakening and that the dead hand of the past is being lifted. It will be long, however, before the new movement will permeate into the villages and into the more retired and out-of-the-way places of the Empire, where under the shadow of lofty mountains, and out of the lines where human thought and human traffic are most vigorous, men cling to the traditions of the past. But that the movement will spread and finally change the whole character of the country, there is not the least shadow of a doubt. [Illustration: A STREET SCENE. _To face p. 131._] CHAPTER VII AMUSEMENTS Chinese a laughter-loving people--Fond of society--Sources of amusements few--No seaside outings or holidays--New Year's time--Dragon boat festival--Feast of Tombs--Theatricals--Battledore and shuttlecock--Kites--Punch and Judy. The Chinese are a laughter-loving people, and their broad, unaesthetic-looking faces seem to have been made with a wide and generous area, in order to allow their latent humour to have plenty of scope for its expansion.