Among this class of amateurs the tendency is to be very conservative. When a club is formed the members hire an old and experienced actor who teaches them to sing and to act in the traditional manner. Once a month performances are given at which the amateurs show what they have learned. Frequently, too, these tyros are given opportunities to act at weddings, funerals, or other festivities held in private homes or in restaurants. To belong to such a club is within the reach of even the ordinary clerks, for the dues are about four dollars a year. I have known former members of the diplomatic corps who had spent many years abroad as well as ten-dollar-a-month clerks among the ranks of the amateurs. When an amateur goes over to the professional stage the Chinese call it “_hsia hai_”, going down to the bottom of the sea, an expression that indicates the low esteem in which the professional actor is held. However, in these days of the Republic, when the social disqualification of the actor counts for very little, and what is more important, a good actor can command the equivalent of a princely income of the days of the Empire, the actor is no longer despised so thoroughly as in former days. Formerly an actor who could read and write was a notable exception, while now occasionally a fairly well-educated man goes on the stage. I know, for example, a youth of twenty who had been carefully trained by a devout American lady in the Christian way in which he was to go. She had taught him stenography and typing, and Percy, as all Americans called him, worked in an office in a modest but useful capacity. Suddenly rumor had it that he was going to go on the stage and, to be sure, an enterprising manager had offered him about forty times the sum the office was paying him. Many of the pious folk felt grieved when Percy accepted. [Illustration: AMATEUR ACTORS IN AN OLD-STYLE CHINESE PLAY The face painting of the actor on the right shows him to be a wicked man, probably a robber. The other is the hero of the piece, a young warrior.] Percy’s going on the stage was perhaps more of a surprise to some other people than to me, for I had not only seen him perform several times with other amateurs at weddings, but I had also observed him during office hours studying Mei Lan-fang’s acting in the Market Theater. One hot summer night I went to a feast where Percy had told me that he was going to play. In the first courtyard of the host’s large residence a score of guests were eating delicious Chinese food and drinking cool beer, while a temporary stage had been erected in the second courtyard. Accompanied by loud music from the orchestra an indifferent play was going on; therefore I set out to find my hero of the evening. I found Percy seated at a table back of the stage busy with his make-up. On his head he was wearing a wig, his eyebrows were penciled, his cheeks rouged, and he was busy painting his eyeballs.