The Chinese are good barbers, cooks and gardeners. As breeders of fish they are unrivalled. Besides this they compete successfully with the Tagal in the following trades: blacksmiths, boiler-makers, stokers, engine-drivers, ship and house carpenters, boat-builders, cabinet-makers and varnishers, iron and brass-founders, shoe-makers, tin-smiths. These artisans are very industrious, and labour constantly at their trades. Their great feast is at the Chinese New Year, which occurs in February, when they take about a week's holiday, and regale themselves on roast pig, and other delicacies, making also presents of sweets, fruits, and Jocchiu hams, to their patrons and customers. There are Chinese apothecaries in Manila, but they are mostly resorted to by their own countrymen, and their awful concoctions are nasty beyond belief. They deal largely in aphrodisiacs. Some Chinese doctors practise in Manila, and are said to make wonderful cures, even on patients given up by the orthodox medicos. They feel the pulse at the temporal artery, or else above the bridge of the nose. They used to suffer a good deal from the jealousy of the Spanish practitioners, and were persecuted for practising without a qualification. Large numbers of Chinese coolies are employed in Manila handling coal, loading and unloading ships and lighters, pressing hemp, drying sugar, and in other work too hard and too constant for the natives. The number of Chinese in Luzon has been variously estimated at from 30,000 to 60,000 men, and two or three hundred women. The anonymous author of 'Filipinas--Problema Fundamental' (Madrid, 1891), gives the number of Chinese in the whole Archipelago as 125,000, and he evidently had access to good information. The fact is nobody knows, and in all probability the Spanish authorities had an interest in understating the number. The Chinese were organised quite separately from the natives. Wherever their numbers were considerable, they had their own tribunal, with a Gobernadorcillo and Principales, the former called the Capitan-China. In Manila, this Capitan was a man of importance, or else the nominee of such a person. Certain governors-general received, nay, even extorted, large sums from the Capitan-China. Weyler is said to have been one of these offenders, but Jovellar caused the Capitan-China to be turned out of Malacañan for offering him a present. No one who knew them would ever believe that Moriones or Despujols would condescend to accept presents from the Chinamen. One favourite trick of the more corrupt governors-general was to have some very obnoxious law made in Spain; for instance, obliging the Chinese to become cabezas-de-barangay, or responsible tax-collectors of their own countrymen, and then extort a ransom for not putting the law in force. Weyler was said to have received $80,000 from the Chinese on this account, but some of this would have to go to Madrid.