Chinamen in China.” The Manchu men today wear Chinese dress. The Emperor, himself, shaves his head and wears the queue, the one visible sign of degradation that is said to have been imposed upon the Chinese at the time of the conquest. Oh! Irony of fate!
The Manchus are now as quiet and peaceful a race as the Chinese themselves. They dread war. They live by the laws of Confucius. Though not a race of thinkers or philosophers, they have come to have the same ideals as the Chinese, and this, without the natural amalgamation brought about by intermarriage, for it is only within the last few years that the Throne has issued an edict, allowing intermarriage between the Chinese and Manchu, and even, with this edict, up to this time there has been very little mixture, by marriage, of the races. The Chinese seem easily led and conquered, but their national vitality is very vigorous, and has kept them pure in racial characteristics after their thousands of years of national existence.
Altar to the Invisible Deity
In the Park of the Temple of Heaven
The Festival of the Harvest Moon, which typifies the season when the life-giving element in Nature goes to rest for the Winter, I have already described. It is intermixed with legends and practices that destroy its original meaning; but the ceremony to the awakening of Spring has not departed from its original intention, and is simpler and nearer Nature. The awakening of Spring, the day when the sap is supposed to stir from its long sleep and to feel the first throes of renewed life, is commemorated in a pretty, homely ceremony at the Palace. The radish and young shoots of lettuce, the first vegetables to receive the benefit of the rising sap, are presented on a silver salver to Her Majesty by a kneeling eunuch. She partakes of them, and then gives them to the young Empress and Ladies to taste of. When Her Majesty raises the first radish to her lips, the young