Hotel Life in China.

Inns Where Diamond-Flashing Clerks Don't Appear,

Hotels in China are quite uniform architecturally. They never differ in point of cleanliness and other details, but they are almost invariably built in the form of a quadrangle enclosing a court. The building is only one storey high. In front of the quadrangle is a space wide enough for wheeled vehicles to drive in. The front part of the strucbure is occupied by the kitchen and the restaurant, if there is any

Along the side of the quadrangle are many small rooms. At the further end is the swell apartment, intended to be occupied by guests of means and distinction. This apartment consists invariably of three rooms, a sitting-room in the middle, and a bedroom on each side. There is no hotel clerk with a scintillating diamond in his shirt-front, the innkeeper fulfilling that capacity incidentally to his other duties. There are three classes of hotels in China. To begin with, there are the business inns, frequented by commercial travellers, as one might say. They bear a certain sort of analogy to the hostelries in our own country, where agents with gripsacks full of merchandise find accommodation.

To these inns traders go for the purpose of showing and disposing of their wares. In all of the large cities there are provincial inns, each of which is kept up for bhe accommodation of people from a particular province, as Canton or Szechuen, receiving only guests who come from thab province. These hotels do a considerable posbal business, bransmitting letters through the hands of the people who enjoy their hospitality. The latter are not legally responsible for the safe delivery of such mail, but it is nevertheless conveyed to the intended recipients with the utmost regularity. In this manner letters are sent all the way from Peking to the border of Burma, the journey requiring four or five months. In addition to the kinds of inns I have described, there are official hotels, where high officials stop on their way through the country. These establishments do not receive tradespeople. The travelling official often takes the whole hostelry for the accommodation of himself and his retainers. He occupies the swell apartmenba in the rear, while they are quartered in the little rooms along the sides of the quadrangle. If he be a very elevated personage indeed he is likely to scorn the inn, preferring to hire a temple. Such religious edifices ordinarily have rooms attached to them, in which comfortable accommodation may be found. An essential idea of the Buddhist doctrine is hospitality to travellers. Some of the most ancient subcriptions which have been discovered in India were made by a native sovereign, who in them conveys instruction as to how to provide for wayfarers, telling what medicines to give them, and even giving directions to the planting of trees along roads for the purpose of affording them shade. In Mongolia there are no inns. Bub monasteries are numerous, and they will always accommodate a stranger. As in France and other European countries, the inns of China are under police control. Each of them keeps a record of its guests for the convenience of the magistrate of the district. Any suspicious person is subjected to inspection and the passport of a foreigner is promptly asked for. The noise in a Chinese hotel is deafening, it never ceases, day or night. Each guest yells from his door to the servants for whatever he wants; the servants shout back ; the cook bawls out names of dishes as they are ready; the cart - drivers wrangle. The mules bray and the pigs squeal. The first thing every person does on arriving is to call for hob water to make tea. Everybody drinks tea at all hours, so that one servant does nothing but carry hot water for tea. The hotel furnishes nothing but hot Water and oil lamps for lighting; everything else ia charged extra. In North China, where camels are used as beasts of burden, there art special inns which take camels. The reason for this is that mules are afraid of camels. Other inns advertise to receive pigs. At tho hotels, cattle and horses are fed mostly on sorghum stalks, chopped up and mixed with bran, Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 172, 22 July 1893, Page 3