Page 125 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

SUNG AND YUAN WARES

cause their facilities for the import and export of gooas are

better when no enclosure exists. There are 18,000 families

at Ching-te-chen. Some are large merchants whose dwell-

ings occupy a vast space and contain a prodigious multitude

of workmen. It is commonly said that the place has a

million souls in it. For the rest, the town is at least a

league in length, on the banks of a fine river. It is not

merely a heap of houses, as might be supposed. The

streets are as straight as a line. They intersect and cross
each other at fixed distances. The whole space is occupied

by them, and the houses are, if anything, too close together ;

the streets too narrow. Passing through them, one ima-
Ongines oneself in the midst of a fair.
all sides are heard

the cries of porters making their way along. The expense

of living is much more considerable than at Ju-chou, for

everything that is needed has to be imported, even to the

wood for the kilns. Yet, despite the high cost of living,

Ching-te-chen is the asylum of a number of poor families

who have not the means of subsisting in the neighbouring

villages. Young people and men of the poorest physique

find employment. Not even the blind and the deformed
colours. " In
fail to make tahelihviisntgorbyyogfrFiun-dliinagngt,he" Ching-te-chen ancient
counted
times," says

only three hundred porcelain kilns." At present it has fully
Nothree thousand.
wonder that conflagrations are often

seen there, for which reason several temples have been

erected to the God of Fire. The worship and the honours

paid to this deity do not diminish the number of calamities.

A short time ago, eight hundred houses were reduced to

ashes. They will be quickly rebuilt, if one may judge by

the multitude of carpenters and masons employed in the

quarter. The profits made by letting shops render the

Chinese very active in repairing losses of this kind. Ching-

te-chen is situated in a vast plain surrounded by high

mountains. The mountain on the east, forming the city's

background, takes the shape of a semi-circle on the outer

side. From these hills issue two rivers which join. One

of them is small, but the other is very large and forms a

fine port, nearly a league long, in a vast basin where the

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