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Show Tai Shan, Sacred Mountain of the East 703 Gilbert Grosvenor Temple of the Mother of the Great Bear: the Author's Strange Address for Two Weeks Inside the teahouse-nunnery the goddess is represented by a Hindu-type image whose powers are symbolized by 48 arms. Scholars facing examinations in Empire days prayed for her intercession with her son, their patron, residing in the Constellation of the Great Bear (page 717). "Miraculously responding (to prayer) without fail," the door announces. Left: a commemorative tablet (page 704). belongings. No thought of beggary in our sense attaches to their begging. Almost halfway up the mountain an arthritic cripple lived in a bed built right on the road, where no one could fail to see the pathos of his condition. His wife was busy in and about their tiny house, while he, in moments between begging, herded a brood of small chickens with a long whip. One Beggar a Stuffed Dummy A little farther along there was a dummy beggar, realistically stuffed, clothed, and posed, with a wig of gray hair, a sure mark of venerability, which should wring coppers from the stonyhearted. The dummy sat by its begging basket while its owner went about better business. The chair bearers, who belong to a well-organized guild, are virtually all Mohammedans. The newcomer to China may feel shy at using brother man as a beast of burden, but the independence and good humor of the men soon eases the feeling. Stopping for lunch by the way, I offered sandwiches to my men, but met a decided "Wo pu chih" (I don't eat). Doubtless these sons of the Prophet feared the foreign food might be "pig meat." They indulged in gay mockery of beggars and priests, imitating their wails and calls realistically. The Tai Shan chair, lightly built of bent wood and rope, differs from the bamboo sedan of the South and is ideally suited to its purpose. The breadth of the stairs permits the men to go up side by side, so that the chair is kept level and not tilted as in the tandem carrying usual in mountains. The weight is cleverly divided, being carried partly by a shoulder yoke and partly by shafts in the hand. It is, like many other Chinese devices, crude and practical (pages 706, 708, 710). |