cal legend, "seven decades," would look as if the writers were entirely destitute of originality!
Chinese social solidarity is often fatal to what we mean by accuracy. A man who wished advice in a lawsuit told the writer that he himself "lived" in a particular village, though it was obvious from his narrative that his abode was in the suburbs of a city. Upon inquiry, he admitted that he did not now live in the village, and further investigation revealed the fact that the removal took place nineteen generations ago! "But do you not almost consider yourself a resident of the city now?" he was asked. "Yes," he replied simply, "we do live there now, but the old root is in that village!"
Another individual called the writer's attention to an ancient temple in his own native village, and remarked proudly, "I built that temple." Upon pursuing the subject, it appeared that the edifice dated from a reign in the Ming Dynasty, more than three hundred years ago, when "I" only existed in the potential mood.
One of the initial stumbling-block of the student of Chinese is to find a satisfactory expression for identity, as distinguished from resemblance. The whole Chinese system of thinking is based on a line of assumptions different from those to which we are accustomed, and they can ill comprehend the mania which seems to possess the Occidental to ascertain everything with unerring exactness. The Chinese does not know how many families there are in his native village, and he does not wish to know. What any human being can want to know this number for is to him an insoluble riddle. It is "a few hundreds," "several hundreds," or "not a few," but a fixed and definite number it never was and never will be.
The same lack of precision which characterises the Chinese use of numbers, is equally conspicuous in their employment of written and even of printed characters. It is not easy to procure a cheap copy of any Chinese book which does not abound
