There was the most admirable courtesy shown me; it was the "foreign teacher" they wished to see, not the "foreign devil." When I rose from the table, half a dozen guests sitting at the other tables rose also and bowed to me as I passed out.
Of all people I have ever met, the Chinese are, I think, the politest.
My illiterate Laohwan, who could neither read nor write, had a courtesy of demeanour, a well-bred ease of manner, a graceful deference that never approached servility, which it was a constant pleasure to me to witness.
As regards the educated classes, there can be little doubt, I think, that there are no people in the world so scrupulously polite as the Chinese.

Their smallest actions on all occasions of ceremony are governed by the most minute rules.

Let me give, as an example, the method of cross-examination to which the stranger is subjected, and which is a familiar instance of true politeness in China.
When a well-bred Chinaman, of whatever station, meets you for the first time, he thus addresses you, first asking you how old you are: "What is your honourable age ?" "I have been dragged up a fool so many years," you politely reply.
"What is your noble and exalted occupation ?" "My mean and contemptible calling is that of a doctor." "What is your noble patronymic ?" "My poverty-struck family name is Mo." "How many honourable and distinguished sons have you ?" "Alas! Fate has been niggardly; I have not even one little bug." But, if you can truthfully say that you are the honourable father of sons, your interlocutor will raise his clasped hands and say gravely, "Sir, you are a man of virtue; I congratulate you." He continues-- "How many tens of thousands of pieces of silver have you ?" meaning how many daughters have you?
"My yatows" (forked heads or slave children), "my daughters," you answer with a deprecatory shrug, "number so many." So the conversation continues, and the more minute are the inquiries the more polite is the questioner.
Unlike most of the Western nations, the Chinese have an overmastering desire to have children.

More than death itself the Chinaman fears to die without leaving male progeny to worship at his shrine; for, if he should die childless, he leaves behind him no provision for his support in heaven, but wanders there a hungry ghost, forlorn and forsaken--an "orphan" because he has no children.

"If one has plenty of money," says the Chinese proverb, "but no children, he cannot be reckoned rich; if one has children, but no money, he cannot be considered poor." To have sons is a foremost virtue in China; "the greatest of the three unfilial things," says Mencius, "is to have no children." (Mencius, iv., pt.