CHAP. XIII - CORRESPONDENCE AND THE PRESS

Summary

Correspondence by letter is very general in China, the post being conveyed between city and city by couriers, who earn their livelihood by carrying letters at a certain rate of mileage, agreed upon by general consent. Official communications are dispatched to and fro by special messengers, who, in cases of emergency, have horses provided for them, and so attain a speed of 150 to 170 miles per diem. Carrier-pigeons, too, are largely employed by business houses. Governmental post-offices and stamps are as yet a dream of the future. Business letters are written upon plain white paper, and folded very much as ours used to be thirty or forty years ago, before envelopes came into vogue. No sealing-wax is used, but the fold is fastened down by means of a little paste, and a seal bearing a private monogram, or some lucky motto, is affixed to the suture with colouring matter.

Friendly notes and billets are inscribed upon slips of delicately tinted paper, tastefully embossed with flowers, vases, and sundry quaint devices peculiar to the Chinese, and these are enclosed in decorated envelopes, a convenience, by the way, which the Chinese introduced long before it was thought of in the West. The mammoth cards previously described are also used for scribbling notes on.