Great quantities of sugar-cane are chewed in China, both by children and
grown people, and these patches grown in the rich Choo-kiang Valley for
the Fat-shan, Canton, and Hong-kong markets are worth the price of a
day's journeying to see. So marvellously neat and thrifty are they, that
one would almost believe every separate stalk had been the object of
special care and supervision from day to day since its birth; every
cane-garden is fenced with neat bamboo pickets, to prevent depredation at
the hands of the thousands of sweet-toothed kleptomaniacs who file past
and eye the toothsome stalks wistfully every day.
After a few miles the hitherto dead level of the valley is broken by low
hills of reddish clay, and here the stone paths merge into well-beaten
trails that on reasonably level soil afford excellent wheeling. The
hillsides are crowded with graves, which, instead of the sugar-loaf "ant
hillocks" of the paddy-fields, assume the traditional horseshoe shape of
the Chinese ancestral grave. On the barren, gravelly hills, unfit for
cultivation, the thrifty and economical Celestial inters the remains of
his departed friends. Although in making this choice he is supposed to be
chiefly interested in securing repose for his ancestors' souls, he at the
same time secures the double advantage of a well-drained cemetery, and
the preservation of his cultivable lands intact.
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