Explore "Chinese Sketches" by Herbert A. Giles on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A ramble through a native town in China must often have discovered to / the observant foreigner small collections of second-hand books and / pamphlets displayed on some umbrella-shaded stall, or arranged less / pretentiously on the door-step of a temple. If innocent of all claims / to a knowledge of the written language, he may take them for cheap / editions of Confucius, with which literary chair-coolies are wont to / solace their leisure hours; at the worst, some of these myriad novels / of which he has heard so much, and read -- in translations -- so little. / It possibly never enters our barbarian's head that many of these / itinerant book-sellers are vendors of educational works, much after / the style of Pinnock's Catechisms and other such guides to knowledge. / Buying a handful the other day for a few cash,[*] we were much amused / at the nature of the subjects therein discussed, and the manner in / which they were treated. The first we opened was on Ethnology and / Zoology, and gave an account of the wonderful types of men and beasts / which exist in far-off regions beyond the pale of China and / civilisation. There was the long-legged nation, the people of which / have legs three _chang_ (thirty feet) long to support bodies of no / more than ordinary size, followed by a short account of a cross-legged / race, a term which explains itself. We are next told of a country / where all the inhabitants have a large round hole right through the / middle of their bodies, the officials and wealthy citizens being / easily and comfortably carried _a la_ sedan chair by means of a strong / bamboo pole passed through it. Then there is the feathered or bird / nation, the pictures of which people remind us very much of Lapps and / Greenlanders.
A few lines are devoted to a pygmy race of nine-inch / men, also to a people who walk with their bodies at an angle of 45 / degrees. There is the one-armed nation, and a three-headed nation, / besides fish-bodied and bird-headed representatives of humanity; last / but not least we have a race of beings without heads at all, their / mouth, eyes, nose, &c., occupying their chests and pit of the stomach!