THE BATTALION.
3
It is a very amusing 1 spectacle to see and hear a crowd of
stupefied Chinamen who have been drinking and smoking to
excess, fight and quarrel. The first one to get hold of the
other’s wig is always, with a few exceptions, the victor. The
quaint old architectural style in which all of the buildings
were built, was very attractive to me. The graceful curves
to the roofs of the houses and the fantastic minarets showed
that they were skilled in that line of mechanical designs.
From the housetop we went to an opera house where the
first performance was just beginning. When the curtain
arose about twenty women and as many men came out on the
stage and began to make the funniest noise that I ever heard
in my life, whereat the whole audience arose, made a pro
found bow, and seated themselves again. The curtain was
then lowered and almost immediately raised again. This
time about ten girls, all of whom had splendid forms, some
but scantily clad, came out began to go through all kinds of
queer motions, all the time making a very strange, humming
noise between their teeth. This lasted about ten minutes,
and then the men came out and began to jabber away; the
rest of the performance was uninteresting to me.
As we were leaving I asked Mr. Adams what those girls
were doing and he said they were dancing. From the opera
house we went to a museum, where we saw many different
kinds of pipes and opiums, and other things. There I bought
a piece of chewing opium about the size of a ten cent plug
of Star chewing tobacco, and it lasted me for over two
months. From the museum we went to a barber shop, where