There are women in China who refuse to marry, and prefer to live a dissolute life of perpetual debauchery.  A woman who has made this election, presents herself in full audience before the commanding officer of a city, declares her aversion to marriage, and desires to be enrolled among the public women.  Her name is then inserted in the register, with the name of her family, the place of her abode, the number and description of her jewels, and the particulars of her dress.  She has then a string put round her neck, to which is appended a copper ring, marked with the king’s signet, and she receives a writing, certifying that she is received into the list of prostitutes, and by which she is entitled to a pension from the public treasury of so many falus yearly, and in which the punishment of death is denounced against any man who should take her to wife.  Every year, regulations are published respecting these women, and such as have grown old in the service are struck off the list.  In the evening, these women walk abroad in dresses of different colours, unveiled, and prostitute themselves to all strangers who love debauchery; but the Chinese themselves send for them to their houses, whence they do not depart till next morning.

The Chinese coin no money, except the small pieces of copper like those we falus, nor will they allow gold and silver to be coined into specie, like our dinars and drams; for they allege that a thief may carry off ten thousand pieces of gold from the house of an Arab, and almost as many of silver, without being much burthened, and so ruin the man who suffers the loss; but in the house of a Chinese, he can only carry off ten thousand falus at the most, which do not make above ten meticals or gold dinars in value.  These pieces of copper are alloyed with some other metal, and are about the size of a dram, or the piece of silver called bagli, having a large hole in the middle to string them by.  A thousand of them are worth a metical or gold dinar; and they string them by thousands, with a knot distinguishing the hundreds.  All their payments, whether for land, furniture, merchandize, or any thing else, are made in this money, of which there are some pieces at Siraff, inscribed with Chinese characters.  The city of Canfu is built of wood and canes interwoven, just like our lattice-work of split canes, the whole washed over with a kind of varnish made of hempseed, which becomes as white as milk, having a wonderfully fine gloss.  There are no stairs in their houses, which are all of one storey, and all their valuables are placed in chests upon wheels, which in case of fire can easily be drawn from place to place, without any hinderance from stairs.