A Chinese play takes a number of weeks or even months in which to complete it.  It may be founded on domestic life or on some historic scene.  Sometimes the history of a province of the Chinese Empire is the theme.  The plays are mostly comedy.  There are no grand tragedies like those of the old Greek poets.  The Chinese have had no such writers as Sophocles or Euripides, no such creators of plays as Shakespeare, and they have no such actors as a Garrick or an Irving.  We were invited to seats on the stage—­which had no curtains, everything being done openly.  In order to reach the stage the guide conducted us down the passageway or aisle through the midst of the audience.  Then we ascended a platform at the end of the stage and went behind it into a long room where the actors were putting on costumes of a fantastic shape and painting their faces with bright coloured pigments.  Some of them also put on masks that would frighten a person should he meet the wearers suddenly.  The majority of the masks were caricatures of the human face and were comical in expression.  We felt quite at home on the stage at once; for here, seated on either side with the actors in the midst of the company, were many of our friends lay and clerical, men and women, looking on in wonder at the strange performance.  An orchestra of six or seven members was here on the back part of the stage—­and the music!  It consisted of the beating of drums, the sounding of gongs and other outlandish noises.  Now and then above the din you could catch the sound of a clarionet and the feeble strains of a banjo.  It was indeed pandemonium!  Yet above all the noise and confusion you could hear the high pitched voices of the actors as they shouted and gesticulated.  The audience, I noticed, was most attentive and decorous.  They were evidently well pleased with the play; and what was quite remarkable they seemed to have neither ears nor eyes for their visitors.  Of course they must have seen us, but with an indifference that almost bordered on contempt they paid no attention to us.

In the play one of the actors died on the stage, but the death had nothing of the tragic or heroic in it.  After a brief interval he rose up and walked off amid the merriment of the audience.

Many Chinamen come here to spend their evening.  The admission is fifty cents, which entitles one to a seat.  As the play runs through six hours at a time, they feel that they get the worth of their money.  They meet their friends there also; and although they are not very demonstrative towards each other, like the warm blooded races of Italy and Greece and Northern Europe and the United States, yet they are very happy in the presence of men of their own race and nation.  The theatre is about the only place where they can meet on common ground, at least in large bodies, and then, as we have already intimated, the theatre is something more than a place of amusement in their eyes.  Their forefathers liked such plays, and they believe that the spirits of the dead are in a certain sense present to share in the enjoyments of men in the body.