[Illustration:  Chinese Women and Children.]

The schools in China are only for boys.  The boys make a great deal of noise in school.  A Chinese teacher thinks the boys are idle if they do not study their lessons out loud.  So each boy shouts as loud as he can.  When the boy has learned his lesson, he goes up and gives his book to the teacher.  Then he turns his back to the teacher, and shouts out the whole lesson to show that he knows it.

The boys are taught to count.  They learn by using balls set in a frame.  The frame is like the frame of a slate.  The balls slide on wires.  With the balls they learn to add and subtract.

They also learn how to write, but they have no pens or pencils.  They write with small brushes dipped in ink.  Each boy makes his own ink.  He puts some water on a stone and then rubs a cake of ink in the water.  This makes a fine black ink called India ink.  Then the boy fills his brush and begins at the top, right-hand corner of the paper.  He writes toward the bottom of the sheet.  He puts one word under another instead of beside it as you do.  Then he begins a new line at the top, and writes to the bottom again.

[Illustration:  Chinese writing.]

Chinese books are printed in the same way.  Where do you think a
Chinese book begins?  A Chinese book begins where our books end.

In China many girls and women have very small feet.  When they are babies their feet are bound up tightly.  They sometimes wear iron shoes.  Then their feet never grow, but are so very small that they can hardly walk.  Poor parents know their girls will have to work hard, and so do not bind their feet.

Chinese girls make beautiful paper flowers.  They paint pictures.  They sing and play.  Some of them pick the snow-white cotton in the fields.  Some of them take care of the silk-worms that spin the soft silk.

But they do not work all the time.  They play many pretty games.  Chinese boys, too, have many kinds of games and toys.  One game is like battledoor and shuttlecock.  They use their feet to strike the shuttlecock.  They do this so fast that the shuttlecock hardly ever falls to the ground.  The Chinese are fond of flying kites.  Even old men fly kites.  They fly their kites in the spring-time.  Chinese kites are of all sizes and shapes.  Some are like birds.  Some are like fish.  Some are like butterflies.

[Illustration:  Chinese Kite.]

There is no other such land in all the world for lanterns as China.  The lanterns there are made of paper in the shape of balls, or flowers, or animals.  Some of the lanterns have a wheel inside.  When the candle is lighted, the draft of air makes the wheel go round very quickly.  When the wheel begins to move inside, the figures on the outside of the lantern begin to move.  Then men are seen fishing or fanning.  Sometimes children are seen dancing.