The Japanese language is said to contain no terms of abuse, so refined are the inhabitants of that earthly paradise.  The Chinese language more than makes up for this deficiency; and it is certainly curious that, as in ancient Greece, the names of animals are not frequently used in this connection, with the sole exception of the dog.  No Chinaman will stand being called a dog, although he really has a great regard for the animal, as a friend whose fidelity is proof even against poverty.

In the ivory shops in China will be found many specimens of the carver’s craft which will bear comparison, for the patience and skill required, with the greatest triumphs of Greek workmen.  Both nations have reproduced the human hand in ivory; the Greeks used it as an ornament for a hairpin; the Chinese attach it to a slender rod about a foot and a half in length, and use it as a back-scratcher.

The Chinese drama, which we can only trace vaguely to Central Asian sources, and no farther back than the twelfth century of our era, has some points of contact with the Greek drama.  In Greece the plays began at sunrise and continued all day, as they do still on the open-air stages of rural districts in China, in both cases performed entirely by men, without interval between the pieces, without curtain, without prompter, and without any attempt at realism.

As formerly in Greece, so now in China, the words of the play are partly spoken and partly sung, the voice of the actor being, in both countries, of the highest importance.  Like the Greek actor before masks were invented, the Chinese actor paints his face, and the thick-soled boot which raises the Chinese tragedian from the ground is very much the counterpart of the cothurnus.

The arrangement by which the Greek gods appeared in a kind of balcony, looking out as it were from the heights of Olympus, is well known to the Chinese stage; while the methodical character of Greek tragic dancing, with the chorus moving right and left, is strangely paralleled in the dances performed at the worship of Confucius in the Confucian temples, details of which may be seen in any illustrated Chinese encyclopaedia.

Games with dice are of a high antiquity in Greece; they date in China only from the second century A.D., having been introduced from the West under the name of shu p’u, a term which has so far defied identification.

The custom of fighting quails was once a political institution in Athens, and under early dynasties it was a favourite amusement at the Imperial Court of China.

The game of “guess-fingers” is another form of amusement common to both countries.  So also is the custom of drinking by rule, under the guidance of a toast-master, with fines of deep draughts of wine to be swallowed by those who fail in capping verses, answering conundrums, recognising quotations; to which may be added the custom of introducing singing-girls toward the close of the entertainment.