In the present instance the answer is so plain that it is almost insulting to our readers to mention that it is “a cherry,” but this is by no means the case with all Chinese riddles, many being exceedingly difficult of solution.  So much so that it is customary all over the Empire to copy out any particularly puzzling conundrum on a paper lantern, and hang it in the evening at the street door, with the promise of a reward to any comer who may succeed in unravelling it.  These are called “lamp riddles,” and usually turn upon the name of some tree, fruit, animal, or book, the direction in which the answer is to be sought being usually specified as a clue.

Were it only in such innocent pastimes as these that the Chinese indulged, we might praise the simplicity of their morals, and contrast them favourably with the excitement of European life.  But there is just one more little solace for leisure, and too often business hours, of which we have not yet spoken.  Gambling is, of course, the distraction to which we allude; a vice ten times more prevalent than opium-smoking, and proportionately demoralising in its effect upon the national character.  In private life, there is always some stake however small; take it away, and to a Chinaman the object of playing any game goes too.  In public, the very costermongers who hawk cakes and fruit about the streets are invariably provided with some means for determining by a resort to chance how much the purchaser shall have for his money.  Here, it is a bamboo tube full of sticks, with numbers burnt into the concealed end, from which the customer draws; at another stall dice are thrown into an earthenware bowl, and so on.  Every hungry coolie would rather take his chance of getting nothing at all, with the prospect of perhaps obtaining three times his money’s worth, than buy a couple of sausage-rolls and satisfy his appetite in the legitimate way.  The worst feature of gambling in China is the number of hells opened publicly under the very nose of the magistrate, all of which drive a flourishing trade in spite of the frequent presents with which they are obliged to conciliate the venal official whose duty it is to put them down.  To such an extent is the system carried that any remissness on the part of the keepers of these dens in conveying a reasonable share of the profits to his honour’s treasury, is met by a brutum fulmen in the shape of a proclamation, setting forth how “it having come to my ears that, regardless of law, and in the teeth of my frequent warnings, certain evil-disposed persons have dared to open public gambling-houses, be it hereby made known,” &c., &c., the whole document being liberally interspersed with allusions to the men of old, the laws of the reigning dynasty, and filial piety a discretion.  The upshot of this is that within twenty-four hours after its appearance his honour’s wrath is appeased, and croupiers and gamblers go on in the same old round as if nothing whatever had happened.