National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

It was the Canadian anthropologist, Dr DAVIDSON BLACK of the Peking Union Medical College, who created the name and examined the remains. The discovery of this Sinanthropus pekinensis has been considered in the scientific world as the most important step in our time towards the solution of the problem of human origin.

SHADOW PLAYS

During the warm, dark summer evenings we sometimes had so-called shadow plays in one of our two courtyards. The theatrical company brought with them the whole of their equipment, setting up in the yard a kind of stage, in the middle of which they had white paper stretched taut after the fashion of a cinema-screen. Behind this was placed a lantern, and the multi-coloured figures, that were artistically cut out of donkey's skin, were manipulated with the help of reeds and steel wires behind the paper screen. As the figures were transparent, they appeared in colour on the screen. »Shadow play » is thus strictly speaking a misnomer as applied to these animated transparences. They were managed in an indescribably skilful way by the artists, who also spoke the dialogue. Noisy but merry music accompanied the scenes.

Both MONTELL and LESSING afterwards each bought a complete shadow play theatre, MONTEI,I,'s being subsequently set up in the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm.

SUMMER WEATHER

The summer heat is not so bad for one who is able to keep indoors. Although the rainy period that year was delayed, the damp was worse than the heat itself. One streamed with perspiration day and night, and there was not much left for the kidneys to do. MoNTELL and GEORG were a good deal worse off than I was, for they were kept continually on the go with all the curio-dealers and petty merchants who came to offer their wares, besides all the work of labelling, cataloguing and packing ethnographic collections. They were on the move the whole time, and frequently had business that took them into town.

Not until the beginning of August did the real summer rains set in that year. The rain streamed down through the stately weeping willows and the lilacs on the terrace, and a regular lake formed in my courtyard. The atmosphere became absolutely saturated with moisture, and had a depressing and exhausting effect on the organism.

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