12 PEKING TO LHASA
capacity. But he had been able to preserve his Province from internal risings, and was therefore popular. He is honest according to his lights, and he has done much good in his Province by allowing no squeezes, establishing girls' schools and paying high salaries to good teachers. But he is a weak man, unable to cope with the corruption round him, afraid of the students and ready for the sake of peace and for fear of their power to give in to their absurd demands.
The President of the local assembly with very proper foresight bought up a huge supply of grain when he saw that famine was imminent. But he sold it at more than twice the price he gave for it and made for himself a huge profit.
A model prison is one of the features of Taiyuan. It is run on modern lines and has over nine hundred male prisoners and thirty female in a separate part. The cells are warmed with kangs and are clean. There are twelve workshops, and the prisoners are usefully employed in making carpets, carpentry, etc. They get three meals a day, and according to the warder they come in thin and go out plump. The majority (those with long sentences) wear chains round their ankles. The chief offences were brigandage and consuming morphia. In this model prison there is no corporal punishment. But a stranger coming to China and only visiting this prison would get a very erroneous impression of Chinese prison administration. The state of the old-fashioned yamen prisons is very different.
The Chief Justice of the Shansi Province was an enlightened man of forty, trained in America.
IIIF Color HighRes
