It is a common thing to see a well-dressed Chinaman sauntering along holding up a bent stick to which a bird is attached by a string some four feet or so in length, so that the little prisoner can make short flights to the limit of its tether and return again to its perch, gaily chirping and singing the while.
Another stroller will be carrying a wicker bird-cage on the hand, bent back and upraised to the shoulder, much as a waiter carries dishes, containing generally a Tientsin lark or other celebrated songster, and on arriving at some open spot will place the cage on the ground, and retiring to a short distance whistle to the bird, which will shortly burst into song, to the evident delight of both owner and bystanders.
Outside one of the gateways is a kind of bazaar, which we foreigners generally called "Bird-cage walk," for there the bird-fanciers lived, and birds of many different kinds were exposed for sale, not in cages, but quite tame, and quietly sitting on perches--parrots, larks, Java sparrows, etc., some of them tied by the leg, but not all.
Here, too, were to be seen wicker baskets, much resembling orange crates, full of common sparrows, representing a regular supply for a regular demand. Benevolent old Chinamen, _flâneurs_ and _literati_ would visit this bazaar of an afternoon with the sole object of buying a few of these little birds for two or three cash each and then letting them fly away, a beatific smile betraying the salve to inward feelings generated by a knowledge of merit acquired, any miseries inflicted on the sparrows by capture and confinement counting for nothing in the balance against the good work accomplished by their purchase and release.
The Chinese ideas of life and death are very dissimilar to our own.
With us, the responsibility of parents for the bringing up and well-being of the children is paramount, the fulfilment of such obligations being enforced both by legal and social pressure, while the responsibility of children for the care of their aged parents is almost _nil_.
Amongst the Chinese, children are considered to be the absolute chattels of the parents, with whose treatment of their offspring neither public opinion nor the country's laws have any right of interference. Infanticide can be, and undoubtedly is to a certain extent, practised, while the father is even said to be legally entitled to punish his grown-up children with death.