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Here the streets are narrower. What strange names they have! Stone Bird Lane, Grinding Row, Old Woo’s Lane, Bean Curd Lane, Family Ma’s Market.

Look at this big house. Turn in by the opening at the right of the front door. Now we are inside the first court, an open space with rooms all around. The room in front of us is the largest in the house. A wooden cabinet stands on the narrow table against the back wall: it is full of slips of wood, each about a foot high. These slips of wood are called ‘ancestral tablets,’ because the Chinese think that the souls of their ancestors live in them. Each one has writing upon it, telling the name of the person whose soul is said to be inside.

To right and left of the chief room are two smaller ones, used as bedrooms. Behind these again is another court, with rooms ranged round it like the front one, and behind it perhaps another. Some houses have ‘five descents’; for Chinese storeys, which are called ‘descents,’ are put one behind the other, instead of being piled upwards as are ours.