The Mail in China

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 43.

The Mail in China.

BUT as regards letters, a considerable proportion of the 400,000,000 Chinamen do occasionally exchange letters, those who cannot write for themselves hiring scribes to do so. These letters are consigned to firms which have houses in all the large towns, where letters are forwarded to distant ports, to be there distributed by special agents, who generally collect the postage from the receiver. There was certainly something comic in the fact that when China was no longer able to exclude foreigners from Pekin, our British postal arrangements were no sooner established than some of the imperial officials came to ask Sir Frederick Bruce to forward certain State documents for them between Pekin and Canton. On the death of the emperor Hien-fung, which occurred just at that time, intimation thereof was sent from his country palace (a distance of 600 li., which is upward of 200 miles) in twenty-four hours, which is the highest speed attainable in China. But the placid celestials, to whom hurry appears a form of vulgar impatience, and to whom telegraphs are an abomination, are content that all ordinary communications should be conveyed either by slow paddling or poling-boats, or else by foot-runners, whose high-sounding title of “the thousand-mile horse” does not quicken their pace beyond about twelve miles in twenty-four hours. They carry a paper lantern and a paper umbrella, and their letter-bag is secured on their back by a cloth knotted across the chest.

—Cassell’s Family Magazine.