Evening star., 1925-01-04

shipped abroad totaled about fifty
seven million pounds. In drying, the
eggs lose about four-fifths of their
weight; therefore, something like
2so, 100000 pounds of eggs in the shell
were required to yield $1,000. .000
pounds of dried eggs. Chinese eggs
average 1,l00 TO the hundred pounds.
so that more than three billion eggs
were smashed to get this amount of
the dried product. This number is
enough to give every one in America
soft-boiled egg for breakfast five
mornings a week every week in the
year.
There are not any poultry breeders
in China as we know them in the
United States, but practically every
family living out in the country has
few hens. They are fed mostly
on table scraps, with a little cracked
rice or bran, and usually are per-
mitted to roost inside the house with
the family. so that the Chinaman
spends practically nothing on their
food or quarters for his egg pro-
ducers.
THE province of Kiangsu, in which
Soochow is located. is one of the
great egg districts OF China. This
is partly because it has such abun-
because il is so densely populated.
In coming to Soochow from Shanghai
by train, I passed through rich
farming district and had a good
chance to see the farms from which
dribblinE streams of eggs flow to the
hatcheries and dried egg factories.
My train left Shanghai a I o'clock
in the morning. but even at that hour
the streets were crowded with peo-
or q
After leaving the factory district of
Shanghai we passed through villages
of mat sheds and shot out into the
fertile farm lands of the Yangtse
delta. Here, for hundred miles
back from the sea, the soil has been
built up by the river.
The country is wonderfully beauti-
full, although it is as fiat as floor.
1t is spotted here and there with
green trees. Now and then there is
a farmstead, its low buildings of
brick, stone, or mud rooted with
black tiles and surrounded by trees.
Some of the latter are the candle
trees, which grow wax on one side
of their leaves that is used to make
candles. There are no fences in the
fields. which are great patchworks of
color each representing a crop, and
fields are mostly truck gardens for
Shanghai. Soochow. and the thickly
populated area between. They are in
credibly small, some being no big
ger than a city lot, but each one
produces two or three crops a year
Besides the vegetables, there are rice
fields and wheat fields, and here and
there patches of cotton.
Everywhere one sees mounds OF
l-y
fields. They are SO thick in places
that they look as though the grass
has been cut and put up in cocks.
They are the famous grave mounds of
China, and in them are buried the
millions of dead of the past. Occa-
sionally we see vaults with plastered
walls built in the fields. Each con-
tains a dead Chinese or his ashes, and
probably also those of his wife and
children. They may be mounds by
and by.
See the people at work in the fields.
There are some women welding long
prolonged hoes about a foot wide.
Their blue-gowned backs rise and
fall as they dig up the rich soil.
There man in a blue gown is swing
ing a scythe; he is moving a. wheat
field. The Chinese grow wheat in
burrows which they weed and hoe just
as we Work our gardens ana harvest
the crop by hand. Often cutting it
1t with a sickle We see sheds here
and there: they are the shelters for
the boys and old women and men who
watch the crops to scare off the birds
These huts also cover wells fed by
the creeks near by. Inside each one
is a cara bao or an OK moving around,
turning a wheel that raises the water
into the, bitches through which it
flows over the. fields. A great part of
the region is irrigated, but all the
water is raised by the power of man
or beast. Human labor is the
cheapest thing there is in China, and
the work Of the country is done by