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between the posts and afterwards cover with lime.
The upper part of the wall is often painted with landscapes, battles, flowers and snakes [i.e. dragons] and is protected against the rain by having the guttering protrude out a good way from the wall. Now and then you find houses that are painted black. Most buildings, however, are built out of baked brick, and the gaps between the bricks are filled with mortar and painted, while the rest of the bricks, which are red in colour, are whitened. Therefore, there is only a very small variety in colour. The first sight of such houses just after they have been built is like this. The older ones look from the outside just as dirty and shabby as they look inside.
If you enter through the doorway into such a building you are right away in the main room. This is a narrow room closed in on three sides and the roof is its ceiling. The floor is usually not covered with floorboards, but is sometimes covered with bricks or cobbles or flagstones, but mostly there is nothing, because the Chinese live par terre ['at ground level'] in its full sense. On the back wall you usually find a picture of the gods in black and yellow. You also find blue and yellow strips of paper with Chinese characters written on them put up there. You also find these on the side walls. The Chinese like to use these to beautify the walls of their homes. In the main room, which is at the same time dining room and reception room, you can find a few pieces of furniture - a table and some narrow roughly-worked benches - that is about all the sorts of furniture I have seen in these rooms.
On both sides of the main room you can find one or two side-rooms. It is very difficult to get into such side-rooms, and to inspect them. However, it is possible to conclude what they are like.
In general one can say that these houses are dark, damp, dirty and smoky. The smoke is caused partly by the smoke of tobacco, partly by the smoke coming from