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it responsibilities of adjudication, or what by Chinese custom is better described as arbitration, in the small affairs of the village; and, more important, of tax collection. By his own account Mr. Hsiao was renowned as a catcher of robbers. He had once caught two, and frequently in his cups, for Mr. Hsiao was the soul of charity and was always inviting us to feasts, he would relate how he had been visited by the two miscreants, had recognised them and made them drunk while he sent round for the police. They had been tried, sentenced, and executed on yonder hill. Mr. Hsiao did not drink the mild yellow rice wine, known as Shaoshing wine, with a taste rather like thick sherry; he plied us with a raw white spirit, also distilled from rice, a spirit of great potency, and what is more he did not only drink it neat of course, Chinese wine is not mixed with water - out of the little thimble cups commonly used, but would challenge us to empty it out of rice bowls, three bowls at a time. The Chief was the only one who could compete, and by the time Mr. Hsiao had finished with him they would be telling each other stories of interminable length in a language which the ignorance of each of the other's mother-tongue confined to gesticulation.
While still in Kinhwa I had been concerned at the delay of the Chinese in finding interpreters for us, for work in class; and as, with the Japanese occupation of the Settlement in Shanghai, many young Chinese men were moving into the interior to avoid having to study under Japanese auspices, I took the opportunity of a Y.M.C.A. relief organisation there to enquire for suitable candidates. We found three lads of about twenty, who spoke good English, and took them on at what by Chinese standards were really high salaries. They were nice lads, but infected with the Kuo Min Tang teaching which made them very touchy about their dignity. Soon after our arrival at Chin Ya there was an unfortunate development. It had been my hope that we could all eat in mess together, but in practice we found the limits imposed by scattered accommodation, small kitchen facilities, and the scarcity of foreign table utensils, knives, forks, spoons, plates, and so on, made it impossible to eat all together at one time. When we travelled we all ate Chinese food, and very good it was too as a rule; but British stomachs are not used to a rice diet, and from my own experience I knew I kept fitter if I had an occasional change to our own type of cooking. So I was anxious that the British members of our party, while at Chin Ya, and it must be remembered that the various members were often absent for long periods, should have the comfort of eating their own kind of food, and so it seemed to be going rather far to go to the trouble of providing them with food to which they were