There can be
no comparison. And my reader will understand that there is much which
the European misses in the way of general physical comfort and
cleanliness. Sanitation is absent _in toto_. Ordinary decency forbids
one putting into print what the uninitiated traveler most desires to
know--if he would be saved a severe shock at the outset; but everyone
has to go through it, because one cannot write what one sees. All
travelers who have had to put up at the caravanseries in Central and
Western China will bear me out in my assertion that all of them reek
with filth and are overrun by vermin of every description. The traveler
whom misfortune has led to travel off the main roads of Russia may
probably hesitate in expressing an opinion as to which country carries
off the palm for unmitigated filth; but, with this exception, travelers
in the Eastern Archipelago, in Central Asia, in Africa among the wildest
tribes, are pretty well unanimous that compared with all these for dirt,
disease, discomfort, an utter lack of decency and annoyance, the Chinese
inn holds its own. And in no part of China more than in Szech'wan and
Yuen-nan is greater discomfort experienced.
The usual wooden bedstead stands in the corner of the room with the
straw bedding (this, by the way, should on no account be removed if one
wishes to sleep in peace), sometimes there is a table, sometimes a
couple of chairs.
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