Excerpt from The Argonaut, Vol. 62: January 1 to June 30, 1908 We joined the crowd moving towards the great Chien Men (men, gate), whose fine old tower, burned by the Boxers in 1900, has just been rebuilt and decorated in gorgeous Oriental colors. On the long street out side it hundreds of lanterns twinkled, some blue, some red, some green, but all inscribed with the two birth day characters that mean ten thousand years. The shops and restaurants on both sides of the new road leading across the outermost of the three cities of which Peking is composed, were flooded with light and color. Even in every-day dress they look gay enough with their wealth of gilded carving, their red and black signboards, and their carved balconies, but on this festive occasion embroidered hangings, masses of potted Chrysanthemums, and painted rectangular glass lamps with gaudy tassels hanging from them transformed the buildings into fairy palaces. Here and there triumphal arches have been erected across the street. These were wonderfully fantastic, built of wood covered with red cloth, and topped by quaint pointed roofs. Dragons made of rucked yellow cloth, with wooden feet and tails stuck on to their bodies at angles calculated to horrify the anatomist, climbed the supporting pillars. While rosettes of yellow, red, and blue silk hung from every possible gable and cross beam. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.