Excerpt from The History of China and India, Pictorial and Descriptive The Chinese are believed to have been, from very remote times, fond of reading and literary pursuits; yet, as far as our present information extends, they do not appear to possess any regular authentic history of the early state of their ancient empire. From the earliest times, it seems to have been the policy of this singular people to keep themselves distinct from the rest of mankind, to subsist on their own abundant resources, and to bar their country against the ingress of other nations. 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.