3-053-789 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in China: street scene in Pekin, 1873. '...a favourite amusement of the Chinese...Almost every man you meet in the streets has a bird on a stick which he carries in his hand. There is a cross stick on the top as a perch, and the bird is fastened by a small string. A Pekin man seems always to have his bird with him...From boyhood up to the most advanced age a bird seems a necessary part of a man's existence...some walk about with their birds in small, neat, round cages. The birds are trained to fly in the air in peculiar whirls and return to the hand. They will fly in circles over the head while the owner throws up seeds, which they catch in passing. It is beautiful to see how perfect the birds are in performing various feats of this kind, how tame and docile their training has made them, how quick they are to obey, and with what confidence they return to the hand of their master, indicating far more intelligence and capability for education than one would be prepared to accede to the bird creation. Anyone taking a walk through the streets of Pekin would be induced to believe that there is much more amusement to be got from birds than by merely shooting them with a gun'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.