The mystic flowery land; a personal narrative . nese tlieatre—the celebrated Kow Shingtheatre into which numbers of smiling-faced sons of Han and tlieircomely ladies are crowding. We may as well enter with the left-hand side of the doorway is the ticket office enclosedby wooden bars and wire lattice-work. Seats in the gallery, partof which is reserved for ladies, cost from 50 cents to § 1, andthose in the lower part or body of the theatre from 10 to 25cents. You pay your money, receive a red ticket, and pass intothe well-filled house. You can sit where you like—on the backof a seat if
The mystic flowery land; a personal narrative . nese tlieatre—the celebrated Kow Shingtheatre into which numbers of smiling-faced sons of Han and tlieircomely ladies are crowding. We may as well enter with the left-hand side of the doorway is the ticket office enclosedby wooden bars and wire lattice-work. Seats in the gallery, partof which is reserved for ladies, cost from 50 cents to § 1, andthose in the lower part or body of the theatre from 10 to 25cents. You pay your money, receive a red ticket, and pass intothe well-filled house. You can sit where you like—on the backof a seat if it suits you, and everybody is agreeable. Some preferto go and sit on the stage near the actors. The building is squareshaped—somewhat resembling a chapel, with the galleries on eitherside and facing the stage which occupies the same position as ,but has no curtain of scenery—these are quite unknown in aChinese theatre. City walls, mountains, temples, palaces, fortifi-cations furniture and other objects are represented by 15 i A RAM15LK IN HONGKONG. Igy while many of the scenes are delineated l)y pantomimic attitiulesand motions. As my learned friend, Mr. Stanton, of .Hon<,kon^f : —Their scenery is inferior to what ours was, at the Cockpit andGlobe theatres in Shaksperes time, and about equal to IettTQuinces scenery in his most lamentable comedy and most cnuddeath of Pyramus and Thisby, as shown in the Midsummer Xi<;litsDream, where a man Avith loam over him represents a wall andhis spread open fingers a cranny for lovers to whisper orchestra, which through the ear-splitting nature of its music,is the great hindrance to foreigners enjoying a play, occupies therear-central part of the stage between the doorways leading tothe green-room. This green-room is an interesting place, full ofstrange things and stranger looking people, of arms, and armourof every period of Chinese history except the last 200 years, ofhideous masks, and be
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectchinade, bookyear1896
