Note 193 — XXXI. A DWARF.

The Cantonese believe the following to be the usual process:—“Young children are bought or stolen at a tender age and placed in a ch‘ing, or vase with a narrow neck, and having in this case a moveable bottom. In this receptacle the unfortunate little wretches are kept for years in a sitting posture, their heads outside, being all the while carefully tended and fed.... When the child has reached the age of twenty or over, he or she is taken away to some distant place and ‘discovered’ in the woods as a wild man or woman.”—China Mail, 15th May, 1878. return to text