Mr. Pride said to me a moment ago that they spoke better English in Boston than any other place in the world. Did he, though, Lady Lawless? That's good. Well, I guess he was only talking through his hat.

The following five-character regulated verse, one of two entitled Twelfth Month, Sixth Day,²⁸ was written by Yuan Hao-wen while under house arrest in Liao-chʻeng. The empire still full of arms, At this edge of the world, the year again renewed. The dragon has shifted, leaving fish and turtles lost; The sun eclipsed, unicorns are fighting. Brambles amid grasses, these desolate hills are snowy; In my old garden, mist and flowers mark the spring. Here in Liao-chʻeng, a moon out tonight, I feel disconsolate still away from home.

Steve Wilson (2018), chapter 8, in Spoilt for Choice: “I reckon like I'm some kind of Sam Spade here. I've put to one side the main plot and concentrated instead on the key character, following him to get some idea of his comings and goings”

The houses themselves are so horrible in their condition, and have been so remodeled from time to time, to meet Celestial ideas and fall in with notions which are but a relic of barbarism, that not even a colored man of the most degraded type can be persuaded to live permanently in a house which has ever been occupied by an unregenerated denizen of Chinatown.