Twenty miles south of Chungking the range of mountains, that shields the eastern face of Szechuan's commercial centre, harbours a sequestered valley, in the floor of which bubble up the hot springs called by the Chinese Wen-tang. Having never visited a Chinese inland watering-place, we thought that a Christmas visit to the Wen-tang would form a pleasant outing for the holidays, and accordingly, packing up our beds and a change of clothing, we set out one Christmas Eve to make the journey. Crossing the great river by the ferry to Hai-tan-chi, a long straggling village composed of a narrow, winding street of steep stone steps, the terminus of the Great Kwei-chow Road, we ascended a thousand feet to the pass of “Hoang-ko-Ya” (Banian Gap), so called from a group of magnificent Ficus infectoria shading the last few hundred yards of the winding stone staircase, that leads to the summit of the gap, a thousand feet above the river. And leaving on our left the beautifully-wooded peak of Lao-chun-tung, with its groups of halls and temples, rising in terraces one behind the other (commemorating some say the retreat in this spot of the philosopher Lao-tze, 600 B.C), we traversed the Straszendorf, the narrow, covered-in street of which forms the first halting-place for travellers bound from Chungking to the south.