His house is a handsome Chinese mansion; it has a dignified entrance and the garden court is richly filled with plants in porcelain vases.

It may thus be said of him, as of the Confucian Superior Man, "riches adorn his house and virtue his person, his heart is expanded, and his body is at ease." A Szechuen man, a native of Chungking, fifty-nine years of age, Wong is a man of immense wealth, his bank being known all over China, and having branches in capital cities so far distant from each other as Peking, Canton, Kweiyang, Shanghai, Hankow, Nanchang, Soochow, Hangchow, and Chungking.

I may add that he has smoked opium for many years.
I formed a high opinion of the intelligence of Wong.

He questioned me like an insurance doctor as to my family history, and professed himself charmed with the amazing richness in sons of my most honourable family.
He had heard of my native country, which he called _Hsin Chin Shan_, the "New Gold Mountain," to distinguish it from the _Lao Chin Shan_, the "Old Gold Mountain," as the Chinese term California.

I was the more pleased to find that Wong had some knowledge of Australia and its gold, because a few months before I had been pained by an incident bearing on this very subject, which occurred to me in the highly civilised city of Manila, in the Philippine Islands.