Huge monoliths are there cut from the boulders which have been dislodged from the mountains, dressed and finished _in situ_, and then removed to the spot where they are to be erected.

The Chinese thus pursue a practice different from that of the Westerns, who bring the undressed stone from the quarry and carve it in the studio.

With the Chinese the difficulty is one of transport--the finished work is obviously lighter than the unhewn block.

In Yunnan, up to the present, I had seen no mason at work, for no masonry was needed.
Houses built of stone were falling into ruin, and only thatched, mud-plastered, bamboo and wood houses were being built in their places.
At Laowatan I told my Christian to hire me a chair for thirty or forty li, and he did so, but the chair, instead of carrying me the shorter distance, carried me the whole day.

The following day the chair kept company with me, and as I had not ordered it, I naturally walked; but the third day also the chair haunted me, and then I discovered that my admirable guide had engaged the chair not for thirty or forty li, as I had instructed him in my best Chinese, but for three hundred and sixty li, for four days' stages of ninety li each.