WHEN American traveller Archie Bell arrived in Shanghai in the early years of the 20th century, a pleasing street scene attracted him. A group of Chinese men were walking in the streets holding birdcages in their hands.

People may have turned a blind eye to such scene when they first encountered them, thinking perhaps that the man was just bringing the bird home to please his wife. But once they met the 20th or 30th bird-cage carrier, they may have found it rather strange, according to the book "The Spell of China" written by Archie Bell.

In Bell's eyes, these men went out for walks with their pet birds, because it was a custom passed on from generation to generation. Even today, it can still easily be seen that many of China's elderly men like to pass their time in this way.

In nearly every household, despite their cramped conditions, an empty space would be left for feeding one or several birds, tied by cords and living in clean birdcages hanging in the gardens.

On festive occasions, people in the city often went to temples or to places with ponds and gardens to breathe the fresh air, taking their birds with them.

This unique scene also aroused the attention of Alicia Bewicke Little, who wrote in her book, "The Land of The Blue Gown", that the existence of each tree seemed to be solely for the purpose of hanging birdcages. Even people who could not afford to plant trees had a long bamboo pole with attachments from which to hang the birdcages.

In their daily lives, Chinese people took great pleasure from the company of song birds. And the happiness and sadness of birds awoke considerable sympathy among them, Little wrote.

In Shanghai, markets for selling birds were usually located in the dirty but interesting "old town", which was not only a place for people to view various kinds of birds but also a place to meet city folk from different social levels.

Once, when Little was drinking tea in a small tea house, a man approached and tried to sell her a bird. This bird knew how to catch melon seeds. Just throw the seeds in the air, and it would catch them in its beak!

But for the Chinese men carrying their birdcages, the birds were never bought for their wives, Bell wrote. They never even thought of their spouses as they wandered through the streets with their birds, since their wives had been chosen by their parents.

What were these poor women fond of? Little wrote that they generally loved chrysanthemums. On her wanderings, Little met some women who pinned a chrysanthemum in their hair as a kind of ornamentation.

Actually, not only women, but many different people were in love with birds, flowers and trees. Standing on the city walls, Little was surprised to find that each family planted a tree if it was possible. Some trees were very beautiful and were taken good care of, she wrote.

Bell also had the same impression as Little. He wrote that people would happily spend lots of money on a short pine tree, just in order to draw artistic inspirations from its shape.

(The author is from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)