Some Dungan vocabulary may sound old-fashioned to Chinese people. For example, they refer to a President as an "Emperor" (Хуаңды, "huan'g-di") and call government offices "yamen" (ямын, "ya-min"), a term for mandarins' offices in ancient China. Their language also contains many loanwords from Arabic, Persian and Turkic. Since the 1940s, the language has been written in Cyrillic script, demonstrating that Chinese can be written with an alphabet (compare the pinyin system). Unlike other minority nationalities in Central Asia, such as the local Koreans, most Dungan people are trilingual. More than two-thirds of the Dungan also speak Russian and a small proportion can speak Kyrgyz or other languages belonging to the titular nationalities of the countries where they live. Nineteenth century explorer Henry Lansdell noted that the Dungan people abstained from spirits and opium, neither smoked nor took snuff and "are of middle height, and inclined to be stout. They have high and prominent foreheads, thick and arched eyebrows, eyes rather sunken, fairly prominent cheek-bones, face oval, mouth of average size, lips thick, teeth normal, chin round, ears small and compressed, hair black and smooth, beard scanty and rough, skin smooth, neck strong, and extremities of average proportions. The characteristics of the Dungans are kindness, industry, and hospitality. They engage in husbandry, horticulture, and trade. In domestic life parental authority is very strong. After the birth of a child the mother does not get up for fifteen days, and, without any particular feast, the child receives its name in the presence of a mullah the day succeeding that of its birth. Circumcision takes place on the eighth, ninth, or tenth day. When a girl is married she receives a dower. In sickness they have recourse to medicine and doctors, but never to exorcisms. After death, the mullah and the aged assemble to recite prayers; the corpse is wrapped in white linen and then buried, but never burned. On returning from the interment the mullah and the elders partake of bread and meat. To saints they erect monuments like little mosques, for others simple hillocks. The widow may re-marry after 90 days, and on the third anniversary of the death a feast takes place." The Dungan are primarily farmers, growing rice and vegetables such as sugar beet.