Taikang City, word on the street

While the PC's have only been in Taikang City for a short while, crew members have noticed the following about this large, old city:

• A bureaucrat caste sits astride a teeming underclass of tradesman, merchants, laborers and slaves. Pretty much the same as every city you have been in so far in the world of Xoth.
• From the magnificent houses of the Butterfly Palace shrouded servants tend to the city's spiritual leader who issues confusing edicts for the city's poor to follow. 
• Mercenary warrior clans serve at the will of the city's treasury. 
• Some tea shops sell lotus, all lotus dens sell tea and rice wine.
• The inane chatter of members of the various philosophical societies fill up the air of most tea shops and lotus dens.
• Tea shop can also be a euphemism for an assassin's poison workshop.
• Large cockroaches the size of chickens have been seen being herded through the city streets at night.
• Inns are very expensive, and have set dinner times with inscrutable prayers and gestures mumbled throughout the meal.
• The local guard favors 9' pole arms.
• The fishing is poor in the harbor, but clams seem plentiful on the tidal flats south of the city.
• The Harbor Master dropped off a voluminous pile of scrolls stamped in ornate insignia.