“I am twenty-eight” (great astonishment, for I pass usually for forty-five).
“How long have you been inside the walls?” (at Peking).
“About four months.”
“Do you belong to the great Ying, or the great Fa?” (English or French).
Then follow a string of the most absurd questions about England. One man asked one day whether it was true that in Europe there were men with holes through their chests and backs, whom their servants carried about by passing a bamboo pole through the hole and so hoisting them on to their shoulders. Such is the Chinese education, that one of their scholars, deeply read in ethics and Confucian books, would be capable of asking questions to the full as ridiculous as the above, which, indeed, was put by an educated man.
After the din, bustle, and dirt of the streets, it is very refreshing to go into one of the shops, where there is always the civillest welcome, even though one may buy nothing. In almost all cases the master of the house gives us delicious tea, sugarless and milkless of course, but of the most exquisite flavour. The infusion is made in a small covered bowl; I have hardly ever seen a teapot. The outer shop is for the most part only, as it were, an advertisement, and contains nothing but trash: one of the finest shops here exhibits to the street a front such as a Cheap Jack at a fair might show; but go inside, and cross a little courtyard into the inner sanctum, and you will be dazzled by the beauty of the ornaments and trinkets for sale. There is a certain black étagère made of ebony, carved to represent very light bamboo stems supporting irregular niches, filled with carved lapis-lazuli, jade, cornelians, agates, and other rare stones, that I should like to carry off bodily. Every piece in the collection is a chef-d’œuvre. The prices are, of course, outrageous, but they come down; indeed, it is curious that a people so proverbially cunning in trade should act as they do. Supposing that they ask thirty dollars for a thing, we offer fifteen, which, at first, will be indignantly rejected; but after perhaps three months of bargaining the man will come down to our price, thus keeping himself for three months out of the interest of his money. There is some beautiful porcelain, but very dear. I have never seen any of the rose-backed plates or cups that are so much prized at home; and two or three of the dealers, whom I have asked about them, had never heard of such things. There is plenty of bad cloisonné enamel about; but the fine specimens came from Yuen-Ming-Yuen, and the Chinese were obliged to sell them off as fast as they could for fear of the law. (I take it the natives had a great hand in the looting.) I only know of two really magnificent pieces, for which the owner asks £1000! He would probably take £300, and they would be a great bargain at the price. They are two colossal covered bowls, without flaw or fault, and would look splendid at Windsor or some very great house. I have written to a friend to tell him of them.
The best chance of picking up here and there a pretty thing is in the minor shops, from which the bigger ones are recruited. There is a street called the Liu-li-chang, which swarms with old book shops (a sort of Paternoster Row) and curiosity shops, some of which are hardly more than stalls, where sometimes one may find a piece of fine porcelain, or other work of art, for an old song.
I start after to-morrow morning for Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, to see the Great Wall, and I shall return by way of the tombs of the emperors of the Ming dynasty; so at any rate I shall not have to sing the eternal refrain, “Peking is very dirty.” I shall be about eight days gone. The trip was originally to have been undertaken with the Russian Minister, but he is detained by business, so I go with Murray, and we accompany Saurin as far as Ku-Pei-Ko̔u, whence he will travel into Mongolia, and Murray and I shall come back.
One more word about the Beggar’s Bridge: often one of the poor creatures will die at his post, and I have seen the corpse lie there for two or three days hardly covered over by a piece of rotten matting. His troubles and miseries are over. The beggars are, I am told, a sort of guild with a recognised head, to whom it is not an infrequent custom to pay a slight annual tribute, by which means their importunities, such as taking up a position outside a man’s door or shop, and refusing to “move on,” may be avoided, and their piteous cry, “Ko̔ Lien! Ko̔ Lien!” (Have mercy! have mercy!) no longer heard. Begging throughout Asia is a fine art.