After our conciliatory address had restored self-possession to all present, everybody drew round the piece of paper on which we had cast up our sum in Arabic numerals. “That is a fine souan-pan,” said one to another; “simple, sure, and speedy.”—“Sirs Lamas,” asked the principal, “what do these characters mean? What souan-pan is this?” “This souan-pan is infallible,” returned we; “the characters are those which the Mandarins of Celestial Literature use in calculating eclipses, and the course of the seasons.” [116] After a brief conversation on the merits of the Arabic numerals, the cashier handed us the full amount of sapeks, and we parted good friends.
The Chinese are sometimes victims to their own knavery, and we have known even Tartars catch them in a snare. One day a Mongol presented himself at the counter of a Chinese moneychanger, with a youen-pao carefully packed and sealed. A youen-pao is an ingot of silver weighing three pounds—in China there are sixteen ounces to the pound; the three pounds are never very rigorously exacted; there being generally four or five ounces over, so that the usual weight of an ingot of silver is fifty-two ounces. The Tartar had no sooner unpacked his youen-pao than the Chinese clerk resolved to defraud him of an ounce or two, and weighing it, he pronounced it to be fifty ounces. “My youen-pao weighs
fifty-two ounces,” exclaimed the Tartar. “I weighed it before I left home.” “Oh, your Tartar scales are all very well for sheep; but they don’t do for weighing bullion.” After much haggling, the bargain was concluded, the youen-pao was purchased as weighing fifty ounces, and the Tartar, having first required and obtained a certificate of the stated weight and value of the ingot, returned to his tent with a good provision of sapeks and bank notes.
In the evening the principal of the establishment received the usual report from each clerk of the business done in the course of the day. “I,” said one of them with a triumphant air, “bought a youen-pao of silver, and made two ounces by it.” He produced the ingot, which the chief received with a smile, soon changing into a frown. “What have you got here?” cried he. “This is not silver!” The ingot was handed round, and all the clerks saw that indeed it was base bullion. “I know the Tartar,” said the clerk who had purchased it, “and will have him up before the Mandarin.”
The satellites of justice were forthwith dispatched after the roguish Tartar, whose offence, proved against him, was matter of capital punishment. It was obvious that the ingot was base bullion, and on the face of the affair there was clear proof that the Tartar had sold it. The Tartar, however, stoutly repudiated the imputation. “The humblest of the humble,” said he, “craves that he may be allowed to put forth a word in his defence.” “Speak,” said the Mandarin, “but beware how you say aught other than the exact truth.” “It is true,” proceeded the Tartar, “that I sold a youen-pao at this person’s shop, but it was all pure silver. I am a Tartar, a poor, simple man, and these people, seeking to take advantage of me, have substituted a false for my genuine ingot. I cannot command many words, but I pray our father and mother, (i.e. the Mandarin), to have this false youen-pao weighed.” The ingot was weighed, and was found to contain fifty-two ounces. The Tartar now drew from one of his boots a small parcel, containing, wrapped in rags, a piece of paper, which he held up to the Mandarin. “Here is a certificate” cried he, “which I received at the shop, and which attests the value and weight of the youen-pao that I sold.” The Mandarin looked over the paper with a roguish smile, and then said: “According to the testimony of the clerk himself who wrote this certificate, this Mongol sold to him a youen-pao weighing fifty ounces; this youen-pao of base bullion weighs fifty-two ounces; this, therefore, cannot be the Mongol’s youen-pao; but now comes the question, whose is it? Who are really the persons that have false bullion in their possession?” Every body present, the Mandarin included, knew perfectly well how the case stood; but the Chinese magistrate, tickled with the Tartar’s ingenuity, gave
him the benefit of the clerk’s dull roguery, and dismissed the charge; but not so the accusers, who were well bastinadoed, and would have been put to death as coiners, had they not found means to appease justice by the present of some ingots of purer metal. It is only, however, upon very rare and extraordinary occasions that the Mongols get the better of the Chinese. In the ordinary course of things, they are everywhere, and always, and in every way, the dupes of their neighbours who by dint of cunning and unprincipled machinations, reduce them to poverty.
Upon receiving our sapeks, we proceeded to buy the winter clothing we needed. Upon a consideration of the meagreness of our exchequer, we came to the resolution that it would be better to purchase what we required at some secondhand shop. In China and Tartary no one has the smallest repugnance to wear other people’s clothes; he who has not himself the attire wherein to pay a visit or make a holiday, goes without ceremony to a neighbour and borrows a hat, or a pair of trousers, or boots, or shoes, or whatever else he wants, and nobody is at all surprised at these borrowings, which are quite a custom. The only hesitation any one has in lending his clothes to a neighbour, is, lest the borrower should sell them in payment of some debt, or, after using them, pawn them. People who buy clothes buy them indifferently, new or secondhand. The question of price is alone taken into consideration, for there is no more delicacy felt about putting on another man’s hat or trousers, than there is about living in a house that some one else has occupied before you.
This custom of wearing other people’s things was by no means to our taste, and all the less so, that, ever since our arrival at the mission of Si-Wang, we had not been under the necessity of departing from our old habits in this respect. Now, however, the slenderness of our purse compelled us to waive our repugnance. We went out, therefore, in search of a secondhand clothes shop, of which, in every town here, there are a greater or less number, for the most part in connection with pawnshops, called in these countries Tang-Pou. Those who borrow upon pledges, are seldom able to redeem the articles they have deposited, which they accordingly leave to die, as the Tartars and Chinese express it; or in other words, they allow the period of redemption to pass, and the articles pass altogether from them. The old clothes shops of the Blue Town were filled in this way with Tartar spoils, so that we had the opportunity of selecting exactly the sort of things we required, to suit the new costume we had adopted.
At the first shop we visited they showed us a quantity of wretched garments turned up with sheep-skin; but though these
rags were exceedingly old, and so covered with grease that it was impossible to guess at their original colour, the price asked for them was exorbitant. After a protracted haggling, we found it impossible to come to terms, and we gave up this first attempt; and we gave it up, be it added, with a certain degree of satisfaction, for our self-respect was somewhat wounded at finding ourselves reduced even to the proposition of wearing such filthy rags. We visited another shop, and another, a third, and a fourth, and still several more. We were shown magnificent garments, handsome garments, fair garments, endurable garments, but the consideration of expense was, in each instance, an impracticable stumbling-block. The journey we had undertaken might endure for several years, and extreme economy, at all events in the outset, was indispensable. After going about the whole day, after making the acquaintance of all the rag-merchants in the Blue Town, after turning over and over all their old clothes, we were fain to return to the secondhand dealer whom we had first visited, and to make the best bargain we could with him. We purchased from him, at last, two ancient robes of sheepskin, covered with some material, the nature of which it was impossible to identify, and the original colour of which we suspected to have been yellow. We proceeded to try them on, and it was at once evident that the tailor in making them had by no means had us in his eye. M. Gabet’s robe was too short, M. Huc’s too long; but a friendly exchange was impracticable, the difference in height between the two missionaries being altogether too disproportionate. We at first thought of cutting the excess from the one, in order to make up the deficiency of the other; but then we should have had to call in the aid of a tailor, and this would have involved another drain upon our purse; the pecuniary consideration decided the question, and we determined to wear the clothes as they were, M. Huc adopting the expedient of holding up, by means of a girdle, the surplus of his robe, and M. Gabet resigning himself to the exposure to the public gaze of a portion of his legs; the main inconvenience, after all, being the manifestation to all who saw us that we could not attire ourselves in exact proportion to our size.