Farther on we stopped to gaze at a small crowd assembled round a fortune‐teller. A stout country‐woman was having her future foretold. The prophet, looking alternately at her hand and at a chart covered with hieroglyphics, was evidently promising her a career full of good fortune and happiness, to judge from the rapt and delighted expression on her face.
A bear, lumbering heavily through a cumbrous dance to the mournful strains of a weird musical instrument, was the centre of another small gathering. Farther down the street a juggler had attracted a ring of interested spectators, who, when the performer endeavoured to collect money from them, melted away quite as rapidly as a similar crowd in the streets of London scatters when the hat is passed round.
We had noticed many peepshows being exhibited along the side‐walk, with small, pig‐tailed urchins, their eyes glued to the peepholes, evidently having their money’s worth. Curious to see the spectacles with which the Chinese showman regales his audiences, we struck a bargain with one, and for the large sum of five cents the whole party was allowed to look in through the glasses. The first tableau represented a troupe of acrobats performing before the Imperial Court. Then the proprietor pressed a spring; by a mechanical device the scene changed, and we drew back from the peepholes! The Chinese are not a moral race. None of us were easily shocked, but the picture that met our gaze was a little too indecent for the broadest‐minded European. We moved on.
Outside a farrier’s booth a pony was being shod. Two poles planted firmly in the earth, with a cross‐piece fixed between them, about six feet from the ground, formed a sort of gallows. Ropes passed round the animal’s neck, chest, loins, and legs, and fastened to the poles, half suspending him in the air, held him almost immovable. The most vicious brute would be helpless in such a contrivance.
Our guide, on being reminded that we desired to make some purchases, stopped outside a low‐fronted, dingy shop, and informed us that it belonged to one of the best silk merchants in Pekin. We entered, and found the proprietor deep in conversation with a friend. The guide addressed him, and told him that we wished to look at some silks. Hardly interrupting his conversation, the merchant replied that he had none. Irritated at his casual manner, our interpreter asked why he exhibited a sign‐board outside the shop, which declared that silks were for sale within. “Oh, everything I had was looted. There is nothing left,” replied the proprietor nonchalantly; and he turned to resume his interrupted conversation as indifferently as if the plundering of his goods was too ordinary a business risk to demand a moment’s thought. Not a word of complaint at his misfortune. How different, I thought, from the torrent of indignant eloquence with which the European shopkeeper would bewail the slackness of trade or a fire that had damaged his property!
We were more successful in the next establishment we visited, for a new stock had been laid in since the capture of the city. But the silks were of very inferior quality, the colours crude and gaudy, and the prices exorbitant. So we purchased nothing.
We next inspected a china shop, which was stacked with pottery from floor to ceiling. To my mind the patterns and colouring of everything we saw were particularly hideous, though some of our party who posed as connoisseurs went into raptures over weird designs and glaring blues and browns.
I was equally disappointed in a visit to a fan shop. China is pre‐eminently the land of fans, and I had hoped to find some particularly choice specimens in Pekin. But all that were shown me were very indifferent—badly made and of poor design. The prettiest I have ever seen were in Canton, where superb samples of carved sandal‐wood and ivory can be procured at a very reasonable price. But Canton is far ahead of the capital in manufactures, and its inhabitants possess a keen commercial instinct. Its proximity to Hong Kong and the constant intercourse with foreigners have sharpened their trading faculties, and there are few smarter business men than the Canton shopkeeper.
