“Allee gone.”
I offered him nine dollah.
“Allee gone.”
I offered him ten dollah.
“Allee gone.”
So I also went, cured of my conceit as a shopper and business man. I had the best of the bargain, however, for the cover didn’t cost me anything. In my subsequent shopping I soon learned that the amount a Chinaman would throw off was so insignificant that it was not worth while to ask it. In fact, it is a good thing to offer him five cents more than he asks to make him jump about and show his goods with more zeal. As we passed out I noticed that the doctor had bought several things of considerable value for his wife.
We then sauntered leisurely down to the street that skirted the seashore, passing the market on our way. The market was a large fenced, rectangular area with a galvanized iron roof. It projected over the sea wall, giving opportunity for the disposal of all dirt by merely throwing it out, supposing, of course, that it were possible to get rid of all of the dirt in the place. It was much better constructed and arranged than the market at Colón, and was well supplied with dirty counters and dirty booths where dirty Chinamen, dirty negroes and dirty mestizos sold dirty fruit, dirty fish, dirty vegetables, etc., all of which should have gone over the sea wall instead of over the palate.
Arriving at the end of the street where it was cut off by an inward curve of the shore line, we turned at right angles to the left into a street about a quarter of a mile long and were, commercially speaking, in Chinatown. The ground-floor front of many of the houses were little Chinese stores, and most of the inhabitants that we saw were Chinese. And before we had finished our walk along the shore, through the market and up this street, we were prepared to endorse the saying that Panama had a separate smell for every turn of the head. A blind man could soon learn to find his way around easily and unerringly.
Up near the main street, where our little street ended, we came to a large, clean-looking Chinese silk and dry-goods store with an imposing entrance. A private carriage was standing in front of it, although upon entering we did not find any one who looked as if he or she had ever possessed or even driven in a carriage. Indeed, on two other occasions I saw a carriage, presumably the same one, in the same place, but never discovered a possible owner shopping there. Hence I inferred that the carriage belonged to the establishment, and was kept there to impress strangers by making them believe that rich customers frequented the place. The store had two front rooms, a main room for all sorts of articles, and a smaller one for silk. We went into the silk room where we found a beautiful display of a costly embroidered silk in the show-cases, and in innumerable pasteboard boxes on shelves reaching almost up to the ceiling.
The proprietor, who waited upon us, was a plump, handsome, courteous, intelligent and exceedingly dignified Chinaman. When Chinamen grow fat they often become good looking; those that remain thin remain ugly, like the rest of us. He showed us all sorts of finery, and Doctor Echeverría let himself out. Whenever the doctor saw silks and embroidery and a Chinaman he thought of his wife, and whenever he thought of his wife he thought of silks and embroidery and Chinamen. In Costa Rica the tariff is very high on silks, and the market is probably not good. We examined many things and made the Chinaman send for more goods from his store-rooms. The doctor wasted no time talking, but bought freely: scarfs, shawls, fans, waists, kimonas, doilies, table covers, etc., for his wife, and handkerchiefs, neckties, etc., for himself.