CHAPTER XIV
PEDDLER LIFE IN CHINA
The Chinese thrifty—Nothing wasted—Besides regular shopkeepers, there are itinerant dealers—The “candy man”—His various kinds of sweets—The “sweets and sours man”—The cloth peddler—Describe him minutely—The pork peddler—The jewellery peddler—The fortune-teller.
The Chinese are a thrifty race. Stern necessity and a widespread poverty that has placed vast masses of them on the very borderland of starvation, have compelled the nation to exercise economies such as are absolutely unknown in the richer lands of the West. We get some idea of the narrow line that divides countless numbers of people from absolute want, by the fact that with regard to food there is nothing of that ever wasted in China. “Wilful waste brings woeful want” is a proverb that Chinese in common life would have great difficulty in understanding, or indeed in any rank of society. The famines that have in all ages desolated great regions in China, and the desperate struggle that is constantly going on for simply enough to eat, have surrounded food as it were with a halo, that would make it seem like sacrilege to misuse what we should throw away as useless or positively hurtful.
A PEDDLER.
A SHOEMAKER AT WORK ON THE STREET.
To face p. 296.
On one occasion, I was travelling in the interior, when I was disturbed by a violent explosion of wrath on the part of the captain of the boat. He was evidently incensed beyond measure with one of the members of the crew, and he used the strongest language in condemnation of him. They were all gathered round the great rice pan having their evening meal, and with every mouthful that was taken out of the bowl that contained the condiment to go with their rice, the anger of the captain blazed out in a fresh burst of indignation. “What is the matter,” I at last asked, “and why are you making such a row over your meal?” “Matter!” he replied, “there is a great deal of matter, that is quite enough to make one as angry as I am. Do you see this man?” he said, pointing with his chopsticks to the delinquent upon whom his wrath was being expended. “I sent him this afternoon to the market to buy some oysters to eat with our rice this evening, and he had not the sense or the nose to buy good ones. He allowed the dealer to cheat him most egregiously, for the oysters are not simply tainted—which would not have seriously mattered—they are positively stinking, and the taste is so offensive that we can hardly get them down without being sick.” “But are you really going to eat them?” I asked, with a look of consternation on my face. “Eat them! of course we are; you would not have us waste the food, would you? We have paid for it, and we certainly could not afford to lose our money,” and the whole crew went on popping the unsavoury, unhealthy morsels into their mouths, grumbling all the time at the man who was the cause of their discomfort, but who in order to cover his mistake pretended to be perfectly satisfied with the almost putrid oysters that one could smell from a distance.