Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

The peddler I am describing has nothing to do with the buying of the refuse tinfoil in the temples. That is kept in the hands of the authorities in each, who dispose of it to meet their current expenses. Where his business lies is amongst the families that are situated within his round. These are accustomed all more or less to offer bribes of money to their household gods whenever they wish to obtain any favour from them. With the thrift of the Chinese they always carefully pick out from the ashes what the gods were cheated into believing were precious pieces of gold and silver. The next day when the peddler makes his rounds they are sold for a few cash to him, and thus they perform the double service of bribing the gods and of putting money into their own pockets.

Of late this man has added to the original idea of being a collector of burnt tinfoil, the name by which he is popularly known amongst the Chinese, by also acting as a rag and bone merchant. As was remarked at the beginning of this chapter, nothing is wasted in China, and what would be thrown into the dust heap in England and carried away next day by the dust cart, is here carefully set aside and kept to be sold to this peddler. A sardine tin, for example, has been opened, and it seems now to be only an incumbrance and of absolutely no value. The Chinaman thinks differently, for he puts it away on a shelf in his kitchen, and when the cry of the collector of burnt tinfoil is heard heralding his approach, it is taken down and in consideration of a few cash is added to his collection of what seems useless rubbish.

A chicken is killed and all the feathers are sedulously preserved, and even the very bones that are left after it has been eaten are collected and put aside to be sold on the morrow. All kerosene tins and empty bottles, unless carefully watched by the mistress, will disappear mysteriously and no one appears to know where they have vanished to; but the peddler, if he would consent to reveal all he knows about them, could tell exactly where they are and how much he has gained by their sale.

A WAYSIDE KITCHEN.

To face p. 317.

It is a very singular thing that the characters of the various kinds of peddler seem to be influenced by the particular business in which each of them is concerned. The pork peddler has a bluff and breezy air about him, and he sends forth his blasts from his shell as though he were the advance guard of an invading army. The seller of “sweets and sours” is distinguished by a pleasing countenance on which a winning smile seems perpetually to rest. His association with children and his constant effort to win their confidence have no doubt been largely instrumental in giving this pleasant character to his face. The cloth peddler, on the other hand, has a severe and dignified countenance, as though he were conscious of the responsibility that belonged to him in being the interpreter as it were of the fashions, and the introducer of foreign goods into a land that was accustomed to look upon any one as a traitor to his country that had any traffic with anything associated with the “Outer Barbarian.”

The profession of the collector of burnt tinfoil has unquestionably had a demoralizing effect upon him. He is usually pale and thin, with the air of a man of broken-down fortunes. He walks along with a timid, shrinking air, as though he scented a policeman at every turn in the road, and when he looks at you it is with a kind of side glance, apparently fearful lest if he looked you straight in the face you would discover the depravity that is deep down in his heart.

Beside the above that I have attempted to describe there are many other kinds of peddlers who are equally interesting in their way. There are, for example, the vegetable seller, and the fruiterer, and the peddler that deals exclusively in needles and threads and tapes. There are also the peddlers with the travelling kitchen, and the one that may be found on the streets at all hours of the night with pork rissoles for the special benefit of opium smokers, who have a weakness for delicacies of this sort. There are, again, the peddlers who are only to be found from about nine o’clock in the evening up almost to the time when the dawn threatens to disperse the shadows of the night. These men are to be found at street corners with portable stoves and a plentiful supply of hot rice. Some of them attempt to cater not simply to the hunger of the late wanderers on the streets, but also to their fastidious appetites, for they have prepared good stocks of vermicelli, and a very pleasant combination of soft-boiled rice and oysters, so as to tempt those who would otherwise be inclined to hurry on their way homewards.

There is one man who though he does not strictly belong to the class I have been discussing, yet as his life is spent on the street in his endeavour to make a living, I shall attempt to describe, and that is the fortune-teller. He is to be found in a niche on some great thoroughfare, where the crowds are passing incessantly the livelong day, and where he is just out of the crush of the living tide that surges just outside of him. His stock-in-trade is about a dozen bamboo slips with enigmatic sentences carved on each of them, that to the mind of the man who can read into the mysteries of the unknown land contain the clues to the story of each one that applies to him to have their future revealed to him or her. He has also a Java sparrow enclosed within a diminutive cage, that is believed to be the interpreter of the spirits in helping to unfold in some slight measure the secrets they hold about the men on earth.