The fact of the matter is the Chinese have no belief in the word infection. There is nothing in this huge cumbrous language to express the idea of germ, bacillus and such like, and so when some terrible odour from a drain that is seething and frothing in the sun, such as would knock off the head of a water buffalo, the Chinese puckers up his nose for an instant and then puts on that childlike smile with which he so often adorns his countenance, and attends to his business without any more fuss.
Now, this is one of the best streets in the town, and contains goods to the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the wealthiest merchants in the town have their places of business in it, and yet there is not one to be compared with any ordinary shop that one meets with in any of the ordinary streets that abound in our cities in the West.
They have all a comparatively mean-looking appearance. They are only one storey high and have no fronts in them. When the shutters are taken down in the morning, the whole of the interior is at once laid bare to the public gaze, and as only the poorer shops attempt to display the goods they have for sale, one can see nothing but rolls on the shelves, and drawers tightly closed, and a number of Chinamen lounging about in a free and easy way, who are really clerks, but who act with a freedom that would ensure them being packed off at a moment’s notice by any vigilant shop-walker in a good business house in England.
But here is a silk shop that it will be interesting to visit. It is one of the best in the whole town, and it is said to contain specimens from all the famous silk-producing districts in the Empire. It does not seem to have anything in it, beyond what one sees lying on the shelves, carefully wrapped up in paper as though the great purpose was to conceal everything from the gaze of the public. We find our progress impeded by a large counter within which the clerks lounge about, and as purchasers are never supposed to sit down, we have to stand on the outside of this, as no chairs of any kind have been provided, not even for the women, when they come to buy. Ladies of course never by any chance come out shopping, so the great majority of the customers are men, and occasionally elderly women of the middle class, who are not supposed to need to sit down.
A BARBER AND HIS CUSTOMER.
To face p. 178.
The appearance of a foreigner causes a commotion, and a responsible-looking man steps forward with a hesitating manner, evidently questioning with himself how he is to address you, since he knows nothing but his own mother-tongue. You inform him, however, in Chinese, that you have come to look at his silks, and at once his countenance clears, and a look of pleasure flashes into his eyes and across the wide and expansive area of his Mongolian features.
The clerks, too, without any apparent restraint from their master’s presence, crowd around and make remarks about your personal appearance, and criticize your dress, and give their opinion about the way in which you pronounce Chinese. In the meanwhile two or three have been dispatched to an inner room, where the precious silks are kept, and they soon appear with a dozen rolls or so carefully wrapped in paper, and tied with string to keep the dust and the sunlight from getting to them.
As each one is unrolled, you gaze with absolute delight upon the exquisite colours that flash upon your sight. Here you have one piece of a delicate creamy white, that seems too pure to be touched without being defiled. Next to it is another of a beautiful rose pink, a colour that the designers must have caught from some rose that had just opened its petals to the sun, and so as the men deftly unwind the various rolls you have displayed before you the whole array of colours that the Chinese weavers have woven into their fabrics, and for the moment the unæsthetic-looking Chinaman becomes sublimed in your imagination, because of the marvellous power with which he has reproduced the various hues of nature in the rolls of silk that are deftly unfolded before you.