CHAPTER XXI
RUNNING AMUCK
If Japan had been a revelation to the tourists, China was a still greater one. For Japan, however much she clung to the dreamy life of former times, had at last awakened and was fast adapting herself to modern, civilized conditions.
If Japan was still half dreaming, China was sound asleep. This, of course, was not true of the foreign quarter, where the great English government buildings and commercial houses might have been those of Paris or London.
But just behind this lay the real China, looking probably the same as three hundred thousand years ago. The little streets, so narrow in places that the houses almost touched and a carriage could not pass! That strange medley of sounds and smells and noises! Here a tinker mending his pans on the sidewalk! There a dentist, pulling a tooth in the open street, jugglers performing their tricks, snake charmers exhibiting their slimy pets. 176
There was a bewildering jumble of trades, occupations and amusements, so utterly different from what the tourists had ever before seen that it held their curiosity unabated and their interest stimulated to its highest pitch during the period of their stay.
“Everything is so topsy turvy!” exclaimed Mabel, as she threaded the noisome streets, clinging close to Joe’s arm. “I feel like Alice in Wonderland.”
“It’s not surprising that things should be upside down when we’re in the Antipodes,” laughed Joe.
“If we saw men walking on their heads it would seem natural out here,” said Jim. “All that a Chinaman wants to know is what other people do, then he does something different.”