“It can, I think, be done,” said the clerk, giving him a pleasant smile. Then his face took on an expression of contrition. “I hope, venerable one, that you will not think this miserable creature too bold if he asks for your papers?”
“Not at all,” said Candron, taking a billfold from his inside coat pocket. “Such is the law, and the law of the People of China is to be always respected.”
He opened the billfold and spread the papers for the clerk’s inspection. They were all there—identification, travel papers, everything. The clerk looked them over and jotted down the numbers in the register book on the desk, then turned the book around. “Your chop, venerable one.”
The “chop” was a small stamp bearing the ideograph which indicated the name Candron was using. Illiteracy still ran high in China because of the difficulty in memorizing the tens of thousands of ideographs which made up the written language, so each man carried a chop to imprint his name. Officially, China used the alphabet, spelling out the Chinese words phonetically—and, significantly, they had chosen the Latin alphabet of the Western nations rather than the Cyrillic of the Soviets. But old usages die hard.
Candron imprinted the ideograph on the page, then, beside it, he wrote “Ying Lee” in Latin characters.
The clerk’s respect for this old man went up a degree. He had expected to have to put down the Latin characters himself. “Our humble establishment is honored by your esteemed presence, Mr. Ying,” he said. “For how long will it be your pleasure to bestow this honor upon us?”
“My poor business, unimportant though it is, will require it least one week; at the most, ten days.” Candron said, knowing full well that twenty-four hours would be his maximum, if everything went well.
“It pains me to ask for money in advance from so honorable a gentleman as yourself,” said the clerk, “but such are the rules. It will be seven and a half yuan per day, or fifty yuan per week.”
Candron put five ten-yuan notes on the counter. Since the readjustment of the Chinese monetary system, the yuan had regained a great deal of its value.