The streets are usually paved with slabs of stone laid cross-wise, and except near markets and wells are comparatively clean. They are not laid out straight, and some present a singularly irregular appearance from the slight angle which each house makes with its neighbors; it being considered rather unlucky to have them exactly even. The names of the streets are written on the gateways crossing them, whenever they are marked at all; occasionally, as at Canton, each division makes a separate neighborhood and has its own name; a single long street will thus have five, six, or more names. The general arrangement of a Chinese city presents a labyrinth of streets, alleys, and byways very perplexing to a stranger who has neither plan nor directory to guide him, nor numbers upon the houses and shops to direct him. The sign-boards are hung each side of the door, or securely inserted in stone sockets; some of them are ten or fifteen feet high, and being gaily painted and gilded on both sides with picturesque characters, a succession of them as seen down a street produces a gay effect. The inscriptions simply mention the kind of goods sold, and without half the puffing seen in western cities; accounts sometimes given of the inscriptions on sign-boards in Chinese cities, as “No cheating here,” and others, describe the exception and not the rule. The edicts of government, handbills of medicines and the famous doctors who make them, notices offering rewards for children who are lost or slaves escaped, new shops opened, houses to let, or other events, cover blank walls in great variety, printed on red, black, white, or yellow paper; the absence of newspapers leads shopmen to depend more for patronage upon a circle of customers and the distribution of cards than to spend much money in handbills. The shrines of the street gods occur in southern cities, located in niches in the wall, with altars before them.
The temples and assembly-halls are the only public buildings in Chinese cities belonging to the people. Their courts and cloisters, with such gardens, tea-houses, and pools as may be accessible, attract constant crowds, and furnish the only places of common resort. The priests derive no small portion of their income from travellers, and their establishments are consequently made more commodious and extensive than the number of priests or the throng of worshippers require.
CLUB-HOUSES AND TAVERNS.
The assembly-halls or club-houses form a peculiar feature of Chinese society. There are more than a hundred in Canton and many hundreds in Peking. They are built sometimes by a particular craft as its guildhall, or more commonly erected by persons resorting to the place for trade, study, or amusement, who subscribe to fit up a commodious establishment to accommodate persons coming from the same town. In this way their convenience, assistance, oversight, and general safety are all increased.[352] All buildings pay a ground rent to the government, but no data are available for comparing this tax with that levied in western cities. The government furnishes the owner of the ground with a hung kí, or ‘red deed,’ in testimony of his right to occupancy, which puts him in possession as long as he pays the taxes. There is a record office in the local magistracy of such documents.
Houses are rented on short leases, and the rent collected quarterly in advance; the annual income from real estate is between nine and twelve per cent. The yearly rent of the best shops in Canton is from $150 to $400; there is no system of insuring against fire, which, with the municipal taxes and the difficulty of collecting bad rents, enhances their price. Such kind of property in China is liable to many risks.
The taverns are numerous and adapted for every calling. Though they will not bear comparison with western hotels, they are far in advance of the cheerless khans and caravansaries found in Western Asia. The traveller brings his own bedding, sometimes also his own provision, and when night comes spreads his mat upon the floor or divan and lies down in his clothes. The better sort of travellers order a room for themselves, but officials or rich men go to temples, or hire a boat in which to travel and sleep; this usage takes off the best class of customers. One considerable source of income to innkeepers is the preparation of dinners for parties of men, who either come to the house or send to it for so many covers; for when a gentleman invites his friends to an entertainment it is common to serve it up at his warehouse, or at an inn. In towns and cities thousands of men eat in the streets; the number of eating and cooking-stalls produces a most lively impression upon a stranger. This custom has had a good effect in promoting the general courtesy so conspicuous among the people, and is increased by great numbers of street story-tellers. The noisy hilarity of the customers, as they ply their “nimble lads,” or chopsticks, and the vociferous cries of the cooks recommending their cakes and dishes, with the steaming savor from the frying-pan and kettles, form only one of the many objects to attract the notice of the foreign observer. Their appearance and the variety of bustling scenes and picturesque novelties presented to him afford constant instruction and entertainment. Those at Canton have been thus described by an eye-witness.
STREET SCENES IN CANTON AND PEKING.
The number of itinerant workmen of one kind or another which line the sides of the streets or occupy the areas before public buildings in Chinese towns is a remarkable feature. Fruiterers, pastrymen, cooks, venders of gimcracks, and wayside shopmen are found in other countries as well as China; but to see a travelling blacksmith or tinker, an itinerant glass-mender, a peripatetic repairer of umbrellas, a locomotive seal-cutter, an ambulatory barber, a migratory banker, a peregrinatory apothecary or druggist, or a walking shoe-maker and cobbler, one must travel hitherward. These movable establishments, together with fortune-tellers, herb and booksellers, chiromancers, etc., pretty well fill up the space, so that one often sees both sides of the streets literally lined with the stalls, wares, or tools of persons selling or making something to eat or to wear. The money-changer sits behind a small table, on which his strings of cash are chained, and where he weighs the silver he is to change; his neighbor, the seal-cutter, sits next him near a like fashioned table. The barber has his chest of drawers made to serve for a seat, and if he has not a furnace of his own he heats his water at the cook’s or the blacksmith’s fire near by, perhaps shaving his friend gratis by way of recompense.
The herbseller chooses an open place where he will not be trampled on, and there displays his simples and his plasters, while the dentist, with a ghastly string of fangs and grinders around his neck, testimonials of his skill, sits over against him, each with his infallible remedy. The book-peddler and chooser of lucky days, and he who searches for stolen goods by divination, arrange themselves on either side, with their tables and stalls, and array of sticks, pencils, signs, and pictures, all trying to “catch a little pigeon.” The spectacle-mender and razor-grinder, the cutler and seller of bangles and bracelets, and the maker of clay puppets or mender of old shoes, are not far off, all plying their callings as busily as if they were in their own shops. Then, besides the hundreds of stalls for selling articles of food, dress, or ornament, there are innumerable hucksters going up and down with baskets and trays slung on their shoulders, each bawling or making his own peculiar note, which, with coolies transporting burdens, chair-bearers carrying sedans, and passengers following one another like a stream, with here and there a woman among them, so fill up the streets that it is no easy matter to navigate one’s way. Notwithstanding all these obstructions, it is worthy of note and highly praiseworthy to see these crowds pass and repass with the greatest rapidity in the narrow streets without altercation or disturbance, and seldom with accident.[353]
Streets at the north present a somewhat different, and on the whole a less inviting because less entertaining and picturesque aspect. Their greater width allows carts to pass, and it also offers more room for the garbage, the rubbish, and the noisome sights that are most disgusting, all of which are made worse in rainy weather by the mud through which one flounders. Barrow thus delineates those in Peking: “The multitude of movable workshops of tinkers and barbers, cobblers and blacksmiths, the tents and booths where tea and fruit, rice and other eatables were exposed for sale, with the wares and merchandise arrayed before the doors, had contracted this spacious street to a narrow road in the middle, just wide enough for two little vehicles to pass each other. The processions of men in office attended by their numerous retinues, bearing umbrellas and flags, painted lanterns and a variety of strange insignia of their rank and station, different trains that were accompanying, with lamentable cries, corpses to their graves, and with squalling music, brides to their husbands; the troops of dromedaries laden with coals from Tartary; the wheel-barrows and hand-carts stuffed with vegetables, occupied nearly the whole of this middle space in one continued line. All was in motion. The sides of the streets were filled with an immense concourse of people, buying and selling and bartering their different commodities. The buzz and confused noises of this mixed multitude, proceeding from the loud bawling of those who were crying their wares, the wrangling of others, with every now and then a strange twanging sound like the jarring of a cracked jewsharp (the barber’s signal), the mirth and laughter that prevailed in every group, could scarcely be exceeded. Peddlers with their packs, jugglers and conjurers, fortune-tellers, mountebanks and quack doctors, comedians and musicians, left no space unoccupied.”[354]