My guide was a sharp fellow, who thoroughly knew all the sights of Canton. As he had been often employed as cicerone by the ship captains, he immediately put me down as one of that jolly fraternity, frequent intercourse with whom had given a slightly nautical twang to his discourse. We had not gone far before he addressed me, "I say, cappen: you come along o' me and see jewelers' shops. Here's first-rate shop—number one jeweler this chap—cappen want to buy anything? Heave along!" The jewelers' shops were numerous, and I saw many very beautiful specimens of carving and filigree-work. Some of the shops sold articles of European design, others ministered only to the native beauty and fashion of Canton. These contained many articles of considerable beauty and real taste. The most notable were the "bird's feather ornaments," which consist of gold or gilt head combs, brooches, ear-rings, and the like, on which are firmly fixed, with glue, strips of the bright blue feathers of the kingfisher (Halcyon Smyrnensis), cut into small patterns, through which the gold ground appears; the whole effect being exactly like that of enamel work. The kingfisher is not, I think, found in China, but is imported in great numbers from Burmah and India. I asked the price of one skin lying on the counter, and was told half a dollar (two shillings and threepence). The bird was probably procured in India for three-halfpence. Ivory shops are in great number, but the Chinese ivory yields, in my opinion, to that of the Japanese. I went into several porcelain shops, and saw in each ten or a dozen languid-looking youths painting away, slowly and laboriously, at leaves, flowers, insects, and so forth, on plates. Each lad had a small bowl of one color, and when he had painted in all the parts of the design intended to be of that color, he passed the plate on to his neighbor, who added his color, and so on all round the room till the pattern was completely colored. The result is stiff and mechanical. There is no attempt at artistic effect, nothing like the beautiful pictures painted in the factories at Worcester or Dresden. Dyers and weavers are numerous. The silk shops are the finest in the bazaar, but their contents are excessively dear, and are not very good. Indeed, the Canton silks are considered by the Chinese themselves to be, inferior to those made in the northern provinces of the empire. I have seen silk dresses and pieces from Pekin brought into India via Nepaul, of a quality which I was assured by a competent judge could not be procured at Canton. This was five-and-twenty years ago, and it is possible that our present widely different connection with China may have introduced a better article into Shanghae, which is so near Pekin. But the Chinese were very jealous formerly about exporting their finest silks, and those I allude to were brought by the members of a mission, sent every three years with a tribute from Kathmandoo to the Emperor of China, as a friendly return present from the emperor to the Rajah of Nepaul.
The Chinese shopkeepers are fat comfortable-looking fellows, with pleasant, good-humored faces. They showed me their curiosities very willingly, and none the less courteously exchanged a smiling "chin-chin" with me if I left the shop without purchasing anything.
Tea-shops are numberless. They are piled up with chests such as we see in England, and with open baskets of coarse and inferior tea for the poor. The cheapest kind is made in thin round cakes or large wafers, strung upon slips of bamboo. It partially dissolves in hot water, and is flavored with salt by those who drink it. Of this form of brick tea I have never seen any mention in the books published by travellers.
There are poulterers' shops, with fowls roasted and raw; and there are vegetable sellers' stalls, and fish in baskets, dead and not over-fresh, or alive in large tubs of water. They were all of the carp family, including réhos, mïrgals, and kutlas, so familiarly known in India, also several species of the siluroids, called vulgarly "catfish." The fish brought from the sea are salted and sun-dried, and, with strong aid from immense festoons of sharks' fins, set up a stench that it is not easy to walk through.
After inspecting shops and elbowing and being elbowed in the crowd till afternoon, when I was ready to drop with heat and fatigue, my pilot steered me to a small square, flagged with stone, on which the sun shone fiercely. He called it "Beggars' square," and told me that all the destitute and abandoned sick in the city crawled, if they could, to this spot, because those who died there received burial at the expense of government. While he spoke, my eyes were fixed upon some heaps of dirty tattered clothes on the ground, which presently began to move, and I discovered to my horror three miserable creatures, lean and covered with odious filth, lying in different stages of their last agony on the bare stones, exposed to the burning rays of the sun. They came here to die, and no one heeded them, or gave them a drop of water, or a morsel of food, or even a little shelter from the noontide glare. I had seen shocking things of this sort in India, but nothing so horrible. To insure a climax of disgusts, my guide led me straight to a dog butcher's shop, where several of the nasty fat oily carcases of those animals were hanging for sale. They had not been flayed, but dangled there with their smooth shining skins, which had been scalded and scraped clean of hair, so that at first I took them for sucking-pigs. There were joints of dog, ready roasted, on the counter, and in the back of the shop were several cages in which live dogs were quietly sitting, lolling their tongues out, and appearing very unconcerned. I saw several cats also, in cages, looking very demure; and moreover I saw customers, decorous and substantial-looking householders, inspect and feel the dogs and cats, and buy those which they deemed fittest for the table. The cats did not like being handled, and mewed loudly. "What cappen think o' that?" said my guide. "Cappen s'pose never eat dog?—dog very good, very fat, very soft. Oh, number one dinner is dog!" "And are cats as good?" I asked. "Oh, Chinaman chowchow everything. Chowchow plenty cat. Chinaman nasty beast, I think, cappen, eh?" My cicerone had been so long mixed up with European and American ship captains and missionaries, that he had learnt to suit his ideas to his company, if his ideas had not actually undergone great modification, as is the case in India with those educated natives of the present day known to us as specimens of "Young Bengal."
Before quitting the bazaar, I was ushered into two gambling-shops. These are licensed by the Chinese government, the owners paying a considerable tax. Both were tolerably full of players, and in both the same kind of game was being played—a simple one enough, if I understood it. [{660}] A player staked a pile of cash or dollars; the croupier staked a similar one; and then another member of the establishment dipped his hand into a bag and drew out a handful of counters; if they were in even fours, the bank won; if they were uneven, the player won, and the croupier's stake was duly handed over to him—rather ruefully, it struck me, by the banker, who sat on the counter raised above the rest. This game appears about as intrinsically entertaining as pulling straws; but I may have overlooked or misunderstood parts of it of a more intellectual nature. In the first house I visited, the players were of the lower class, and the stakes were copper cash. One man, quite a youth, left the room evidently cleaned out; his look revealed it, and I suppose he went away to the opium shop, the usual consolation of a Chinaman under the circumstances. As we entered the second gambling-house, my guide informed me, "This rich house. Number one fellow play here—mandarin chap." And truly I saw in the room goodly piles of dollars heaped up before a better-dressed assembly. The game appeared to be the same, and money changed hands rapidly. I "chin-chinned" to the banker and to the company, and was civilly allowed to look on. The room led through a filigreed doorway to another apartment, where cakes, loaves, tea, and pipes were spread out, and where long-tailed gentlemen were lounging and discussing the news of the day.
Being in want of cash, and having only dollar notes with me, I asked my guide what I should do? He straightway led me to a money-changer's, where I was at once furnished with change for my notes at par. As this was an unusual accommodation, I asked the reason of such generosity, and was informed that the dollars given me were all light, and that the changer would obtain full-weight dollars for the notes by-and-by. I was assured, however, that in all the shops the dollars I had received would be received at the full value; and this I found to be the case. All the time I was in the money-changer's, I saw three or four people telling, examining, and stamping dollars. So defaced and mutilated does the coin become by bearing the "chop" or mark of every banker or dealer into whose possession it passes, that it as nearly as possible returns to that state of bullion which the Chinaman prefers to minted coin. As it was, the only small change I could procure for a dollar was in fragments of silver; in the weighing out of which I was of course at the mercy of the shopman.
A chair having been with great difficulty procured for me, and another for my guide, we were about emerging from the bazaar when I had the honor of meeting a mandarin and suite. My bearers had just time to squeeze into the entrance of a side-alley, when the cavalcade was down upon us. Funny-looking soldiers with spears and muskets indiscriminately, musicians and drummers or tom-tom beaters, and an amazing figure in red and gold apparel of a loose flapping cut, with a sword in his hand, mounted upon an inexcusable pony—a Chinese Rosinante. In the centre of this cortege the mandarin was borne along, a placid fat dignitary, in a richly embroidered purple velvet and golden dress, seated in a gaudy sedan.
It was a great relief to emerge from the crowded bazaar, pass through the gateway in the massive city wall, and proceed through comparatively airy lanes to one or two Chinese gentlemen's houses and gardens, which my guide most unceremoniously entered, marshalling me in without a word of introduction or apology, and making me feel rather ashamed of myself. These dwellings, as well as the joss-houses or temples, have been so often described, that I will not inflict them again on the reader. Not the slightest objection was raised by the priests to my exploring every part of the temples, the vergers showing the altars, the various images, the cloisters [{661}] and refectories, with great alacrity, and extending their hands afterward for a fee. The only undescribed fact connected with these worthies which I was informed of is, that they sell their finger-nails to any foreigner desirous of purchasing such curiosities. These nails are suffered to grow uncut, and attain a length of three or four inches, looking remarkably unlike finger-nails, and forming curiosities much coveted, said my guide, by foreign gentlemen and "cappens." Among other religious edifices I visited a Mohammedan temple, a singular jumble of Islamism and Buddhism. Extracts from the Koran wore an odd appearance emblazoned on Chinese architecture. There were no priests visible here; only children and begging old women.