Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-05-07
LIFE IN CHINA.
Oriental Customs That Seem Amusing
to Dwellers in the Occident.

Oriental Customs That Seem Amusing
to Dwellers in the Occident.
Who and what are these melancholy
mortals who are meandering along COW
cred with sheepskins? They are what,
when you see them in Fleet street, you
call sandwich men," They are OK
hibiting the wares purchasable at this
clothier's shop on our left. Instead of
carrying advertisement-boards, and
wandering up and down the street, a
layer of lean mortality between two
slices of wood, they wear upon their
own backs the very goods which you
are respectfully invited to inspect and
to buy. Do not imagine that a China
mans mind feels any qualms at the
thought that these garments have been
for weeks upon the back of one of the
unwashed. He is troubled by no such
unpleasant reflections. But he would
no doubt drive q harder bargain on the
plea that they had been already much
worm. These sheepskins are very high
~ valued in winter by the country peo-
pie. If you were relating to an agricul-
tural audience in the south of China,
and in the north also to towns
people. the suferings of the
prosecuted saints of old, it would
never do to tell them that ''they wan
dered about in sheep-skins and goat
skins" You would err as much as
the Moravian missionaries did who first
preached of the fires of hell to tho
G~reenlanders. Those Arctic folk were
immensely pleased with the prospect of
going there, and the missionaries were
naturally very much shocked at the re-
suit OF their own preaching. And so,
to the Chinese mind, the wandering
about in sheep-skins and goat-skins does
not at all imply that thev were .'desti-
tute, afflicted, tormented." They
would very much like to be prosecuted
to that degree. The Chinaman is a
wonderful creature for enduring end
less nuisances, regarding them rs things
that are and have been, and therefore
still must be. We could scarcely have
a better illustration of that last remark
than this stage, which has been thrown
right across the main thoroughfare.
We must either find our way round
by a side street, or creep under the
stage as best we can. Fancy what it
would be for a band of i%tinerant
actors to erect a theater in Cheapside,
compelling all the traffic to turn aside
for a whole day; and cher consider that
the street we are in bears about
the same relation to the city of
Annoy as Cheapside does to the
city of London! Yet the people do not
complain. 1t is probable that not one
in a hundred who turn aside because the
road is blocked thinks that such a nui-
sance ought not to be allowed. It is
much more likely that the inhabitants
Of the street are objects of envy because
the theater is brought to their doors.
Some shopkeeper in the street has in
vited the actors at bis expense, and his
neighbors are much obliged to him for
giving them an opportunity of seeing
the play, and of hearing the drums beat,
the bells ring, the cyn,bals clash, and
/ the actors howl and screech, withoutthe
trouble of leaving their shop-doors.
The entertaining sights are so numerous
that to describe all that strikes the new.
conner asfantastic would take a volume.
You may see q woman deliberately
washing her long black hair in wooden
] bowl, combing it out and doing it up in