Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1895-01-25
Q The GREAT PAIN OF CHINA.
From IIarper's weelly.1

In together; dense city and green fields
and groves side by side within a long,
gray, battlcmented wall. You must
fancy the inclOsure dissected by canals
rs well as streets, and the streets must
be pictured as only from five to niue feet
wide, 50 that the aWesome crowds in the
principal thoroughfares are as the
crowds on Broadway would be if all the
people were assembled on one Broadway
sidewalk. As there are no carriage
roads, there are no carriages. The rich
ride in Sedan chairs, high above your
head, on poles laid on the shoulders of
coolies. The ordinary folk ride on
wheelbarrows, If 1T all, and nearly
everybody walks. The travel outside
the cities is by boat, therefore there is
nearly always "A good-sized city at each
point where waterway joins the moat
that surrounds the wall. The jam, the
awful crush at one of these gate cities
Cif it is beside large city, is beyond de-
scripton. Boats are there as thick as
cut trees on logging stream. Junks,
flats, chop-boats. kickaway boats, sam
pans, and flower boats all lie in a SEEM
ingly endless hudde. with just narrow,
shifting thread of passage through the
mass. The shouting, the clatter, the
din of yelling, distract attention from the
delicate steering your men must do to
work their way through the mass. In
the thick of the flOtilla are seen floating
houses and shops, whereon men, women
and children are at work or are sleeping or
eating. There are floating shops for the
sale of fish and baskets and vegetables,
rice, nuts-everthing. There are the FAM
Gus llower-boats, all gilt and satin behind
their carved eXteriors, with their show
ing of painted and powdered girls and
dlvans and drink and pipes. The pOpu-
lation is like that of Suffolk street, like
grant steamer. Over the tops of the
boats on one side are seen the city wall
and its edging of grass dotted with huts
of mud and bamboo, and with graves
]
of prairie dogs. on. the. other side are
the shops of the outer city, all open to
the waterway, at the tops of stone stair
ways, given over to. crowds of men, eat
ing, drinking tea, Shopping, selling, buy
ing, idling, or rushing about.
Ifyour enter such city by water
oh ~ .IaI 70 in, lp ol
you may see many pleasure-craft, calico
"play-pdgn boats of glass and lacquer
and gilt work, and wherever there is a
stone bridge will be seen street-of The
dead walls of dwellings that show nc
windows or of long rows of shops
These shops are either wholly open, OIL
disclose little fanciful railing ending
with Il carved lions head, to separate the
public from the shopkeepers. The shop
ping streets are best worth a visit
Every shop has its signs hung across
the street or perpendcularly before it
The number of shops for the sale o
seals, Emade of wood or white metal
brass or jade stone, surprises a stranger
The impress. of a seal is as mportan
there as a written signature is here. Tn,
number of tea-shops, which correspond
to our bar-rooms, is also prodigious, blu
they show nothing but tables and chair
and BARRIERS at work while the customer
drink. E The display of vegetables i
gaudy, and the cooking of cakes almos
perfumes entire cities. In the stores TO
the sale of silks or clothing or cOttoI
goods .one sees the ls,ock on shelves, bu
in most shops. very little is displayed
Customers must ask for what they went
And the worst goods are always show
, tirsl-either because they bring the great
err profit or because it is desired to sc
to get at what merchant has to sell
Sometimes he shows his best stock onl
after many {, visits to his shop. Tn
iewelry-stores are splendid reposItorie
of beautiful things, but the best one
saw in Chiua displayed nothing but
counter and few score boxes. Their
are almost as many places for selin
ornaments for women's hair as there ar
seal shops. The fan-shops and the Lar
tern-shOps are as strange to the eye a
they are attractive. In the shops tn
merchants generally keep themselves /
the background, beside an ink-slab an
brush or cup OF steaming tea. Th
clerks do the work, as you see when 20
notice the long curled-up tinger-nails c
q, the master and the heavy iade-stone rim
l. upon his right thumb. Thus men crippl
' their right hands to give proof that the
do not need to work.
1t is fun to loiter in drugstore an
to watch the making up of prescriptions
for they are apt to call for dead beetles
dried snakes, toads stretched on frames
eyes of insects, everything that can b
suggested by the ignorance of the mos
l,.I.,uord nrofoesion N China