dwellings, are, most of them, good-looking—the men of average height and shapely, and the women seldom disfigured by small bandaged feet. There are also a number of soldiers, not far from the parade-ground—fellows who, erect and muscular, carry themselves with a dauntless military air. These are the remnants of the once powerful Tartar camp. They have been instructed in foreign drill, and are said to make good soldiers; they certainly contrast favourably with many of the troops I saw in other quarters of the Empire. As to the shopkeepers, they are all Chinese, but their small-footed consorts are nowhere to be seen; the fact is, they keep them strictly secluded. Some of these handsome Tartar matrons have their children seated in bamboo cages at their doors, and pretty little birds they make, too.
One is almost bewildered by the diversity of shops and the attractive wares they display. Then the shopkeepers are so very fascinating in their manners. Have a good look at them; they are about the best class of men in China—industrious, contented and refined-looking, some of them. A short time back a curious, though not uncommon, sort of lottery was got up among the shopkeepers of Canton. Wang-leang-chai of the Juy-Chang boot shop in Ma-an street, seized with a passion for poetry, organised a sort of literary lottery, and offered the stakes as prizes to the successful composer of the best lines on five selected subjects.[1]
Frequently, on entering a Canton shop, you will find its owner with a book in one hand and a pipe or fan in the other, and wholly absorbed in his studies. You will be doomed to disappointment if you expect the smoker to start up at once, all
- ↑ See China Review, 1873, p. 249.
