1841.
Illustrations of Men and Things in China.
473
Economy of Chinese workmen. The number of itinerant work- men of one kind or another, which line the sides of the streets, or occupy the areas before public buildings in Chinese towns, is a re- markable feature. Fruiterers, pastry-men, cook-stalls, venders of gimcracks, and wayside shopkeepers, are found in other countries as well as in China; but to see a traveling blacksmith or tinker, an itinerant glass-mender, a peripatetic umbrella-mender, a locomotive seal-cutter, an ambulatory barber, a migratory banker, a peregrinatory apothecary, or a walking shoemaker and cobbler, one must travel hitherwards. These movable establishments, together with fortune- tellers, herbsellers, chiromancers, &c., pretty well fill up the space, so that one often sees both sides of the street in Canton literally lined with the stalls or tools of persons selling or making something to eat or to wear. The money-changer has simply a small table, with a few drawers, behind which he sits; the cutter of seals has a similar stand on which he works. The barber has the chest of drawers hold- ing his apparatus contrived like a seat, and if he has not a furnace of his own he heats his water at the blacksmith's, or the cook's fire near by, perhaps shaving his friend gratis by way of recompense. The herbseller or apothecary chooses an open place, where he will not be trampled upon, and there displays his simples and his boluses, with gay signs and promises to all around. The book-pedler, fortune- teller, and chooser of lucky days, arrange themselves on either side, with their tables and array of sticks, pencils, boards and pictures, all trying to "catch a little pidgeon." The spectacle-mender, the cutter of rings, the razor-grinder, the maker of clay puppets, and the cob- bler, are not far off, all plying their trades 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 pedlers going to and fro with baskets slung on their shoulders, each bawling his own peculiar cry, which, with coolies transporting burdens, chair- bearers carrying sedans, and passengers following one another like a stream, so fill up the streets, hardly six feet wide anywhere, that it is no easy matter to navigate among them. Notwithstanding all these obstructions, it is worthy of note, and highly praiseworthy in the Chinese, that these crowds pass and repass with the greatest rapidity, without altercation or disturbance, each one giving in a little, and passing by his neighbor with the utmost quietness.
his
Among all the street workmen, hardly one of them excels the black- smith for the portability of his establishment. The construction of his bellows has already been explained (Vol. IV. page 38), but that is only
60
VOL. X. NO. VIII.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.