30 CONCERNING CHINESE ROADS 



and conversed in loud voices, wliilst beneath the 

 verandah eaves swallows came and went con- 

 tinuously. A boy, wlio had set up a tray laden 

 with cheap cigarettes, at intervals gave utterance 

 in a nonchalant manner to an exhortative liowl. 

 Since the suppression of poppy-growing, cigarettes 

 have become very popular with the Chinese, and 

 the British- American Tobacco Company turn out 

 a million cigarettes a day, made of native tobacco, 

 at their Hankow factory. \'icing with the cigar- 

 ette seller was an elderly man with a tray of dis- 

 gusting-looking cooked chickens, whose protruding 

 necks and heads, petrified wings and straggling 

 legs gave them a peculiarly indecent appearance. 

 Both they and tlie hard-boiled eggs which wedged 

 them on the tray were of a chocolate-brown colour, 

 having been boiled in bean-oil. The proprietor, 

 a fat, half-naked Chinaman, pompously paraded 

 the inn. Popping in and out of doors, familiarly 

 slapping his broad back when chance brought them 

 within his peripatetic orbit, were three uncomely 

 representatives of the oldest profession in the 

 world. Pigtails hung down their loosely flapping 

 shirts ; white trousers covered their lower limbs, 

 and though their feet were only partially deformed 

 they minced along with the stilted gait of a woman 

 of fashion. Morosely viewing the scene was their 

 manager, a gross, discontented -looking elderly man. 

 At intervals he dashed frantically across the yard 

 to the kitchen, and returned with a teapot. Now 

 and again a muleteer arrived with a clinking of 

 bells, or perhaps a chair. As the evening drew in 

 lights appeared in the windows ; the fat proprietor, 

 his queue replaited, sat with his underlings at the 



