The China Bazar. 33 



The Chinese merchant is generally a fat, round-faced man, 

 with an imjiortant and business-like look. He wears the same 

 style of clothing (loose, white smock, and blue or black trow- 

 sers) as the meanest coolie, but of finer materials, and is always 

 clean and neat ; and his long tail, tipped with red silk, hangs 

 down to his heels. He has a handsome warehouse or shop in 

 town, and a good house in the country. He keeps a fine 

 horse and gig, and every evening may be seen taking a drive 

 bareheaded to enjoy the cool breeze. He is rich, he owns sev- 

 eral retail shops and trading-schooners, he lends money at high 

 interest and on good security, he makes hard bargains, and 

 gets fatter and richer every year. 



In the Chinese bazar are hundreds of small shops in which 

 a miscellaneous collection of hardware and dry-goods are to be 

 found, and where many things are sold wonderfully cheaj). 

 You may buy gimlets at a penny each, white cotton thread at 

 four balls for a half-penny, and j^enknives, corkscrews, gun- 

 i:)Owder, writing-paper, and many other articles as cheap or 

 cheaper than you can purchase them in England. The shop- 

 keeper is very good-natured ; he will shoAV you every thing 

 he has, and does not seem to mind if you buy nothing. Ho 

 bates a little, but not so much as the Klings, who almost al- 

 ways ask twice what they are willing to take. If you buy a 

 few things of him, he wiU speak to you afterward every time 

 you pass his shop, asking you to walk in and sit down, or take 

 a cup of tea, and you wonder how he can get a living where 

 so many sell the same trifling articles. The tailors sit at a 

 table, not on one ; and both they and the shoe-makers work 

 well and cheaply. The barbers have plenty to do, shaving 

 heads and cleaning ears ; for which latter operation they have 

 a great array of little tweezers, picks, and brushes. In the 

 outskirts of the town are scores of carpenters and blacksmiths. 

 The former seem chiefly to make coffins and highly -painted 

 and decorated clothes-boxes. The latter are mostly gun-mak- 

 ers, and bore the barrels of guns by hand out of solid bars of 

 iron. At this tedious operation they may be seen every day, 

 and they manage to finish off a gun with a flint lock very 

 handsomely. All about the streets are sellers of water, vege- 

 tables, fi-uit, soup, and agar-agar (a jelly made of sea-weed), 

 who have many cries as unintelligible as those of London. 



C 



