CHINESE JADE
O
N the rare occasions
when I visited any outlandish city on sightseeing expeditions, I saw
nothing worth while; but whenever business took me among the Chinese
people, not only did I discover for myself the kind of beings I had
come among, but the very stones of their shops and dwellings came to
life and spoke to me. Everything assumed a different aspect, perhaps
because I myself became a real part of the bustle and movement.
Thus
when on successive pleasure excursions I made the short trip to Canton,
all I saw was a muddy, sluggish watercourse, covered for miles with
floating hovels large and small, an unhallowed city of narrow, mean,
evil-smelling streets filled with a jostling noisy crowd of yellow
pig-tailed pedestrians swathed in vermin-ridden rags, itinerant vendors
of titbits revolting alike to sight and scent, sweating, acrid
chair-coolies and half-naked urchins, the spume of plaguy slums.
But
when in due course I came again to South China's most populous city in
quest of trade and was called upon to pit my cunning against its
traders in gems and semi-precious stones, had sat among them, partaken
of their rough and ready, or it might be more elaborate, hospitality,
had conferred upon me the freedom of their social clubs, had watched
them in the counting-house, in the workshop, among their kith and kin,
or as "master and man," what a transformation in the scenes i saw!
The
muddy, sluggish watercourse became the mighty on-rushing Pearl River,
the floating hovels became homes, the unhallowed city a hive of human
industry, the mean and narrow streets an archaic curiosity, the noisy
crowd human beings
with virtues, vices, lusts and passions; the very rags on their
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