How the Chinese do Business.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVII, Issue 1375, 3 September 1895, Page 3

How the Chinese do Business.

In the business part of the Chinese city there are tens of thousands of stores packed together like the booths of a fair, all opened to the streets, and most of them filled with customers. The are walled with shelves, and 12 ft square makes a big store. Some of them have floors ot cement, some of boards, and others nothing but dirt. The sign of boards hang up and down the stores, instead of across the top, as with us. These signs are so many that they almost fill the entire streets. They nearly cover the fronts of some of the shops, and the drug stores advertise their patent medicines by such sign boards. These signs are pushed this way and that by ;the crowds which continually move through them. What a curious crowd it is. Jump up on this stone, and take a look up and down the street. There are coolies by the hundred carrying great burdens; coolies harnessed to big barrows, which would load down a waggon ; coolies carrying barrels of oil, boxes of tea, loads of bricks, buckets of ducks, and, in short, everything under the Chinese sun. There are men rushing along with the big chairs of mandarins and with the little chairs of women. There are dirty boys by the hundreds, who have greasy pigtails hanging down their dirty backs, and who look at you and yell out “ baby kidnapper ” or “ foreign devil ” as soon as your back is turned. There are women who seem to almost fall as they hobble along on their mutilated feet. There are old Chinamen in big spectacles, and young Chinamen in silk gowns. There are dandies and dudes, scholars arid servants, merchants and mechanics, each, in his , own dress, pushing and shoving his way through the mass. There are queer Chinamen from the country, with great straw hats turned up at the sides, who gawk along like a farmer boy during his first visit to London, and there are dilettante.blase Chinese gentlemen.