A DAY IN OLD CANTON.

Northland Age, Volume VIII, Issue 25, 9 February 1912, Page 8

A DAY IN OLD CANTON.

'“I had been living near Canton for ten months,’’ says a writer in the Shanghai "Mirror,” "before I mustered courage enough to visit it. Finally a party of six of us, .with three bearers each and a Chinese guide, spent a day exploring the curious old city. -~ "First we went to a dark, dingy passage known in China as a street, in which almost every shop worked and 'sold only ivory. Here we saw the most beautiful things, ranging from carved tusks at £IOO apiece to napkin rings for five shillings, which would have cost five times as much in America. "Our guide next took us to the kingfisher’s feather shops. This work, which is very beautiful, consists of inlaying pieces of silver with the feather cut in most minute pieces. It requires a most steady hand, as the pieces of feather cannot be seen with the naked eye, they are cut so small. For this work a kind of •microscope used by watchmakers is necessary. "It is quite common to find children of eight or nine years working at this silver and feather industry. We were told by the guide that these people so engaged became blind after ten years or so at this work. "Here I purchased a scaff pin repre-* , senting a butterfly with its wings inlaid with blue kingfisher’s feathers, its body being striped with same. It cost me eighteen pence, and I have heard that others like it have cost the tourist thirty shillings, and been thought cheap at that. "We next paid a visit to the jade stone shops. These are all in one street as far as we could see, and all do cutting and grinding. The stone seems very to cut. We saw one workman holding a piece of jade for quite ten minutes on the cutting stone (a small grindstone ! with a sharp edge), and after all this ; had made only a very slight impression. "Here we saw them making the watch charms and earfings for the j Chinese lady. The earrings seemed j to be made in great quantities in the ! form of a circle with a hole in the I centre. We did not purchase any of j this stone as it is very costly and far above our moderate means. "When we left the jade shops we took a look at the sandlewood ones, ! which also seemed to lie confined to one street. The work here is very much like the ivory work, the articles being very similar, napkin rings, card cases, junks, sampans, lans, boxes, &c., the pattern in carving being exactly alike. "Next we visited the ‘silk piece 1 goods huts.’ The word hut seems out of place in conjunction with silk 1 piece goods, but one cannot call them anything better, ‘with their muddy floors and plank beds placed in the same room with the machine for weaving, which takes up the majority of the one-roomed hut. "We arrived when the work was in full swing. One man passing the shuttle backward and forward and all talking and singing to each other; one little boy nip at the top of the

machine manipulating a kind of ; stringed instrument that formed the design in the cloth, there being about ; a hundred strings to this arrangement, yet the small fellow can talk L to you, and very seldom looks at the ' strings he pulls, yet seldom makes a mistake. Four persons seem to work, at one machine. "We left these hard-working natives to go a little further and came to the ‘glass-bangle huts.’ These are even poorer than the silk-piece-goods huts. The bangles are made by melting coloured glass over a charcoal fire of great heat, the glass being held just inside the furnace ; when on the point of running it is turned around on the rod as an opium smoker cooks opium. "This is done without any glass falling into the furnace, and requires much practice, as the worker has to work behind a screen in which a small hole is pierced. This is to protect him from the heat. "When the glass is in a fit state, it is quickly withdrawn and held above a revolving fireclay barrel turned on a stick held in the workman’s left hand, the glass dropping from the rod in a long thread on to the barrel, which makes one circuit, joining the two ends—is cut off short, and the bangle is formQji on the fire- , clay barrel, and after cooling is taken off and filed down and made . fast to cards in pairs and exported to all parts of China. "As time was flying and we were rather tired, we asked our guide to take us to the water clock that we had heard such a lot about. So, • mounting our chairs, we proceeded , to the house in which it is situated. ; Going upstairs, we went into a room i and were shown four kongs, the uppermost being the largest, the next . lower one somewhat smaller, and so l on, the bottom one the smallest. "The top kong was filled with ! water, which was allowed to drop into the next kong, and from this kong into the next, it going through i each ko»g until it reaches the lower r one. As the water dropped into the lower kong it floated a flat piece of l wood on which a stick or gauge is r placed upright in the centre, and on which the hours and minutes are marked ; this corresponding to a i cover half over the top oi the kong • gives the time, the reading on the stick appearing above the cover is ) the time. This, according to onr ’ watches, was a few minutes out, but after running for years and centuries, l as it had been, puts our best chronometers to shame.” ’