houses, the shops, and the proprietors: the houses are not much more than four yards broad; the shops are carefully lacquered and varnished; and the proprietors, who are very stout, very fat, and as yellow as ochre, are all dressed in long blue robes, and fan themselves automatically with screens of painted silk.
Old China Street and New China Street form really, a part of the European ghetto; never does a Chinaman venture into them, especially if he wants to purchase anything. A native will no more go and be taken in by the traders there, than a Parisian will visit certain shops into which provincials and foreigners plunge. The shops in these two Chinese streets of the factories are, in reality, only make-shifts: if, some fine day or other, the sovereign mob of Canton were to prohibit the barbarians from repairing to the suburbs, a traveller, pressed for time, might, in an extreme case, purchase his curiosities in the above thoroughfares. He might also, on his return, assert that he had seen real Chinamen and brought back real Chinese porcelain and fans. Such, in truth, are these two celebrated passages, of which people talk so much. I can swear that, if there were nothing more curious to be seen at Canton, it would be better for anyone to remain in a faï-ting, in the midst of the floating city. I have described, as minutely and as exactly as I could, the European quarter of Canton.
