CANTON
chair coolies to carry them along Yuck Tsze and Tai-son-kai Streets, and the Old Factory district where most of the shops in the guild are located.
Solemn Chinamen squat in front of partially completed idols, whose mysterious faces are hardly more strange than the saffron countenances of their makers. The idol carvers, after putting the finishing touches on the images, cover them with gold leaf or gilt, and dispose of them to native purchasers, and sometimes to souvenir-seeking foreigners.
Natives engaged in turning out cabinets, chairs, buffets, tables, and other articles of the sort, will tell the visitor—with flickers of pride in their usually expressionless faces—that their ancestors worked in the same shop, making the same kind of articles, long before the "foreign devils" ever came to China. When the faltering hand of an aged father dropped the carving tools, leaving, say, an idol or a chair half completed, the youthful hand of his son would pick up the carving tools, and the son would carry on the work where his father left off—just as his father carried on the work after his grandfather and his grandfather carried on the work after his great grandfather, and so on down through the centuries. It is a fatalistic, initiative-destroying custom—typical of the strange manners and customs of old China.
Buddhist images and picture frames are sold in Siu-sen-kai; ivory and turquoise goods in Tai-sen-kai, Yuen-sek-hong, and Yuk-tsz-hong; sandalwood products in Hou-pun-kai; feather fans and embroideries in Chong-yuen-fong; sandalwood products and porcelain in Sen-tau-lan; and ivory, lacquer ware, and silver vessels in Sai-hing-kai.
Pottery manufactured in Canton is exported to nearly every country in the world, and doubtless many of the Americans and Europeans visiting the city ate their porridge or bread and milk from dishes made in Canton before they were old enough to know there was such a city.
The Cantonese make many kinds of pottery, from the delicately designed eggshell variety to the sturdy sort designed for use in restaurants and nurseries (where an ability to stand hard knocks is one of the qualities most desired in dishes).
Forty-Seven
