, the cries of
chair coolies warning the passersby to clear the way for their
illustrious patrons.

The Chinese seem unable to do anything without an enormous expenditure
of talk and noise. Ordinary bargaining looks like the beginning of a
fierce fight. Any trifling accident attracts a great crowd, which
becomes excited at the slightest provocation. It is easy to see from an
ordinary walk in this Hongkong street how panic or rage may convert the
stolid Chinese into a deadly maniac, who will stop at no outburst of
violence, no atrocity, that will serve to wreak his hatred of the
foreigner.

Although Hongkong has been Europeanized in its main streets, there are
quarters of the city only a few blocks away from the big hotels and
banks which give one glimpses of genuine native life. Some of these
streets are reached by scores of granite steps that climb the steep
mountainside. These streets are not over twelve or fifteen feet wide,
and the shops are mere holes in the wall, with a frontage of eight or
ten feet. Yet many of these dingy shops contain thousands of dollars'
worth of decorated silks and linens, artistic carvings, laces, curios
and many other articles of Chinese manufacture. Unlike the Japanese, who
will follow the tourist to the sidewalk and urge him to buy, these
Chinese storekeepers show no eagerness to make sales. They must be urged
to display their fine goods, and they cannot be hurried. The best time
to see these native streets is at night. Take a chair if the climate
overpowers you, but walk if you can. Then a night stroll through this
teeming quarter will always remain in the memory. Every one is working
hard, as in Japan, for the Chinese workday seems endless. All kinds of
manufacture are being carried on here in these narrow little shops; the
workers are generally stripped to the waist, wearing only loose short
trousers of cheap blue or brown cotton, the lamplight gleaming on their
sweating bodies. Here are goldsmiths beating out the jewelry for which
Hongkong is famous; next are scores of shops in all of which shoes are
being made; then follow workers in willow-ware and rattan, makers of
hats, furniture and hundreds of other articles. In every block is an
eating-house, with rows of natives squatted on benches, and with large
kettles full of evil-smelling messes. The crowds in the streets vie with
the crowds in the stores in the noise that they make; the air reeks with
the odors of sweating men, the sm