Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/152

104 class, namely, the money-changers, one or more of whom is a dire necessity in every village. The village money-changer keeps a pair of scales, or rather two pairs of scales, one for buying and one for selling, and having weighed the lump of silver in exchange for which cash are desired, hands over the equivalent number of hundreds, less a few cash by way of commission, to his victim. Pleasing complications are introduced into the pastime of money-changing by the fact that a nominal 100 cash does not as a matter of actual fact consist of 100, but varies from 98 to 33 according to the part of the empire in which you happen to be. "Nowhere does a Chinaman mean 1000 cash when he speaks of 1000 cash" and the only rule which is common to all cash problems throughout the eighteen provinces, and the only rule, therefore, which the traveller need trouble to bear in mind, is the unwritten law which decrees that 100 cash may be any number except 100. In some districts a number, which is more or less constant, is