Page:Inside Canton.djvu/70

Rh Hair is, in China, an object of considerable trade. In a charming little work, entitled La Coiffure, les Yeux et les petits Pieds, Natalis Rondot informs us, that a false queue costs, at Shanghai, only two hundred and sixty sapecs, or, in other words, ninety centimes. It is really not worth while to be without one!

The street Ta-teong-kiaï has been called Physic Street by the English, on account of the multitude of druggists' shops it contains; but the laboratories are not more numerous there than the shops of the dealers in lanterns, curiosities, and stuffs. It traverses the whole length of the suburbs, from east to west, and, on account of its immense extent, is one of the most frequented thoroughfares in Canton. In the description I have just given of it, I have endeavoured to convey an idea of the noise; the movement and the activity which always reign there, and, since I have taken it as a type of the business streets, I will now describe one of the houses in it. This specimen will be sufficient to enable the reader to understand the internal and external arrangement of all the little edifices devoted to retail trade.