Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/103

 venture to introduce the reader, as he must needs feel more or less interest in the tea-men, and their mode of preparing this highly-prized luxury. Passing up the creek, along the usual narrow channel, between densely-packed rows of floating craft, we land on a broad stone platform, cross a court where men are to be seen weighing the tea, and enter a large three-storied brick building, where we meet Tan King Ching, the proprietor, to whom we bear an introduction from one of his foreign cus- tomers. One of the clerks is directed to show us over the place. He first ushers us into a large warehouse, where thousands of chests of the new crop are piled up, ready for inspection by the buyer. The inspection of this cargo is an exceedingly simple process ; the for- eign tea-taster enters and places his mark on certain boxes in dif- ferent parts of the pile and these are forthwith removed, weighed and scrutinised as fair samples of the bulk. The whole cargo is shipped without further ceremony should the parcels examined prove satisfactory ones; and, indeed, nowadays it seldom hap- pens that shortcomings in weight and quality are at the last moment detected, for the better class of Chinese merchants are remarkable for their honesty and fair dealing. I am the more anxious thus to do justice to the Chinese dealers, because the notion has got abroad that, as a rule, they are the most noto- rious cheats; men who never fail to overreach the unsuspecting trader when an opportunity occurs, and upon whose shoulders must fall the full weight of the charge of preparing and selling spurious or adulterated teas which have reached this country in a condition not fit for human food. It seems clear to me that the Chinese manufacturer of this sort of rubbish is by no means the most reprehensible party in the trade. He it is, indeed, who sets himself to collect from the servants of foreigners or natives, and from the restaurants and tea-saloons, the leaves