Manchurian Books

For some distance our road lay through narrow streets or alleys
paved with large flags. In a small niche somewhere in the front of
every house, we saw little altars from one to three feet high,
before which, as it was yet early, the night lamps were still
burning. An immense quantity of oil is unnecessarily consumed in
keeping up this religious custom. The shops now began to be opened.
They resemble neat entrance halls, having no front wall. The goods
were exposed for sale either in large open boxes or on tables,
behind which the shopkeepers sit and work. In one corner of the
shop, a narrow staircase leads up into the dwelling-house above.
Here, as in Turkish towns, the same regulation is observed of each
trade or calling having its especial street, so that in one nothing
but crockery and glass, in another silks, and so on, is to be seen.
In the physician's street are situated all the apothecaries' shops
as well, as the two professions are united in one and the same
person. The provisions, which are very tastily arranged, have also
their separate streets.


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