ABSTRACT
I N every town, and in almost every part of everytown in China, one will find in operation, on any sunny day, the smallest and m.ost modest retail establishments on earth. The stock is sometimes displayed on a make-shift trestle board counter, but as frequently it will be found on a square of bamboo matting spread on the ground. Rarely does either the trestle board counter or the matting cover more than a single square yard. The pitiful stock invariably consists of what appears to be the most useless collection of articles it is possible to imagine - crooked nails, rusty screws, defective buttons, broken door knobs, cracked saucers, a couple of empty cigarette tins. It is just the sort of a nondescript collection of rubbish that a child Dlight collect in an attempt to 'play shop' on an
ambitious scale and that is really all that it is - a playtime store - but the players are old men instead of children. Every fine morning you can see these ancient playboy merchants trudging to their favourite corners carrying their precious cargo with them. There they assemble their stock, carefully separating rusty screws from crooked nails, and there they sit all day in the sun. If it is a rainy day the shops do not open. .It is a pleasant life. They see the moving picture of the crowds on the street, pass the time ofday with an acquaintance, chatter with competing merchants, and once in a long time they may actually make a sale. Someone may find himself in need of just the piece of rubbish he sees displayed and buy it for a few coppers. But these old merchants do not have to worry about their customers or make any reports on sales volume. A son or a grandson provides them with bed and board and they keep shop for the fun of the thing, just as old gentlemen in other parts of the world play golf or pitch horse shoes or go to offices where they are no longer needed. Perhaps some of them have wanted all their lives to be shopkeepers and are able to gratify their ambition only when in their dotage. If that is the way they want to spend their time, their children see that they are allowed to do so, for in China the whims of babies and of old men are always gratified.
