Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451, page 49 by Various Authors
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hed his hold, he employs all the resources of a skilful and utterly unprincipled knavery. He keeps his victim in his house, eating, drinking, and smoking one day after another, until his subordinates have sold all the poor man's cattle, or whatever else he has to sell, and bought for him in return the commodities he requires, at prices double and treble the market value. But so plausible is the Chinese, and so simple is the Tartar, that the latter invariably departs with the most entire confidence in the immense philanthropy of the former, and with a promise to return, when he has other goods to sell, to the establishment where he has been treated so fraternally.'
The missionaries were themselves mistaken for Tartars when they visited the 'Blue Town,' and every kind of imposition was attempted to be practised on them. The hotel scouts assailed them at their first entry, and almost compelled them, by physical force, to become their guests; shopkeepers cozened on all hands; and even bankers condescended to cheat. Messrs Gabet and Huc wished to exchange silver for Chinese coin current. The Tartars can weigh, but cannot calculate, and accordingly the bank-teller of Blue Town, after gravely consulting his souan-pan (exchange-table), announced the value to be about a thousand sapeks less than it should have been. The missionaries remonstrated, and a colleague was called in to check the sum, but he, with due gravity, declared that the first was right. A bystander interfered, and declared in favour of the strangers. 'Sirs Lamas,' said the banker, 'your mathematics are better than mine.' 'Oh, not at all,' replied we, with a profound bow; 'your souan-pan is excellent; but who ever heard of a calculator always exempt from error?' These phrases were, it seems, rigorously required under the circumstances by Chinese politeness. Whenever any person in China is compromised by any awkward incident, those present always carefully refrain from any observation which may make him blush, or, as the Chinese c