Looking from behind the curtains that veiled the window of his chair, Stanton Ware saw the rope-dancers twirling and spinning as the pickpockets worked among the gaping crowds.
There were clairvoyants selling almanacs of lucky days and the peddlers carrying yoked panniers of sweets, needles, toys, tea, rice cakes and fans.
There were craftsmen mending porcelain with rivets, chiropodists and barbers, scribes, quacks and, inevitably as the Chinese crowd so loved them, acrobats and jugglers sometimes accompanied by bears and monkeys.
To Stanton Ware it was all very familiar and had an attraction all of its own.
He had almost forgotten, he thought, the smell of roasting meat and game, of ginseng, soy, garlic and tobacco, which seemed to hang over the streets in clouds.
The sedan chair wov
