Page 9 - incense-bearers of han

CHAPTER I - THE TIGER BECOMES A LAMB

Mr. Wang is the third brother in that particular family of Wang which dwells in the
village of Wang in the northern reaches of the province of Kiangsu. He is a large man,
about six feet in height, with broad shoulders and a sizeable head. His wide flat nose

is fairly well distributed over the area of his face, which is somewhat reminiscent of a
meat platter. After arising at a late hour of the morning, inhaling his morning ration of
soft rice or wheat gruel, he sweeps majestically and importantly down the street,

hands in his sleeves, to the village tea shop. There, with legs crossed, and jerking the
up-pointed toe to the cadence of the melody, he listens to an itinerant bard chant the
sagas of his people, the while fondling his tea cup with his strong, well shaped fingers.
Time is no object, and Mr. Wang remains at his table after the transient songster has
taken his departure.

Presently he is joined by a group of friends who are in turn served to tea by the
noisy and loquacious attendant, who greets the new-comers familiarly. This hearty

man represents a type, numerous, distinctive and interesting. He wears a well-worn
satin gown and is girded about the waist with an apron that flows well-nigh down to
the hem of his garment, caked with the grease and wipings of the years. Over his
shoulder is slung a cotton rag that was probably white in the Tang Dynasty, but not
since. At a jaunty angle on the top of his head, rests the conventional small hat,

battered and shiny with grease and surmounted by a frayed cloth button, which peeps
through its insulation of red silk thread. He places a pot with a thin sprinkling of tea
leaves over the bottom, and a cup in front of each of the patrons, then swaggers over

to the stove in the corner from which he takes a kettle with an amazingly long spout.
With his left hand he grasps the tea pot, tilts it over and thumbs aside the cover which
is about the size of a silver dollar. Then, from a distance of not less than two feet, he
propels a stream of boiling water squarely into the aperture in the top of the pot. If the
dexterity of his right hand should fail him he would have a couple of scalded fingers

on his left! After the usual amenities, Mr. Wang sits phlegmatically listening to his
friends discuss money, local politics, the crops, the bandit situation and the doings of
the townspeople. The content of the conversation of these oriental wiseacres does not

differ greatly from that of the casual meetings of mid-morning Coca Cola drinkers at
the fountains along America‟s Main Street. This difference is however to be noted.
The wise men of the East are vastly more leisurely and less hurried, and their
materialism is freely interspersed with philosophical observations and platitudes, and
clothed with a degree of sanctimoniousness by a multitude of proverbial and classical