Overwhelming Odds Too Much for the Original Titleholder Almost a month ago today, the "North-China Daily News" published en article concerning "the narrowest shop in Shanghai, and most probably one of the smallest" the little exchange shop housed in the space between Mountrie's and Kelly Walsh's, and which was just celebrating its fifth anniversary. It then seemed improbable that there could be a smaller shop, but yesterday the contender for the title of Shanghai's Smallest Shop was "found," surprisingly enough on the same side of Nanking Road, about ten feet or so east of Honan Road.
A match was promptly arranged and unbiassed observers and referees yesterday unanimously awarded the title to the newcomer on the scene. It is an exchange shop, like the first one, and in the preliminary rounds an examination—carried out as accurately as possible in the absence of a ruler—showed that both shops are about a yard wide and sell much the same sort of cigarettes, matches, and so on.
End of Round Two, therefore, saw both title-holder and the contender breathing heavily, with points fairly evenly divided between them. But youth soon began to tell over experience. The Municipal-Library-Match-provider, losing ground, wildly pointed. to the September Newcomer's comparatively poorer choice of location—"no chance at all with the tourist trafüc"—and was promptly warned by the referee against fouling.
The Newcomer retaliated, pointing io the fact that his roof is not six feet from the ground but five and that the back of his shop does not extend into a so-called alleyway for a matter of eight to ten feet but stops short at a point approximately three feet six inches from the edge of the counter.
As the title-holder reeled under this sudden attack the contender followed up his advantage by pointing out that his shop is so small that it is even impossible to get an ice-box and soft drinks into it without pushing the rest of the shop into the street.
This practically gives the September Newcomer the title on the spot, but he clinches the fight by following up his crushing lead with a final awe-inspiring right in the shape of the statement that when his sole shopkeeper takes a deep breath no one else can get into the shop and that it is, even then, best to remove a couple of cartons of cigarettes to allow him better breathing space.
And so, the champion passes and the title goes to the newcomer—until someone finds a smaller shop or even makes one. The Shanghai Society for Small Keepers of Small Shops points out, however, that fortunately for the well-being of its members, there are limits beyond which even the keenest minimaniac finds it impossible to go.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.