Woosung Road at the entrance near Garden Bridge is at first glance made up completely of baskets moving in two streams past each other. At second glance, one sees that the baskets, all sizes and all shapes, are being carried by insignificant coolies or shock-headed little boys who bal ance them on shoulder-poles. This strange, traMe moves slowly but endlessly into Woosung Road from all directions, spreading out as *he street continues, until "the baskets give way to carts and beggars and moving platforms loaded.with lead pipe, planks, or amply trull-crates Hither come the foreigners who need money, waiting, one" supposes, for the quieter times of the day, and carrying their treasures under their coats. Here, too, come _ims provident Chinese with their spare clothing. For there are pawn-shops in Woosung Road. There are other shops too—sweet-shops, vegetable booths, butchers, tailoring establishments decorated with fashion-plates ten years old. There are mysterious booths full of nothing but people. But the most important windows are barred, and these are the places where'the shy Europeans creep to sell. their luxuries.
The depression has had a noticeable effect upon Woosung Road. That silver tea-service, for instance, and the remarkably good array of second-hand cameras, are easily explained. But why are there so man; saxophones and slide-rules? Is Shanghai "30° thickly populated with engineers and musicians who have gone broke? Each shop has its own Style of window-dressing, and shoe: jostle with eyeglasses, knives forks with Yale locks, artificial sible pyjamas with telescopes. Always, however, in every window, there Is a plethora of saxophones "and abundance of slide-rules. Are she hapless engineers so desperate that they cannot carry their drawing-instruments in their boxes when they ship for home?
In the trays of jewellery are quantities of badly carved jade, with here and.there an English pin brooch, delicate if battered, set with seed-pearls and depicting some old~ fashioned spray of flowers. There are hundreds of _watches—hunters, small bracelet-watches, - Ingersolls, and one Inexplicable enamelled affair, highly-coloured picture of a damsel eating cherries. There are more than hundreds of elocks—travelling clocks, and kitchen timepieces, and everything in between. There are stringed instruments—violins with and with~ out their cases, mandolins, guitar and a snakeskin ukulele For some reason, everything in a pawnshop window looks sad, even though it be a light-hearted sort of cast-off. A sextant in a corner has Thangdog look. One particularly urge shop offers a peculiarly varied inventory—three folding-rules, two cameras, bby tennis-racket, Ivory elgar-holders, a row of German
very choice bundle of chopsticks, a sewing-machine, a telescope, two new electric fans, several pairs of spectacles, a tray'of rings with one good black opal, a silver teapo*, and, 'a8 the most important item, a motorcycle. Between all these articles are heaps of material in bolts—cotfon and embroidered Spanish shawls, and here and there a pith helmet.
Shanghai pawn-shop is taken up by By far the bulk of apace me winter clothes. Some bright Chinese girl first thought of a way to settle the storage-problem, and many people have since followed her example. The proprietor must of course, take the very best care of them, and of course you have a little extra pocket-money all. summer besides. Next winter will be time to think of the Interest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.