He
straightway skinned the animal and cut up the carcass immediately in
front of my door, where Lao Chang waited to get the best cut for my
dinner. My three fellow-lodgers squatted alongside, going through their
apologetic ablutions as if naught were happening. Their dirty face-rags
were wrung and rewrung; they got to work with that universal tooth-brush
(the forefinger!), and that the dead body of a bullock was being
dissected two feet from the table at which they ate their steaming rice
was a detail of not the slightest consequence in the world.
Hungay is an old-time capital of one of the original kingdoms,
destroyed in the year A.D. 749. The road leading out towards Chao-chow
was built some considerable time before that year, and has never been
subject to any repairs whatever (for this fact I have drawn upon my
imagination, but should be very much surprised to know that I am far out
in my reckoning). Villagers have appropriated the public slabs and small
boulders which comprised the wretched thoroughfare; reminiscent puddles
tell you the tale, and the badness of the road renders it necessary for
the traveler to be out of bed a little earlier than usual to face the
ordeal.
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