Johnny Liddell walked slowly down a side street in Chinatown that had so far shucked the Occidental atmosphere that he might well have been walking down a street in the native quarter of Shanghai. Here were the stores that did not cater to tourists, where Chinese sold to Chinese, where the merchandise was too exotic and sometimes too strong for the Occidental palate, where nationally advertised patent medicines had made way on the shelves of apothecaries to potions compiled of portions of reptiles and rodents.
Here the tourist never penetrated and no other white man was to be seen on the street. The elderly Chinese shuffled by, their wrinkled faces placid, their pace unhurried. The younger Chinese seemed self-conscious and vaguely uncomfortable in their western clothes as they, too, adopt
