In tracing the memories that lie between the lines of a journey, one can find unique kinds of door-to-door salesmen who toured our cities of old. They ran their small businesses with much in common; tweaking only meagre profits borne from polite and patient service, and free delivery.
With no need to travel far, people would emerge from their hutongs to purchase household items and daily essentials right outside their own doors. The produce came to them, preceded by the tradesmen’s bracing and melodious calls that treated both young and old with honestly and integrity.
The price of progress has come to mean that such scenarios are little more than a memory; often the subject of conversation among China’s elderly or the setting for a television period drama series.
The Flower & Shoes Pattern
It is early summer. At this time each year people know to look out for ladies sporting a blue shoulder bag; coming from the countryside villages, neatly dressed, they are referred to as “the peddlers of flowers and shoes pattern”. From their bag come forth beautifully decorated pieces of fabric. Butterflies, floral designs or depictions of Chinese society have been impeccably embroidered upon them. Young and old alike surround this travelling saleswoman, snapping up the patterns in all their wonderment of sizes; some useful as neck scarves, others for adorning tables, yet more to be fashioned into stylish waistcoats or shoes. Our adorable entrepreneur then gracefully retires from the alleyways, destined for another year of stitching.
The Tinker
Mender of pots and pans and sharpener of knives, the tinker may be renowned as a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, yet in the China of old, tinkers came with a greater skillset.As the echoes of his cries carried forth through the alleyways, not only would the women and children come out with their pots, bowls and scissors, but so would the replies; “Tinker, come here!” For this was one itinerant in great demand; in addition to fixing up a leaky bowl he would also often be able to perform precision work on delicate ceramics. Such miraculous work is worthy of being upheld as a national skill.
Wood Fired Wonton
All year round delicious scents can be detected hanging in the air. In these cities of old there are countless and charismatic delicacies such as maltose, baked wheat cake with duck’s oil, jiuniang osmanthus, stinky toufu and ruyi toufu, duck’s blood and bean starch vermicelli soup. Yet, it is the wood-fired wontons that stand head and shoulders above them all. This small snack is enjoyed by the entire nation, but now sadly their stands are few and far between. Negligible profits and environmental concerns over the scarcity of wood have pushed the wood fired-wonton between a rock and a hard place.
In Nanjing we are lucky; here people from all over China can still visit Fuzimiao for a taste of the genuine wood-fired wonton.
Sugar-coated figurine
Children from up down the alleyways are thronging excitedly together; something is definitely up! Their being accompanied by a unique syrupy fragrance can only mean one thing; sugar coated figurines! Then our gypsy enters, with his marble-topped workbench, ready to do his magic with the simplest of ingredients; boiling sugar and glutinous rice dough. Our gypsy is adept; heaped upon an iron ladle a thick pale yellow transparent liquid overflows with precision. With hands and simple tools he works hard at this traditional folk art; toning different colours, shaping various life-like figurines, forming delicate patterns as the syrup cools. Such are these figurines’ colour and lustre that they form a beautiful memory for Chinese children across the Motherland.
The Mobile Barber
Barbering may have its origins in Sicily, dating back to 296 BCE, but in China, the history of the mobile barber can be traced back further. This tradesman made his way from house to house with a pole over his shoulder, on one end of which was a bench, razors and other haircutting tools; on the other a bucket of boiled water. In traditional society the barber’s skill was greatly admired. Upon the orders of elders, apprentices began by honing their cutting and slicing skills by practicing on white gourd, one of the first crops to have been commercially harvested by humankind.
