Since the retreat from Liao-yang the streets of Mukden have all blossomed out into Russian signs, more or less grammatical. Some of them may possibly have been brought from Liao-yang, for I remember that on the day that General Stackelberg abandoned Shu-shan all of the Russian signboards over Chinese shops were hastily withdrawn. All of them are easily detachable, so that at a moment's notice they can be thrown into a cart and sent on to Tie-ling or Kharbin.
Every second shop in Mukden is now selling European goods. It may have been a pawnshop before or a Chinese drug-store, but it is now selling Armour's beef, St. Charles' cream, Wright's health underwear and a variety of other European and American articles — all of them made in Japan, although the manufacturers refrain from stating that fact on the labels.
Mukden's great original line is furs, of which there is an imposing display in the streets; in fact, the whole city is one vast fur market. Sheepskins are especially plentiful — sheepskin gloves, sheepskin stockings and sheepskin overcoats. Most of the sheepskin in the gloves and stockings was originally worn by Chinese dogs, in the ridiculous belief that it was dogskin, or by goats labouring under a delusion that it was goatskin. Nevertheless, there is enough good fur in Mukden to make me regret that the wise old custom of our ancestors, according to which a pagan city held by Christian troops was periodically looted so as to inspire the presumptuous burghers with the fear of God, has been allowed to fall into disuse. If that
custom is revived there are one or two shops in Mukden that I should like to pay a visit to.
There are crowds of horsemen, mounted and dismounted, vociferating outside the numerous saddlers' shops that line the street and dazzle the unwary rider with a display of imitation Cossack saddles that come to pieces at the end of a day's ride.
A Chinese showman with a performing sheep is gladdening the hearts of the simple Russian soldiers; while close by there passes, unobserved, a farmer carrying on his shoulders two trampled bundles of kiaoliang, or Chinese corn, representing the harvest yielded perhaps by a dozen acres of land. This harvest he had tended with unwearied care until the storm of shrapnel burst, and men, horses, carriages and guns rolled like an avalanche over his crops.
At this time a strange trade has sprung up in Mukden — the collection, at the front, of cart-loads of the little leaden tops of shells, and their sale to Chinese lead merchants in the city. I may mention that during a battle I often found these little caps useful as drinking cups, when nothing else was available.
A long side street is entirely devoted to tinkers, who turn out the best work that is produced in Mukden today. They make those fine strong copper household utensils which are so largely used in China and which look so much better than our tin articles. Day by day they work in their little open shops, surprised and delighted if a foreigner manifests any interest in their humble labour, careless about wars and rumours of wars, and sure to be safe, no matter who wins or loses. Akin to the tinker is the old cobbler at the street corner, the man who makes small dough pies, the ragman, and all that honest humble brotherhood which is not interested in politics and has nothing to fear from the destruction of armies and the fall of thrones. A Mongol lama, with vestments of green and gold and shaven head, is slowly picking his way across the crowded street, fingering his beads all the time and feverishly muttering: " Om manepadme hun, om mane padme hun," for, owing to his lack of a pigtail, he has been already arrested six times to-day on suspicion of being a Japanese. Majestic mules move along, their upper lips curled as if in disdain, but really because a slender steel chain passes across the upper gum, and is used for guiding them. Mandarins go past in faded sedan chairs.
Suddenly there is a commotion, and two long lines of Chinese dressed in red and carrying staves in their hands come along at a brisk trot. One can at once see by their bearing that they are the retainers of some great man; and so they are, for behind them comes the famous Jan-June or Tartar-general, carried in a curtained palanquin. He is on his way to the temple, where he will return thanks to the gods, for to-day is the Empress Dowager's birthday; and, as he is borne hurriedly past, one catches just a fleeting glimpse of his gorgeous robes, enveloping a tall, bent, meagre form, his worn parchment-like face of the Li-Hung-Chang type, with deeply marked semicircles underneath the eyes, his head crowned by a Chinese cap with the peacock feather, and his scanty beard and moustache.