The Private Papers Of Eastern Jewel - Plot & Excerpts
It was an elegant nineteenthcentury building decorated in the style of the Belle Epoque, full of French furniture and foreigners. There was a ballroom with a hall of mirrors that imitated the famous salon in the palace of Versailles, and a busy international bar that never closed. Peking was a city of walls within walls, built to keep out the dust and deaden the clamour of its busy citizens. As wood was scarce, the houses were built with brick and wattle and had shapely roofs and slender windows. In the streets there were mules and donkeys pulling carts and on my first day I saw camels swaying along the broader avenues carrying coal and coconuts. The streets were narrow unpaved alleys where pedestrians vied for space with bicycles and wheelbarrows. After the modernity of Shanghai, I felt as though I had stepped back into the old century. Although the city had water, electricity and trams to ferry its citizens, it was still at heart the capital of ancient China. Its opium dens, known as 'swallows' nests', had inky carbon walls smudged by a hundred years of smoke, a unique darkness that powdered your clothes when you brushed against it.
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