Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 162, 29 September 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

Ch:ian-Fu the Wise

( By

V. O. SOUTHEE)

xle was so small that his long, thin, shiny pigtail seemed longer than his whole body.. He. showed his Chinese conservatism by dyeing his finger-nails deep brown and by wearing funny baggy trousers and a gorgeous silk blouse, its original colour may have been blue, which reached down to his knees. And he carried wonders in his bundle. Chian-Fu was no salesman, you un- ! derstand, nor was he a merchant. He favoured you by bartering his exquis- j ite silks and embroideries for mere j money—“much soiled money” he would j say, screwing up his nose. He came twice a month —preferably ! on Saturdays—squatted down on our kitchen floor and slowly untied his bundle. He never asked what exactly we wanted. He took it for granted that we would buy something, and if we weakly protested his line-furrowed lace registered such genuine despair that all our wise resolutions flew to the four winds of heaven. Chian-Fu was a magician in his understanding of colour values. The lining of his bundle was black, and against it he would fling, as though nonchalantly, his magnificent wares. Stockings there were filmy, misty, things spun of the joys of dawn and the many-hued sadness of twilight. Shawls which might have taken away the drabness of prison walls — blue and orange, gold and red, green and yellow, chaste white and purple. Yards of silk; handkerchiefs galore; green-handled fans; cigarette boxes; frames of flower-embroidered silk; quizzical little gods, carved of jade and ivory, and curious trays of beaten brass and burnished copper. Each thing would be gently stroked by the nimble fingers and placed on the floor for our admiration. Chian-Fu meanwhile crooning some scarcely audible melocly. “Nothing to-day, thank you, ChianFu.” He would answer; “Is the sun shining outside, or is it a black storm? For my eyes see nothing but darkness.” “Wa are sorry, Chian-Fu,” but he was not listening to our regrets. “This tiny thing,” his hands touched a small ash-try of brass, “said to my fingers, as they put it into the bundle this morning: ‘Oh, fingers of ChianFu, I am tired of you and I wish to be touched by you no more.’ ” We bought it! And on those Saturday mornings when we felt we just could not afford anything, we slunk out of the house, to be met by our garrulous servant on our return: “Chian-'Fu came and sat on the threshold and waited, and his eyes shed tears because of your absence.” But Chian-Fu was no mere tradesman; he simply walked the earth, deeply imbued with the- wisdom of China.