Upon receiving our sapeks, we proceeded to buy the winter clothing we needed. Upon a consideration of the meagreness of our exchequer, we came to the resolution that it would be better to purchase what we required at some secondhand shop. In China and Tartary no one has the smallest repugnance to wear other people’s clothes; he who has not himself the attire wherein to pay a visit or make a holiday, goes without ceremony to a neighbour and borrows a hat, or a pair of trousers, or boots, or shoes, or whatever else he wants, and nobody is at all surprised at these borrowings, which are quite a custom. The only hesitation any one has in lending his clothes to a neighbour, is, lest the borrower should sell them in payment of some debt, or, after using them, pawn them. People who buy clothes buy them indifferently, new or secondhand. The question of price is alone taken into consideration, for there is no more delicacy felt about putting on another man’s hat or trousers, than there is about living in a house that some one else has occupied before you.
This custom of wearing other people’s things was by no means to our taste, and all the less so, that, ever since our arrival at the mission of Si-Wang, we had not been under the necessity of departing from our old habits in this respect. Now, however, the slenderness of our purse compelled us to waive our repugnance. We went out, therefore, in search of a secondhand clothes shop, of which, in every town here, there are a greater or less number, for the most part in connection with pawnshops, called in these countries Tang-Pou. Those who borrow upon pledges, are seldom able to redeem the articles they have deposited, which they accordingly leave to die, as the Tartars and Chinese express it; or in other words, they allow the period of redemption to pass, and the articles pass altogether from them. The old clothes shops of the Blue Town were filled in this way with Tartar spoils, so that we had the opportunity of selecting exactly the sort of things we required, to suit the new costume we had adopted.
At the first shop we visited they showed us a quantity of wretched garments turned up with sheep-skin; but though these rags were exceedingly old, and so covered with grease that it was impossible to guess at their original colour, the price asked for them was exorbitant. After a protracted haggling, we found it impossible to come to terms, and we gave up this first attempt; and we gave it up, be it added, with a certain degree of satisfaction, for our self-respect was somewhat wounded at finding ourselves reduced even to the proposition of wearing such filthy rags. We visited another shop, and another, a third, and a fourth, and still several more. We were shown magnificent garments, handsome garments, fair garments, endurable garments, but the consideration of expense was, in each instance, an impracticable stumbling-block. The journey we had undertaken might endure for several years, and extreme economy, at all events in the outset, was indispensable. After going about the whole day, after making the acquaintance of all the rag-merchants in the Blue Town, after turning over and over all their old clothes, we were fain to return to the secondhand dealer whom we had first visited, and to make the best bargain we could with him. We purchased from him, at last, two ancient robes of sheepskin, covered with some material, the nature of which it was impossible to identify, and the original colour of which we suspected to have been yellow. We proceeded to try them on, and it was at once evident that the tailor in making them had by no means had us in his eye. M. Gabet’s robe was too short, M. Huc’s too long; but a friendly exchange was impracticable, the difference in height between the two missionaries being altogether too disproportionate. We at first thought of cutting the excess from the one, in order to make up the deficiency of the other; but then we should have had to call in the aid of a tailor, and this would have involved another drain upon our purse; the pecuniary consideration decided the question, and we determined to wear the clothes as they were, M. Huc adopting the expedient of holding up, by means of a girdle, the surplus of his robe, and M. Gabet resigning himself to the exposure to the public gaze of a portion of his legs; the main inconvenience, after all, being the manifestation to all who saw us that we could not attire ourselves in exact proportion to our size.