Good or bad, wonderful or not, you can tell at a glance.
A peddler carried a double-decker goods box on his back. The top section was covered with glass and divided into compartments displaying his wares, such as needles, thimbles, combs, fine-toothed combs, hair clips, buttons, tooth powder, face powder, matches, and sugar beans. Each of his two large boxes had a couplet pasted on it, written in strange characters made up of several ordinary ones. One side read “Ten Thousand Taels of Gold,” and the other “May Wealth and Treasures Come In.”
Whenever the peddler arrived somewhere, he shook a long-handled rattle drum, making a “ba-lang, ba-lang” sound to attract local villagers to buy his goods.
