The cultivated Chinese greatly admire antiques, and highly value an old piece of curious china, an antique bronze, or a rare carving. It is said that no city in the empire has more of the antique, the rare, the curious, and the grotesque, to interest a foreigner, than Canton,--the shops of Curio Street, in the New City, being mostly occupied by dealers in such articles. Some of these shops are large, and well filled with articles of rare and handsome workmanship. At any of them one can soon invest a thousand dollars in elegant pieces of furniture, rich carvings, and other valuable works of _vertu_ and art. Many of the articles in bronze, however, are too ugly or too disagreeably grotesque to tempt a foreigner. The studio of the noted painter, Lamqua, and the shop of “Old Siqua,”--whose lacquered ware is considered the finest in Canton,--are also in the Honam suburbs. Lamqua is an artist of much talent; and having profited by the instruction of Chinery,--the Anglo-Eastern artist already mentioned,--his pictures are free from the gross inaccuracies in perspective, and many other points that usually mar the sketches and paintings of his countrymen. He is noted for his fine fruit-pieces, and I also observed in his studio some very good pictures of foreigners. His finely painted miniatures, copied from photographs, and done on ivory, are also excellent. The Chinese women are very fond of ornaments made of the “jade-stone.”[29] Vases, also, and other fancy articles manufactured from it, are highly prized, and sold to the wealthy at fabulous prices. A daily market expressly for the sale of this article, which is located in the western suburbs, is regulated by certain laws, one of which requires it to be closed at twelve in the morning.