Walla-wallas and sightseeing boats operate from the Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong and the Public Pier in Kowloon, both less than a block east of the Star Ferry terminals. There is more of the flavor of the old days at Blake Pier, a few hundred feet west of the Star Ferry terminal on the Hong Kong side. Private yachts and mailboats discharge there, and there’s always a bustle of arrivals and departures. But the colony’s reclamation scheme will before long swallow up Blake Pier and its works. The General Post Office, a moldering antique opposite Blake Pier, is also to be replaced soon; until it goes, it is a handy place to mail packages or to buy Hong Kong government publications. Wyndham Street, which runs south off Queen’s Road Central, is the last resting place of another antique, the sedan chair, which was the favored conveyance when roads were too steep or too rough for rickshaws. Of the four registered sedan chairs left in the colony, two are generally parked there, waiting patiently for a fare. A few of the older Chinese residents still use them, but Europeans have grown chair-shy, possibly worried about what kind of picture they present while riding between two poor fellows panting along in the traces. And well they might be. A line of rickshaws also parks along Wyndham Street, but their business is better than that of the sedan chairs. Tourists and many Chinese continue to hire them; tourists enjoy the picturesque novelty and the Chinese find them practical for funeral processions or for hauling packages too large to carry on a bus or tram without causing a riot. Police report 866 registered rickshaws, with the number declining each year. Many people shun them as degrading and inhumane; others are unwilling to risk their lives by weaving through motor traffic in such a flimsy craft. Rickshaw drivers, subjected to alternate sweating and cooling, are particularly vulnerable to tuberculosis. The alleys and side streets of the Central District are a source of wonder and surprise to tourists. Pedder Lane, branching off Pedder Street directly opposite the Gloucester Hotel, is lined with open-air cobblers. Hundreds of shoes, mended and unmended, are racked behind the repair stands, and the cobblers are as busy as Kris Kringle’s toy-builders on December 23d. Shoeshine Alley, a short section of Theater Lane which runs from the west end of Pedder Lane to Des Voeux Road Central, has ten to a dozen shoeshine boys stationed along the pavement. Customers stand in the alley with rickshaws and motorbikes brushing their coattails while they get shoeshines.