Shortly before Christmas last year, a FedEx box arrived at Blum’s salvage emporium, sent by Carbone.
a good variety of fresh and live goods in our emporium are waiting for your choice and purchase.
Here in Menghai, the newly opened six-story emporium built to house hundreds of buyers and bundlers is a very lonely place.
The city served, as one later historian describes it, as “both court and emporium”, ringed by a double curtain of defensive walls, “square for cosmic order”.
“River of Smoke” takes the story, and some of the first book’s characters, from Calcutta to the port-city of Canton (now called Guangzhou) on the Pearl River delta, then and now, China’s emporium.
