(Mannering did not speak Cantonese, but he knew a handful of written characters, including metal, want, and die—enough to conduct a pictographic colloquy with the aid of his pocketbook, an object that was by now so heavily marked and foxed with use that he was able to perform very sophisticated rhetorical allusions simply by leafing back through the pages and pointing with his fingers to an old quarrel, an old settlement, an old sale.)
Love this system he uses
