He remained three uneventful months in Hongkong as Student Interpreter at the Superintendency of Trade, awaiting the return of Sir John Bowring, H.B.M.’s Minister to China, who was away at Taku trying to open negotiations with the Peking Government.  It was this same Sir John Bowring, by the way, who first aroused Robert Hart’s interest in Chinese life and customs—­subjects on which so many foreigners in China remain pitifully ignorant all their lives.  “Study everything around you,” said he to the young man.  “Go out and walk in the street and read the shop signs.  Bend over the bookstalls and read titles.  Listen to the talk of the people.  If you acquire these habits, you will not only learn something new every time you leave your door, but you will always carry with you an antidote for boredom.”

When the Minister came back in September, Robert Hart was appointed to the British Consulate at Ningpo, and started off immediately, travelling up to Shanghai in a trim little 150-ton opium schooner called the Iona.  The voyage should have taken a week; it took three.  At first a calm and then the sudden burst of the north-east monsoon made progress impossible; the schooner tacked back and forth for a fortnight, advancing scarcely a mile, and all this time her single passenger could just manage to take seven steps on her little deck without wetting his feet.  Then, to make matters worse, provisions gave out, and the ship’s company was reduced for twelve days to an unsavoury diet of water-buffalo and peanuts—­all they could get from a nearby island.  Was it any wonder that Hart could never afterwards endure the taste of peanuts, or that at the mere sight of a passing water-buffalo his appetite was clean gone for the day?

He found Shanghai in the hands of the Triads (rebels), and a friend, one of the missionaries, took him to see their famous chief, who was said to have risen, not from the ranks, but from the stables of an American merchant.  With Mr. (afterwards Sir Rutherford) Alcock he also went into the other camp to visit the commander of the Imperialist forces, a Mongol, the Governor of the Province and a man of fine presence.  He was the first specimen of the Mandarin class that Robert Hart had seen, and consequently the details of the interview remained in his memory.

In later years he would sometimes describe what interested him most as, silent and inconspicuous, he observed the doings of his seniors.  It was not the crowd of petty officials standing about, though they were curious enough to a newcomer in their long official robes and hats decorated with peacock’s feathers; it was not the conversation going on between Alcock and the Governor; it was simply the way the latter, by his excessive dignity and dramatic manner, turned a simple action into a ceremony.  What he did was to draw carefully from his official boot a wad of fine white paper, detach one sheet, and solemnly blow his nose upon it.  The action was nothing,