eight o'clock
This explained all . It meant a visit to Hop Sing 's warehouse , the opening and exhibition of some rare Chinese novelties and curios , a chat in the back office , a cup of tea of a perfection unknown beyond these sacred precincts , cigars , and a visit to the Chinese theatre or temple . This was , in fact , the favorite programme of Hop Sing when he exercised his functions of hospitality as the chief factor or superintendent of the Ning Foo Company . At eight o'clock on Friday evening , I entered the warehouse of Hop Sing . There was that deliciously commingled mysterious foreign odor that I had so often noticed ; there was the old array of uncouth-looking objects , the long procession of jars and crockery , the same singular blending of the grotesque and the mathematically neat and exact , the same endless suggestions of frivolity and fragility , the same want of harmony in colors , that were each , in themselves , beautiful and rare . Kites in the shape of enormous dragons and gigantic butterflies ; kites so ingeniously arranged as to utter at intervals , when facing the wind , the cry of a hawk ; kites so large as to be beyond any boy 's power of restraint , -- so large that you understood why kite-flying in China was an amusement for adults ; gods of china and bronze so gratuitously ugly as to be beyond any human interest or sympathy from their very impossibility ; jars of sweetmeats covered all over with moral sentiments from Confucius ; hats that looked like baskets , and baskets that looked like hats ; silks so light that I hesitate to record the incredible number of square yards that you might pass through the ring on your little finger , -- these , and a great many other indescribable objects , were all familiar to me . I pushed my way through the dimly-lighted warehouse , until I reached the back office , or parlor , where I found Hop Sing waiting to receive me .