Did you notice the ancient custom of bargaining with the fingers?

Did anyone remember the scene where the Chinese band is hiring the old Chinese mercenary sitting against the wall of the abandoned barn? Later on, one of the Chinese warriors is 'communicating' with the old Chinese mercenary. There's a grey cloth over both men's hands and they look like they're playing tiddlywinks with their fingers. You see the old man shaking his head in disagreement. What both men were doing was bargaining. This is a true ancient, Central Asian/northwestern Chinese frontier custom far back then. It was considered uncouth to bargain verbally and in front of others or the passing public. Often the two bargainers would slip their hands into something that looks like one of those 18th century European and early American hand mufflers that women used to stick both hands inside for warmth when outside in wintertime. The bargaining was all done by finger tappings and rubbing of the other's fingers. Often both men might enjoy a cup of tea or some other beverage, maybe smoke as well. They might look at each other but sometimes they could look off to the side into the distance and let their fingers do the talking. Decades ago, an episode of television's Ripley's Believe It or Not actually showed this custom still in use in northwestern China and just beyond. Typically the Han Chinese do not practice this type of non-verbal bargaining. It is the other Asian peoples in that faraway part of the desert lands of eastern central Asian and the northwest Chinese frontier lands.

Truth is stranger than fiction. Men show odd customs (to us westerners) in other parts of the world, i.e., the nose rub between Polynesian men; men holding hands in the Middle East; some African tribesman would seal a bargaining deal by spitting a mouthful of milk or water on each other's faces. Wasn't there some old British - Welsh or Scottish - custom of spitting on one's palm and then shaking another guy's hand when completing a business deal? In America, as recent as the 1960s, young men used to hang their arms around the shoulder's of their best buddies. I distinctly remember the custom dying out rapidly at the onset of the 1970s. And shockingly, back in the early 1800s American roadside inns, if all the rooms were taken, a single male traveler could opt to pay a lower overnight fee by sleeping in the bed of another single male, a total stranger. Go watch the classic, "Moby Dick", starring Gregory Peck. In 'Buster and Billy', 1972, two American highschool teenager friends, played by Jan Michael Vincent and Robert Englund share the same bed, when Englund spends the night over at Vincent's parents house. The two boys talk about life, about school, the future, before dropping off to sleep. That was the 1950s America. Usually time changes customs, you think, but some do survive for a very long time it seems.