Chinese menA Chinese Dandy.Thefollowing description of a Chinese exquisite, is from a new work on China, by P. Dobel, formerly Russian Consul to China, and a resident in that country for sevenyears:—“His dress is composed of crapes and silks of great price, his feet are covered with high-heeled boots of the most beautiful Nankin satin, and his legs are encased in gaiters, richly embroidered, and reaching to the knee. Add to this an acorn-shaped cap of the latest taste, an elegant pipe, richly ornamented, in which burns the purest tobacco of the Fokien, an English watch, a toothpick suspended to a button by a string of pearls, a Nankinfan, exhaling the perfume of the tcholane, (a Chinese flower,) and you will have an exact idea of a fashionable Chinese.“The Chinese dandy, like dandies of all times and all countries, is seriously occupied with trifles. He belongs either to the Quail Club or the Cricket Club. Like the ancient Romans, the Chinese train quails, quarrelsome birds, intrepid duellists, whose combats form the subject of senseless wagers. In imitation of the rich, the poorer Chinese place at the bottom of an earthen basin, two field crickets. These insects they excite and provoke, until they grow angry, attack each other, and the narrow field of battle is soon strewed with their claws, antennæ and corselets.“There is between the Chinese and the old Romans as great a difference as there is between the combats of the crickets and the terrible combats of the gladiators.”
Chinese men
Thefollowing description of a Chinese exquisite, is from a new work on China, by P. Dobel, formerly Russian Consul to China, and a resident in that country for sevenyears:—
“His dress is composed of crapes and silks of great price, his feet are covered with high-heeled boots of the most beautiful Nankin satin, and his legs are encased in gaiters, richly embroidered, and reaching to the knee. Add to this an acorn-shaped cap of the latest taste, an elegant pipe, richly ornamented, in which burns the purest tobacco of the Fokien, an English watch, a toothpick suspended to a button by a string of pearls, a Nankinfan, exhaling the perfume of the tcholane, (a Chinese flower,) and you will have an exact idea of a fashionable Chinese.
“The Chinese dandy, like dandies of all times and all countries, is seriously occupied with trifles. He belongs either to the Quail Club or the Cricket Club. Like the ancient Romans, the Chinese train quails, quarrelsome birds, intrepid duellists, whose combats form the subject of senseless wagers. In imitation of the rich, the poorer Chinese place at the bottom of an earthen basin, two field crickets. These insects they excite and provoke, until they grow angry, attack each other, and the narrow field of battle is soon strewed with their claws, antennæ and corselets.
“There is between the Chinese and the old Romans as great a difference as there is between the combats of the crickets and the terrible combats of the gladiators.”