CHAPTERVIII.HOUSEKEEPING IN SIAM.Allordinary Siamese houses must have three rooms. Indeed, so important is this considered that the suitor must often promise to furnish the requisite number before the parents will consent to let him claim his bride.There is the bedroom, where the family all huddle together at night; an outer room, where they sit through the day and where they receive visitors; and the kitchen.I will begin at the latter and try to describe the dirty, dingy place. The Siamese have no godliness, and the next thing to it, cleanliness, is entirely lacking. So please step carefully or you may soil your clothes against a black rice-pot or come in contact with drying fish.There is usually a rude box filled with earth where they build the fire and do what they call the cooking; that is, they boil rice and make curry and roast fish and plantains over the coals. All in the household are taught to do these simple things, and the father and the brothers, if they are at home, in poor families, where the women work for the living, are just as apt to get them ready as the women.There is no making of bread or pie or cake or pudding—no roast, no gravies, no soups. Even vegetables are seldom cooked at home, but are prepared by others and sold in the markets or peddled about the streets. There they buy boiled sweet potatoes and green corn, and stewed fruits and curries, and roasted fish, and nuts and peanuts and bananas, sliced pineapple, melon and squash; and pickled onions and turnips are sold through the streets of Bangkok and Petchaburee just as pickled beets are in Damascus.Curry is made of all sorts of things, but is usually a combination of meat or fish and vegetables. If you want an English name for it that all can understand you must call it astew. The ingredients are chopped very fine or pounded in a mortar, especially the red peppers, onions and spices. The predominant flavor is red pepper, so hot and fiery that your mouth will smart and burn for half an hour after you have eaten it. Still, many of the curries are very nice, and with boiled rice furnish a good meal. But sometimes “broth of abominable things is in their vessels,” as, for instance, when they make curry of rats or bats or of the meat of animals that have died of disease; and they flavor it withkapick, a sort of rotten fish of which all Siamese are inordinately fond. Its chief peculiarity is that it “smells to heaven” and is unrivaled in the strength of its flavor.Siam is unique in that she produces two of the most abominable, and yet the most delicious, things, if we believe what we hear. These are, first, the durian, a large fruit found only on this peninsula; and, second, kapick, which I hope is not found anywhere outside of Siam.But to return to the kitchen: it has no chimney, and the smoke finds its way out as best it can, so that nearly everything is black and sooty. There is but little furniture except the fireplace, the rice-pots, a kettle and perhaps a frying-pan, and baskets of various shapes and sizes, one pair being daubed within and without with pitch and used to carry water. There is a little stool, a foot square and six inches high, that they call a table, and on which they place the curry and fish and sliced vegetables, while those who eat squat like toads about it, each having on the floor before him a bowl of rice, which is replenished from a larger dish near by or directly from the rice-pot in the fireplace.There is no regularity about their meals, and they do not wait for one another, but eat whenever they get hungry. In the higher families the men always eat first and by themselves, and the wives and children and dogs take what is left.The usual rule is for each one to wash his own rice-bowl and turn it upside down in a basket in the corner of the room, there to drip and dry till the next time it is needed.They eat with their fingers, very few having even so much as a spoon, and they do not use the wafer-like bread so common in the Levant, which the Syrians double into a kind of three-cornered spoon, and, dipping up somekibby, or camel-stew, or rice, eat down spoon and all.The kitchen floors are nearly all made of split bamboo, with great cracks between, through which they pour all the slops and push the scraps and bones, so that sweeping is unnecessary. Near the door are several large earthen jars for water, which are filled from the river by the women or servants. Here they wash their feet before they enter the house, and their hands and mouths before and after they eat, dipping the water with a gourd or cocoanut-shell. They use brass basins and trays a great deal, but for lack of scouring they are discolored and green with verdigris; and I cannot help thinking that the use of such vessels is one of the fruitful sources of the fearful sores and eruptions with which the whole nation is afflicted.SIAMESE LADIES DININGSIAMESE LADIES DINING.There are no washing- or ironing-days. Many wear no upper garment, only a waist-cloth, which they keep on when they go to bathe, and when they come up out of the water they change it for a dry one. It is then rubbed a little in the water, wrung out and spread in the sun to dry. If it is not stolen, they fold it up when it is dry and pat it with their hands, and that is all the ironing they do.The outer room of the house is barren enough, with perhaps a mat or ox-hide for guests to sit upon, and a tray from which all are served with betel and tobacco. It is considered a great insult not to offer betel to your guests, and a greater one still, I believe, to refuse it when offered. They think the red lips and black teeth it produces are very beautiful. They have a saying, “Any dog can have white teeth,” inferring that only human beings know how to blacken theirs.The bedroom is where things accumulate—old baskets and bags, rags, bundles and boxes. You seldom see idols in a Siamese house, but I have seen them sometimes in the bedroom, especially if any one is sick. There are no bedsteads, no tables, chairs, bureau, washstand, or indeed any of those things which we consider necessary. A torn straw mat or two, or perhaps an ox-hide on the floor, with a brick-shaped pillow stuffed with cotton or a brick itself or block of wood for a pillow, constitute the ordinary Siamese bed.In families not the very poorest you will find long narrow mattresses stuffed with tree-cotton. They may be covered with an old ragged waist-cloth instead of a sheet, and over them is suspended a mosquito curtain of dark-blue cloth or one of unbleached cotton. I have known these curtains to hang for years without ever being changed or washed. The beds and mats are filthy and swarming with bugs, which also infest the curtains, the coverings, the cracks in the floor and the wall, the boxes, and indeed all the rubbish in the room. I have seen them creeping over the people, and no one seems to mind them or think of being ashamed.These rooms are never cleared out or swept or scrubbed. The cobwebs of succeeding years tangle and entangle themselves in the corners, drape the rafters and the windows, and indeed every place where the busy spinners can do their work. There is seldom more than one window in a bedroom, and at night it is carefully closed, and if it were not for the cracks in the floor and walls the miserable inmates would surely smother. They do not bring their cattleintothe house, for it is very frail and set upon poles about six feet from the ground, but they do keep themunderthe house, so that they can hear if thieves come to steal them.They never give any dinner- or tea-parties or visit each other, as we do at home. There is an occasional feast, as at a wedding, a funeral or a hair-cutting, and sometimes neighbor girls will sit together under the trees to sew, or by the same lamp at night to economize oil and to chat and gossip. A great place for the latter pastime is at the temples when they go to hear the Buddhist services, which are usually in Bali, and therefore not understood, or by the river-banks and wells when they go to fetch water.Thus you see that housekeeping among the Siamese is very simple and primitive. There are no women who have worn out their lives in making and mending, baking and scrubbing, and fussing over a cook-stove. They do not dread the spring house-cleaning or the fall setting up of stoves and putting down of carpets. There is no Thanksgiving dinner to cook, nor Christmas holiday feasting, and no Fourth of July picnic; no preserving or pickling, no canning of fruits nor packing of butter nor pressing of cheese.But, alas! there is no happy home-life either—no family altar, no pleasant social board where father, mother, sisters and brothers meet three times a day, and, thanking God for food, eat with joy and gladness and grow strong for his service; no sitting-room, where some of the happiest years of our lives are spent in loving companionship with those of our own household, no place for books, and no books to read, except perhaps a few vile tales or books of superstition and witchery.May God pity Siam and plant in her kingdom many happy Christian homes! May her people be purified and cleansed, and taught of him in all things! Then, and not till then, will the good influences, working from the heart outward, touch and cleanse and beautify all their surroundings.Note.—The reader will doubtless notice that my description is of Siamese life among the lower classes, not among those who have come in contact with missionaries and been improved somewhat, nor those of the higher classes in Bangkok—the princes and nobles, whose old-time home-life was neater and more orderly than that here described. These, through the influence of foreigners coming to Siam and visits to foreign lands, have raised themselves in the scale of living, and have foreign houses filled with foreign furniture and conveniences, order sumptuous meals from foreign bakeries, and have them placed upon their tables and served in modern style. I do not consider that trueSiamesehousekeeping.
Allordinary Siamese houses must have three rooms. Indeed, so important is this considered that the suitor must often promise to furnish the requisite number before the parents will consent to let him claim his bride.
There is the bedroom, where the family all huddle together at night; an outer room, where they sit through the day and where they receive visitors; and the kitchen.
I will begin at the latter and try to describe the dirty, dingy place. The Siamese have no godliness, and the next thing to it, cleanliness, is entirely lacking. So please step carefully or you may soil your clothes against a black rice-pot or come in contact with drying fish.
There is usually a rude box filled with earth where they build the fire and do what they call the cooking; that is, they boil rice and make curry and roast fish and plantains over the coals. All in the household are taught to do these simple things, and the father and the brothers, if they are at home, in poor families, where the women work for the living, are just as apt to get them ready as the women.
There is no making of bread or pie or cake or pudding—no roast, no gravies, no soups. Even vegetables are seldom cooked at home, but are prepared by others and sold in the markets or peddled about the streets. There they buy boiled sweet potatoes and green corn, and stewed fruits and curries, and roasted fish, and nuts and peanuts and bananas, sliced pineapple, melon and squash; and pickled onions and turnips are sold through the streets of Bangkok and Petchaburee just as pickled beets are in Damascus.
Curry is made of all sorts of things, but is usually a combination of meat or fish and vegetables. If you want an English name for it that all can understand you must call it astew. The ingredients are chopped very fine or pounded in a mortar, especially the red peppers, onions and spices. The predominant flavor is red pepper, so hot and fiery that your mouth will smart and burn for half an hour after you have eaten it. Still, many of the curries are very nice, and with boiled rice furnish a good meal. But sometimes “broth of abominable things is in their vessels,” as, for instance, when they make curry of rats or bats or of the meat of animals that have died of disease; and they flavor it withkapick, a sort of rotten fish of which all Siamese are inordinately fond. Its chief peculiarity is that it “smells to heaven” and is unrivaled in the strength of its flavor.
Siam is unique in that she produces two of the most abominable, and yet the most delicious, things, if we believe what we hear. These are, first, the durian, a large fruit found only on this peninsula; and, second, kapick, which I hope is not found anywhere outside of Siam.
But to return to the kitchen: it has no chimney, and the smoke finds its way out as best it can, so that nearly everything is black and sooty. There is but little furniture except the fireplace, the rice-pots, a kettle and perhaps a frying-pan, and baskets of various shapes and sizes, one pair being daubed within and without with pitch and used to carry water. There is a little stool, a foot square and six inches high, that they call a table, and on which they place the curry and fish and sliced vegetables, while those who eat squat like toads about it, each having on the floor before him a bowl of rice, which is replenished from a larger dish near by or directly from the rice-pot in the fireplace.
There is no regularity about their meals, and they do not wait for one another, but eat whenever they get hungry. In the higher families the men always eat first and by themselves, and the wives and children and dogs take what is left.
The usual rule is for each one to wash his own rice-bowl and turn it upside down in a basket in the corner of the room, there to drip and dry till the next time it is needed.
They eat with their fingers, very few having even so much as a spoon, and they do not use the wafer-like bread so common in the Levant, which the Syrians double into a kind of three-cornered spoon, and, dipping up somekibby, or camel-stew, or rice, eat down spoon and all.
The kitchen floors are nearly all made of split bamboo, with great cracks between, through which they pour all the slops and push the scraps and bones, so that sweeping is unnecessary. Near the door are several large earthen jars for water, which are filled from the river by the women or servants. Here they wash their feet before they enter the house, and their hands and mouths before and after they eat, dipping the water with a gourd or cocoanut-shell. They use brass basins and trays a great deal, but for lack of scouring they are discolored and green with verdigris; and I cannot help thinking that the use of such vessels is one of the fruitful sources of the fearful sores and eruptions with which the whole nation is afflicted.
SIAMESE LADIES DININGSIAMESE LADIES DINING.
SIAMESE LADIES DINING.
There are no washing- or ironing-days. Many wear no upper garment, only a waist-cloth, which they keep on when they go to bathe, and when they come up out of the water they change it for a dry one. It is then rubbed a little in the water, wrung out and spread in the sun to dry. If it is not stolen, they fold it up when it is dry and pat it with their hands, and that is all the ironing they do.
The outer room of the house is barren enough, with perhaps a mat or ox-hide for guests to sit upon, and a tray from which all are served with betel and tobacco. It is considered a great insult not to offer betel to your guests, and a greater one still, I believe, to refuse it when offered. They think the red lips and black teeth it produces are very beautiful. They have a saying, “Any dog can have white teeth,” inferring that only human beings know how to blacken theirs.
The bedroom is where things accumulate—old baskets and bags, rags, bundles and boxes. You seldom see idols in a Siamese house, but I have seen them sometimes in the bedroom, especially if any one is sick. There are no bedsteads, no tables, chairs, bureau, washstand, or indeed any of those things which we consider necessary. A torn straw mat or two, or perhaps an ox-hide on the floor, with a brick-shaped pillow stuffed with cotton or a brick itself or block of wood for a pillow, constitute the ordinary Siamese bed.
In families not the very poorest you will find long narrow mattresses stuffed with tree-cotton. They may be covered with an old ragged waist-cloth instead of a sheet, and over them is suspended a mosquito curtain of dark-blue cloth or one of unbleached cotton. I have known these curtains to hang for years without ever being changed or washed. The beds and mats are filthy and swarming with bugs, which also infest the curtains, the coverings, the cracks in the floor and the wall, the boxes, and indeed all the rubbish in the room. I have seen them creeping over the people, and no one seems to mind them or think of being ashamed.
These rooms are never cleared out or swept or scrubbed. The cobwebs of succeeding years tangle and entangle themselves in the corners, drape the rafters and the windows, and indeed every place where the busy spinners can do their work. There is seldom more than one window in a bedroom, and at night it is carefully closed, and if it were not for the cracks in the floor and walls the miserable inmates would surely smother. They do not bring their cattleintothe house, for it is very frail and set upon poles about six feet from the ground, but they do keep themunderthe house, so that they can hear if thieves come to steal them.
They never give any dinner- or tea-parties or visit each other, as we do at home. There is an occasional feast, as at a wedding, a funeral or a hair-cutting, and sometimes neighbor girls will sit together under the trees to sew, or by the same lamp at night to economize oil and to chat and gossip. A great place for the latter pastime is at the temples when they go to hear the Buddhist services, which are usually in Bali, and therefore not understood, or by the river-banks and wells when they go to fetch water.
Thus you see that housekeeping among the Siamese is very simple and primitive. There are no women who have worn out their lives in making and mending, baking and scrubbing, and fussing over a cook-stove. They do not dread the spring house-cleaning or the fall setting up of stoves and putting down of carpets. There is no Thanksgiving dinner to cook, nor Christmas holiday feasting, and no Fourth of July picnic; no preserving or pickling, no canning of fruits nor packing of butter nor pressing of cheese.
But, alas! there is no happy home-life either—no family altar, no pleasant social board where father, mother, sisters and brothers meet three times a day, and, thanking God for food, eat with joy and gladness and grow strong for his service; no sitting-room, where some of the happiest years of our lives are spent in loving companionship with those of our own household, no place for books, and no books to read, except perhaps a few vile tales or books of superstition and witchery.
May God pity Siam and plant in her kingdom many happy Christian homes! May her people be purified and cleansed, and taught of him in all things! Then, and not till then, will the good influences, working from the heart outward, touch and cleanse and beautify all their surroundings.
Note.—The reader will doubtless notice that my description is of Siamese life among the lower classes, not among those who have come in contact with missionaries and been improved somewhat, nor those of the higher classes in Bangkok—the princes and nobles, whose old-time home-life was neater and more orderly than that here described. These, through the influence of foreigners coming to Siam and visits to foreign lands, have raised themselves in the scale of living, and have foreign houses filled with foreign furniture and conveniences, order sumptuous meals from foreign bakeries, and have them placed upon their tables and served in modern style. I do not consider that trueSiamesehousekeeping.