Shape of a Lady’s Shoe.PREVALENCE OF THE FASHION.—LADIES’ SHOES.The opinion prevails abroad that only the daughters of the rich or learned pay this price to Dame Fashion. A greater proportion is indeed found among the well-to-do classes, and in the southern provinces near the rivers the unfashionables form perhaps half of the whole; for those who dwell in boats, and all who in early life may have lived on the water or among the farmsteads, and slave girls sold in infancy for domestics, are usually left in the happy though low-life freedom of nature. Close observation in the northern provinces show general adoption of the usage among the poor, whose feet are not, however, usually so small as in the south. Foreigners, on their arrival at Canton or Fuhchau, seeing so many women with natural feet on the boats and about the streets, wonder where the “little-footed Celestials” they had heard of were, the only specimens they see being a few crones by the wayside mending clothes. Across the Mei ling range the proportion increases. All the women who came to the hospital at Chusan in 1841, to the number of eight hundred or one thousand, had their feet more or less cramped; and some of them walked several miles to the hospital and home again the same day. Although the operation may be less painful than has been represented, the people are so much accustomed to it that most men would refuse to wed a woman whose feet were of the natural size; and a man who should find out that his bride had large feet when he expected small ones would be exonerated if he instantly sent her back to her parents. Thekin lien, or ‘golden lilies,’ are desired as the mark of gentility; the hope of rising to be one of the upper ten, and escaping the roughness and hard work attached to the lower class, goes farto strengthen even children to endure the pain and loss of freedom consequent on the practice. The secret of the prevalence of the cruel custom is the love of ease and praise; and not till the principles of Christianity extend will it cease. In Peking, where the Manchus have shown the advantages nature has over fashion, the example of their women for two hundred and fifty years, aided by the earnest efforts of the great Emperor Kanghí, has not had the least effect in inducing Chinese ladies to give it up. The shoes are made of red silk and prettily embroidered; but no one acquainted with Chinese society would say that “if a lady ever breaks through the prohibition against displaying her person, she presents her feet as the surest darts with which a lover’s heart can be assailed!”[364]Cosmetics are used by females to the serious injury of the skin. On grand occasions the face is entirely bedaubed with white paint, and rouge is added to the lips and cheeks, giving a singular starched appearance to the physiognomy. A girl thus beautified has no need of a fan to hide her blushes, for they cannot be seen through the paint, her eye being the only index of emotion. The eyebrows are blackened with charred sticks, and arched or narrowed to resemble a nascent willow leaf, or the moon when first seen—as in the ballad translated by Mr. Stent, which pictures the beauty as possessingEyebrows shaped like leaves of willowsDrooping over “autumn billows;”Almond shaped, of liquid brightness,Were the eyes of Yang-kuei-fei.[365]A belle is described as having cheeks like the almond flower, lips like a peach’s bloom, waist as the willow leaf, eyes bright as dancing ripples in the sun, and footsteps like the lotus flower. Much time and care is bestowed, or said to be, by females upon their toilet, but if those in the upper classes have anything likethe variety of domestic duties which their sisters in common life perform, they have little leisure left for superfluous adorning. If dramas give an index of Chinese manners and occupations, they do not convey the idea that most of the time of well-bred ladies is spent in idleness or dressing.TOILET PRACTICES.At his toilet a Chinese uses a basin of tepid water and a cloth, and it has been aptly remarked that he never appears so dirty as when trying to clean himself. Shaving is done by the barber, for no man can shave the top of his head. Whiskers are never worn, even by the very few who have them, and mustaches are not considered proper for a man under forty. Snuff bottles and tobacco pipes are carried and used by both sexes, but the practice of chewing betel-nut is confined to the men, who, however, take much pains to keep their teeth white. Among ornamental articles of dress, in none do they go to so much expense and style as in the snuff bottle, which is often carved from stone, amber, agate, and other rare minerals with most exquisite taste. Snuff is put on the thumb-nail with a spoon fastened to the stopper—a more cleanly way than the European mode of “pinching.”[366]The articles of food which the Chinese eat, and the mode and ceremonies attending their feasts, have aided much, in giving them the odd character they bear abroad, though uncouth or unsavory viands form an infinitesimal portion of their food, and ceremonious feasts not one in a thousand of their repasts. Travellers have so often spoken of birdsnest soup, canine hams, and grimalkin fricassees, rats, snakes, worms, and other culinary novelties, served up in equally strange ways, that their readers get the idea that these articles form as large a proportion of the food as their description does of the narrative. In general, the diet of the Chinese is sufficient in variety, wholesome, andwell cooked, though many of the dishes are unpalatable to a European from the vegetable oils used in their preparation, and the alliaceous plants introduced to savor them. In the assortment of dishes, Barrow has truly said that “there is a wider difference, perhaps, between the rich and the poor of China than in any other country. That wealth, which if permitted would be expended in flattering the vanity of its possessors, is now applied to the purchase of dainties to pamper the appetite.”The proportion of animal food is probably smaller among the Chinese than other nations on the same latitude, one platter of fish or flesh, and sometimes both, being the usual allowance on the tables of the poor. Rice, maize, Italian millet, and wheat furnish most of the cereal food; the first is emphatically the staff of life, and considered indispensable all over the land. Its long use is indicated in the number of terms employed to describe it and the variety of allusions to it in common expressions. Totake a mealischih fan, ‘eat rice;’ and the salutation equivalent tohow d’ye?ischih kwo fan?‘have you eaten rice?’ The grain is deprived of its skin by wooden pestles worked in a mortar by levers, either by a water-wheel or more commonly by oxen or men. It is cleaned by rubbing it in an earthen dish scored on the inside, and steamed in a shallow iron boiler partly filled with water, over which a basket or sieve containing the rice is supported on a framework; a wooden dish fits over the whole and confines the steam. By this process the kernels are thoroughly cooked without forming a pasty mass, as is too often the result when boiled by cooks in Christian countries. Bread, vegetables, and other articles are cooked in a similar manner; four or five sieves, each of them full and nicely fitting into each other, are placed upon the boiler and covered with a cowl; in the water beneath, which supplies the steam, meats or other things are boiled at the same time. Wheat flour is boiled into cakes, dumplings, and other articles, but not baked into bread. Maize, buckwheat, oats, and barley are not ground, but the grain is cooked in various ways, alone or mixed with other dishes. Italian millet, or canary-seed (Setaria), furnishes a large amount of nutritious cereal food in the north; the flour is yellow and sweet, and boiled or baked for eating, oftenseasoned with jujube plums in the cakes. Its cultivation is easy, and its prolific crop makes up in a measure for the small seeds; ten thousand kernels have been counted on one spike in a good season.VEGETABLES EATEN BY THE CHINESE.The Chinese have a long list of culinary vegetables, and much of their agriculture consists in rearing them. Leguminous and cruciferous plants occupy the largest part of the kitchen garden; more than twenty sorts of peas and beans are cultivated, some for camels and horses, but mostly for men.Soyis made by boiling the beans and mixing water, salt, and wheat, and producing fermentation by yeast; its quality is inferior to the foreign. Another more common condiment, called bean curd or bean jam, is prepared by boiling and grinding black beans and mixing the flour with water, gypsum, and turmeric. The consumption of cabbage, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cress, colewort, and other cruciferous plants is enormous; a great variety of modes are adopted for cooking, preserving, and improving them. The leaves and stems of many plants besides those are included in the variety of greens, and a complete enumeration of them would form a curious list. Lettuce, sow thistle (Sonchus), spinach, celery, dandelion, succory, sweet basil, ginger, mustard, radishes, artemisia, amaranthus, tacca, pig weed (Chenopodium), burslane, shepherd’s purse, clover, ailantus, and others having no English names, all furnish green leaves for Chinese tables. Garlics, leeks, scallions, onions, and chives are eaten by all classes, detected upon all persons, and smelt in all rooms where they are eating or cooking. Carrots, gourds, squashes, cucumbers, watermelons, tomatoes, turnips, radishes, brinjals, pumpkins, okers, etc., are among the list of garden vegetables; the variety of cucurbitaceous plants extends to nearly twenty. Most of these vegetables are inferior to the same articles in the markets of western cities, where science has improved their size or flavor. Several aquatic plants increase the list, among which the nelumbium covers extensive marshes in the eastern and northern provinces, otherwise unsightly and barren. The root is two or three feet long, and pierced longitudinally with several holes; when boiled it is of a yellowish color and sweetish taste, not unlike a turnip. Taro is used less than the nelumbium, andso are the water-caltrops (Trapa) and water-chestnuts. The taste of water-caltrops when boiled resembles that of new cheese; water-chestnuts are the round roots of a kind of sedge, and resemble that fruit in color more than in taste, which is mealy and crisp. The sweet potato is the most common tuber; although the Irish potato has been cultivated for scores of years it has not become a common vegetable among the people, except on the borders of Mongolia.COMMON TABLE FRUITS.The catalogue of fruits comprises most of those occurring elsewhere in the tropic and temperate zones, and China is probably the earliest home of the peach, plum, and pear. The pears are large and juicy, sometimes weighing eight or ten pounds; the white and strawberry pear are equal to any western variety. The apples are rather dry and insipid. The peaches, plums, quinces, and apricots are better, and offer many good varieties. Cherries are almost unknown. The orange is the common fruit at the south, and the baskets, stalls, and piles of this golden fruit, mixed with and heightened by contrast with other sorts and with vegetables, which line the streets of Canton and Amoy in winter, present a beautiful sight. Many distinct species of Citrus, as the lemon, kumquot, pumelo, citron, and orange, are extensively cultivated. The most delicious is thechu-sha kih, or ‘mandarin orange;’ the skin, when ripe, is of a cinnabar red color, and adheres to the pulp by a few loose fibres. The citron is more prized for its fragrance than taste, and the thick rind is now and then made more abundant by cutting it into strips when growing, each of which becomes a roundish end like a finger, whence the name ofFuh shao, or ‘Buddha’s hand,’ given it. It will remain uncorrupt for two or three months, diffusing an agreeable perfume.ChapterVI.contains brief notices of other fruits. The banana and persimmon are common, and several varieties are enumerated of each; the plantain is eaten raw and cooked, and forms a large item in the subsistence of the poor. The pomegranate, carambola or tree gooseberry, mango, custard-apple, pine-apple, rose-apple, bread-fruit, fig, guava, and olive, some of them as good and others inferior to what are found in other countries, increase the list. Thewhampe,líchí,lungan, or ‘dragon’s eyes,’ andloquat, are the native names of four indigenous fruits at Canton. The whampe (Cookia) resembles a grape in size and a gooseberry in taste; the loquat orpebo(Eriobotrya) is a kind of medlar. The líchí looks like a strawberry in size and shape; the tough, rough red skin encloses a sweet watery pulp of a whitish color surrounding a hard seed. Grapes are plenty and cheap; in the northern cities they are preserved during the winter, and even till May, by constant care in regulating the temperature.Chestnuts, walnuts, ground-nuts, filberts (Torreya), almonds, and the seeds of the salisburia and nelumbium, are the most common nuts. The Chinese date (Rhamnus) has a sweetish, acidulous flesh; the olive is salted or pickled; the names of both these fruits are given them because of a resemblance to the western sorts, for neither the proper date nor olive grows in China. A pleasant sweetmeat, like cranberry, is made from the seeds of the arbutus (Myrica), and another still more acid from a sort of haw, both of them put up for exportation.Preserved fruits are common, and the list of sweetmeats and delicacies is increased by the addition of many roots, some of which are preserved in syrup and others as comfits. Ginger, nelumbium roots, bamboo shoots, the common potato, and other vegetables are thus prepared for export as well as domestic consumption. The natives consume enormous quantities of pickles of an inferior quality, especially cabbages and onions, but foreigners consider them detestable. The Chinese eat but few spices; black pepper is used medicinally as a tea, and cayenne pepper when the pod is green.Oils and fats are in universal use for cooking; crude lard or pork fat, castor oil, sesamum oil, and that expressed from two species of Camellia and the ground-nut, are all employed for domestic and culinary purposes. The Chinese use little or no milk, butter, or cheese; the comparatively small number of cattle raised and the consequent dearness of these articles may have caused them to fall into disuse, for they are all common among the Manchus and Mongols. A Chinese table seems ill furnished to a foreigner when he sees neither bread, butter, nor milk upon it, and if he express his disrelish of the oily dishes oralliaceous stews before him, the Chinese thinks that he delivers a sufficient retort to his want of taste when he answers, “You eat cheese, and sometimes when it can almost walk.” Milk is used a little, and no one who has lived in Canton can forget the prolonged mournful cry ofngao nai!of the men hawking it about the streets late at night. Women’s milk is sold for the sustenance of infants and superannuated people, the idea being prevalent that it is peculiarly nourishing to aged persons.[367]Sugar is grown only in Formosa and the three southern provinces, which supply the others; neither molasses nor rum are manufactured from it. No sugar is expressed from sorghum stalks, nor do the Chinese know that it contains syrup. The tobacco is milder than the American plant; it is smoked and not chewed or made into cigars, though these are being imported from Manila in steadily increasing quantities, and find favor among many of the wealthier Chinese; snuff is largely used. The betel-nut is a common masticatory, made up of a slice of the nut and the fresh leaf of the betel-pepper with a little lime rubbed on it. The common beverages are tea and arrack, both of which are taken warm; cold water is not often drunk, cold liquids of any kind being considered unwholesome. The constant practice of boiling water before drinking, in preparing tea, doubtless tends to make it less noxious, when the people are not particular as to its sources. Coffee, chocolate, and cocoa are unknown, as are also beer, cider, porter, wine, and brandy.KINDS OF ANIMAL FOOD USED.The meats consumed by the Chinese comprise, perhaps, a greater variety than are used in other countries; while, at the same time, very little land is appropriated to rearing animals for food. Beef is not a common meat, chiefly from a Buddhistic prejudice against killing so useful an animal. Mutton in the southern provinces is poor and dear compared with its excellence and cheapness north of the Yangtsz’ River, where the greater numbers of Mohammedans cause a larger demand for it. The beef of the buffalo and the mutton of the goat are still less used; pork is consumed more than all other kinds, and no meat can be raised so economically. Hardly a family so poor that it cannot possess a pig; the animals are kept even on the boats and rafts, to consume and fatten upon what others leave. Fresh pork probably constitutes more than half of the meat eaten by the Chinese; hams are tolerably plenty, and a dish called “golden hams,” from the amber appearance of the joint, makes a conspicuous object in feasts. Horseflesh, venison, wild boar, and antelope are now and then seen, but in passing through the markets mutton, pork, fowls, and fish are the viands which everywhere meet the eye.A few kittens and puppies are sold alive in cages, mewing and yelping as if in anticipation of their fate, or from pain caused by the pinching and handling they receive at the hands of dissatisfied customers. Those intended for the table are usually fed upon rice, so that if the nature of their food be considered, their flesh is far more cleanly than that of the omnivorous hog; few articles of food have, however, been so identified abroad with the tastes of the people as kittens, puppies, and rats have with the Chinese. American school geographies often contain pictures of a market-man carrying baskets holding these unfortunate victims of a perverse taste (as we think), or else a string of rats and mice hanging by their tails to a stick across his shoulders, which almost necessarily convey the idea that such things form the usual food of the people. Travellers hear beforehand that the Chinese devour everything, and when they arrive in the country straightway inquire if these animals are eaten, and hearing that such is the case, perpetuate the idea that they form the common articles of food. However commonly live kittens and puppies or dressed dogs may be exposed for sale, one may live in a city like Canton or Fuhchau for many years and never see rats offered for food, unless he hunts up the people who sell them for medicine or aphrodisiacs; in fact, they are not so easily caught as to be either common or cheap. A peculiar prejudice in favor of black dogs and catsexists among natives of the south; these animals invariably command a higher price than others, and are eaten at midsummer in the belief that the meat ensures health and strength during the ensuing year.Rats and mice are, no doubt, eaten now and then, and so are many other undesirable things, by those whom want compels to take what they can get; but to put these and other strange eatables in the front of the list gives a distorted idea of the everyday food of the people. There are perhaps half a dozen restaurants in Canton city where dog’s-meat appears upon themenu; it is, however, by no means an inexpensive delicacy.[368]The flesh of rats is eaten by old women as a hair restorative.The blood of ducks, pigs, and sheep is used as food, or prepared for medicine and as a paste; it forms an ingredient in priming and some kind of varnish. It is coagulated into cakes for sale, and in cooking is mixed with the meats and sauces. The blood of all animals is eaten without repugnance so far as concerns religious scruples, except in the case of Buddhist priests.Frogs are caught in a curious manner by tying a young jumper lately emerged from tadpole life to a line and bobbing him up and down in the grass and grain of a rice field, where the old croakers are wont to harbor. As soon as one of them sees the young frog sprawling and squirming he makes a plunge at him and swallows him whole, whereupon he is immediately conveyed to the frog-fisher’s basket, losing his life, liberty, and lunch together, for the bait is rescued from his maw and used again as long as life lasts.HATCHING DUCKS’ EGGS.Poultry, including chickens, geese, and ducks, are everywhere raised; of the three the geese are the best flavored, but all of them are reared cheaply and supply a large portion of the poor with the principal meat they eat. The eggs of fowls and ducks are hatched artificially, and every visitor to Canton remembers the duck-boats in which those birds are hatched and reared and carried up and down the river seeking for pasture along its muddy banks. Sheds are erected for hatching, in which area number of high baskets well lined to retain the heat. Each one is placed over a fireplace, so that the heat shall be conveyed to the eggs through the tile in its bottom and retained in the basket by a close cover. When the eggs are brought a layer is put into the bottom of each basket, and a fire kept in the room at a uniform heat of about 80° F. After four or five days they are examined in a strong light, to separate the addled ones; the others are put back in the baskets and the heat kept up for ten days longer, when they are all placed upon shelves in the centre of the shed and covered with cotton and felt for fourteen days. At the end of the twenty-eighth day the shells are broken to release the inmates, which are sold to those who rear them. Pigeons are raised to a great extent; their eggs form an ingredient in soups. Wild and water fowl are caught in nets or shot; the wild duck, teal, grebe, wild goose, plover, snipe, heron, egret, partridge, pheasant, and ortolan or rice bird are all procurable at Canton, and the list could be increased elsewhere.If the Chinese eat many things which are rejected by other peoples, they are perfectly omnivorous with respect to aquatic productions; here nothing comes amiss; all waters are vexed with their fisheries. Their nets and other contrivances for capturing fish display great ingenuity, and most of them are admirably adapted to the purpose. Rivers, creeks, and stagnant pools, the great ocean and the little tank, mountain lakes and garden ponds, tubs and rice fields, all furnish their quota to the sustenance of man, and tend to explain, in a great degree, the dense population. The right to fish in running streams and natural waters is open to all, while artificial reservoirs, as ponds, pools, tanks, tubs, etc., are brought into available use; near tide-water the rice grounds are turned into fish-ponds in winter if they will thereby afford a more profitable return. The inhabitants of the water are killed with the spear, caught with the hook, scraped up by the dredge, ensnared by traps, and captured by nets; they are decoyed to jump into boats by painted boards, and frightened into nets by noisy ones, taken out of the water by lifting nets and dived for by birds—for the cormorant seizes what his owner could not easily reach. In short, every possible way of catching or rearing fish is practised in one part of thecountry or another. Tanks are placed in the streets, with water running through them, where carp or perch are reared until they become so large they can hardly turn round in their pens; eels and water-snakes of every color and size are fed in tubs and jars until customers carry them off.King-crabs, cuttle-fish, sharks, sting-rays, gobies, tortoises, turtles, crabs, prawns, crawfish, and shrimps add to the variety. The best fish in the Canton market are the garoupa or rock cod, pomfret, sole, mackerel, bynni carp or mango fish, and the polynemus, erroneously called salmon. Carp and tench of many kinds, herring, shad, perch, mullet, and bream, with others less common at the west, are found in great abundance. They are usually eaten fresh, or merely opened and dried in the sun, as stock-fish. Both salt and fresh-water shell-fish are abundant. The oysters are not so well flavored as those on the Atlantic coast of America; the crabs and prawns are excellent, but the clams, mussels, and other fresh-water species are less palatable. Insect food is confined to locusts and grasshoppers, grubs and silk-worms; the latter are fried to a crisp when cooked. These and water-snakes are decidedly the most repulsive things the Chinese eat.Many articles of food are sought after by this sensual people for their supposed aphrodisiac qualities, and most of the singular productions brought from abroad for food are of this nature. The famous birdsnest soup is prepared from the nest of a swallow (Collocalia esculenta) found in caves and damp places in some islands of the Indian Archipelago; the bird macerates the material of the nest from seaweed (Gelidiumchiefly) in the crop, and constructs it by drawing the food out in fibres, which are attached to the damp stone with the bill. The nest has the same shape as those which chimney swallows build, and holds the young against the cliffs; they rarely exceed three or four inches in the longest diameter. The operation of cleaning is performed by picking away each morsel of dirt or feathers from the nest, and involves considerable labor. After they come forth perfectly free from impurities they are stewed with pigeons’ eggs, spicery, and other ingredients into a soup; when cooked they resemble isinglass, and the dish depends upon sauces and seasoning for most of its taste. The biche-de-mer, tripang, orsea-slug, is a marine substance procured from the Polynesian Islands; it is sought after under the same idea of its invigorating qualities, and being cheaper than the birdsnest is a more common dish; when cooked it resembles pork-rind in appearance and taste. Sharks’ fins and fish-maws are imported and boiled into gelatinous soups that are nourishing and palatable; and the sinews, tongues, palates, udders, and other parts of different animals are sought after as delicacies. A large proportion of the numerous made dishes seen at great feasts consists of such odd articles, most of which are supposed to possess some peculiar strengthening quality.COOKING AMONG THE CHINESE.The art of cooking has not reached any high degree of perfection. Like the French, it is very economical, and consists of stews and fried dishes more than of baked or roasted. Salt is proportionately dear from its preparation being a government monopoly, and this has led to a large use of onions for seasoning. The articles of kitchen furniture are few and simple; an iron boiler, shaped like the segment of a sphere, for stewing or frying, a portable earthen furnace, and two or three different shaped earthenware pots for boiling water or vegetables constitute the whole establishment of thousands of families. A few other utensils, as tongs, ladles, forks, sieves, mills, etc., are used to a greater or less extent, though the variety is quite commensurate with the simple cookery. Both meats and vegetables, previously hashed into mouthfuls, are stewed or fried in oil or fat; they are not cooked in large joints or steaks for the table of a household. Hogs are baked whole for sacrifices and for sale in cook-shops, but before being eaten are hashed and fried again. Cutting the food into small pieces secures its thorough cooking with less fuel than it would otherwise require, and is moreover indispensable for eating with chopsticks. Two or three vegetables are boiled together, but meat soups are seldom seen; and the immense variety of puddings, pastry, cakes, pies, custards, ragouts, creams, etc., made in western lands is almost unknown in China.[369]
Shape of a Lady’s Shoe.
Shape of a Lady’s Shoe.
Shape of a Lady’s Shoe.
PREVALENCE OF THE FASHION.—LADIES’ SHOES.
The opinion prevails abroad that only the daughters of the rich or learned pay this price to Dame Fashion. A greater proportion is indeed found among the well-to-do classes, and in the southern provinces near the rivers the unfashionables form perhaps half of the whole; for those who dwell in boats, and all who in early life may have lived on the water or among the farmsteads, and slave girls sold in infancy for domestics, are usually left in the happy though low-life freedom of nature. Close observation in the northern provinces show general adoption of the usage among the poor, whose feet are not, however, usually so small as in the south. Foreigners, on their arrival at Canton or Fuhchau, seeing so many women with natural feet on the boats and about the streets, wonder where the “little-footed Celestials” they had heard of were, the only specimens they see being a few crones by the wayside mending clothes. Across the Mei ling range the proportion increases. All the women who came to the hospital at Chusan in 1841, to the number of eight hundred or one thousand, had their feet more or less cramped; and some of them walked several miles to the hospital and home again the same day. Although the operation may be less painful than has been represented, the people are so much accustomed to it that most men would refuse to wed a woman whose feet were of the natural size; and a man who should find out that his bride had large feet when he expected small ones would be exonerated if he instantly sent her back to her parents. Thekin lien, or ‘golden lilies,’ are desired as the mark of gentility; the hope of rising to be one of the upper ten, and escaping the roughness and hard work attached to the lower class, goes farto strengthen even children to endure the pain and loss of freedom consequent on the practice. The secret of the prevalence of the cruel custom is the love of ease and praise; and not till the principles of Christianity extend will it cease. In Peking, where the Manchus have shown the advantages nature has over fashion, the example of their women for two hundred and fifty years, aided by the earnest efforts of the great Emperor Kanghí, has not had the least effect in inducing Chinese ladies to give it up. The shoes are made of red silk and prettily embroidered; but no one acquainted with Chinese society would say that “if a lady ever breaks through the prohibition against displaying her person, she presents her feet as the surest darts with which a lover’s heart can be assailed!”[364]
Cosmetics are used by females to the serious injury of the skin. On grand occasions the face is entirely bedaubed with white paint, and rouge is added to the lips and cheeks, giving a singular starched appearance to the physiognomy. A girl thus beautified has no need of a fan to hide her blushes, for they cannot be seen through the paint, her eye being the only index of emotion. The eyebrows are blackened with charred sticks, and arched or narrowed to resemble a nascent willow leaf, or the moon when first seen—as in the ballad translated by Mr. Stent, which pictures the beauty as possessing
Eyebrows shaped like leaves of willowsDrooping over “autumn billows;”Almond shaped, of liquid brightness,Were the eyes of Yang-kuei-fei.[365]
Eyebrows shaped like leaves of willowsDrooping over “autumn billows;”Almond shaped, of liquid brightness,Were the eyes of Yang-kuei-fei.[365]
Eyebrows shaped like leaves of willowsDrooping over “autumn billows;”Almond shaped, of liquid brightness,Were the eyes of Yang-kuei-fei.[365]
Eyebrows shaped like leaves of willows
Drooping over “autumn billows;”
Almond shaped, of liquid brightness,
Were the eyes of Yang-kuei-fei.[365]
A belle is described as having cheeks like the almond flower, lips like a peach’s bloom, waist as the willow leaf, eyes bright as dancing ripples in the sun, and footsteps like the lotus flower. Much time and care is bestowed, or said to be, by females upon their toilet, but if those in the upper classes have anything likethe variety of domestic duties which their sisters in common life perform, they have little leisure left for superfluous adorning. If dramas give an index of Chinese manners and occupations, they do not convey the idea that most of the time of well-bred ladies is spent in idleness or dressing.
TOILET PRACTICES.
At his toilet a Chinese uses a basin of tepid water and a cloth, and it has been aptly remarked that he never appears so dirty as when trying to clean himself. Shaving is done by the barber, for no man can shave the top of his head. Whiskers are never worn, even by the very few who have them, and mustaches are not considered proper for a man under forty. Snuff bottles and tobacco pipes are carried and used by both sexes, but the practice of chewing betel-nut is confined to the men, who, however, take much pains to keep their teeth white. Among ornamental articles of dress, in none do they go to so much expense and style as in the snuff bottle, which is often carved from stone, amber, agate, and other rare minerals with most exquisite taste. Snuff is put on the thumb-nail with a spoon fastened to the stopper—a more cleanly way than the European mode of “pinching.”[366]
The articles of food which the Chinese eat, and the mode and ceremonies attending their feasts, have aided much, in giving them the odd character they bear abroad, though uncouth or unsavory viands form an infinitesimal portion of their food, and ceremonious feasts not one in a thousand of their repasts. Travellers have so often spoken of birdsnest soup, canine hams, and grimalkin fricassees, rats, snakes, worms, and other culinary novelties, served up in equally strange ways, that their readers get the idea that these articles form as large a proportion of the food as their description does of the narrative. In general, the diet of the Chinese is sufficient in variety, wholesome, andwell cooked, though many of the dishes are unpalatable to a European from the vegetable oils used in their preparation, and the alliaceous plants introduced to savor them. In the assortment of dishes, Barrow has truly said that “there is a wider difference, perhaps, between the rich and the poor of China than in any other country. That wealth, which if permitted would be expended in flattering the vanity of its possessors, is now applied to the purchase of dainties to pamper the appetite.”
The proportion of animal food is probably smaller among the Chinese than other nations on the same latitude, one platter of fish or flesh, and sometimes both, being the usual allowance on the tables of the poor. Rice, maize, Italian millet, and wheat furnish most of the cereal food; the first is emphatically the staff of life, and considered indispensable all over the land. Its long use is indicated in the number of terms employed to describe it and the variety of allusions to it in common expressions. Totake a mealischih fan, ‘eat rice;’ and the salutation equivalent tohow d’ye?ischih kwo fan?‘have you eaten rice?’ The grain is deprived of its skin by wooden pestles worked in a mortar by levers, either by a water-wheel or more commonly by oxen or men. It is cleaned by rubbing it in an earthen dish scored on the inside, and steamed in a shallow iron boiler partly filled with water, over which a basket or sieve containing the rice is supported on a framework; a wooden dish fits over the whole and confines the steam. By this process the kernels are thoroughly cooked without forming a pasty mass, as is too often the result when boiled by cooks in Christian countries. Bread, vegetables, and other articles are cooked in a similar manner; four or five sieves, each of them full and nicely fitting into each other, are placed upon the boiler and covered with a cowl; in the water beneath, which supplies the steam, meats or other things are boiled at the same time. Wheat flour is boiled into cakes, dumplings, and other articles, but not baked into bread. Maize, buckwheat, oats, and barley are not ground, but the grain is cooked in various ways, alone or mixed with other dishes. Italian millet, or canary-seed (Setaria), furnishes a large amount of nutritious cereal food in the north; the flour is yellow and sweet, and boiled or baked for eating, oftenseasoned with jujube plums in the cakes. Its cultivation is easy, and its prolific crop makes up in a measure for the small seeds; ten thousand kernels have been counted on one spike in a good season.
VEGETABLES EATEN BY THE CHINESE.
The Chinese have a long list of culinary vegetables, and much of their agriculture consists in rearing them. Leguminous and cruciferous plants occupy the largest part of the kitchen garden; more than twenty sorts of peas and beans are cultivated, some for camels and horses, but mostly for men.Soyis made by boiling the beans and mixing water, salt, and wheat, and producing fermentation by yeast; its quality is inferior to the foreign. Another more common condiment, called bean curd or bean jam, is prepared by boiling and grinding black beans and mixing the flour with water, gypsum, and turmeric. The consumption of cabbage, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cress, colewort, and other cruciferous plants is enormous; a great variety of modes are adopted for cooking, preserving, and improving them. The leaves and stems of many plants besides those are included in the variety of greens, and a complete enumeration of them would form a curious list. Lettuce, sow thistle (Sonchus), spinach, celery, dandelion, succory, sweet basil, ginger, mustard, radishes, artemisia, amaranthus, tacca, pig weed (Chenopodium), burslane, shepherd’s purse, clover, ailantus, and others having no English names, all furnish green leaves for Chinese tables. Garlics, leeks, scallions, onions, and chives are eaten by all classes, detected upon all persons, and smelt in all rooms where they are eating or cooking. Carrots, gourds, squashes, cucumbers, watermelons, tomatoes, turnips, radishes, brinjals, pumpkins, okers, etc., are among the list of garden vegetables; the variety of cucurbitaceous plants extends to nearly twenty. Most of these vegetables are inferior to the same articles in the markets of western cities, where science has improved their size or flavor. Several aquatic plants increase the list, among which the nelumbium covers extensive marshes in the eastern and northern provinces, otherwise unsightly and barren. The root is two or three feet long, and pierced longitudinally with several holes; when boiled it is of a yellowish color and sweetish taste, not unlike a turnip. Taro is used less than the nelumbium, andso are the water-caltrops (Trapa) and water-chestnuts. The taste of water-caltrops when boiled resembles that of new cheese; water-chestnuts are the round roots of a kind of sedge, and resemble that fruit in color more than in taste, which is mealy and crisp. The sweet potato is the most common tuber; although the Irish potato has been cultivated for scores of years it has not become a common vegetable among the people, except on the borders of Mongolia.
COMMON TABLE FRUITS.
The catalogue of fruits comprises most of those occurring elsewhere in the tropic and temperate zones, and China is probably the earliest home of the peach, plum, and pear. The pears are large and juicy, sometimes weighing eight or ten pounds; the white and strawberry pear are equal to any western variety. The apples are rather dry and insipid. The peaches, plums, quinces, and apricots are better, and offer many good varieties. Cherries are almost unknown. The orange is the common fruit at the south, and the baskets, stalls, and piles of this golden fruit, mixed with and heightened by contrast with other sorts and with vegetables, which line the streets of Canton and Amoy in winter, present a beautiful sight. Many distinct species of Citrus, as the lemon, kumquot, pumelo, citron, and orange, are extensively cultivated. The most delicious is thechu-sha kih, or ‘mandarin orange;’ the skin, when ripe, is of a cinnabar red color, and adheres to the pulp by a few loose fibres. The citron is more prized for its fragrance than taste, and the thick rind is now and then made more abundant by cutting it into strips when growing, each of which becomes a roundish end like a finger, whence the name ofFuh shao, or ‘Buddha’s hand,’ given it. It will remain uncorrupt for two or three months, diffusing an agreeable perfume.
ChapterVI.contains brief notices of other fruits. The banana and persimmon are common, and several varieties are enumerated of each; the plantain is eaten raw and cooked, and forms a large item in the subsistence of the poor. The pomegranate, carambola or tree gooseberry, mango, custard-apple, pine-apple, rose-apple, bread-fruit, fig, guava, and olive, some of them as good and others inferior to what are found in other countries, increase the list. Thewhampe,líchí,lungan, or ‘dragon’s eyes,’ andloquat, are the native names of four indigenous fruits at Canton. The whampe (Cookia) resembles a grape in size and a gooseberry in taste; the loquat orpebo(Eriobotrya) is a kind of medlar. The líchí looks like a strawberry in size and shape; the tough, rough red skin encloses a sweet watery pulp of a whitish color surrounding a hard seed. Grapes are plenty and cheap; in the northern cities they are preserved during the winter, and even till May, by constant care in regulating the temperature.
Chestnuts, walnuts, ground-nuts, filberts (Torreya), almonds, and the seeds of the salisburia and nelumbium, are the most common nuts. The Chinese date (Rhamnus) has a sweetish, acidulous flesh; the olive is salted or pickled; the names of both these fruits are given them because of a resemblance to the western sorts, for neither the proper date nor olive grows in China. A pleasant sweetmeat, like cranberry, is made from the seeds of the arbutus (Myrica), and another still more acid from a sort of haw, both of them put up for exportation.
Preserved fruits are common, and the list of sweetmeats and delicacies is increased by the addition of many roots, some of which are preserved in syrup and others as comfits. Ginger, nelumbium roots, bamboo shoots, the common potato, and other vegetables are thus prepared for export as well as domestic consumption. The natives consume enormous quantities of pickles of an inferior quality, especially cabbages and onions, but foreigners consider them detestable. The Chinese eat but few spices; black pepper is used medicinally as a tea, and cayenne pepper when the pod is green.
Oils and fats are in universal use for cooking; crude lard or pork fat, castor oil, sesamum oil, and that expressed from two species of Camellia and the ground-nut, are all employed for domestic and culinary purposes. The Chinese use little or no milk, butter, or cheese; the comparatively small number of cattle raised and the consequent dearness of these articles may have caused them to fall into disuse, for they are all common among the Manchus and Mongols. A Chinese table seems ill furnished to a foreigner when he sees neither bread, butter, nor milk upon it, and if he express his disrelish of the oily dishes oralliaceous stews before him, the Chinese thinks that he delivers a sufficient retort to his want of taste when he answers, “You eat cheese, and sometimes when it can almost walk.” Milk is used a little, and no one who has lived in Canton can forget the prolonged mournful cry ofngao nai!of the men hawking it about the streets late at night. Women’s milk is sold for the sustenance of infants and superannuated people, the idea being prevalent that it is peculiarly nourishing to aged persons.[367]
Sugar is grown only in Formosa and the three southern provinces, which supply the others; neither molasses nor rum are manufactured from it. No sugar is expressed from sorghum stalks, nor do the Chinese know that it contains syrup. The tobacco is milder than the American plant; it is smoked and not chewed or made into cigars, though these are being imported from Manila in steadily increasing quantities, and find favor among many of the wealthier Chinese; snuff is largely used. The betel-nut is a common masticatory, made up of a slice of the nut and the fresh leaf of the betel-pepper with a little lime rubbed on it. The common beverages are tea and arrack, both of which are taken warm; cold water is not often drunk, cold liquids of any kind being considered unwholesome. The constant practice of boiling water before drinking, in preparing tea, doubtless tends to make it less noxious, when the people are not particular as to its sources. Coffee, chocolate, and cocoa are unknown, as are also beer, cider, porter, wine, and brandy.
KINDS OF ANIMAL FOOD USED.
The meats consumed by the Chinese comprise, perhaps, a greater variety than are used in other countries; while, at the same time, very little land is appropriated to rearing animals for food. Beef is not a common meat, chiefly from a Buddhistic prejudice against killing so useful an animal. Mutton in the southern provinces is poor and dear compared with its excellence and cheapness north of the Yangtsz’ River, where the greater numbers of Mohammedans cause a larger demand for it. The beef of the buffalo and the mutton of the goat are still less used; pork is consumed more than all other kinds, and no meat can be raised so economically. Hardly a family so poor that it cannot possess a pig; the animals are kept even on the boats and rafts, to consume and fatten upon what others leave. Fresh pork probably constitutes more than half of the meat eaten by the Chinese; hams are tolerably plenty, and a dish called “golden hams,” from the amber appearance of the joint, makes a conspicuous object in feasts. Horseflesh, venison, wild boar, and antelope are now and then seen, but in passing through the markets mutton, pork, fowls, and fish are the viands which everywhere meet the eye.
A few kittens and puppies are sold alive in cages, mewing and yelping as if in anticipation of their fate, or from pain caused by the pinching and handling they receive at the hands of dissatisfied customers. Those intended for the table are usually fed upon rice, so that if the nature of their food be considered, their flesh is far more cleanly than that of the omnivorous hog; few articles of food have, however, been so identified abroad with the tastes of the people as kittens, puppies, and rats have with the Chinese. American school geographies often contain pictures of a market-man carrying baskets holding these unfortunate victims of a perverse taste (as we think), or else a string of rats and mice hanging by their tails to a stick across his shoulders, which almost necessarily convey the idea that such things form the usual food of the people. Travellers hear beforehand that the Chinese devour everything, and when they arrive in the country straightway inquire if these animals are eaten, and hearing that such is the case, perpetuate the idea that they form the common articles of food. However commonly live kittens and puppies or dressed dogs may be exposed for sale, one may live in a city like Canton or Fuhchau for many years and never see rats offered for food, unless he hunts up the people who sell them for medicine or aphrodisiacs; in fact, they are not so easily caught as to be either common or cheap. A peculiar prejudice in favor of black dogs and catsexists among natives of the south; these animals invariably command a higher price than others, and are eaten at midsummer in the belief that the meat ensures health and strength during the ensuing year.
Rats and mice are, no doubt, eaten now and then, and so are many other undesirable things, by those whom want compels to take what they can get; but to put these and other strange eatables in the front of the list gives a distorted idea of the everyday food of the people. There are perhaps half a dozen restaurants in Canton city where dog’s-meat appears upon themenu; it is, however, by no means an inexpensive delicacy.[368]The flesh of rats is eaten by old women as a hair restorative.
The blood of ducks, pigs, and sheep is used as food, or prepared for medicine and as a paste; it forms an ingredient in priming and some kind of varnish. It is coagulated into cakes for sale, and in cooking is mixed with the meats and sauces. The blood of all animals is eaten without repugnance so far as concerns religious scruples, except in the case of Buddhist priests.
Frogs are caught in a curious manner by tying a young jumper lately emerged from tadpole life to a line and bobbing him up and down in the grass and grain of a rice field, where the old croakers are wont to harbor. As soon as one of them sees the young frog sprawling and squirming he makes a plunge at him and swallows him whole, whereupon he is immediately conveyed to the frog-fisher’s basket, losing his life, liberty, and lunch together, for the bait is rescued from his maw and used again as long as life lasts.
HATCHING DUCKS’ EGGS.
Poultry, including chickens, geese, and ducks, are everywhere raised; of the three the geese are the best flavored, but all of them are reared cheaply and supply a large portion of the poor with the principal meat they eat. The eggs of fowls and ducks are hatched artificially, and every visitor to Canton remembers the duck-boats in which those birds are hatched and reared and carried up and down the river seeking for pasture along its muddy banks. Sheds are erected for hatching, in which area number of high baskets well lined to retain the heat. Each one is placed over a fireplace, so that the heat shall be conveyed to the eggs through the tile in its bottom and retained in the basket by a close cover. When the eggs are brought a layer is put into the bottom of each basket, and a fire kept in the room at a uniform heat of about 80° F. After four or five days they are examined in a strong light, to separate the addled ones; the others are put back in the baskets and the heat kept up for ten days longer, when they are all placed upon shelves in the centre of the shed and covered with cotton and felt for fourteen days. At the end of the twenty-eighth day the shells are broken to release the inmates, which are sold to those who rear them. Pigeons are raised to a great extent; their eggs form an ingredient in soups. Wild and water fowl are caught in nets or shot; the wild duck, teal, grebe, wild goose, plover, snipe, heron, egret, partridge, pheasant, and ortolan or rice bird are all procurable at Canton, and the list could be increased elsewhere.
If the Chinese eat many things which are rejected by other peoples, they are perfectly omnivorous with respect to aquatic productions; here nothing comes amiss; all waters are vexed with their fisheries. Their nets and other contrivances for capturing fish display great ingenuity, and most of them are admirably adapted to the purpose. Rivers, creeks, and stagnant pools, the great ocean and the little tank, mountain lakes and garden ponds, tubs and rice fields, all furnish their quota to the sustenance of man, and tend to explain, in a great degree, the dense population. The right to fish in running streams and natural waters is open to all, while artificial reservoirs, as ponds, pools, tanks, tubs, etc., are brought into available use; near tide-water the rice grounds are turned into fish-ponds in winter if they will thereby afford a more profitable return. The inhabitants of the water are killed with the spear, caught with the hook, scraped up by the dredge, ensnared by traps, and captured by nets; they are decoyed to jump into boats by painted boards, and frightened into nets by noisy ones, taken out of the water by lifting nets and dived for by birds—for the cormorant seizes what his owner could not easily reach. In short, every possible way of catching or rearing fish is practised in one part of thecountry or another. Tanks are placed in the streets, with water running through them, where carp or perch are reared until they become so large they can hardly turn round in their pens; eels and water-snakes of every color and size are fed in tubs and jars until customers carry them off.
King-crabs, cuttle-fish, sharks, sting-rays, gobies, tortoises, turtles, crabs, prawns, crawfish, and shrimps add to the variety. The best fish in the Canton market are the garoupa or rock cod, pomfret, sole, mackerel, bynni carp or mango fish, and the polynemus, erroneously called salmon. Carp and tench of many kinds, herring, shad, perch, mullet, and bream, with others less common at the west, are found in great abundance. They are usually eaten fresh, or merely opened and dried in the sun, as stock-fish. Both salt and fresh-water shell-fish are abundant. The oysters are not so well flavored as those on the Atlantic coast of America; the crabs and prawns are excellent, but the clams, mussels, and other fresh-water species are less palatable. Insect food is confined to locusts and grasshoppers, grubs and silk-worms; the latter are fried to a crisp when cooked. These and water-snakes are decidedly the most repulsive things the Chinese eat.
Many articles of food are sought after by this sensual people for their supposed aphrodisiac qualities, and most of the singular productions brought from abroad for food are of this nature. The famous birdsnest soup is prepared from the nest of a swallow (Collocalia esculenta) found in caves and damp places in some islands of the Indian Archipelago; the bird macerates the material of the nest from seaweed (Gelidiumchiefly) in the crop, and constructs it by drawing the food out in fibres, which are attached to the damp stone with the bill. The nest has the same shape as those which chimney swallows build, and holds the young against the cliffs; they rarely exceed three or four inches in the longest diameter. The operation of cleaning is performed by picking away each morsel of dirt or feathers from the nest, and involves considerable labor. After they come forth perfectly free from impurities they are stewed with pigeons’ eggs, spicery, and other ingredients into a soup; when cooked they resemble isinglass, and the dish depends upon sauces and seasoning for most of its taste. The biche-de-mer, tripang, orsea-slug, is a marine substance procured from the Polynesian Islands; it is sought after under the same idea of its invigorating qualities, and being cheaper than the birdsnest is a more common dish; when cooked it resembles pork-rind in appearance and taste. Sharks’ fins and fish-maws are imported and boiled into gelatinous soups that are nourishing and palatable; and the sinews, tongues, palates, udders, and other parts of different animals are sought after as delicacies. A large proportion of the numerous made dishes seen at great feasts consists of such odd articles, most of which are supposed to possess some peculiar strengthening quality.
COOKING AMONG THE CHINESE.
The art of cooking has not reached any high degree of perfection. Like the French, it is very economical, and consists of stews and fried dishes more than of baked or roasted. Salt is proportionately dear from its preparation being a government monopoly, and this has led to a large use of onions for seasoning. The articles of kitchen furniture are few and simple; an iron boiler, shaped like the segment of a sphere, for stewing or frying, a portable earthen furnace, and two or three different shaped earthenware pots for boiling water or vegetables constitute the whole establishment of thousands of families. A few other utensils, as tongs, ladles, forks, sieves, mills, etc., are used to a greater or less extent, though the variety is quite commensurate with the simple cookery. Both meats and vegetables, previously hashed into mouthfuls, are stewed or fried in oil or fat; they are not cooked in large joints or steaks for the table of a household. Hogs are baked whole for sacrifices and for sale in cook-shops, but before being eaten are hashed and fried again. Cutting the food into small pieces secures its thorough cooking with less fuel than it would otherwise require, and is moreover indispensable for eating with chopsticks. Two or three vegetables are boiled together, but meat soups are seldom seen; and the immense variety of puddings, pastry, cakes, pies, custards, ragouts, creams, etc., made in western lands is almost unknown in China.[369]