The Ice Is Rather A Costly Article, As It Has To Be Brought From North America.

In the evening, tea is served up.

During meal-times, a large punkah is employed to diffuse an agreeable degree of coolness through the apartment. The punkah is a large frame, from eight to ten feet long, and three feet high, covered with white Indian cloth, and fastened to the ceiling. A rope communicates, through the wall, like a bell-pull, with the next room, or the ground floor, where a servant is stationed to keep it constantly in motion, and thus maintain a pleasing draught.

As may be seen from what I have said, the living here is very dear for Europeans. The expense of keeping a house may be reckoned at 30,000 francs (6,000 dollars - 1,200 pounds) at the lowest; a very considerable sum, when we reflect how little it procures, neither including a carriage nor horses. There is nothing in the way of amusement, or places of public recreation; the only pleasure many gentlemen indulge in, is keeping a boat, for which they pay 28s. a- month, or they walk in the evenings in a small garden, which the European inhabitants have laid out at their own cost. This garden faces the factory, surrounded on three sides by a wall, and, on the fourth, washed by the Pearl stream.

The living of the Chinese population, on the contrary, costs very little; 60 cash, 1,200 of which make a dollar (4s.), may be reckoned a very liberal daily allowance for each man. As a natural consequence, wages are extremely low; a boat, for instance, may be hired for half a dollar (2s.) a-day, and on this income, a whole family of from six to eight persons will often exist. It is true, the Chinese are not too particular in their food; they eat dogs, cats, mice, and rats, the intestines of birds, and the blood of every animal, and I was even assured that caterpillars and worms formed part of their diet. Their principal dish, however, is rice, which is not only employed by them in the composition of their various dishes, but supplies the place of bread. It is exceedingly cheap; the pekul, which is equal to 124 lbs. English avoirdupois, costing from one dollar and three-quarters to two dollars and a half.

The costume of both sexes, among the lower orders, consists of broad trousers and long upper garments, and is remarkable for its excessive filth. The Chinaman is an enemy of baths and washing; he wears no shirt, and does not discard his trousers until they actually fall off his body. The men's upper garments reach a little below the knee, and the women's somewhat lower. They are made of nankeen, or dark blue, brown, or black silk. During the cold season, both men and women wear one summer-garment over the other, and keep the whole together with a girdle; during the great heat, however, they allow their garments to flutter unconstrained about their body.

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Words from 53369 to 53881 of 187810