The markets are thronged with people making their purchases in the early mornings, and the congested condition, with the great variety of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate fish market in London. In the following table we give a list of vegetables observed there and the prices at which they were selling.

—————————————————————————————-
LIST OF VEGETABLES DISPLAYED FOR SALE IN BOONE ROAD MARKET,
SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH, 1900, WITH PRICES EXPRESSED
IN U. S. CURRENCY.—
————————————————————————————-
Cents
Lotus roots, per lb. 1.60
Bamboo sprouts, per lb. 6.40
English cabbage, per lb. 1.33
Olive greens, per lb. .67
White greens, per lb. .33
Tee Tsai, per lb. .53
Chinese celery, per lb. .67
Chinese clover, per lb. .58
Chinese clover, very young, lb. 21.33
Oblong white cabbage, per lb. 2.00
Red beans, per lb. 1.33
Yellow beans, per lb. 1.87
Peanuts, per lb. 2.49
Ground nuts, per lb. 2.96
Cucumbers, per lb. 2.58
Green pumpkin, per lb. 1.62
Maize, shelled, per lb. 1.00
Windsor beans, dry, per lb. 1.72
French lettuce, per head .44
Hau Tsai, per head .87
Cabbage lettuce, per head .22
Kale, per lb. 1.60
Rape, per lb. .23
Portuguese water cress, basket 2.15
Shang tsor, basket 8.60
Carrots, per lb. .97
String beans; per lb. 1.60
Irish potatoes, per lb. 1.60
Red onions, per lb. 4.96
Long white turnips, per lb. .44
Flat string beans, per lb. 4.80
Small white turnips, bunch .44
Onion stems, per lb. 1.29
Lima beans, green, shelled, lb. 6.45
Egg plants, per lb. 4.30
Tomatoes, per lb. 5.16
Small flat turnips, per lb. .86
Small red beets, per lb. 1.29
Artichokes, per lb. 1.29
White beans, dry, per lb. 4.80
Radishes, per lb. 1.29
Garlic, per lb. 2.15
Kohl rabi, per lb. 2.15
Mint, per lb. 4.30
Leeks, per lb. 2.18
Large celery, bleached, bunch 2.10
Sprouted peas, per lb. .80
Sprouted beans, per lb. .93
Parsnips, per lb. 1.29
Ginger roots, per lb. 1.60
Water chestnuts, per lb. 1.33
Large sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.33
Small sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.00
Onion sprouts, per lb. 2.13
Spinach, per lb. 1.00
Fleshy stemmed lettuce, peeled,
per lb. 2.00
Fleshy stemmed lettuce, unpeeled,
per lb. .67
Bean curd, per lb. 3.93
Shantung walnuts, per lb. 4.30
Duck eggs, dozen 8.34
Hen's eggs, dozen 7.30
Goat's meat, per lb. 6.45
Pork, per lb. 6.88
Hens, live weight, per lb. 6.45
Ducks, live weight, per lb. 5.59
Cockerels, live weight, per lb. 5.59—
————————————————————————————-

This long list, made up chiefly of fresh vegetables displayed for sale on one market day, is by no means complete. The record is only such as was made in passing down one side and across one end of the market occupying nearly one city block. Nearly everything is sold by weight and the problem of correct weights is effectively solved by each purchaser carrying his own scales, which he unhesitatingly uses in the presence of the dealer. These scales are made on the pattern of the old time steelyards but from slender rods of wood or bamboo provided with a scale and sliding poise, the suspensions all being made with strings.

We stood by through the purchasing of two cockerels and the dickering over their weight. A dozen live birds were under cover in a large, open-work basket. The customer took out the birds one by one, examining them by touch, finally selecting two, the price being named. These the dealer tied together by their feet and weighed them, announcing the result; whereupon the customer checked the statement with his own scales. An animated dialogue followed, punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing the birds into the basket and turning to go away while the dealer grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again balancing the roosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at the dealer, who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm subsided and the dealer accepted 92c, Mexican, for the two birds. They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three pounds each, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our currency.

Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and Japan and when one sees them growing they suggest giant stalks of asparagus, some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot in height at the stage for cutting. They are shipped in large quantities from province to province where they do not grow or when they are out of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki referred to in Fig. 22, had come from Canton or Swatow or possibly Formosa. The form, foliage and bloom of the bamboo give the most beautiful effects in the landscape, especially when grouped with tree forms. They are usually cultivated in small clumps about dwellings in places not otherwise readily utilized, as seen in Fig. 66. Like the asparagus bud, the bamboo sprout grows to its full height between April and August, even when it exceeds thirty or even sixty feet in height. The buds spring from fleshy underground stems or roots whose stored nourishment permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stages may exceed twelve inches in twenty-four hours. But while the full size of the plant is attained the first season, three or four years are required to ripen and harden the wood sufficiently to make it suitable for the many uses to which the stems are put. It would seem that the time must come when some of the many forms of bamboo will be introduced and largely grown in many parts of this country.

Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and widely cultivated from Canton to Tokyo. These are seen in the lower section of Fig. 70, and the plants in bloom in Fig. 71, growing in water, their natural habitat. The lotus is grown in permanent ponds not readily drained for rice or other crops, and the roots are widely shipped.

Sprouted beans and peas of many kinds and the sprouts of other vegetables, such as onions, are very generally seen in the markets of both China and Japan, at least during the late winter and early spring, and are sold as foods, having different flavors and digestive qualities, and no doubt with important advantageous effects in nutrition.

Ginger is another. crop which is very widely and extensively cultivated. It is generally displayed in the market in the root form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of China than the water chestnut. This is a small corm or fleshy bulb having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell a dozen spitted together on slender sticks the length of a knitting needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the canals producing a fruit resembling a horny nut having a shape which suggests for them the name "buffalo-horn". Still another plant, known as water-grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu province where the land is too wet for rice. The plant has a tender succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coarser ones away suggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten is the central tender new growth, and when cooked forms a delicate savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars, Mexican, per hundred catty, or $.97 to $1.29 per hundredweight, and the return per acre is from $13 to $20.

The small number of animal products which are included in the market list given should not be taken as indicating the proportion of animal to vegetable foods in the dietaries of these people. It is nevertheless true that they are vegetarians to a far higher degree than are most western nations, and the high maintenance efficiency of the agriculture of China, Korea and Japan is in great measure rendered possible by the adoption of a diet so largely vegetarian. Hopkins, in his Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture, page 234, makes this pointed statement of fact: "1000 bushels of grain has at least five times as much food value and will support five times as many people as will the meat or milk that can be made from it". He also calls attention to the results of many Rothamsted feeding experiments with growing and fattening cattle, sheep and swine, showing that the cattle destroyed outright, in every 100 pounds of dry substance eaten, 57.3 pounds, this passing off into the air, as does all of wood except the ashes, when burned in the stove; they left in the excrements 36.5 pounds, and stored as increase but 6.2 pounds of the 100. With sheep the corresponding figures were 60.1 pounds; 31.9 pounds and 8 pounds; and with swine they were 65.7 pounds; 16.7 pounds and 17.6 pounds. But less than two-thirds of the substance stored in the animal can become food for man and hence we get but four pounds in one hundred of the dry substances eaten by cattle in the form of human food; but five pounds from the sheep and eleven pounds from swine.

In view of these relations, only recently established as scientific facts by rigid research, it is remarkable that these very ancient people came long ago to discard cattle as milk and meat producers; to use sheep more for their pelts and wool than for food; while swine are the one kind of the three classes which they did retain in the role of middleman as transformers of coarse substances into human food.