Chinese Method of Husking Grain.
At King-Kiang wheat is served as rice. It is first threshed with flails made of bamboo, and then pounded by a rough stone hammer, working in a mortar which rests on a pivot, and is operated like a treadle by the human foot. This separates the husks, and it is then winnowed, the grain being afterwards ground in the usual way.
Rice is undoubtedly the staple food of those parts of China where it will grow, in spite of its being a precarious crop, the failure of which means famine. A drought in its early stages withers it, and an inundation, when nearly ripe, is equally destructive; whilst the birds and locusts, which are fearfully numerous in China, infest it more than any other grain. Rice requires not only intense heat, but moisture so abundant that the field in which it grows must be repeatedly laid under water. These requisites exist only in the districts south of the Yang-tse Kiang (the Yellow River) and its several tributaries. Here a vast extent of land is perfectly fitted for this valuable crop. Confined by powerful dykes, these rivers do not generally, like the Nile, overflow and cover the country; but by means of canals their waters are so widely distributed that almost every farmer, when he pleases, can inundate his field. This supplies not only moisture, but a fertilising mud or slime, washed down from the distant mountains. The cultivator thus dispenses with manure, of which he labours under a great scarcity, and considers it enough if the grain be steeped in liquid manure.
The Chinese always transplant their rice. A small space is enclosed, and very thickly sown, after which a thin sheet of water is led or pumped over it; in the course of a few days the shoots appear, and when they have attained the height of six or seven inches the tops are cut off, and the roots transplanted to a field prepared for the purpose, when they are set in rows about six inches from each other. The whole surface is again supplied with moisture, which continues to cover the plants till they approach maturity, when the ground is allowed to become dry.
The first harvest is reaped in the end of May or beginning of June, the grain being cut with a small sickle, and carried off the field in frames suspended from bamboo poles placed across a man’s shoulders. Barrow (p. 565) thus describes one: ‘The machine usually employed for clearing rice from the husk, in the large way, is exactly the same as that now used in Egypt for the same purpose, only that the latter is put in motion by oxen and the former commonly by water. This machine consists of a long horizontal axis of wood, with cogs, or projecting pieces of wood or iron, fixed upon it at certain intervals, and it is turned by a water-wheel. At right angles to this axis are fixed as many horizontal levers as there are circular rows of cogs; these levers act on pivots that are fastened into a low brick wall, but parallel to the axis and at the distance of about two feet from it. At the further extremity of each lever, and perpendicular to it, is fixed a hollow pestle, directly over a large mortar of stone or iron sunk into the ground; the other extremity extending beyond the wall, being pressed upon by the cogs of the axis in its rotation, elevates the pestle, which by its own gravity falls into the mortar. An axis of this kind sometimes gives motion to 15 or 20 levers.’
Meantime the stubble is burnt on the land, over which the ashes are spread as its only manure; a second crop is immediately sown, and reaped about the end of October, when the straw is left to putrify on the ground, which is allowed to rest till the commencement of the ensuing spring.
As the cereal food of the Chinese is principally boiled rice, it stands to reason that bakers are not numerous, bread only appearing at the tables of high-class mandarins. It is chiefly replaced by fancy biscuits and numberless kinds of pastry, made not only with wheaten flour, but also that of rice—these serve as vehicles for the various jams and fruit compotes for which the Chinese are famous, and which they know so well how to make; in fact, the bakers are more strictly confectioners, and they can be seen any day busy in their shops baking cakes of rice flour and ground almonds of every imaginable shape and varied in quality by spices. Not only so, but these cakes are sold, already baked, in the peripatetic cookeries which go about the streets. Out of wheaten flour they make a kind of vermicelli, which is much esteemed by the Chinese.
Failure of the rice crops, and consequent famine in Japan, have been the means of introducing wheaten flour into this country more rapidly than anything else could have done. Most remarkable is the universal favour that bread and similar floury concoctions are beginning to enjoy in the treaty ports. This article of food has become completely Japanized, and sells in forms unknown to Europeans. Tsuke-pau, sold by peripatetic vendors, who push their wares along in a tiny roofed hand-cart, is much liked by the poorer classes. It consists of slices—thick, generous slices—of bread dipped in soy and brown sugar, and then fried or toasted. Each slice has a skewer passed through it, which the buyer returns after demolishing the bread.
Flour is now used in many other ways besides the manufacture of simple bread. There is Kash-pau, cake bread, which is sold everywhere. As the name implies, it is a sort of sweet breadstuff made into cakes of various sizes and artistic figures, according to the skill and fancy of the baker. To an European palate this Kash-pau is rather dry and tasteless, but it is very cheap, and for five sen (three-halfpence) a huge paper bagful can be bought. Kasuteira, or sponge cake, is not so much sought after as it used to be. Yet some bakeries, such as the Fugetsu-do and Tsuboya, excel in producing the lightest and most delicious sponge cake.