“Nothing is more stirring than the picture presented by the wide plains of Pe-tche-li at harvest time. The toil of the husbandman has brought forth its fruit; the crops of all kinds fill to overflowing the granaries; threshers, winnowers and reapers, with crowds of gleaning women and children, fill the air with their joyous songs, as half stripped beneath the glowing sun, with their pig-tails wound around their heads, they zealously toil on from daybreak to night fall, only leaving off for a few moments to swallow an onion or two, or a handful of rice, to take a few whiffs at their pipe, or to vigorously fan themselves when the heat becomes unbearable, and the perspiration is running down their stalwart limbs.
123.—CHINESE AGRICULTURE.
“Water in this province is as little neglected as the land:
“Pisciculture is practised on a large scale and in the most intelligent manner. When spring returns, a quantity of vendors of fish spawn perambulate the country to sell this precious spat to the pond owners. The eggs, fecundated by the milt, are carried about in small barrels full of damp moss. These spawn-sellers are followed by hawkers of young fry, skilful divers who catch in very fine nets the new born fish reposing in the holes in the river beds. These fry are reared in special ponds, and disseminated when they have grown bigger in the lakes and larger pieces of water. The Chinese have succeeded in rearing and preserving in artificial basins the most interesting and most productive species of their rivers. In the immense lakes close to the Temple of Heaven at Peking, they rear gold fish, a kind of bream weighing sometimes as much as twenty-five pounds, carp, and the celebrated kia-yu, a domestic fish. Morning and evening the keepers bring herbs and grains for the fish, which greedily eat them, and which soon reach a considerable size, thanks to this fattening diet. A lake managed in this way is a greater source of revenue to its owner than the most fruitful fields.
“The sea-shore at the mouth of the Peï-ho is covered with parks to hold the fish at low water. These are made of several lengths of blue cotton stuff stretched on a cane framework, which is fastened to a quantity of small stakes. This framework folds in any direction like the leaves of a screen. A drag net is also used by the inhabitants of the coast. Soles, sea toads, bream, gold fish, whiting, cod and a quantity of other fish are caught in the gulf of Pe-tche-li. Many cetaceous fish are also found there, dolphins, several kinds of sharks, amongst them the tiger shark (Squalus tigrinus), whose striped and spotted skin is used in several manufactures, and a large species of turtle.
124.—CHINESE FISHING.