As the cucumbers were being washed with the cold well water, I thought to myself that they were probably no more germ-free after the bath than before. Unboiled water from shallow wells is not necessarily free from germs. I said nothing, however. After the daughter had finished scrubbing the cucumbers, the mother got a knife and carefully peeled two big ones. Then she handed them to us. Her own she did not bother to peel.
"We Chinese are very unhygienic," she apologized. "Of course you wouldn't eat cucumbers without peeling them!"
What would she have thought if she knew that to our minds neither the washing in cold water nor the peeling made them safe to eat? I glanced at my sister, who was usually very particular about seeing that all raw fruits and vegetables were scalded before eating, and was astonished to find that she was placidly and unconcernedly munching her cucumber. She and Mrs. Wong were already striking up a lively conversation about something else. I followed her example, and found the cucumber very refreshing.
"How can you be so particular about scalding things at home, and then go out to the country and eat unscalded cucumbers?" I asked, as we were wending our way home.
"Oh, we couldn't possibly offend Mrs. Wong by refusing to eat what she had to offer us!" was my sister's reply. "We certainly ought to be as particular as we can when we are in our own home; but when we are guests, and it's a question of offending someone—well, I think the Lord looks after those cases!"
Teacups! Beautiful Kingtechen china of the thousand-flower pattern, thin and exquisite; or perhaps just a rough earthenware cup, with the handle missing. Everywhere we went in China we found teacups. Everywhere we went the first thing we were offered was a cup of tea. Fragrant tea, bitter tea, hot tea, cold tea; tea served in hand-painted china, tea in an earthenware bowl—whatever the cup was, we lifted it to our lips and drank. What was the first thing we thought of as we tasted the tea? Whether it was pleasant or otherwise? The kindness of the one who offered it to us? Or the dangers that might lurk on the edge of that cup? For tea, even very hot tea, cannot be expected to sterilize the rim of the cup; and who knows who used it previously, or what dangerous disease he might have had? It had been washed, of course, or at least rinsed out, but—
"Don't the Chinese scald their dishes when they wash them?" you ask. Well, do you? "M-m-m, not always, but the danger is much less in America," you say. That may be true; but it is hard to realize the danger of infection in one's own home, wherever it may be; and even those who live under what we might call unhygienic conditions are no more conscious of the danger in their own homes than you are in yours. I used to think, sometimes, that the most dangerous thing we met with in China was just an ordinary teacup, and that the germs that lurked on its rim were more menacing than tigers or bandits. (Let me hastily add that in all my fifteen years in that country, and having partaken of tea from ten thousand teacups, more or less, in many places and in many homes, I am still quite alive, and in good health and spirits!)
"Now, that wouldn't worry me!" you think cheerfully. "I'm just not particular!"
I am sorry, but that is not at all the conclusion I want you to draw from the above remarks. I am giving no one license for not being careful. No child of God should feel at liberty to disregard what he knows to be the rules of good health, just because he feels like it, much less the man or woman on the mission field.