districts, relates that the customary charge for supper, bed, and breakfast next morning altogether amounted to 80 cash only, or about 3 3⁄8d.![131] In the streets of Shanghai, the eating-houses are greatly out-numbered by the tea-houses, where one gets a cup of tea for 6 cash (1⁄4d.). These, like our own cafés, are laid out with little tables, stools, and benches. As soon as a guest enters and takes his seat, a Chinese attendant brings a cup, throws into it the proper quantity of tea-leaves, and pours boiling water upon it. After the lapse of a few minutes the hot light yellow liquid is hastily swallowed, but avoiding the leaves which are swimming on the surface, and usually serve for a second or even a third infusion. These tea-houses are crowded with visitors throughout the day, who sometimes transact business here over a cup of tea and a pipe of oiled tobacco, sometimes resort hither to wile the time listlessly away.
The chief place of amusement, however, of the native population of Shanghai is the Tea-Garden (Tschin-Huang-Mian), or temple of the Emperor, which contains numerous gardens laid out in Chinese fashion, and booths of all sorts, besides the attractions of jugglers, singers, actors, soothsayers, musicians, and mountebanks, all driving their respective avocations. The whole scene is eminently characteristic of the grotesqueness
of Chinese taste. Artificial canals and tanks filled with green stagnant water, redolent of miasmatic effluvia, amid which the Lotos opens its lovely white blossoms, quantities of zig-zag bridges with beautifully carved balustrades, islands with artificially constructed rocks and grottoes, subterranean passages, flags of all shapes and sizes, bearing the most bombastic inscriptions—such are the chief attractions of a Chinese People's Garden, every large town boasting one such, erected at the expense of the State, in which from early morning till late in the evening a vast crowd of human beings is incessantly surging to and fro, intent on pleasure, dissipation, or profit. The rabble, however, have not access to every part of the Tea-Garden, a certain portion being set apart for the recreation of the chief officials of the city (Táu-Tái). This portion, shut off by a lofty wall, is elegantly laid out, and is made attractive with all manner of dwarf trees nursed with great care and expense, besides the usual grottoes, artificial hills and precipices, pavilions, &c. Hither the head magistrate occasionally resorts to pass the warmest hours of the day, and dozes away undisturbed by the cares of his onerous responsibilities. All the public gardens of China present almost the identical features of the one we visited; a park without artificial islands and wooden bridges, without canals (in lieu of paths), without pools of stagnant water thickly covered with the broad leaves of the Nelumbium, would, in the eyes of a Chinese, be deprived of its chief pleasure and its greatest attraction.
Close to the Tea-Garden is the largest Buddhist Temple within the city walls, in which throughout the day the over-credulous Chinese kneel before their idols, and with many reverences murmur their set formulas of prayers. Like everything else in China, even religious observances are regarded from the most practical point of view. They think they have done enough when they have gone through a certain round of outward ceremonies. The condition of most of the temples, the utter neglect of some, and the various employments of others, indicate that the Chinese either has no sense of the sanctity attaching to such places of devotion, or else attaches but little value to the act itself. The men rarely enter the temples. It is only the women who, to satisfy the cravings of the heart, have recourse to invoking the Deity. Frequently one sees a worshipper approach the attendant sitting in the porch of the temple, in order to get their horoscope calculated by him for a few cash. For this purpose she shakes with eager devotion a box of bamboo-cane filled with thin wands, until one of these wands springs out. The words inscribed on each wand furnish the oracle-expounder with an infallible sign, by which, after consulting one of the books of Chinese wisdom spread out before him, he is enabled to pronounce the answer of the divinity to the prayers preferred by the poor dupe. The most prolific source of revenue of the temple and its ministrants, consists, however, in the sale of the gold and silver tissue paper,[132]
which plays so important a part in the worship of the Chinese, and owing to their zealous and frequent use are heaped up in immense piles, for consumption by fire in a gigantic furnace.
Much more edifying than the interior of the great Buddhist temple with its troops of swag-bellied idols in their parti-coloured apparel, some with a good-humoured leer, others sulkily scowling on the beholder, is the appearance of the temple of Confucius[133] in a remote quarter of the city. In this extensive building, at once elegant and simple, and with numerous halls and corridors, the scholars undergo their examination for the service of the state; here the Government officials at stated seasons perform certain religious ceremonies, and here all the literati assemble for the discussion of grave questions of debate. The main hall has its red-tinted walls covered with Chinese and Tartar inscriptions, all of which refer to Confucius, his doctrines and his wisdom. At intervals, a number of tablets let into the wall inform the visitor that this edifice is devoted to the instruction of the virtuous, and the cultivation of the endowments. At the same time every person who passes this in a sedan-chair or on horseback,
whether an official or one of the people, is compelled to quit his vehicle and traverse the consecrated space on foot. Over the entrance to the right is written: "His virtue is comparable to Heaven and Earth;" and above the door to the left we read, "His teachings comprise all the wisdom of ancient and modern days." Behind the temple is a smaller edifice, dedicated to the five progenitors of Confucius. The temple itself is similarly surrounded with various apartments, all, as their bombastic inscriptions announce, devoted to the honour and advancement of knowledge. One of these chambers is dedicated to the god of Literature, another to the guardian spirit of Science. The latter is curiously represented as a figure holding in one hand a stylus, in the other a lump of silver, emblematic, we presume, of "man through wisdom attaining unto riches."
In every city throughout China there is, as well as a tea-garden, a temple in honour of the great teacher Kong-fu-tse, whose knowledge and whose moral system, 2400 years after his mortal pilgrimage, instruct and gladden not merely his own countrymen, but all admirers throughout the world of what is noble and virtuous.
Among the various monasteries of the city, we visited one of the Taouists, called the Du-Kung or Great Mirror (probably of Virtue), where strangers provided with introductions are received and entertained at 150 cash (6d. per diem). This cloister, whose sole inhabitants are some five or six Chinese