The houses of the poor are dark, dirty, low, and narrow tenements, where the floor is of earth covered with mats or tiled, and the doorway the only opening, on which a swinging mat conceals the interior. The whole family often sleep, eat, and live in a single room. Pigs, dogs, and hens dispute the space with children and furniture—if a table and a few trestles and stools, pots and plates, deserve that name. The filthy street without is a counterpart to the gloomy, smoky abode within, and a single walk through the streets and lanes of such a neighborhood is sufficient to reconcile a person to any ordinary condition of life. On the outskirts of the town a still poorer class take up with huts made of mats and thatch upon the ground, through which the rain and wind find free course. It is surprising that people can live and enjoy health, and even be cheerful, as the Chinese are, in such circumstances. Between these hovels and the abodes of the rich is a class of middle houses, consisting of three or four small rooms surrounding a court, each one lodging a family, which uses its portion of the quadrangle.
The best furniture is made of a heavy wood stained to resemble ebony; camphor, elm, pine, aspen, and melia woods furnish cheaper material. Ornamental articles, porcelain vases, copper tripods or pots, stone screens, book-shelves, flowers in pots, etc., show the national taste. Ink sketches of landscapes, gay scrolls inscribed with sentences suspended from the walls, and pretty lanterns relieve the baldness of the room; their combined effect is not destitute of variety and elegance, though there is a lack of comfort. Partitions are sometimes fancifully made of lattice-work, with openings neatly arranged for the reception of boxes containing books. The bedrooms are small, poorly ventilated, and seldom visited except at night. A massive bedstead of costly woods, elaborately carved, and supporting a tester for the silk curtains and mosquito-bars, is often shown as the family pride and heirloom; a scroll of fine writing adorns its fringe or valance. Mattresses or feather beds are not used, and the pillow is a hollow square frame of rattan or bamboo. The bed, wardrobe, and toilet usually complete the furniture of the sleeping apartments of the Chinese; but if this is also the sitting room, the bed is rolled up so as often to furnish seats on its boards.
STYLE OF GARDENS.
The grounds of the rich are laid out in good style, and were not the tasteful arrangements and diversified shrubbery which would render them charming resorts almost always spoiled by general bad keeping—neglect and ruin, if not nastiness and offals, being often visible—they would please the most fastidious. The necessity of having a place for the women and children to recreate themselves is one reason for having an open enclosure, even if it be only a plat of flowers or a bed of vegetables. In the imperial gardens the attempt to make an epitome of nature has been highly successful. De Guignes describes their art of gardening as “imitating the beauties and producing the inequalities of nature. Instead of alleys planted symmetrically or uniform grounds, there are winding footpaths, trees here and there as if by chance, woody or sterile hillocks, and deep gulleys with narrow passages, whose sides are steep or rough with rocks, and presenting only a few miserable shrubs. They like to bring together in gardening, in the same view, cultivated grounds and arid plains; to make the field uneven and cover it with artificial rock-work; to dig caverns in mountains, on whose tops are arbors half overthrown, and around which tortuous footpaths run and return into themselves, prolonging, as it were, the extent of the grounds and increasing the pleasure of the walk.”
A fish-pond, supplied by a rivulet running wildly through the grounds, forms a pretty feature of such gardens, in which, if there be room, a summer-house is erected on a rocky islet, or on piles over the water, accessible by a rugged causey of rock-work. The nelumbium lily, with its plate-like leaves and magnificent flowers, is a general favorite in such places; carp and other fish are reared in their waters, and gold-fish in small tanks. Whenever it is possible a gallery runs along the sides of the pond for the pleasure and use of the females in the household. A tasteful device in some gardens, which beguiles the visitor’s ramble, is a rude kind of shell or pebble mosaic inlaid in the gravelly paths, representing birds, animals, or other figures; the time required to decipher them prolongs the walk, and apparently increases the size of the grounds. The pieces of rock-work are cemented and bound with wire; and in fish-pools, grottos, or causeways this unique ornament has a charming effect, the moss and plants which grow upon it adding rather to its appropriateness.
The wood and mason work is unsubstantial, requiring constant repairs; when new they present a pretty appearance, but both gardens and houses, when neglected, soon fall into a ruinous condition. Some of the principal merchants at Canton, in the former days of the hong monopoly, had cultivated grounds of greater or less extent attached to their establishments. One of them, by way of variety, constructed a summer-house entirely of glass, this wonderful structure being made so that it could be closed and protected with shutters.
The arrangement of shops and warehouses is modified by the uses to which they are applied, but they still resemble dwelling-houses more than is the case with stores in western cities. The rear room of the shop is a small apartment, used for a dormitory, store-room, or workshop, and sometimes for all these purposes together; it is in most cases on an upper floor. Small ones are lighted from the street, but the largest by a skylight, in which cases there is a latticed screen reaching across the room, to secure the inside from the street. The whole shop-front is thrown open by day and closed at night by shutters running in grooves, and secured by heavy cross-bars to a row of posts which fit in sockets in the threshold and lintel. The doorway recedes a foot or two, and the projecting roof serves to protect customers, and such goods as are exposed, from the rain and sun. In small shops there are two counters, a long one running back from the door, and another at right angles to it, reaching partly across the front. The shopman sits within the angle formed by these, and as they are low he can easily serve a customer in the street as well as in the shop. At night the smaller one often forms a lodging place for homeless beggars. The facing of the outer counter is of granite, and in Canton a niche containing a tablet inscribed to the god of wealth is cut in the end, where incense is burned. Another shrine is placed on high within the apartment, dedicated to the deity of the place, whoever he may be.
The loft is much contracted; and that it may not intercept the skylight, it is usually a small chamber reached by a gallery, and lighted in front. Chinese tradesmen do not make much display in exhibiting their goods, and the partial use of glass renders it somewhat unsafe for them to do so. The want of a yard compels them to cook and wash either behind or on top of the building; clerks and workmen usually eat and sleep under the shop roof. In the densest parts of Canton the roofs are covered with a loose framework, on which firewood is piled, clothes washed and dried, and meals cooked; it also affords a sleeping place in summer. In case of fire, however, these lumbered roofs become like so many tinder-boxes, and aid not a little to spread the flames.
SHOP AND THOROUGHFARES.
The narrowness of the streets in Chinese cities is a source of many inconveniences; few exceed ten or twelve feet in width, and most of those in Canton are less than eight. No large squares having fountains and shrubbery, nor any open spaces except the areas in front of temples relieve the closeness of these lanes. The absence of horses and carriages in southern cities, and a custom of huddling together, a desire to screen the thoroughfare from the sun, and ignorance of the advantages of another mode, are among the leading reasons for making them so contracted; while the difficulty of collecting a mob in them should be mentioned as one point in their favor. In case of fire it is difficult to get access to the burning buildings, and dangerous for the inmates to move or save their property. At all times porters carrying burdens are impeded by the crowd of passengers, who likewise must pass Indian file lest they tilt against the porters. Ventilation is imperfect where the buildings are packed so closely, and the public necessaries and their offal carried through the streets by the scavengers pollute the air. Drainage is very superficial and incomplete; the sewers easily choke up or get broken and exude their contents over the pathway. The ammoniacal and other gases which are generated aggravate the ophthalmic diseases so prevalent; and it is a matter of surprise that the cholera, plague, or yellow fever does not visit the inhabitants of such confined abodes, who breathe so tainted an atmosphere. The peculiar government of cities by means of wards and neighborhoods, each responsible to the officials, combined with the ignorance among all ranks of the principles of hygiene, will account for the evils so patent to one accustomed to the energetic sway of a mayor and board of health in most European cities, who can bring knowledge and power to coöperate for the well-being of all.