Oils and fats are in universal use for cooking; crude lard or pork fat, castor oil, sesamum oil, and that expressed from two species of Camellia and the ground-nut, are all employed for domestic and culinary purposes. The Chinese use little or no milk, butter, or cheese; the comparatively small number of cattle raised and the consequent dearness of these articles may have caused them to fall into disuse, for they are all common among the Manchus and Mongols. A Chinese table seems ill furnished to a foreigner when he sees neither bread, butter, nor milk upon it, and if he express his disrelish of the oily dishes or alliaceous stews before him, the Chinese thinks that he delivers a sufficient retort to his want of taste when he answers, “You eat cheese, and sometimes when it can almost walk.” Milk is used a little, and no one who has lived in Canton can forget the prolonged mournful cry of ngao nai! of the men hawking it about the streets late at night. Women’s milk is sold for the sustenance of infants and superannuated people, the idea being prevalent that it is peculiarly nourishing to aged persons.[367]
Sugar is grown only in Formosa and the three southern provinces, which supply the others; neither molasses nor rum are manufactured from it. No sugar is expressed from sorghum stalks, nor do the Chinese know that it contains syrup. The tobacco is milder than the American plant; it is smoked and not chewed or made into cigars, though these are being imported from Manila in steadily increasing quantities, and find favor among many of the wealthier Chinese; snuff is largely used. The betel-nut is a common masticatory, made up of a slice of the nut and the fresh leaf of the betel-pepper with a little lime rubbed on it. The common beverages are tea and arrack, both of which are taken warm; cold water is not often drunk, cold liquids of any kind being considered unwholesome. The constant practice of boiling water before drinking, in preparing tea, doubtless tends to make it less noxious, when the people are not particular as to its sources. Coffee, chocolate, and cocoa are unknown, as are also beer, cider, porter, wine, and brandy.
KINDS OF ANIMAL FOOD USED.
The meats consumed by the Chinese comprise, perhaps, a greater variety than are used in other countries; while, at the same time, very little land is appropriated to rearing animals for food. Beef is not a common meat, chiefly from a Buddhistic prejudice against killing so useful an animal. Mutton in the southern provinces is poor and dear compared with its excellence and cheapness north of the Yangtsz’ River, where the greater numbers of Mohammedans cause a larger demand for it. The beef of the buffalo and the mutton of the goat are still less used; pork is consumed more than all other kinds, and no meat can be raised so economically. Hardly a family so poor that it cannot possess a pig; the animals are kept even on the boats and rafts, to consume and fatten upon what others leave. Fresh pork probably constitutes more than half of the meat eaten by the Chinese; hams are tolerably plenty, and a dish called “golden hams,” from the amber appearance of the joint, makes a conspicuous object in feasts. Horseflesh, venison, wild boar, and antelope are now and then seen, but in passing through the markets mutton, pork, fowls, and fish are the viands which everywhere meet the eye.
A few kittens and puppies are sold alive in cages, mewing and yelping as if in anticipation of their fate, or from pain caused by the pinching and handling they receive at the hands of dissatisfied customers. Those intended for the table are usually fed upon rice, so that if the nature of their food be considered, their flesh is far more cleanly than that of the omnivorous hog; few articles of food have, however, been so identified abroad with the tastes of the people as kittens, puppies, and rats have with the Chinese. American school geographies often contain pictures of a market-man carrying baskets holding these unfortunate victims of a perverse taste (as we think), or else a string of rats and mice hanging by their tails to a stick across his shoulders, which almost necessarily convey the idea that such things form the usual food of the people. Travellers hear beforehand that the Chinese devour everything, and when they arrive in the country straightway inquire if these animals are eaten, and hearing that such is the case, perpetuate the idea that they form the common articles of food. However commonly live kittens and puppies or dressed dogs may be exposed for sale, one may live in a city like Canton or Fuhchau for many years and never see rats offered for food, unless he hunts up the people who sell them for medicine or aphrodisiacs; in fact, they are not so easily caught as to be either common or cheap. A peculiar prejudice in favor of black dogs and cats exists among natives of the south; these animals invariably command a higher price than others, and are eaten at midsummer in the belief that the meat ensures health and strength during the ensuing year.
Rats and mice are, no doubt, eaten now and then, and so are many other undesirable things, by those whom want compels to take what they can get; but to put these and other strange eatables in the front of the list gives a distorted idea of the everyday food of the people. There are perhaps half a dozen restaurants in Canton city where dog’s-meat appears upon the menu; it is, however, by no means an inexpensive delicacy.[368] The flesh of rats is eaten by old women as a hair restorative.
The blood of ducks, pigs, and sheep is used as food, or prepared for medicine and as a paste; it forms an ingredient in priming and some kind of varnish. It is coagulated into cakes for sale, and in cooking is mixed with the meats and sauces. The blood of all animals is eaten without repugnance so far as concerns religious scruples, except in the case of Buddhist priests.
Frogs are caught in a curious manner by tying a young jumper lately emerged from tadpole life to a line and bobbing him up and down in the grass and grain of a rice field, where the old croakers are wont to harbor. As soon as one of them sees the young frog sprawling and squirming he makes a plunge at him and swallows him whole, whereupon he is immediately conveyed to the frog-fisher’s basket, losing his life, liberty, and lunch together, for the bait is rescued from his maw and used again as long as life lasts.
HATCHING DUCKS’ EGGS.
Poultry, including chickens, geese, and ducks, are everywhere raised; of the three the geese are the best flavored, but all of them are reared cheaply and supply a large portion of the poor with the principal meat they eat. The eggs of fowls and ducks are hatched artificially, and every visitor to Canton remembers the duck-boats in which those birds are hatched and reared and carried up and down the river seeking for pasture along its muddy banks. Sheds are erected for hatching, in which are a number of high baskets well lined to retain the heat. Each one is placed over a fireplace, so that the heat shall be conveyed to the eggs through the tile in its bottom and retained in the basket by a close cover. When the eggs are brought a layer is put into the bottom of each basket, and a fire kept in the room at a uniform heat of about 80° F. After four or five days they are examined in a strong light, to separate the addled ones; the others are put back in the baskets and the heat kept up for ten days longer, when they are all placed upon shelves in the centre of the shed and covered with cotton and felt for fourteen days. At the end of the twenty-eighth day the shells are broken to release the inmates, which are sold to those who rear them. Pigeons are raised to a great extent; their eggs form an ingredient in soups. Wild and water fowl are caught in nets or shot; the wild duck, teal, grebe, wild goose, plover, snipe, heron, egret, partridge, pheasant, and ortolan or rice bird are all procurable at Canton, and the list could be increased elsewhere.