The Corean liquor by preference is brewed or distilled from rice, millet, or barley. These alcoholic drinks are of various strength, color, and smell, ranging from beer to brandy. No trait of the Coreans has more impressed their numerous visitors than their love of all kinds of strong drink. No sooner were the ports of Corea opened to commerce than the Chinese established liquor stores, while European wines, brandies and whiskeys have entered to increase the national drunkenness. Although the Corean lives between the two great tea-producing countries of the world, he scarcely knows the taste of tea and the fragrant herb is little used on the peninsula.
The staple diet has in it much more of meat and fat than that of the Japanese, and the average Corean can eat twice as much as the Japanese. Beef, pork, fowls, venison, fish, and game are consumed without much waste and rejected material. Dog flesh is on sale among the common butchers’ meat. The women cook rice beautifully, and other well-known dishes are barley, millet, beans, potato, lily-bulbs, seaweeds, acorns, radishes, turnips, macaroni, vermicelli, apples, pears, plums, grapes, persimmons, and various kinds of berries. All kinds of condiments are much relished.
One striking fault of the Coreans at the table is their voracity. In this respect there is not the least difference between the rich and poor, noble or plebeian. To eat much is an honor, and the merit of a feast consists not in the quality but in the quantity of the food served. Little talking is done while eating, for each sentence might lose a mouthful. Hence, since a capacious stomach is a high accomplishment, mothers use every means to develop as elastic a capacity as possible in their children from very infancy. The Coreans equal the Japanese in devouring raw fish, and uncooked food of all kinds is swallowed without a wry face. Fish bones do not scare them. These they eat as they do the small bones of fowls.
THE BATTLE AT GAZAN.
Japanese Drawing.
COREAN EGG-SELLER.—Native Drawing.
Nationally and individually the Coreans are very deficient in conveniences for the toilet. Bath tubs are rare, and except in the warmer days of summer, when the river and sea serve for immersion, the natives are not usually found under water. The need of soap and hot water has been noticed by travelers and writers of every nation. The men are very proud of their beards, and honor them as a distinctive glory and mark of their sex. Women coil their glossy black tresses into massive knots and fasten them with pins, or gold and silver rings.
Corea is famous as the land of big hats. Some of these head-coverings are so immense that the human head encased in one of them seems as but a hub in a cart wheel. In shape the gentleman’s hat resembles a flowerpot inverted in the center of a round table. Two feet is a common diameter, and the top, which rises in a cone nine inches higher, is only three inches wide at the apex. The usual material is bamboo, split to the fineness of a thread and woven. The fabric is then varnished or lacquered, and becomes perfectly weatherproof. The prevalence of cotton clothing, easily soaked and rendered uncomfortable, requires the ample protection for the back and shoulders which these umbrella-like hats furnish.
The wardrobe of the upper classes consists of the ceremonial and the house dress. The former as a rule is of fine silk, and the latter of coarser silk or cotton. They are of pink, blue, and other rich colors. The official robe is a long garment like a wrapper, with loose baggy sleeves. There are few tailors’ shops, the women of each household making the family outfit. The underdress of both sexes is a short jacket with tight sleeves, which for men reaches to the thighs, and for women only to the waist, and a pair of drawers reaching from waist to ankle. The females wear a petticoat over this garment, so that the Coreans say they dress like western women, and foreign-made hosiery and undergarments are in demand. Their general style of costume is that of the wrapper, stiff, wide, and inflated, with abundant starch in summer, but clinging and baggy in winter. The white dress of the Corean makes his complexion look darker than it really is. Footgear is either of native or of Chinese make. The laborer contents himself with sandals woven from rice-straw, which usually last but a few days. Small feet do not seem to be considered a beauty, and the foot binding of the Chinese is unknown in Cho-sen.