He does not forsake the amusement of kite-flying even when arrived at maturity. His artistic imitations of birds and dragons float over our housetops. To these are often affixed contrivances for producing hollow, mournful, buzzing sounds, mystifying whole neighborhoods. His game of shuttlecock is to keep a cork, one end being stuck with feathers, flying in the air as long as possible, the impelling member being the foot, the players standing in a circle and numbering from four to twenty. Some show great dexterity in kicking with the heel. His vocal music to our ears seems a monotonous caterwaul. His violin has but one string: his execution is merely a modified species of saw-filing.
He loves to gamble, especially in lotteries. He is a diligent student of his own comfort. Traveling on foot during a hot day, he protects himself with an umbrella and refreshes himself with a fan. In place of prosaic signs on his store-fronts, he often inscribes quotations from his favorite authors.
He is a lover of flowers. His balconies and window-sills are often thickly packed with shrubs and creepers in pots. He is not a speedy and taciturn eater. His tea-table talks are full of noisy jollity, and are often prolonged far into the night.
He is a lover of the drama. A single play sometimes requires months for representation, being, like a serial story, "continued" night after night. He never dances. There is no melody in the Mongolian foot. Dancing he regards as a species of Caucasian insanity.
To make an oath binding he must swear by the head of a cock cut off before him in open court. Chinese testimony is not admissible in American courts. It is a legal California axiom that a Chinaman cannot speak the truth. But cases have occurred wherein, he being an eye-witness, the desire to hear what he might tell as to what he had seen has proved stronger than the prejudice against him; and the more effectually to clinch the chances of his telling the truth, the above, his national form of oath, has been resorted to. He has among us some secret government of his own. Before his secret tribunals more than one Mongolian has been hurried in Star-Chamber fashion, and never seen afterward. The nature of the offences thus visited by secret and bloody punishment is scarcely known to Americans. He has two chief deities—a god and a devil. Most of his prayers are offered to his devil. His god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not necessary to propitiate him. But his devil is ugly, and must be won over by offering and petition. Once a year, wherever collected in any number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies on an altar, keeps up night and day a steady crash of gongs, and installs therein some great, uncouth wooden idols. When this period of worship is over the "josh-house" disappears, and the idols are unceremoniously stowed away among other useless lumber.
He shaves with an instrument resembling a butcher's cleaver in miniature. Nature generally denies him beard, so he shaves what a sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel, something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No misfortune for him can be greater.
Coarse cowhide boots are the only articles of American wear that he favors. He inclines to buy the largest sizes, thinking he thereby gets the most for his money, and when his No. 7 feet wobble and chafe in No. 12 boots he complains that they "fit too much."
He cultivates the vegetables of his native land in California. They are curiosities like himself. One resembles our string-bean, but is circular in shape and from two to three feet in length. It is not in the least stringy, breaks off short and crisp, boils tender very quickly and affords excellent eating. He is a very careful cultivator, and will spend hours picking off dead leaves and insects from the young plants. When he finds a dead cat, rat, dog or chicken, he throws it into a small vat of water, allows it to decompose, and sprinkles the liquid fertilizer thus obtained over his plantation. Watermelon and pumpkin seeds are for him dessert delicacies. He consumes his garden products about half cooked in an American culinary point of view, merely wilting them by an immersion in boiling water.
There are about fifteen English words to be learned by a Chinaman on arriving in California, and no more. With these he expresses all his wants, and with this limited stock you must learn to convey all that is needful to him. The practice thus forced upon one in employing a Chinese servant is useful in preventing a circumlocutory habit of speech. Many of our letters the Mongolian mouth has no capacity for sounding. R he invariably sounds like l, so that the word "rice" he pronounces "lice"—a bit of information which may prevent an unpleasant apprehension when you come to employ a Chinese cook. He rejects the English personal pronoun I, and uses the possessive "my" in its place; thus, "My go home," in place of "I go home."
When he buries a countryman he throws from the hearse into the air handfuls of brown tissue-paper slips, punctured with Chinese characters. Sometimes, at his burial-processions, he gives a small piece of money to every person met on the road. Over the grave he beats gongs and sets off packs of fire-crackers. On it he leaves cooked meats, drink, delicacies and lighted wax tapers. Eventually the bones are disinterred and shipped to his native land. In the remotest mining-districts of California are found Chinese graves thus opened and emptied of their inmates. I have in one instance seen him, so far as he was permitted, render some of these funeral honors to an American. The deceased had gained this honor by treating the Chinese as though they were partners in our common humanity. "Missa Tom," as he was termed by them, they knew they could trust. He acquired among them a reputation as the one righteous American in their California Gomorrah. Chinamen would come to him from distant localities, that he might overlook their bills of sale and other documents used in business intercourse with the white man. Their need of such, an honest adviser was great. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers often took advantage of their ignorance of the English language, written or spoken. "Missa Tom" suddenly died. I had occasion to visit his farm a few days after his death, and on the first night of my stay there saw the array of meats, fruit, wine and burning tapers on a table in front of the house, which his Chinese friends told me was intended as an offering to "Missa Tom's" spirit.