Mr. Fortune, the celebrated botanist and indefatigable Chinese traveller, gives to Tient-sin the glory of being the filthiest and most noisome of Chinese cities, although he mentions Shanghai with high honor. Canton, from which Europeans have mainly derived their ideas of China, is comparatively a clean and neat place, far superior to the more northern cities.
To descend from generalities to particulars. The smells are a horrible compound, worse than in Coleridge's 'City of Cologne.' First and foremost are the sewers, which are all open, the deposits of the night-soil of the city, with convenient wells at every corner and in niches in the walls. At these are to be found, at all hours, men with buckets slung on bamboos, filling them for transportation in these primitive open vessels to the farmers, who use the compost on their fields. These wretches, with their vile burdens, are met at every turn, and pass through the streets and roads in long files, loading the air with abominations. No attention is paid to the wells and sewers until they overflow, and, as chance may direct, the coolies take their loads from the most convenient.
This is a terrible nuisance, but it is hardly worse than the odors which arise from the innumerable cook shops, and from the peripatetic bakeries at every corner. What they are cooking, no man knows, but if not dog chow-chow, it is sure to be fried in some vegetable oil that sends up a mighty vapor, hiding the cooks and rolling into the narrow street, where it scarcely finds vent between the overhanging eaves of the houses. The sickening smell of the castor bean seems everywhere. Occasionally the sight and powerful odor of hard-boiled and rotten goose eggs, split open to show that they are either rotten or half hatched, attract the Chinese epicure. The oily cakes and crullers that the wandering baker is frying for a group of children, powerfully offend European olfactories, although so tempting to the half-naked brats. Many different and offensive odors come from these greasy cook shops, but the offence in almost every instance can be traced home to the vegetable oils, greasy and rancid, which seem to pervade all Chinese cookery, as it is seen in the streets of the cities. Many of the dishes, but for this oil, would be quite tempting; and such, as have tasted them in the houses of the rich, assure us that they are not so bad as they smell. The much-talked-of edible bird's-nest soup is really a fine dish. The substance, after it is prepared, all the dirt and feathers being separated from it, is as clean and pure as isinglass, which it greatly resembles in appearance. Great care is taken to make it pure before it is sold for use, and in the shops at Canton it may be seen in every stage of manufacture. Their ducks and geese are fine birds, and, with excellent pork, and their never-failing rice, are the favorite dishes of such as can afford them; which, by the way, they really know how to cook—an art that is very little understood in England or America.
Dog chow-chow, kittens, rats, and mice, with crickets and locusts, are only eaten by the vilest of the vile—poor wretches, who must support themselves and families on a pittance of about fifteen or twenty dollars a year.
Of course there are many things in their way of cookery, and in their tastes for such articles as sharks' fins, fish maws, beche-de-mer, etc., which are revolting to an educated stomach; but in their way the Chinese are quite as dainty as the most fastidious of other lands, and in fine vegetables, fish, and fruits they enjoy as much variety and evince as discriminating a taste as any people in the world. Their fish are sold in the markets alive, and taken from the tanks as selected by the purchaser. Their way of drinking tea will be found, after familiarity, superior to ours, for when milk is not used the finer aroma of the leaf is obtained. Indeed, they are very particular in regard to the quality and decoction of their tea, totally refusing the poisonous green teas that are consumed in such quantities in England, and especially in America.
They know, too, how to draw it, and just at the right moment the boiling water is poured upon the leaf, and, without allowing it to simmer by the fire, as we do, long enough to get the flavor of the stalks and stems, they drink it off as soon as the boiling water has fairly acted upon the delicate leaves. English tea-drinkers, who like to mix a green and a black tea, and allow it to steam for a quarter of an hour to make it strong, complain that Chinese tea is mere dishwater, just as the man accustomed to get boozy on brandy, made 'fiery' with sulphuric acid, has no taste for the light French wines. A Chinaman colors his green tea with Prussian blue for his foreign customers, who like a bright, pretty color; but he is too wise to drink it. This process of coloring we have seen, publicly, in the tea factories of Shanghai; and the disgust with which the manufacturer denied that he ever drank his own wares, was too strong to be assumed. 'No good,' was his only reply.
Despite the filth and many disagreeable things to be encountered in a walk or ride through a city like Shanghai, it is one of the most interesting places imaginable in which to spend an hour or two on a summer morning.
In the heat of the day, at mid-summer, it is dangerous in China, and especially to a new comer, to be exposed even to the reflected rays of the sun, and many a poor fellow has lost his life by neglect or contempt of the cautions of his more experienced friends not to be in the sunshine between the hours of 10 A. M. and 4 P. M. More than ordinary precaution is necessary in times of cholera, owing to the peculiar electrical condition of the atmosphere, in which any exertion or exposure is often fatal to one recently arrived on the coast. All excursions to the city are therefore, of necessity, made in the morning or late in the afternoon. The gates are opened at daybreak, and the early visitor is almost certain to be unpleasantly reminded of the prevalence of cholera by the number of dead bodies lying in the streets. They are those of coolies, or poor persons, who have died during the night, and having no friends, the public authorities must take them wherever they chance to die, and provide for their burial. In August, 1863, at a time when the cholera was not particularly virulent, the deaths were supposed to be five hundred a day, principally among the poor, who, from insufficient food, miserable lodging in the streets and porticoes of temples, and constant exposure in the day to the direct rays of the sun, to say nothing of the filth and foul air of the city, were peculiarly exposed to the ravages of disease. Another sign of the presence of cholera, and an odd one, was the number of persons passing with necks disfigured by perpendicular parallel bars, as if branded by hot irons. This curious remedy is applied for any pain in the stomach, however slight, even for sea sickness, and the marks are made with strong pincers. By the Chinese it is thought very efficacious, although on what theory it is difficult to understand.
Entering the city from the north gate, after crossing the ditch that separates the walls from, the French Concession, we find ourselves in close and extremely narrow streets, with shops opening upon them, neither glass nor any partition separating them from passers by. The same arrangement is quite common in our own streets for fruit-sellers' shops, toy stores, and newspaper and periodical stands. But instead of one or two attendants at a stand, in China we find a dozen, in summer time naked from the waist upward, emaciated by opium smoking, and having a sickly look painful to see. Most of the shops have a carved railing and a counter facing the street, the ends of which are ornamented by grotesque shapes of dogs and gilded idols. A figure of a pug-nosed dog with bandy legs is very common. At the first glance it would be supposed that this was one of those nondescripts the Chinese are so fond of devising, but a closer examination shows that the figure is an admirably life-like copy of an odd dog, common to Pekin, pug-nosed and bandy-legged, and no doubt his form will be recognized in many of the grotesque, awkward-looking figures of which ivory carvings abound in all countries where Chinese curiosities are to be found.
Standing on the counter is generally a roll of joss-sticks wound spirally around a wire frame, and always burning to the tutelary idol of the shop, for the sake of good luck. It is the duty of one of the boys to see that this coil of joss-stick is always lighted—a very convenient arrangement for tobacco smokers strolling through the streets. Another custom which they have, and which is also supposed to bring success to the shopkeeper, is to encourage the swallows to build under the eaves and among the bamboo rafters. Three or four of these nests of swallows, with broods of twittering young ones, may often be observed in a single shop, neat stretchers of cotton cloth or bamboo being built under the nests, to prevent any possible damage to the goods. The birds seem quite at home amid all the hubbub; and the kind care which protects them amid a semi-barbarous people is one of those traits of a common humanity—of kindness to the helpless—which marks the common origin of the most civilized and most barbarous of the human race. The streets of Shanghai are not divided among the trades, as in Canton, but shops of all kinds occur in every crooked lane and alley-way. Principal among them are the cookshops, some of which are evidently restaurants on a large scale, for they are filled, from morning till night, with half-naked coolies, eating indescribable dishes, of which rice is the great staple, and sipping tea. They all sit at little tables, built for two, or at round tables, seating half a dozen. In the country and in the suburbs these last are drawn out into the open air at sunset, and are occupied by parties taking their tea in a social manner. The roads around Shanghai are fall of such parties on a warm summer's eve.