“During the entrée acte all China has been exploding crackers, and Hong Kong has been celebrating its ‘Isthmian games.’ Toward the close of the three days of festivity the Chinese holiday became almost exciting. If they had kept up half as sharp a fire at Canton on the 29th of December as they did on the 14th of February, we should never have got over the walls with a less loss than 500 men. The streets both of Canton and Hong Kong were piled with myriads of exploded cracker carcasses. In Hong Kong, where I passed the last day of these festivities, grave men and sedate children were from morning till midnight hanging strings of these noisy things from their balconies, and perpetually renewing them as they exploded. The sing-song women, in their rich, handsome dresses, were screeching their shrill songs, and twanging their two-stringed lutes on every veranda in the Chinese quarter, while the lords of creation, assembled at a round table, were cramming the day-long repast. The women—hired singing women of not doubtful reputation—in the intervals of their music, take their seats at the table opposite the men. They do not eat, but their business being to promote the conviviality of the feast, they challenge the men to the samshu cup, and drink with them. It is astonishing to see what a quantity of diluted samshu these painted and brocaded she-Celestials can drink without any apparent effect. Ever and anon one of the company retires to a couch and takes an opium pipe, and then returns and recommences his meal. I was invited to one of these feasts; the dishes were excellent, but it lasted till I loathed the sight of food. I believe the Chinese spend fabulous sums in these entertainments; the sing-song women are often brought from distances, and are certainly chosen with some discrimination. They are an imitation of the Chinese lady, and, as the Chinese lady has no education and no duties, the difference between the poor sing-song girl and the poor abject wife is probably not observable in appearance or manner. The dress is particularly modest and becoming. They all have great quantities of black hair. If they would let it fall disheveled down their backs as the Manilla women do, they would be more picturesque, but not formal and decent, as China is, even in its wantonness. The Chinawoman’s hair is gummed and built up into a structure rather resembling a huge flat-iron, and the edifice is adorned with combs, and jewels, and flowers, arranged with a certain taste. An embroidered blue silk tunic reaches from her chin nearly to her ankles. Below the tunic appear the gay trowsers, wrought with gold or silver thread; the instep glancing through the thin, white silk stockings, and a very small foot (when left to nature the Chinese have beautiful feet and hands) in a rich slipper, with a tremendous white sole in form of an inverted pyramid. In these sing-song girls you see the originals of the Chinese pictures—the painted faces, the high-arched, penciled eyebrows, the small, round mouth, the rather full and slightly sensual lip, naturally or artificially of a deep vermilion, the long, slit-shaped, half closed eyes, suggestive of indolence and slyness. What the voluble and jocose conversation addressed to them by the men may mean I can not tell, but their manners are quite decent, their replies are short and reserved, and every gesture, or song, or cup of samshu seems to be regulated by a known ceremonial.”
[371] Golownin, vol. iii. p. 52.
[372] Perry’s Expedition, p. 462.
[373] Arctic Explorations, vol. i. p. 373.
[374] Ibid. ii. 250.
[375] Ibid. ii. 115.
[376] Arctic Explorations, ii. 123.
[377] Ibid. ii. 125.
[378] Ibid. ii 109.
[379] Ibid. ii. 121.