The Hawaiian gazette., 1879-08-13
WEDNESDAY. AUGUST :l3. 1879.
A Chinese Dinner.
How che viceroy Entertained General Grant
and his Party.
Prom John Russel YOung's Letter.l

HOW TO DINE IN CHINA.
The custom in China is not to give you bill OF
fare over which you can mediate and If the DIM
ner has any resources whatever compose minor
dinner Of your Own. A servant comes to each
table and lays down a slip Of red tea-box paper
inscribed with Chinese characters This is the
name of the dish. Each table was covered with
dishes, which remained there during the dinner
dishes of everything except observation-disclosures
and cakes predOmnatng. The courses are
brought 10 bowls and set down in the middle of
the table. Your Chinese friend, whose poliIeuess
is unvarying, always helps you before be hslps
himself. He dives his two chopsticks into the
smoking bowl and takes out savory morsel and
drops it on your plate. Then he helps himself
frequently, not troubling the plate. but eating d.
rectly from the bowl. II the dish is of dainty
shark fms or birds nest soup, all the Chinese go
to work a. the same bowl and with the same
cbopsticks. silver and ivory, which we're not
changed during the entire dinner, but did service
for fish and fowl and sweetmeats. Between each
course.were cigars or pipes. The high Cinnamon
had pipe bearears with them, and as each course
was ended they would take a Whit. But The CT.
gars came as u relief to the smoking members oil
the party, for they could sit aud look on and en-
joy the spectacle and have the opera sensation
Of looking at something new and strange. The
CIGARS too, were an excuse for not ealing, and al
a Chinese dinner an excuse for not eating il well
come There is no reason in the world why you
should not eat q Chinese dinner except that you
are not accustomed TO it, You come to the table
with depraved appetite. Corn bread and pigs
feet and corned beef have done their work upon
you, and good dinner most probably means a
mound OF beef overspread with potatoes. OF
course such training units you for the ncetiss
the delicate touches Of Chinese dinner. Then
nm sure you do not like sweetmeats That il a
taste belonging to earlier aud happier days-.o
the days OF innocence and hope, before you ever
beard OF trnffies aud champagne. You would
rather fight duel than eat one Of the heaps of
candied preparations which our Chinese friends
gobble up like children. But there is where our
Chinese friends, with their healthy child-bred
tastes, have the advantage Of US, and why it is
that your incapacity to enjoy your dinner is the
result Of an appetite deadened by civilization.
BIRDS NEST SOUP.
But, whatever the reason, the fact is that
cigar is blessing. aud enables you to turn your
dinner into an entertainment to look on and oe
yourself amused. inst as 40 hour ago you were
amusing the crowd by the way 10 which you vel
coined the birds-nest soup. The one thing which
gave the dinner touch of poetry was the bird's
nest coup. The fact that the Chinese hive found
soup 10 the nest OF bird is one of The achieve
ments OF their civilization. Take any school OF
half-grown children. and ask them about the
manners of the Chinese and there Is not an an
swer that will not include bird's-nest soup. So
when our Chinese General told Us as be read the
caballsic letters on red tea-chest paper that the
next dish Was TO be ird's-nest soup we awakened
to 1t as the realization of u new mystery. One of
The disadvantages OF getting in life is that you
have fewer end fewer sensations, that you know
everything, that there is no awful, joyous rup-
turOua mVsterV tn hp mazda tnnwn I Ito hocornas
recollectIons and things are not in themselves
good, but only better or worse than the same
things as you have seen them before. But birds
nest soup was new-nOne of US had ever seen ii
and to come to China without eating birds
nest soup would be like going TO Philadelphia
without ehtlDg terrapin-H wantoD, pei 6diuus
trIhlDg with the compensations of life. The birds
nests come from Java. Borneo and Sumatra and
are rare aud dear. My China friend told me that
the dish before ts would cost Sl5 or $40; that
the BIRDS nest PR pared for soup was worth its
weight IN silver. was glad to know this, because
l bad been under the impression that the Amer
leans were the only people who turGed silver into
their io1d, and 1t was u consolation to know that
the Oldest civilization 10 the world is as extraya-
giant as the youngest. The nests are built in,
end are the work of species of swallow When
the BOWL came on the table il was as thick as q ra-
goui, and our Chinese friends logged out mess
oil stringy hhr0us food, about the color and con.
sistency of good od-fashioned vermiceili. The
soup certainly does not justify its fame. There
was nothing dlsagreeable about ii it was simply
tasteless. | could not detect flavor or the sus-
plclon OF flavor it was only mess of not IN
pleasant glutinous food that needed seasoning. |
can Imagine how French cook could take a
blrds-nest soup and SO arrange it that an epicure
would relish 1t. But be might do the same with
turnlps or asparagus without paying their weight
10 silver.
CURIOUS DISHES.
Alter we had learned the blrd's-nest soup. and
bad, alas. one mystery less TO know in this deveI.
oplng world. we we're attracted by sharks fins.
The fins of the shark are much priced In China.
and there were several stewed We only Skin
mished around this dish in a coy, inquiring man
ner, really no. caring to 60 into it, but feeling
that 1t would be an improperly to come to a
Chinese dinner and not taste shark fms. What
would folks at home say about Us /? In this spirit
"a spirit OF duty OF doing something that had to
be done. that was among other reasons why we
were ten thousand miles from home on our way
around the word-we went through our Chinese
dinner. The dishes that we knew we're 30 dis.
guised that even when they made themselves
known they hevOnd racnoni,,on 1ho Alb.