Morning journal and courier., 1889-08-28
CHINESE AND THEIR WAYS.
Tkey Know Better Tn an Any Other
 People What Economy Means.

kACy AAOsH DOSbOK A A Ah tAAJ ObAc1
 People What Economy Means.
 From the North China Herald.l
 The Chinese are pre- eminently economical whether it be in limiting the number of wants, in preventing waste, or in adjusting forces in such manner as to make little represent great deal. The universal diet consists of rice, beans, millet, garden vege- tables, and fish, with little meat on high festivals. Wholesome food in abundance may be supplied at less than penny day for each adult, and even in famine times thousands of persons have been kept alive for months on about a halfpenny day each. This implies the existence of high degree of culinary skill in the Chinese. Their modes of preparing food are thor ough and various. There is no waste; every thing is made to do as much duty as possi- ble. What Is left is the veriest trifle. The physical condition of the Chinese dog or cat, who has to live on the leavings of the fam fly, shows this. They are clearly kept On starvation allowances. The Chinese are not extremely fastidious in regard to food; all is fish that comes to their net, and most things come there sooner or later. Certain disturbances of the human organization, due to eating diseased meat, are we'll recognized among the people, but it is considered better to eat the meat, the cheapness of which is certain, and run the risk of the consequences, which are not quite certain, than to buy dear meat even with the assurance of no evil results. In- deed, the meat of animals which have died of ordinary ailments is rather dearer than that of those which have in an epidemic such as pleuro- pneumonia. Another example of careful, calculating economy is the construc- tion of the cooking pots and boilers, the bottoms of which as thin as possible that the contents may boil all the sooner, for fuel is scarce and dear, and consists generally of nothing but the stalks and roots of the crops, which make rapid blaze and disappear. The business of gathering fuel is committed | to children, for one who can do nothing else can at least pick up straws and leaves and weeds. In autumn and winter vast army of fuel gatnerers spread over the land Boys ascend trees and beat them with clubs 1 to shake all the leaves; the very straws get no time to show which way the wind | blows before they are annexed by some col | lector.
 Similarly professional manure collector ri swarm over all the roads of the country Chinese women carry this minute economy into their dress. Nothing comes amiss tc them; if it is not used in one place it is ir | another, where it appears thing of beauty.
 Foreign residents who gave their cast-of clothes to Chinese may be assured the ca
 reer of usefulness of these garments is d
 last about to commence. Chinese wheel
 barrows squeak for want of few drops O
 oil, but to people who have no nerves tht
 squeak is cheaper than the oil. Similarl,
 dirt is cheaper than hot water, and so, as
 rule, the people do not wash. The motto
 Cheaper than dirt" which the soap deal
 CT puts in his windows, could not be
 made intelligible to the Chinese. To then
 the average foreigners are mere soap was
 ters.
 Scarcely any tool can be got ready made
 it is so much cheaper to buy the parts ant
 put them together for yourself, and as al
 most everybody takes this view, ready mad
 tools are not to be got. Two rooms ar
 dimly lighted with a single lamp deftl.
 placed in hole in the dividing wall. Chinese
 in fact, seem to be capable of doing any
 thing by means of almost nothing. The.
 will give you an iron foundry on a minut
 scale of completeness in back yard, ant
 will make in an hour a cooking range,
 strong and perfect draught. out of pile o
 mud bricks, lasting indefinitely, operatin perfectly, and costing nothing. The ol
 woman who in her last moments hobbled @
 near as possible to the family graveyard i
 order to die so as to avoid the expense C ! ,oas., I,oorore x,oo Nh{uaoo