Year: 1879

Bow Party of Americans Dined at

 Canton with the Chinese Viceroy.

 The New York Herald correspond ent travelling with General Grants party gives an interesting account of dinner at the Viceroy's palace in Canton. We quote;

 A VICEREGAL DINNER.

 The dining-room was open on the gardens, apparently open on three sides. Around the open sides was a wall of servants, attendants, soldiers, manda- rins, and if you looked beyond into the gardens, under the corruscating foliage, burdened with variegated lanterns, you saw groups ana lines, all staring in upon us. Our dining-room was, l have said, an open hall, looking out upon a garden. Our table was D series of tables, forming three sides of a square. The sides of the tables that formed the interior of the square were not occupied. Here the servants moved about. At each table were six persons, with the exception of the principal table, which was given up to General Grant, the Viceroy, the Tartar general, MT. Borie and MT. Holcombe. Behind the Viceroy stood his interpreter and other personal servants. Attend ants stood over the other tables with large peacock fans, which was q com ort, the night was so Warm. The din- ner was entirely Chinese, with the exception of the knives, forks and glasses. But in addition to the knives and forks we had chOpstickS, with which some of the party made interesting cN- periments in the way of searching out ragout and soup dishes. At each of the tables were one or two of our Chinese friends, and we were especially fortunate at having with us a Chinese officer who spoke English well, having learned it at the mission-school of Dr. Hopper.

 The custom in China is not to give you a bill-of-fare. over which you can medi- tate and, if the dinner has any resources whatever, compose minor dinner Ot your own. A servant comes to each table and lays down a slip of red box paper inscribed with Chinese characters. This is the name of the dish. Each table was covered with dishes. which remained during the dinner-dishes of everything except hread-sw eetmeats and cakes predominating. The courses are brought in bowls and set down in the middle of the table. Your Chinese friend, whose politeness is unvarying, always help you before he helps himself He dives his two chopsticks into the smoking bowl and Jugs out savory mOrsel and drops it on your plate. Then he helps himself frequently, not troubling the plate, but eating directly shark's-fins' or bird's-nest soup, all the Chinese go to work at the same bowl and with the same chopsticks, silver and ivory, which were not changed during the entire dinner, but did service for fish and fowl and sweetmeats. Between each course were cigars or pipes. The high Chinamen had pipe bearers with them, and as each course was ended they would take a whiff. But the cigars came as relief to the smoking members of the party, for they could sit and look on and enjoy the spectacle and have the sensation of looking at something new and strange. The cigars, too, were an excuse for not eating, and at q Chinese dinner an excuse for not eating is wei come. There is no reason in the world why you should not eat Chinese din- ner except that you are not accustomed to it. You come to the table with a de- prayed appetite. Corn bread and pigs feet and corned beef have done their work upon you, and a good dinner most probably means mound of beef over spread with potatoes. Of course such training units you for the niceties, the delicate touches. of a Chinese dinner Then I am sure you do not like sweet

 

 earlier and happier days-to the days of innocence and hope, before you ever heard of truflles and champagne. You would rather fight duel than eat one of those 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 us, and why it is that your incapacity to enjoy your dinner is the result of an ap- petite deadened by civilization.

 The one thing which gave the dinner a touch of poetry was the birds nest soup The fact that the Chinese have found soup in the nest of bird is one of the achievements of their civilization Take any school of half-grown children and ask them about the manners of the Chinese. and there is not an answer that will not include birds nest soup. So when our Chinese general told us, as he read the cabalistic letters onred tea chest paper, that the next dish was to be birds nest soup, we awakened to it as to tine realization of a new mystery. The birds nests came from Java, Borneo and Sumatra, and are rare and dear. My China friend told me that the dish before us would cost $l5 or S20, that the birds nest prepared for soup was worth it's weight in silver. The nests are built in and are the work of q species of swallow. When the bowl came on the table it was as thick as ragout, and our Chinese friends lugged out a mess of stringy, fibrous food, about the color and consistency of good old fashioned vermiceli. The soup cer- tainly does not justify it's fame. There was nothing disagreeable about it; it was simply tasteless. I could not detect flavor or the suspision of flavor; it was only a mess of not unpleasant, glu- tinous food. that needed seasoning.

 After we had learned the birds nest soup, and had, alas! one mystery less to know in this developing world, we were attracted by sharks fins. The fins of the shark are much prized in China, and there were several stewed. We dis covered that the birds nest soup was insipid that sharks fins were oily and rancid; that fish brain was too rich;