Part 1
# The Costume of China: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese ### By Alexander, William
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Produced by Chris Curnow, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
[Illustration:
THE
COSTUME of CHINA
by W. Alexander F.S.A. &c.
CHINA—PLATE 1 ]
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PICTURESQUE REPRESENTATIONS
OF THE DRESS AND MANNERS
OF THE CHINESE.
ILLUSTRATED IN FIFTY COLOURED ENGRAVINGS,
WITH DESCRIPTIONS.
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BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER.
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LONDON:
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PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET BY W. BULMER AND CO. CLEVELAND-ROW. 1814.
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LIST OF THE PLATES.
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Plate 1 The Title. A Stand of Arms. 2 Kien Lung, the Emperor. 3 Fishermen. 4 Man Servant. 5 Mandarin in his Court Dress. 6 Young Bonze sacrificing. 7 Juggler. 8 Children collecting Manure. 9 Watchman. 10 Lady and her Son. 11 Bonze. 12 Lantern Seller. 13 Soldier with his Matchlock. 14 Porter carrying Goods. 15 Mandarin in his Common Dress. 16 Boat Girl. 17 A common Sedan, or Chair. 18 Mandarin’s Servant on Horse-back. 19 An itinerant Musician. 20 Ensign of the Bowmen. 21 Mendicant. 22 Barbers champooing, &c. 23 Bookseller. 24 Soldier of Infantry. 25 A Raree Show. 26 Mandarin’s Page. 27 A travelling Smith. 28 Mourners at a Tomb. 29 Vender of Rice. 30 Female Comedian. 31 Sedan Bearer. 32 A man selling Betel, &c. 33 A Horse and Cart with the Driver. 34 Seller of Pipes. 35 Waterman. 36 Tradesman reckoning on his Swanpan. 37 Women winding Cotton. 38 Soldier of the Cavalry mounted. 39 Punishment of the Cangue. 40 Groupe of Children. 41 Chairman with a Sedan. 42 Vessels near a Town. 43 A Lady of Rank. 44 Nursery Maid and Children. 45 Stage Player. 46 Trackers regaling. 47 Mandarin’s Officer. 48 Punishment of the Arrow. 49 Woman selling Chow-chow. 50 Groupe of Soldiers.
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PLATE I. FRONTISPIECE.
EXHIBITING the various kinds of weapons, offensive and defensive, in use among the Chinese infantry, cavalry, artillery, and bowmen, arranged on a stand or frame of wood. One or more of these frames are commonly to be met with at the military posts and at the depôts of arms and guard-houses, close to the gates of their walled cities.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 2 ]
Plate II.
KIEN LUNG.
KIEN Lung was the fourth Emperor of the Tartar dynasty, which now possesses the throne of China. When the annexed Sketch was taken he was eighty-three years of age, but had all the appearance of a hale, vigorous man of sixty. Indeed his whole life had been spent in the
## active discharge of public business, and in the violent exercise of
hunting and shooting in the wild regions of Tartary, which he continued with unabated zeal almost to the period of life above mentioned. He always commenced public business at two or three in the morning, and gave audience to foreign ambassadors at that early hour, whether in winter or summer, and he generally retired to rest at sunset; and to this invariable habit of rising and retiring at an early hour, he attributed much of his healthy and vigorous constitution.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 3 ]
Plate III.
THE FISHING CORMORANTS.
THE Leu-tzé, or fishing cormorant of China, is the _pelicanus sinensis_, and resembles very much the common cormorant of England, which, we are told by naturalists, was once trained up to catch fish, pretty much in the same manner as those of China are. They are exceedingly expert in taking fish, and pursue them under water with great eagerness. They are taken out, on the rivers and lakes, in boats or bamboo rafts; and though sent on the chace after long fasting, they are so well trained that they rarely swallow any of the fish they take until they are permitted to do so by their masters. Many thousand families in China earn their subsistence by means of these birds.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 4 ]
Plate IV.
A MAN SERVANT.
WE have little to observe on this figure. His dress is pretty nearly that of the class of people to which he belongs. The Chinese are excellent domestic servants, and when honest, which is a quality not common among them, they are invaluable. They are rather slow, and do not like to be put out of their way, but they do their work well and neatly. Every European resident at Canton and Macao has Chinese servants, which on the whole, are preferable to any other race of Orientals. They are sometimes brought over to England, but are seldom happy till they get back to their own country, which has the same kind of charm to them as the vallies of Switzerland had to the natives of that once happy country.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 5 ]
Plate V.
A MANDARIN
IN HIS COURT DRESS.
ALL officers of state, whether civil or military, from the highest to the lowest, have been named by the early Portuguese writers _mandarins_, from a word in their own language, _mandar_, to command; and this name, improper as it is, has preserved its ground ever since. The figure of a bird on the embroidered breast-plate of the annexed figure points him out as a civilian. A military officer wears the figure of an animal resembling the tiger. The degree of rank, whether civil or military, is marked by a small globe on the top of the cap, opake red coral distinguishing the highest, and brass the lowest rank: the intermediate colours are transparent red, opake and transparent blue, opake and transparent white. As a mark of imperial favour, one, two, or three feathers from the tail of the peacock are appended to the back part of the bonnet. All officers, whether civil or military, invariably wear thick-quilted boots, and, when in their court-dresses, embroidered petticoats. Most of them wear chains of coral, or agate, or coloured glass round the neck, as in the annexed figure.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 6 ]
Plate VI.
AN OFFERING IN THE TEMPLE.
THE figure kneeling before the deities mounted on pedestals is a priest of the sect of Fo. He is burning incense, or rather paper that is covered over with some liquid that resembles gold. Sometimes, in lieu of this, tin foil is burnt before the altars of China, and this is the principal use to which the large quantities of tin sent from this country is applied. On the four-legged stool is the pot containing the sticks of fate, and other paraphernalia belonging to the temple, and behind it is the tripod in which incense is sometimes burned. These superstitious rites are performed several times by the priests every day, but there is no kind of congregational worship in China. The people pay the priests for taking care of their present and future fate.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 7 ]
Plate VII.
A JUGGLER,
PERFORMING TRICKS WITH JARS.
THIS engraving exhibits a posture-master balancing two large China vases, and throwing himself into most extraordinary attitudes; he exhibited a variety of curious postures before the Ambassador, at his lodgings opposite to Canton, and played with the large jars precisely in the same manner as the Indian jugglers, in Pall-mall, toss about the large round stone of twelve or fourteen pounds weight; but those who have seen both are inclined to give the palm to the Chinese.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 8 ]
Plate VIII.
CHILDREN COLLECTING MANURE.
THE collecting and preparing of manure of various descriptions, and making it up into cakes for sale, occupy a very considerable population of the lowest class of society, and for the most part is the employment of the aged and children. No agriculturists, perhaps, understand the value of manure better than the Chinese, and certainly none are so well skilled in the economical distribution of it. It is quite ridiculous to see the avidity with which young children follow a traveller on horseback for the chance of catching what the animal may emit, which is immediately caught up, and thrown into the basket; and if the traveller himself should contribute his portion, it is considered as more valuable than that from the animal.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 9 ]
Plate IX.
A WATCHMAN.
THE police is so well regulated in all the large cities of China, that disturbances rarely, if ever, happen during the night. The watch is set at nine, and continues till five in the morning. A gate is placed at each end of the cross streets, which are all streight, and at right angles with the main streets; from each gate a watchman proceeds till he meets his brother watchman about the middle; at every half hour he beats the hollow bamboo tube, in his left hand, with the mallet in the right, striking the same number of blows as there may be half hours elapsed from nine o’clock: the blow gives a dead, dull sound, sufficiently audible, and to a stranger sufficiently disagreeable. Each watchman is also furnished with a paper lantern. At the great gates of cities, and at certain distances in the main streets are guard-houses, at which a party of soldiers are stationed to aid the police, if necessary; but this is rarely the case, as, in addition to the common watch, every tenth housekeeper in every street is made responsible for the orderly good conduct of his nine neighbours. In the day time there is plenty of noise, and quarrelling and scuffling among the lower orders of the Chinese.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 10 ]
Plate X.
A LADY, AND HER SON.
THE annexed print is the representation of a Chinese Lady, and her Son, of a certain rank in life, from which no high ideas will probably be entertained of the taste in dress either of one or the other. Our modern notions of a head-dress, however, approximate those of the Chinese; though it is to be hoped that our ladies will never be brought to imitate the small and mutilated feet of the Chinese women, which disqualify them from the free use of their limbs.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 11 ]
Plate XI.
A BONZE.
THE priests of _Fo_ in China are the same as the priests of _Boudh_ are in India, from whence their religion passed into China in the first century of the Christian æra. The temples and the monasteries of China swarm with them; and they practice, ostensibly at least, all the austerities and mortifications of the several orders of monks in Europe, and inflict on themselves the same painful, laborious, and disgusting punishments which the faquirs of India undergo, either for the love of God, as they would have it supposed, or to impose on the multitude, as is most probably the real motive. In China, however, they are generally esteemed as men of correct morals: and there is reason to believe, that the calumnies heaped upon them by the Catholic missionaries are for the most part unfounded, and were occasioned by the mortification they experienced in finding their ceremonies, their altars, their images, their dress, to resemble so very nearly their own.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that our umbrellas are borrowed from the Chinese. The poorest person has one of these machines to keep off the rain; but in China they are made of paper, and the wood part is entirely of bamboo. The hats of the common people are in fact a kind of umbrella; they are generally made of rice straw plaited, and so large that they equally defend the face from the rays of the sun and cover the shoulders from the rain. That which the priest carries under his arm is small in proportion of some of those worn by the peasantry. In moderate weather a Chinese, though close shaved, except as to the little lock of hair growing from the crown, generally goes bareheaded.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 12 ]
Plate XII.
A VENDER OF LANTERNS.
THERE is no nation so fond of illuminations and fire-works as the Chinese, and no nation has exerted its skill so effectually in the multitude of contrivances to exhibit light. Their lanterns are as various in shape as in materials. The most common are of painted paper. The most beautiful and ornamental of silk gauze, finely painted and stretched on frames that are not deficient in carving and curious workmanship, and decorated with tassels of silk of various colours. Other lanterns are round and cylindrical, and of one single piece of thin transparent horn, sometimes of an immense size. At certain times in the year, but more particularly in the month of February, they celebrate what has been called the Feast of Lanterns, when every body in the street carries some transparency or other made in every possible form: some of them like fishes, some like beasts of various kinds, and others birds. Some resemble trees and shrubs, with flowers and fruits, each in their appropriate colours. Those lanterns borne by the man in the print are of the most ordinary kind.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 13 ]
Plate XIII.
A SOLDIER WITH HIS MATCHLOCK.
THE military of China differs, as every thing else differs, from that of all other nations, in the nature of its establishment, its occupation, and its dress. They have two distinct armies, if they may be so called; the one composed entirely of Tartars, who are stationed in the several provinces on the Tartar frontier, and occupy all the garrison towns of the empire; the other composed of Chinese, who are parcelled out in the smaller towns and hamlets to keep the peace, by acting as constables, subordinate collectors of the taxes, guards to the granaries, and assisting in various ways the civil magistrate. Along the public roads, canals and rivers, are placed, at certain intervals, small square guard-houses, at which are stationed from six to twelve men, who are employed in settling disputes upon the rivers or roads, and also in conveying the public dispatches. When a foreign ambassador or any of their own mandarins travel, these soldiers turn out in their holiday dresses with their streamers stuck in the back, as in the annexed figure. The breast-plate and shoulder-guards are nothing more than cotton stuffed with wadding, and the helmet, which looks so fierce, is made only of paste-board. The Chinese matchlocks resemble so much the old common matchlock of the Portuguese, that it has been supposed these people first introduced them into China, where however it is sufficiently determined, gunpowder was in familiar use many centuries before any communication was known to exist between this country and Europe. In some of the larger matchlocks there is a fork to support the piece, and by sticking it in the ground to give it the degree elevation that may be required.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 14 ]
Plate XIV.
A PORTER CARRYING GOODS.
IT has long been known that the ingenious Chinese, taking advantage of the constancy with which the wind blows in the same direction, applied a sail to assist the progress of their land carriages; but the late British Embassy has furnished us with the precise manner in which these sails are applied, and it appears that they are meant only to aid a sort of wheelbarrow, different however in its structure; that in the present drawing resembling very much the same machine which is used in the Western world, and differing from that which has already been given in a former volume exhibiting the Costume of China.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 15 ]
Plate XV.
A MANDARIN
IN HIS COMMON DRESS.
THE official habits in which all the mandarins are compelled to appear in public being made of the thickest silk, are exceedingly cumbersome, and not well adapted for the summer months, which are excessively hot even in the most northerly provinces; they therefore in private take every opportunity of throwing off their ceremonial garb, and assume a thin loose gown, tied with a belt round the waist. Their summer-hat is also made of light rice straw. The head is not encumbered with hair, which all ranks and ages shave close off, leaving only a small lock hanging down behind. The use of fans is universal. Even the military, when drawn out on parade-duty, make use of fans. It will be observed in this figure, that the spectacles worn by the Chinese are considerably larger than ours: they are made of cristal, glass being a species of manufacture unknown in China.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 16 ]
Plate XVI.
A BOAT GIRL.
ON all the rivers and canals of China a vast number of families live entirely in their boats, and the women are generally quite as efficient navigators as the men, particularly in rowing and steering. Their dress differs very little from that of the men, except about the head, on which the hair is suffered to grow freely, and is sometimes plaited behind like that of the men, as in this figure, but more frequently tied up in a knot upon the crown of the head. Among persons of this description the feet are allowed to grow to their full size, and they are almost invariably without shoes or other cover. They smoke tobacco and chew the betel and areca nut with as much avidity as the men.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 17 ]
Plate XVII.
A COMMON SEDAN CHAIR.
THIS is one of the most common of sedan chairs, used by the peasantry; though there are others still meaner, and without any covering over head. The wages of labour are so low, and the price of provisions so cheap, that any man above a common labourer can afford to be carried in his chair.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 18 ]
Plate XVIII.
A MANDARIN’S SERVANT ON HORSEBACK.
THE annexed is a portrait of a true Tartar horse, which seems to be pretty much of the same breed as those of the Cossacks. The Chinese horses are precisely of the same kind. In fact, no pains whatever appear to be taken either for improving the breed, or by attention to their food, cleanliness, or regular exercise, to increase the size, strength, or spirit of the animal. A currycomb, or any substitute for it, is unknown in China. Indeed horses are not much in use. Wherever the nature of the country admits of canals or navigable rivers, travelling and conveyance of every kind are principally performed on the water. A single horse suffices to draw a mandarin’s carriage, which is nothing more than a little covered cart without springs.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 19 ]
Plate XIX.
AN ITINERANT MUSICIAN.
THE Chinese have full as great a variety of musical instruments as most other nations, but they are all of them indifferent, and the music, if it may be so called, produced out of them, execrable. The merit of our travelling musician consists in beating a sort of tambourine, or rather a shallow kettle-drum, with a mallet held between the toes of one foot, while he strikes a pair of cymbals with the other, and, at the same time plays upon a sort of guitar accompanied by his voice. It would seem also that he is equally skilled in wind instruments, of which a flute and trumpet make their appearance out of the mouth of his bag; a pair of rattles connected by a piece of riband lie on the ground, and near them a hollow piece of wood, nearly heart-shaped, which, when struck with a mallet, emits a dull disagreeable sound, like the hollow bamboo carried by the watchman, for which this is sometimes substituted. A Chinese band always play in unison, and never in parts: this indeed is an art they have not yet reached, and those few who have heard European harmony pretend to dislike it. A Chinese ear is best gratified with the sounds of noisy instruments, as gongs, kettle-drums, shrill trumpets, jingling bells and cymbals, or with the faint and reedy tones, scarcely audible, of a little bamboo organ, which swell and die away not unlike those of an Eolian harp.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 20 ]
Plate XX.
AN OFFICER OF THE CORPS OF BOWMEN.
THE original weapon of the Chinese, which by the way seems to be the offensive arms of most savages, is the bow. It is still preferred by them to the matchlock; and the Tartars are so fond of it, that it forms an essential part of the education of the young princes of the blood. Their bows are large, and require a considerable degree of strength, as well as a peculiar knack to string them. Even the Emperor wears a ring of agate on the right thumb for the string to press against in drawing the bow, which is the weapon he uses every summer in hunting tigers and other wild beasts in the forests of Tartary. When the troops are drawn out on parade-duty, not only the superior officers carry colours, but a small flag is stuck on the back of every fifth, seventh, or ninth man. The characters on the flag generally designate the rank of the bearer and the name of the corps.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 21 ]
Plate XXI.
A CHINESE MENDICANT.
BEGGING is by no means a profitable trade in China, and few therefore pursue it except the monks of Fo and Tao-tzé, and a few impostors who go about pretending to foretell events and predict good or ill fortune. The annexed is the representation of a beggar of a different description. The piece of hollow wood in his hand is struck to draw attention, and the label on his back describes his condition, which is not exactly such as in other countries would excite much compassion. It states his unfortunate situation, as having no children to take care of him, to console him in affliction, to give him food when hungry, or medicine when sick. The want of children is considered in China as the greatest of all misfortunes, and is in reality so, as by the moral precepts of that nation, which have all the force of law, filial piety is looked upon as the first of moral virtues; and, however poor a child may be, he is bound to share his earnings with his aged parents.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 22 ]
Plate XXII.
CHINESE BARBERS CHAMPOOING, _&c._
THROUGHOUT all the East, in India as well as in China, the luxury of champooing is enjoyed by all ranks of men; it consists of pulling the joints until they crack, and of thumping the muscles until they are sore; it is generally an operation performed by the barbers, who at the same time cleanse the ears, tickle the nose, and play a thousand tricks to please and amuse their customers, to whom and the surrounding audience they tell their gossiping stories. Of their merit in this respect we have abundant information in the Arabian Nights Entertainments.
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[Illustration:
CHINA—PLATE 23 ]
Plate XXIII.
A BOOKSELLER.