Chinese Beverages. — Temperance a National Virtue. 493 



ables were presented in every imaginable form. During the 

 meal one young girl, who had played a part in the dramas, 

 was incessantly occupied with filling for each guest a very 

 small cup with a warm beverage distilled from millet, thus 

 carrying out the code of Chinese civility, that the cup should 

 never be suffered to be empty, and therefore, that however lit- 

 tle has once been drunk it must forthwith be replenished. Of 

 the juice of the grape the Chinese make no use, although 

 there are many districts in the country which are eminently 

 adapted to the growth of the vine. All the native drinks con- 

 sist of nothing but poor-flavoured, highly-perfumed drinks, 

 chiefly distilled from millet and rice, and known by the 

 general name of Samshoo, although this name is solely appli- 

 cable to that obtained from rice, which somewhat resembles 

 arrack. After the meal is over there are no spirits presented, 

 but only tea, usually the common green tea, or else a tea pre- 

 pared from almonds. The Chinese are, on the whole, a very 

 temperate people, and even their passion for smoking opium 

 is rather a vice among the masses of the coast provinces and 

 the large towns, than of the interior of the kingdom. Dur- 

 ing the banquet, as well as after it, there were further theatri- 

 cal exhibitions, but the guests, who had been sufficiently 

 wearied with the first of these, preferred to retu^e quietly to 



than that we should remove the bones from the flesh, or crack the shells of nuts and 

 almonds, both which operations seem to them excessively absurd. In fact, it is no 

 mere bon-mot which represents a Chinese gazing in astonishment at Europeans 

 playing billiards, or nine-pins, waltzing, or " polking," and remarking, with an ill-con- 

 cealed assumption of superiority, that wealthy people ought to leave such fatiguing 

 things to be done by their servants I ! 



