CHINA. 



311 



thafacter at an early hour of the morning, to pick up the bodies 

 and of the infants, that have been thrown out into the streets, 



Manners. j n tng course o f t h e night, and to carry them, without 

 ^"~" enquiry, to a common pit without the city-walls, into 

 which they are said to be thrown promiscuously, whether 

 living or dead. It has been calculated, that nearly 20,000, 

 chiefly female infants, are annually collected in this man- 

 ner throughout the empire ; but, at the same time, it is 

 admitted, that a great proportion of these have not been 

 destroyed by their parents. As the law requires, that 

 every corpse, whether young or old, must be carried to 

 a place of burial, which is generally at a considerable dis- 

 tance from the city, and as funerals in China are attend- 

 ed with very heavy expences, many of the infants, found 

 in the streets, are understood to have been dead born, or 

 to have died in their early months, and to have been dis- 

 posed of in this manner, as the cheapest mode of burial. 

 M. De Guignes, however, positively denies the sup- 

 posed frequency of infanticide among the Chinese, and 

 strenuously maintains, that it does not happen in a greater 

 number of instances, than might be conceived to arise in 

 so vast an empire, frum the extreme misery and poverty, to 

 which the lower classes are often reduced by the dreadful 

 famines which repeatedly occur. Some of his presump- 

 tive reasonings, however, against the fact, such as, that 

 the Chinese account themselves dishonoured when they 

 leave no family to perform their funeral rites, and to per- 

 petuate their memory in the hall of ancestors ; and that, 

 in this view, they are often known to adopt the children 

 <if others when they have no offspring of their own ; are 

 by no means sufficiently conclusive on the point, as it is 

 never contended, that a Chinese parent destroys all ///. 

 children, but only those, for whom he thinks himself 

 unable to provide. But what he affirms as facts, and 

 advances upon his own personal observation, is more 

 deserving of credit and consideration. There are in every 

 city, he informs us, houses prepared to receive the chil- 

 dren who are exposed ; _and thither all these, who are 

 found alive, are carefully conveyed and brought up. " I 

 have traversed China throughout its whole length. In 

 travelling by water, I never saw an infant drowned. In 

 my route by land, I have passed 'through the cities and 

 villages early in the morning, and have been upon the 

 roads at all hours of the day, and I never yet perceived 

 one child exposed or dead." He affirms, farther, that the 

 Chinese tenderly love their children ; that the women are 

 remarkably careful to preserve them from accidents ; and 

 that they testify all the usual distress of a mother, when 

 their infants are in danger of perishing. " From all that 

 I have said," he concludes, " I will not affirm, that in- 

 fanticide does not take place in China ; but I will con- 

 tend, that it is not more common there, than in any other 

 parts of the globe." 



Slam. In ancient times, there were no slaves in China, except 

 those who were taken prisoners in war, or condemned to 

 servitude by the laws. Afterwards, in times of famine, 

 parents were frequently reduced to the necessity of sell- 

 ing their children ; this practice, originating in the pres- 

 ure of necessity, has continued to exist, and even become 

 common, from mere motives of sordid avarice. It is chief- 

 ly female children, who are thus disposed of, and who are 

 educated in music, dancing, and similar accomplishments, 

 that they may be suld as concubines to the wealthier 

 classes, or produce profit to their purchasers, from the 

 wages of prostitution. Frequently, however, both male 

 and female slaves are employed as domestics ; the latter, 

 generally accompanying the young women of the family 

 when they marry, and the former being employed as la- 

 bourers or artizans. Boys are purchased, also, by the 



players to be instructed in their art, and to recruit their Character 

 number. A person may also sell himself as a slave, when ,, a 

 he has no other means of succouring his father ; and a ,_' m " c "'. 

 young woman, who finds herself destitute, may, in like 

 manner, be purchased with her own consent- The pri- 

 soners of war are the slaves of the emperor, and general- 

 ly sent to labour on his lands in Tartary. Except in the 

 case of those, who are sold by the sentence of the judges, 

 and the concubines of a mandarin whose goods are con- 

 fiscated, there are no public markets or sales of slaves in 

 China ; and the condition of persons of this class is. very 

 different from that of the negroes in the West India co- 

 lonies, better protected by the laws, and treated rather 

 as servants or even as children, than as beasts of burden. 



Eunuchs were formerly extremely numerous in China ; E unuc j,j 

 and, as appears from the history of the empire, frequent- 

 ly exercised no small degree of political influence. At 

 the Tartar conquest, they were reduced from ten thou- 

 sand to one thousand, and afterwards to three hundred ; 

 but, since that period, they have again increased to about 

 five or six thousand. They are employed chiefly in the 

 imperial palaces or habitations of the grandees ; where 

 they perform the mere menial offices of sweeping the 

 rooms, arranging the furniture, watching the gates, keep- 

 ing the gardens, and serving the women. Those, who 

 were observed about the emperor's palace at Pekin, were 

 generally large and robust in their persons, but distin- 

 guished by an uncommon shrillness of voice. They have 

 no beard, or soon lose it ; and, though possessing plump 

 countenances in youth, they become very ugly and wrink- 

 led as they grow old. Many of them have wives, and^ 

 adopted children, to whom they bequeath their pro- 

 perty. 



The mode of living among the lower orders in China Mode of 

 is miserable in the extreme. Two or three jars, a few living, 

 basons of coarse earthen ware, a large iron pot, a frying 

 pan, and a portable stove, are the chief articles of furni- 

 ture in their possession. They neither use tables nor 

 chairs, but at meals all the family sit" upon their heels 

 round the large pot, with a bason in every one's hand. 

 They take the rice from the pot with a spoon, and put 

 it into the bason, which they hold in the left hand close 

 to their mouths ; and then, with two slender sticks, or 

 porcupine quills, between the two first fingers of the right 

 hand, they throw the food, with great expedition,, into 

 their mouths. Their food consists chiefly of boiled rice, 

 millet, or some other grain, with the addition of onions 

 or garlic, or some other vegetable, especially the Pe-tsai, 

 a kind of insipid cabbage or beet, fried in oil, which is 

 most esteemed when in a rancid state ; and sometimes 

 season their food with a wretched kind of ragout made 

 of shrimps pickled in brine. They have little milk, no 

 butter, cheese, or bread ; and, unless in those places 

 where fish abounds, a morsel of pork is the only animal 

 food, which the poor can afford to taste, as a relish to 

 their rice. They are little scrupulous, however, as to 

 the articles of their diet ; and rats, frogs, worms, and 

 dogs, are all excellent food to a Chinese. The latter are 

 reared and fed for the purpose, and are said to be neither 

 unpleasant nor unwholesome. Those who were employ- 

 ed in the conveyance of the British embassy thankfully 

 picked up the refuse of the provisions ; and even boiled 

 again the tea leaves which had been used. There is no- 

 thing so filthy, that those who ply in boats upon the ri- 

 ver at Canton will.nol use as food ; and the dead hogs, 

 which are thrown over board, and which float when they 

 begin to putrefy, are considered by these poor creatures 

 as a most valuable prize, and often furnish occasion for 

 serious contests. It is said, also, that the Chinese, when 



