1770 CHINESE 413 



In manner they are always civil, or rather obsequious ; 

 in dress always neat and clean in a high degree, from the 

 highest to the lowest. To attempt to describe either their 

 dresses or persons would be only to repeat some of the many 

 accounts of them that have already been published, as every 

 one has been written by people who had much better oppor- 

 tunities of seeing them, and more time to examine them 

 than I have had. Indeed, a man need go no farther to 

 study them than the China paper, the better sorts of which 

 represent their persons, and such of their customs, dresses, 

 etc., as I have seen, most strikingly like, though a little in 

 the caricatura style. Indeed, some of the plants which are 

 common to China and Java, as bamboo, are better figured 

 there than in the best botanical authors that I have seen. 

 In eating, they are easily satisfied, not but that the richer 

 have many savoury dishes. Eice, however, is the chief food 

 of the poor, with a little fish or flesh, as they can afford it. 

 They have a great advantage over the Malays, not being 

 taught by their laws or religion to abstain from any food 

 that is wholesome, so that, besides pork, dogs, cats, frogs, 

 lizards and some kinds of snakes, as well as many sea 

 animals looked upon by other people to be by no means 

 eatable, are their constant food. In the vegetable way, they 

 also eat many things which Europeans would never think 

 of, even if starving with hunger ; as the young leaves of 

 many trees, the lump of Iractece and flowers at the end of a 

 bunch of plantains, the flowers of a tree called by the Malays 

 combang ture (Aeschinomine grandiflora), the pods of Jcellor 

 (G-uilandina moringa), two sorts of blites (Amaranthus), all 

 which are boiled or stewed; also the seeds of taratti 

 (NympJiea Nelumbo), which indeed are almost as good as 

 hazel nuts. All these, however, the Malays also eat, as well 

 as many more whose names I had not an opportunity of 

 learning, as my illness rendering me weak and unable to go 

 about prevented me from mixing with these people as I 

 should otherwise have done. 



In their burials the Chinese have an extraordinary super- 

 stition, which is that they will never more open the ground 



