A Mixed Dinner 2 1 1 



were needed to convince the company of their superior 

 native refinement, as compared with our barbaric methods 

 of eating, this feast was enough. In lieu of the chicken 

 being neatly cut up, and stewed in a delicate sauce, all ready 

 for serving to the mouth with the elegant chopsticks, a rough, 

 plain boiled fowl was set on the table, with no carving-knife 

 to dissect it with. Each guest had been provided with a 

 miniature ivory-handled knife and a two-pronged fork, and 

 after much effort we succeeded in gnawing at fragments of 

 the carcase, unaccompanied with bread or vegetables. Then 

 came a leg of mutton . roasted '' rare," not bad in itself, but 

 without potatoes and bread somewhat unpalatable. Fortu- 

 nately, we had some Chinese dishes to finish up with, and 

 a cup of fragrant tea with which to wash down the hetero- 

 geneous repast. After experience of this meal I began to 

 think myself less a victim than I did before, in being 

 generally restricted in my travels to a Chinese cuisine pure 

 and simple. Dinner over, we adjourned to another court, 

 in which a local artist had made ready to photograph us in 

 a group. The man was a Cantonese, who had been brought 

 from Shanghai by some English traveller, whose name I 

 could not succeed in deciphering from his Chinese version, 

 and who had brought him thus far to photograph the scenery 

 en route. The man had settled in Chung-king, and was 

 apparently doing a thriving business.^ The group was 

 successfully taken, and forms an interesting record of my 

 visit. I may here mention that I heard the photographer 

 expatiating to the mandarins, his fellow-countrymen, upon 

 the benefit he had derived from consulting Dr. Edwards, of 

 the China Inland Mission in this city, for ophthalmia, from 

 which he had been long suffering, and of which he was now 

 cured : he dwelt upon the fact of the doctor's receiving no 

 payment (" yi ko chien pu yao "), but the idea of becoming 



