Cuap. mr) CHINESE CUSTOMS. 4d 
T sition minutes the Mandarin himself came 
to ~eBhduct us into a more splendid apartment. 
It was a large airy room, one side fitted up with 
finely carved cases, in the centre of which stood 
a time-piece and some beautiful jars filled with 
flowers. I here had an opportunity of seeing the 
great veneration with which the Chinese regard 
anything that is old. One of these pieces of porce- 
lain, he informed us, had been in his family for 
five hundred years, and had the peculiar property 
of preserving flowers or fruits from decay for a 
lengthened period. - He seemed to prize it much on 
account of its age, and handled it with great 
veneration. The other side of the room was ele- 
vated a little, and fitted up for the “sing-song,” or 
theatricals, of which the Chinese, from the highest 
to the lowest, are passionately fond. Tea was 
soon brought in, in a tea-pot, in the European 
fashion, and not in the manner usual amongst the 
Chinese; for the custom with them is first to put 
the tea into the cup, and then to pour the water 
over it, the visitor drinking the beverage and leaving 
the leaves in the bottom of the cup—an admirable 
mode for such persons as the Aberdeen gentleman, 
who, some years since, when coffee was not so com- 
mon as it is now, complained that ‘his landlady 
did not give him the thick as well as the thin.” 
Sugar is never used by the Chinese with their 
tea. 
The Mandarin, after making various inquiries 
