86 CHINESE CLOTHING. [Cuapr. VI. 
extremely cold; and in December and January the 
ice on the ponds and canals was of considerable 
thickness. The most attractive shops in the’ city 
now, were the different clothing establishments, 
where all articles of wearing apparel were lined 
with skins of various kinds, many of them of the 
most costly description. The very poorest Chinese 
has always a warm jacket or cloak lined with sheep 
skin, or padded with cotton, for the winter; and 
they cannot imagine how the Europeans can exist 
with the thin clothing they generally go about in. 
When the weather was cold, I used always to wear 
a stout warm great coat above my other dress, and 
yet the Chinese were continually feeling the thick- 
ness of my clothes, and telling me that surely I 
must feel cold. Their mode of keeping themselves 
comfortable in winter, differs entirely from ours: 
they rarely or never think of using fires in their 
rooms for this purpose, but as the cold increases, 
they just put on another jacket or two, until they 
feel that the warmth of their bodies is not carried 
off faster than it is generated. As the raw damp 
cold of morning gives way to the genial rays of 
noon, the upper coats are one by one thrown off, 
until evening, when they are again put on. In the 
spring months, the upper garments are cast off by 
degrees, and when the summer arrives, the Chinese 
are found clad in thin dresses of cotton, or in the 
grass cloth manufactured in the country. In 
the northern towns the ladies sometimes use a 
‘small brass-stove, like a little oval basket, having 
