CHINESE GARDENING. 



739 



lation composed of peaceful, conservative people, indus- 

 trious, but without that energy of mind and character 

 which has always distinguished our race, we have only 

 to adopt China's mild vegetarianism, and develop the 

 garden and the orchard rather than the field and pas- 

 ture. At the bottom of national character lies, as a 

 physical basis, the diet — not simply the diet of the peo- 

 ple, but of its generation. 



3rd. The best results obtained from the garden, as 

 contrasted with the field, are not the economical ones — 

 the production of more mouths to feed nor of more 

 hands to labor — but its aesthetic ones : the love for and 

 enjoyment of flowers and all natural objects, and the 

 simple delight in the every-day hues of the beauties of 

 the growing world. 



Those who doubt the existence of such sentiments 

 among the millions of Asia should read the Chinese bal- 

 lad of the Tea Picker, which is sung by the young girls 

 and women who pick the tea in the tea gardens on the 

 hills of China. There is much in Eastern art, and some- 

 thing in its literature, to indicate that even as regards 

 the swarming myriads of China, the poetic influence of 

 gardening has been the purely successful one — producing 

 a good result without alloy. 



4th. Regarded in its economical aspects Chinese gar- 

 dening may be called the successful failure of vegetar- 

 ianism. The result has been accomplished, the feeding 

 a vast population on vegetable food; for while quantities 

 of fish and other meats are used in China, the diet is 

 sufficiently vegetarian in character to make the country 

 an example of what that cult would persuade us to accept. 

 The aim of agriculture is not to produce the greatest 

 amount of food, but the best food that can be produced. 

 The aim of gardening is not to make life possible on an 

 acre of ground, but give the energetic mind and body 

 what it needs to supplement the other foods and employ- 

 ments and recreations of an active life. It is not so much 

 on economical grounds that we are to urge for every la- 

 boring man, however poor, the possession of a little plot 

 of land ; rather are the reasons those which have to do 

 with the spiritual existence of the family, especially the 

 children. We do not need to make it easier for the poor 

 and miserable to breed poverty and misery for another 

 generation, but it should be our effort to make the home 

 and family life of every household the best possible, and 

 especially to bring to it the good influences of the gar- 

 den and of the natural world, to the love of which gar- 

 dening leads. 



A study of Chinese gardening does not indicate that 

 we have made a mistake in our apparently wasteful 

 method of using the earth, but the fine taste in artistic 

 forms and colors, the simple and widespread enjoyment 

 of the natural world, which more extended knowledge of 

 Eastern nations shows us to be the posession of even the 

 common people, have a most important lesson. We have 

 failed to get into our very blood that love for nature and 

 nature's forms and coloring that has somehow become 



an inhent.ince with these eastern millions. We exag- 

 gerate and are sentimental where they enjoy so simply 

 and quietly that we are hardly willing to credit them 

 with any feeling whatever. But however little inten- 

 sity there may be in the feeling of the Chinese and Jap- 

 anese for nature, their arts give the plainest evidence 

 that' we have much to learn from them. 



That love of flowers which causes the boat-women and 

 even women scavengers to wear them in their tresses*, 

 and the tea-pickers to sing at their work — 



" My wicker basket slung on arm, and hair entwined with flowers, 

 To the slopes I go of high Sunglo, and pick the tea for hours — " 



this simple enjoyment of natural beauty may have 

 done more for the world than we have supposed, and it 

 may be precisely the influence that our own popula- 

 tion needs. The preaching of the pulpit, the service 

 of the church, the work of the school, are all easy to 

 estimate, but those quiet, uplifting influences that flow 

 into the responsive heart from the natural world, who 

 can tell their transformations ? Even amid dark super- 

 stitions, the millions of China have at least the gentle 

 light of the silent world of nature, which gardening has 

 taught them to love. 



THE FRUITS OF CHINA. 



The apples of China are dry and insipid ; the plums, 

 quinces and apricots afford better varieties, and two 

 pears, the White and Strawberry, are said to be equal to 

 any western varieties. The fruit of the south is the 

 orange, the most delicious species being the ^ liu-shakin 

 or mandarin orange. The olives are inferior , dates were 

 formerly abundant, but are now but little cultivated. 

 Four of the indigenous fruits are the whampe [cookia] 

 a grape in size, a gooseberry in taste ; the loquat, or 

 pebo [eriobotrya] , a kind of medlar ; and the lichi, 

 a strawberry in size and shape, the tough red skin en- 

 closing a sweet, watery pulp of a whitish color sur- 

 rounding a hard seed. The pomegranate is cultivated 

 chiefly for its flowers ; the guava and the rose apple 

 are grown to make jellies : bread-fruit, almonds, man- 

 goes, bananas, the persimmon and the carambola, or 

 gooseberry-tree, are also cultivated. A pleasant sweet- 

 meat like cranberry is made from the seeds of the 

 arbutus [myrica]. The citron is valued more for its 

 fragrance than its taste, and the thick rind is cut into 

 strips while growing, each strip becoming a roundish 

 end like a finger, whence the name Fun s/iao, or Buddha 

 hand. 



Grapes are abundant and cheap, and in northern 

 China are kept through the winter by carefully regu- 

 lating the temperature of the fruit ; a system akin to 

 our "cold storage," which is practically new with us. 



(*l The flowers grown in potson the boats, and those usually 

 worn by boat-women in their hair, all assist in imparting a pleas- 

 ing aspect to the river at Funchau. The jasmine is the favorite 

 flower for the hair. The cypress vine is found trained about the 

 homes of e\'en the poorest people. 



