The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong
and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the
native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be
seen in the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and
in Watson’s Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized
teakwood, which is becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and
the Metropolitan Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and
strong handwork of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can
take care of herself in furniture making if time is not of the “essence
of importance.” Loving art, I would not recommend sending her our
machinery for furniture, but if government schools and offices are to
be supplied quickly, I suppose we shall be compelled to make esthetics
surrender to utility here also!
The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan
in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control
the Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are
powerful in the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the
Japanese are influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai
and Hankau the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the
aid of Krupps, their foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank,
to establish a central engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung
province, with branches possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe
that the graduates will order German machinery and material for China’s
coming prodigious development.
The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food laws
a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the
pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This
changes the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color
to a ball state, colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic
flavor slightly. The Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green
tea longer to preserve it under the new rule, and moreover old custom
dies hard in China as far as agriculture is concerned. The American
government has done a world service in improving the quality of the
ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who do things by wholesale, will
insist in time that Australia and England, the champion tea-drinkers
per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the Americans have made
“ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of cousin John’s habit
of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands than in China,
“If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard of the May
1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the same,
saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t got
used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law
gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers
never got used to our laws.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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