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The Costume of China: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese — John Shaqi

The Costume of China: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the ChineseAlexander, William

History

The Costume of China: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese

Name: The Costume of China: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese
Author: Alexander, William

Alexander, William

China -- Social life and customs; Costume -- China

THERE is little to observe on the annexed engraving. It represents a
groupe of the common peasantry of the country eating their rice. The
particular employment of these, here designated, is that of tracking
barges on the canals; the pieces of wood lying by them being those which
they place across the chest to drag forward the vessels. It will be seen
from the other prints, that the common mode of carrying burthens is that
of swinging baskets from the two extremities of a bamboo, which is laid
by the middle across the shoulders.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration:

  CHINA—PLATE 47
]

                              Plate XLVII.

                         A MANDARIN’S OFFICER.

THIS gentleman is a sort of appendage to a man in power. Some half-dozen
of them generally precede a mandarin of rank when he goes in procession,
but more especially when he attends a tribunal of justice. Their
peculiar province seems to be that of keeping off the crowd. The
feathers they wear in their tall conical hats are from three to six feet
in length, and are apparently the tail feathers of a peculiar species of
pheasant, which is represented as very scarce. Some of them wear the
tail feathers of the argus pheasant.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration:

  CHINA—PLATE 48
]

                             Plate XLVIII.

                PUNISHMENT FOR INSOLENCE TO A SUPERIOR.

PIERCING the ear with various sharp instruments is among the punishments
of the Chinese. A man who had been insolent to one of the suite of Lord
Macartney’s embassy, was sentenced to receive fifty strokes from the
pant-zee or bamboo, in addition to having his hand pinned to his ear by
an iron wire, which was said to have been inflicted immediately after
the bastinade.

The middle figure is an inferior officer of the police, who holds a
painted board on which the crime is exhibited to spectators; the other
personage is a mandarin reproving the culprit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Illustration:

  CHINA—PLATE 49
]

                              Plate XLIX.

                        WOMAN SELLING CHOW-CHOW.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Costume of China: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese

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