How The Chinese Economise.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5019, 29 May 1889, Page 3

How The Chinese Economise.

The Chinese are pre-eminently economical, whether it be in limiting thelnumber of wants, in preventing waste, or in adjusting forces in such a manner as to make a little represent a great deal. The univeral diet consists of rice, beans, millet, garden vegetables, and fish, with a little meat on bight festivals. Wholesome food in abundance may be supplied at loss than a penny a day for each adult, and even in famine times thousands of persons have been kept alive for months on about a half-penny a day each. This implies tho existence of a high degree of culinary skill in the Chinese, Their modes of preparing food are thorough and various. There is no waste; everything is made to do as much duty as possible. What is left is tho veiiest trifle. The physical condition of the Chinese dog or cat, who has to live on the leavings of the family, shows this; they are clearly kept on starvation allowances. The Chinese are not extremely fastidious in regard to food ; all is fish that comes to their net, and most things come there sooner or later. Certain disturbance of the human organisation, due to eating diseased meat, are well recognised among the people ; but it is considered better to eat the meat, the cheapness of which is certain, and run the risk of the consequences, which are not quite certain, than to buy dear meat with the assurance of no ev ; l results. Indeed the moat of animals which have died of ordinary ailments is rather dearer than those which have died in an epidemic such as pleuro [pneumonia. Another example of careful, calculating economy is the construction of the cooking pots and boilers,the bottomof which are as thin as possible that tho contonte may boil all the sooner, for fuel is scarce and dear, and consists generally of, nothing but the stalks and roots of the crops, which make a rapid blaze and disappear. The business of gathering fuel is committed to children, for one who can do nothing else can at least pick up straws and leaves and weeds. In autumn and winter a vast army of fuel gatherers spread over tho land. Boys ascend trees and Leqt them with clubs to shake off the leaves ; the very straws get np time to show which way the winds blows before they are annexed by Jsomo enterprising collector. Similarly professional manure collectors swarm over all the roads of tho country. Chinese women carry this minute economy into their dress; nothing comes amiss to them ; if it is not used in one place it is another, where it appears a thing of beauty. Foreign residents who give their cast off clothes away to Chinese may be assured that the career of usefulness of these garments is at last about to commence. Chinese wheelbarrows squeak for the want of a few drops of oil; but to people who have no nerves tho squeak is cheaper than the oil; similarly, dirt is cheaper than hot water, and so, as a rule, the people do not wash ; the motto ‘ Cheaper than Dirt,’ which the soap denier puts in bis windows, could not be made intelligible to the Chinese. To them the average foreigners are mere soap wasters. Scarcely any tool can be got ready made ; it is so much cheaper to buy the parts and put them together for yourself, qnd a§ almost everybody takes this yiew ready-made tools are not to be got. Two rooms are dimly lighted with a singlo lamp deftly placed in a hole in the dividing wall. Chinese, in fact, seem to be capable of doing almost anything by means of almost nothing. They will givp you an iron foundry on a minute scale of completeness in a back yard, and will make in an hour a cooking range, of strong and perfect draught, out of a pile of mud bricks, lasting indefinitely, operating perfectly, and posting pothing. The old woman who in her last moments hobbled as near as possible to the family graveyard in order to die so as to avoid tho expense of coffin bearers was Chinese.—North China Herald.