HOW THE CHINESE ECONOMIZE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2635, 1 June 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW THE CHINESE ECONOMIZE.

The Chincso are pre-eminently ecouoinitial, whether it bn in limiting the number of want?, in preventing waste, or in adjusting forces in such a manner as to make a litilo represent a great deal. The universal diet consists of rice, beans, millet, garden vegetables, and fish, with a little ttioat on high festivals. Wholesome food in abundance may bo supplied at less than tt penny a day for each adult, and oven in famine times thousand of persons have been kept alive for months ou about a halfpenny n day each. This implies the 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 the veriest trifle. The physical condition of the Chinese dog or eat, who has to live on the leavings of the family, rhows 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 disturbances of tho human organ'sation, 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 even with the assurance of no evil results. Indeed, the meat of animals which have died of ordinary ailments, is rather dearer than that of those which have died in an epidemic such as pleuro-pneumonia. Another example of careful, calculating economy is the construction of the cooking pots aud boilers, the bosoms of which are as thin as possible that the contents may boil all the sooner, for fuel is scarce and dear, and consists generally of nothing but the stalks and roots of tho crops, which have 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 the land. Boys ascend trees and beat them with clubs to shake off the leaves; the very straws get no time to show which way the wind blows before they are annexed by some enterprising collector. Similarly professional manure collectors swarm over all the roads of the country. Chinese women carry this miuute economy into their dress ; nothing comes amiss to them ; if it is not used iu one place, it is in another, where it appears as a thing: of beauty. Foreign residents who give their cast off clothes j away to Chinese may bo assured the cureer of usefulness of these garments is at last about to commence. Chiue-e wheelbarrows squeak for the want of a few drops of oil; but to people who hare no nerves tho squeak is cheaper than the oil. Similarly, dirt is cheaper than hot water, and so, as u rule, the people do not wash ; the motto " Cheaper than dirt," which tho soap dealer puts in his windows, could not bo made intelligible to Chinese. To them tho average foreigners are mere soap-wasters. Scarcely any tool can got ready inado; it is cheaper to buy the parts and pub them together for yourself, and as almost everybody takes this view ready-made tools are not to be got. Two rooms are dimly lighted with a single lamp deftly placed in a hole in the dividing wall Chinese, in fact, seem to be capable of doing anything by means of almost nothing. They will give 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 draft, out of a pile of mud bricks, lasting indefinitely, operating perfectly, and costing nothing. 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 the expense of colliu bearers, was Chinese.—North China Herald