SOME CHINESE TRAITS.

SOME CHINESE TRAITS.

Restaurants are very numerous in Chinese cities. The cook stands almost on the sidewalk and fries the food in great pots of boiling fat to a beautiful brown and places it on trays to tempt the passerby. All the food is eaten with chop-sticks from bowls. Rice is served in buckets, and an average Chinaman will eat great quantities of rice mixed with cooked meat and vegetables, and many cups of tea. They eat very rapidly, holding the bowl up to the mouth; they seem to push the rice in the mouth and swallow it. The Chinese are fond of eggs that have been packed in salt and ashes from ten to twenty years. When these eggs are exposed for sale they are as black as coal. Birds-nest soup is another dainty. There is a certain bird that builds her nest high on the cliffs. She fastens her nest to the rocks with a sort of gelatine made in her mouth. It is this jelly that is used to make the soup. Fish is much used, salted and 'sun-dried and fresh. Also squids and the arms of the octopus. Chicken and pork are largely used, cut m small pieces, as well as vegetables, also cut to fit chop-sticks.

The Chinese can do wonderful work. They embroider on. silk in gold or natural colors. They make delicate filigree silver work. They carve ivory balls, and five or six balls within each other, with fine and accurate workmanship. Of course, the inside balls have all to be carved through the small openings in the outside balls. Whole elephants' tusks are carved with trees and animals and landscapes. They cut and carve the jade stone into wonderful and curious shapes. Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette , 7 October 1914, Page 3