The Fleshpots of China

THE menus of a lonely missioner in China are subject to many vicissitudes. Mission fare was always plain, though I recall one occasion of wild extravagance when pâte de foie gras graced my half-century birthday spread. I soon got used to buffalo milk and butter, the latter perfectly white like lard, with a slightly sweetish taste, but better than the tinned article. Milk is not regarded as a beverage in Eastern lands.

Once at a medical mission in China, after several weeks of almost uneatable bread, the housekeeper, who lacked experience and interest in her mission job, grew desperate and implored the assembled workers to produce a dependable recipe for bread. I remained modestly in the background until the silence on the part of ten busy women — doctors, Bible workers, everything but cooks — became painful; then I said that I could make rolls without a recipe. I was joyfully escorted to the kitchen and set to work, while the Chinese cook critically observed my operative technique. Domestic episodes had to be sandwiched in between medical and surgical duties. I hoped to finish the rolls before an impending consultation with a physician about some surgical work which I was to do for him next day, but the doctor arrived before the baking was quite finished, and as we sat and talked over the case he sniffed hungrily at the oven fragrance; finally he cast pride to the winds and asked for rolls. Our family was too large to permit generosity, but he bore off in triumph the one roll bestowed upon him. He was rash enough to spread the good news, and while we were at dinner we had to surrender a roll apiece to two homesick American youths who came to the door a-begging. I know the incident would have delighted my mother.

It was in Te chow that I saw a free distribution of food at a Buddhist temple. That day thirty-one hundred were fed with yellow millet mush, cooked in sixteen vats about five feet across, and served in any vessel presented by the recipients. There were baskets, pots, pans, tubs, buckets, broken dishes, and even Standard Oil tins. In another part of China, Kushan, I saw the delightful kitchen of a Buddhist monastery. It was a great heavy-beamed room, open on one side, in which were chopping blocks, enormous cauldrons, and copper troughs for washing dishes. The priests were busy preparing vegetables, and later we had a very good vegetarian meal served on a verandah.

In Canton there were many ways of purveying and cooking food which I found curious, and in some instances harrowing. Live fish were carried about the streets in tubs of water to ensure their freshness. If a customer wanted a small piece, some nonvital part—perhaps a portion near the tail — would be cut out and sold. The fish went on swimming and did n’t seem to mind. The chow or edible dog was in evidence, only the cheaper breeds being sold for food. Two dainties which I did not try were silkworms, thriftily fried after finishing their life work as spinners, and beautiful large brown beetles, also fried. Street kitchens on poles, with a table and condiments at one end and cooking apparatus at the other, seemed to bo well patronized.

On long mule-cart trips in northern China stops were made for food, but I always carried my spirit lamp and a few private supplies, such as tea, bread, rice, and jam. Sometimes the doctor I was going to visit would send the cart, carter, and food. Usually a little cabinet with drawers for the various kinds of food was fastened on the back of the cart. After an overnight stop the coolies brought hot water for tea at about 3 A.M., before the early start, and the prudent traveler did well to have the bread spread the night before, for time was short. The day was begun thus early, often in utter darkness, cold, and weariness, in order to accomplish what in China is a day’s journey — about thirty miles — and reach safe quarters well before four in the afternoon, for, according to custom, robbers did not begin their activities before that hour. Life in America might be simplified if bandits would keep to a definite schedule!

At about 11 A.M., when the men stopped to feed the mules and themselves, the drawers of the cabinet usually revealed some food that could be cooked on charcoal braziers or the spirit lamp. When the animals had eaten and the men were satisfied, they would call to me to get into the cart, and when I was seated cross-legged, ready for a start, they would take off the wheels, grease them, and put them on again. As the cart in action was none too comfortable, with its elliptical wheels that did n’t keep time, I protested against being put in before these preparations were made; but I was told that it was necessary to make a quick start after greasing the wheels, as the starved, mangy scavenger dogs waited in droves, ready to swarm around us and lick off the grease if given an opportunity.

Some of the Chinese delicacies celebrated in travelers’ tales, such as birdnest soup, shark’s fins, and other oddities, I did not often taste. They are not easy to get everywhere, and are reserved for special occasions. I liked many of the Chinese dishes, and, as I learned to use chopsticks without difficulty, I got along very well when I was a guest at Chinese meals.

One dish which I saw served in various parts of China is called the ‘Eight Precious,’ and has a symbolic significance. It is made at the table. A great copper chafing dish is brought in, blue with spirit flames, and flanked by the eight ingredients, each in its own dish. I could not understand what was said as the dish was prepared, but it seemed to be in the nature of a formula or an incantation. In Soochow the ingredients which I identified were a mound of sweetened rice, lotus seeds, chestnuts, water chestnuts, almonds, and bamboo.

The articles vary somewhat in different cities. In Yünnan, one dish — apparently a local specialty — served at a feast was made of the tongues and kidneys of ducks; another tidbit was pigeons’ brains.

At Dong kau, in the south, the food was not especially attractive. At the hospital, where I worked for some weeks, we had native tea, plain, at six in the morning. Breakfast came at eight, with more tea, jam, possibly bacon if the courier had brought any, and eggs with a musty taste — not from age, the Chinese explained, but because the mosquitoes had stung them. I can believe it, for they were malignant malarial mosquitoes, and if the eggs escaped they were the only things immune.

Even Charles Lamb’s succulent essay on roast pig did not make me a pork lover in China. In spite of the familiar assertion, ‘Pigs is pigs,’ the porkers in the different parts of the country have such varying characteristics that a book could be written about them. In the north are the horrible scavenger pigs, which have achieved more notoriety in foreign lands than their better-behaved brethren. In Hankow pigs are chiefly associated with the factory there, where they are made into pork for the English market, and where it is said much ‘Wiltshire’ bacon originates. In Nanchang, the pigs I saw were stately and intelligent-looking, and they sauntered slowly about with brows wrinkled in thought. In Dong kau they are of a lively temperament and trot briskly. They have delightful mud wallows and come out quite yellow with clay, and when rain begins they squeal wildly and scuttle and scamper to cover. They wander over the mountains for food, and come trotting home at night when their owners call them. In the mountains the small pigs wear sandals to protect their soft hoofs from the rocks, and it is a funny sight to see a whole litter of baby pigs trotting along in their little grass sandals. In Canton pigs are precious possessions and are not allowed to walk, but are carried by coolies with poles, in baskets woven to fit them. They dwell ‘in marble halls’

— in other words, pens fastened with teakwood bars. In Yünnan they are led by halters. At the entrance to the precincts of one village I saw a monumental pig of granite, who knelt on the wooded dike of a wide irrigation ditch, apparently as guardian angel of the village. Here in America the pork barrel looms large as a national figure, but we have not yet immortalized it in stone!