Volume 1

Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846 / translated by William Hazlitt; now edited with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot.

  • Évariste Régis Huc
Date:
[1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846 / translated by William Hazlitt; now edited with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and enabled us, indeed, to remove it from the minds of the Chinese themselves in other parts of the empire. We found here in every Street men, not women, occupied in this species of industry. Their productions are wholly without taSte or delicacy of execution ; they merely knit coarse cotton into shapeless stockings, like sacks, or sometimes gloves, without any separation for the fingers, and merely a place for the thumb, the knitting needles being small canes of bamboo. It was for us a singular speClacle to see parties of mustachioed men sitting before the door of their houses in the sun, knitting, sewing, and chattering like so many female gossips ; it looked quite like a burlesque upon the manners of Europe. From Lao-Ya-Pou to Si-Ning-Fou [Hsi-ning-fu was five days’ march ; on the second day we passec. through Ning-Pey-Hien [Nien-po-hsien], a town of the third order. Outside the weStern gate, we Stopped at an inn to take our morning meal; a great many travellers were already assembled in the large kitchen, occupying the tables which were ranged along the walls ; in the centre of the room were several furnaces, where the innkeeper, his wife, several children, and some servants were actively preparing the dishes required by the gueSts. While everybody seemed occupied, either in the preparation or in the consumption of victuals, a loud cry was heard. It was the ho£iess, thus expressing the pain occasioned by a knock on her head, which her husband had admin¬ istered with a shovel. At the cry, all the travellers looked in the diredtion whence it proceeded ; the woman retreated, with vehement vociferations, to a corner of the kitchen ; the innkeeper explained to the company that he had been compelled to corredf his wife for insolence, insubordination, and an indifference to the interests of the establishment, which eminently compromised its prosperity. Before he had finished