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J. NACKEN
Congee. As they pass your door you have your choice. Here comes the first, crying Mai 'chü 'hüt 'chuk:* the next, Mai' yü *shang 'chuck,† etc. You may have pigs' blood congee, fish congee, mulberry-root flavoured congee, or barley, or kidney or pork and a variety of other congees.
I may be allowed to here remark that all street cries are also heard on the water. When you see a man paddling his own canoe among the Chinese shipping, you may know that the articles he has for sale are the same as these sold on shore. As these hawkers do not come within the regulation which is in force on shore, I cannot say how many there may be. They simply have a small boat license; their lungs are so good that I hear their cries pretty distinctly in my house up the hill, and they assist their cousins on shore to swell the number of cries considerably. Some of these are of bad character; they will paddle out to the foreign shipping, having concealed bottles of samshoo under their heaps of sugar-cane or pine-apples. They bargain with the sailors and will steal if opportunity offers.
The second batch of hawkers who have articles of food for sale go out in the hours that precede the two principal Chinese meals at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. There are firstly the sellers of vegetables. In spring they sell celery, coarse greens, water cresses, salad, spinage, and bean sprouts. In summer; pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, egg plant, popaga‡, lotus root§, bamboo sprouts, many kinds of beans, etc. In autumn: caraway plant, pepper, potatoes, taro, various cabbages etc.; and in winter: mustard plants, white greens, colewort, parsley, onions, garlic, scallion, etc.
Mai tau' fu' is a cry heard very frequently. This bean curd is often the only "sung" on the table. It is made of bean flour, prepared with salt, gypsum, and water, then pressed between two boards, and sold in little square pieces at one cash each.
* ⭑## [The diacritical marks in the text are difficult to read from
the microfilm, Ed.]
广费魚生粥
+ ***
$ # This is a very good vegetable, which is not yet found, as far as
I know, on European tables. This root, after being dried and powdered, forms the well-known arrow-root,
|| 費荳腐
, ie, whatever is on the table besides the rice.
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