Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volumes 4-6 |
Common terms and phrases
Ainos alphabet ancient appearance Barracouta boats Buddha Buddhist building called Canton century China Chinese characters Chinese language Chinese Repository coast concubine Corean cousin dialects Dictionary district dynasty Eagre Emperor empire erected Excellency SIR JOHN feet female final fish foreign Fúh-kien Ghilack given Hakodadi Hongkong honour Imperial India inhabitants inscription island Japan Japanese Klaproth land language Mandarin marriage married Meeting then adjourned miles Mongolian mountain Nanking native Neu-chih Ningpo observed officers origin pagoda paper phonetic port present previous Meeting priests pronunciation province relics religion remarkable Resident rhymes river rocks ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY Sanon Sanscrit says Secretary Shanghae Shortrede side SIR JOHN BOWRING Society sounds specimens stone Stoupas Sung dynasty tablet Táh Táng Tartars Tauist temple tide tion tone towers translation villages visited wife worship writing written Yezo Yuen
Popular passages
Page 37 - Temple, which afforded a good view of the entire scene. On a sudden, all traffic in the thronged mart was suspended, porters cleared the front street of every description of merchandise, boatmen ceased lading and unlading their vessels, and put out into the middle of the stream, so that a few moments sufficed to give a deserted appearance to the busiest part of one of the busiest cities of Asia.
Page 14 - To destroy daughters,' he says, ' is to make war upon Heaven's harmony,' (in the equal numbers of the sexes ;) ' the more daughters you drown, the more daughters you will have ; and never was it known that the drowning of daughters led to the birth of sons.
Page 11 - ... by every imaginable decoy and device. There is no river which is not staked to assist the fisherman in his craft. There is no lake, no pond, which is not crowded with fish. A piece of water is nearly as valuable as a field of fertile land. At daybreak every city is crowded with sellers of live fish, who carry their commodity in buckets of water, saving all they do not sell to be returned to the pond, or kept for another day's service.
Page 10 - China — every variety of net, from vast seines embracing miles, to the smallest handfilet in the care of a child. Fishing by night and fishing by day, fishing in moon-light, by torch-light, and in utter darkness, — fishing in boats of all sizes,— fishing by those who are stationary on the rock by the sea-side, and by those who are absent for weeks on the wildest of seas, — fishing by cormorants, — fishing by divers, — fishing with lines, — with baskets — by every imaginable decoy...
Page 13 - ... singularly economical. Drunkenness is a rare vice in China, and fermented spirits or strong drinks are seldom used. Tea may be said to be the national, the universal beverage ; and though that employed by the multitude does not cost more than from 3d. to...
Page 38 - The spectacle was of greatest interest when the eagre had passed about one half way among the craft On one side they were quietly reposing on the surface of the unruffled stream, while those on the nether portion were pitching and heaving in tumultuous confusion on the flood ; others were scaling, with the agility of salmon, the formidable cascade. This grand and exciting scene was but of a moment's duration ; it passed up the river in an instant, but from this point with gradually diminishing force,...
Page 10 - Every variety of net, from vast seines, embracing miles, to the smallest hand-filet, in the care of a child ; fishing by night and fishing by day ; fishing in moonlight, by torchlight, and in utter darkness ; fishing in boats of all sizes ; fishing by those who are stationary on the rock by the seaside, and by those who are absent for weeks on the wildest of seas ; fishing by cormorants ; fishing by divers; fishing with lines, with baskets — by every imaginable decoy and device. There is no river...
Page 11 - ... than the roof, and who seldom tread except on the deck or boards of their sampans, — show to what an extent the land is crowded, and how inadequate it is to maintain the cumberers of the soil. In the city of Canton alone it is estimated that 300,000 persons dwell upon the surface of the river : the boats, sometimes twenty or thirty deep, cover some miles, and have their wants supplied by ambulatory salesmen, who wend their way through every accessible passage.
Page 37 - Loud shouting from the fleet announced the appearance of the flood, which seemed like a glistening white cable, stretched athwart the river at its mouth, as far down as the eye could reach. Its noise, compared by Chinese poets to that of thunder, speedily drowned that of the boatmen : and as it advanced with prodigious velocity — at the rate, I should judge, of twenty-five miles an hour — it assumed the appearance of an alabaster wall, or, rather, of a cataract four or five miles across, and...
Page 7 - ... place — it is decidedly the least so of the Five Treaty Ports ; but I found, generally speaking, that the real returns were considerably in excess of the official estimates. And I would remark, that, in taking the area of the eighteen provinces of China at 1,348,870 square miles, the census of 1812 would give 268 persons to a square mile, which is considerably less than the population of the densely peopled countries of Europe.