Part 5 (1/2)

The markets are thronged with people making their purchases in the early mornings, and the congested condition, with the great variety of vegetables, makes it almost as impressive a sight as Billingsgate fish market in London. In the following table we give a list of vegetables observed there and the prices at which they were selling.

----------------------------------------------------------- LIST OF VEGETABLES DISPLAYED FOR SALE IN BOONE ROAD MARKET, SHANGHAI, APRIL 6TH, 1900, WITH PRICES EXPRESSED IN U. S. CURRENCY.-- --------------------------------------------------------- Cents Lotus roots, per lb. 1.60 Bamboo sprouts, per lb. 6.40 English cabbage, per lb. 1.33 Olive greens, per lb. .67 White greens, per lb. .33 Tee Tsai, per lb. .53 Chinese celery, per lb. .67 Chinese clover, per lb. .58 Chinese clover, very young, lb. 21.33 Oblong white cabbage, per lb. 2.00 Red beans, per lb. 1.33 Yellow beans, per lb. 1.87 Peanuts, per lb. 2.49 Ground nuts, per lb. 2.96 Cuc.u.mbers, per lb. 2.58 Green pumpkin, per lb. 1.62 Maize, sh.e.l.led, per lb. 1.00 Windsor beans, dry, per lb. 1.72 French lettuce, per head .44 Hau Tsai, per head .87 Cabbage lettuce, per head .22 Kale, per lb. 1.60 Rape, per lb. .23 Portuguese water cress, basket 2.15 Shang tsor, basket 8.60 Carrots, per lb. .97 String beans; per lb. 1.60 Irish potatoes, per lb. 1.60 Red onions, per lb. 4.96 Long white turnips, per lb. .44 Flat string beans, per lb. 4.80 Small white turnips, bunch .44 Onion stems, per lb. 1.29 Lima beans, green, sh.e.l.led, lb. 6.45 Egg plants, per lb. 4.30 Tomatoes, per lb. 5.16 Small flat turnips, per lb. .86 Small red beets, per lb. 1.29 Artichokes, per lb. 1.29 White beans, dry, per lb. 4.80 Radishes, per lb. 1.29 Garlic, per lb. 2.15 Kohl rabi, per lb. 2.15 Mint, per lb. 4.30 Leeks, per lb. 2.18 Large celery, bleached, bunch 2.10 Sprouted peas, per lb. .80 Sprouted beans, per lb. .93 Parsnips, per lb. 1.29 Ginger roots, per lb. 1.60 Water chestnuts, per lb. 1.33 Large sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.33 Small sweet potatoes, per lb. 1.00 Onion sprouts, per lb. 2.13 Spinach, per lb. 1.00 Fleshy stemmed lettuce, peeled, per lb. 2.00 Fleshy stemmed lettuce, unpeeled, per lb. .67 Bean curd, per lb. 3.93 Shantung walnuts, per lb. 4.30 Duck eggs, dozen 8.34 Hen's eggs, dozen 7.30 Goat's meat, per lb. 6.45 Pork, per lb. 6.88 Hens, live weight, per lb. 6.45 Ducks, live weight, per lb. 5.59 c.o.c.kerels, live weight, per lb. 5.59-- ---------------------------------------------------------

This long list, made up chiefly of fresh vegetables displayed for sale on one market day, is by no means complete. The record is only such as was made in pa.s.sing down one side and across one end of the market occupying nearly one city block. Nearly everything is sold by weight and the problem of correct weights is effectively solved by each purchaser carrying his own scales, which he unhesitatingly uses in the presence of the dealer. These scales are made on the pattern of the old time steelyards but from slender rods of wood or bamboo provided with a scale and sliding poise, the suspensions all being made with strings.

We stood by through the purchasing of two c.o.c.kerels and the d.i.c.kering over their weight. A dozen live birds were under cover in a large, open-work basket. The customer took out the birds one by one, examining them by touch, finally selecting two, the price being named. These the dealer tied together by their feet and weighed them, announcing the result; whereupon the customer checked the statement with his own scales. An animated dialogue followed, punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing the birds into the basket and turning to go away while the dealer grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again balancing the roosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at the dealer, who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm subsided and the dealer accepted 92c, Mexican, for the two birds.

They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three pounds each, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our currency.

Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and j.a.pan and when one sees them growing they suggest giant stalks of asparagus, some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot in height at the stage for cutting. They are s.h.i.+pped in large quant.i.ties from province to province where they do not grow or when they are out of season. Those we saw in Nagasaki referred to in Fig.

22, had come from Canton or Swatow or possibly Formosa. The form, foliage and bloom of the bamboo give the most beautiful effects in the landscape, especially when grouped with tree forms. They are usually cultivated in small clumps about dwellings in places not otherwise readily utilized, as seen in Fig. 66. Like the asparagus bud, the bamboo sprout grows to its full height between April and August, even when it exceeds thirty or even sixty feet in height.

The buds spring from fleshy underground stems or roots whose stored nourishment permits this rapid growth, which in its earlier stages may exceed twelve inches in twenty-four hours. But while the full size of the plant is attained the first season, three or four years are required to ripen and harden the wood sufficiently to make it suitable for the many uses to which the stems are put. It would seem that the time must come when some of the many forms of bamboo will be introduced and largely grown in many parts of this country.

Lotus roots form another article of diet largely used and widely cultivated from Canton to Tokyo. These are seen in the lower section of Fig. 70, and the plants in bloom in Fig. 71, growing in water, their natural habitat. The lotus is grown in permanent ponds not readily drained for rice or other crops, and the roots are widely s.h.i.+pped.

Sprouted beans and peas of many kinds and the sprouts of other vegetables, such as onions, are very generally seen in the markets of both China and j.a.pan, at least during the late winter and early spring, and are sold as foods, having different flavors and digestive qualities, and no doubt with important advantageous effects in nutrition.

Ginger is another. crop which is very widely and extensively cultivated. It is generally displayed in the market in the root form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of China than the water chestnut. This is a small corm or fleshy bulb having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell a dozen spitted together on slender sticks the length of a knitting needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the ca.n.a.ls producing a fruit resembling a h.o.r.n.y nut having a shape which suggests for them the name ”buffalo-horn”. Still another plant, known as water-gra.s.s (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu province where the land is too wet for rice. The plant has a tender succulent crown of leaves and the peeling of the outer coa.r.s.er ones away suggests the husking of an ear of green corn. The portion eaten is the central tender new growth, and when cooked forms a delicate savory dish. The farmers' selling price is three to four dollars, Mexican, per hundred catty, or $.97 to $1.29 per hundredweight, and the return per acre is from $13 to $20.

The small number of animal products which are included in the market list given should not be taken as indicating the proportion of animal to vegetable foods in the dietaries of these people. It is nevertheless true that they are vegetarians to a far higher degree than are most western nations, and the high maintenance efficiency of the agriculture of China, Korea and j.a.pan is in great measure rendered possible by the adoption of a diet so largely vegetarian.

Hopkins, in his Soil Fertility and Permanent Agriculture, page 234, makes this pointed statement of fact: ”1000 bushels of grain has at least five times as much food value and will support five times as many people as will the meat or milk that can be made from it”. He also calls attention to the results of many Rothamsted feeding experiments with growing and fattening cattle, sheep and swine, showing that the cattle destroyed outright, in every 100 pounds of dry substance eaten, 57.3 pounds, this pa.s.sing off into the air, as does all of wood except the ashes, when burned in the stove; they left in the excrements 36.5 pounds, and stored as increase but 6.2 pounds of the 100. With sheep the corresponding figures were 60.1 pounds; 31.9 pounds and 8 pounds; and with swine they were 65.7 pounds; 16.7 pounds and 17.6 pounds. But less than two-thirds of the substance stored in the animal can become food for man and hence we get but four pounds in one hundred of the dry substances eaten by cattle in the form of human food; but five pounds from the sheep and eleven pounds from swine.

In view of these relations, only recently established as scientific facts by rigid research, it is remarkable that these very ancient people came long ago to discard cattle as milk and meat producers; to use sheep more for their pelts and wool than for food; while swine are the one kind of the three cla.s.ses which they did retain in the role of middleman as transformers of coa.r.s.e substances into human food.

It is clear that in the adoption of the succulent forms of vegetables as human food important advantages are gained. At this stage of maturity they have a higher digestibility, thus making the elimination of the animal less difficult. Their nitrogen content is relatively higher and this in a measure compensates for loss of meat. By devoting the soil to growing vegetation which man can directly digest they have saved 60 pounds per 100 of absolute waste by the animal, returning their own wastes to the field for the maintenance of fertility. In using these immature forms of vegetation so largely as food they are able to produce an immense amount that would otherwise be impossible, for this is grown in a shorter time, permitting the same soil to produce more crops. It is also produced late in the fall and early in the spring when the season is too cold and the hours of suns.h.i.+ne too few each day to permit of ripening crops.

VII

THE FUEL PROBLEM, BUILDING AND TEXTILE MATERIALS

With the vast and ever increasing demands made upon materials which are the products of cultivated fields, for food, for apparel, for furnis.h.i.+ngs and for cordage, better soil management must grow more important as populations multiply. With the increasing cost and ultimate exhaustion of mineral fuel; with our timber vanis.h.i.+ng rapidly before the ever growing demands for lumber and paper; with the inevitably slow growth of trees and the very limited areas which the world can ever afford to devote to forestry, the time must surely come when, in short period rotations, there will be grown upon the farm materials from which to manufacture not only paper and the subst.i.tutes for lumber, but fuels as well. The complete utilization of every stream which reaches the sea, reinforced by the force of the winds and the energy of the waves which may be transformed along the coast lines, cannot fully meet the demands of the future for power and heat; hence only in the event of science and engineering skill becoming able to devise means for transforming the unlimited energy of s.p.a.ce through which we are ever whirled, with an economy approximating that which crops now exhibit, can good soil management be relieved of the task of meeting a portion of the world's demand for power and heat.

When these statements were made in 1905 we did not know that for centuries there had existed in China, Korea and j.a.pan a density of population such as to require the extensive cultivation of crops for fuel and building material, as well as for fabrics, by the ordinary methods of tillage, and hence another of the many surprises we had was the solution these people had reached of their fuel problem and of how to keep warm. Their solution has been direct and the simplest possible. Dress to make fuel for warmth of body unnecessary, and burn the coa.r.s.er stems of crops, such as cannot be eaten, fed to animals or otherwise made useful. These people still use what wood can be grown on the untillable land within transporting distance, and convert much wood into charcoal, making transportation over longer distances easier. The general use of mineral fuels, such as coal, c.o.ke, oils and gas, had been impossible to these as to every other people until within the last one hundred years. Coal, c.o.ke, oil and natural gas, however, have been locally used by the Chinese from very ancient times. For more than two thousand years brine from many deep wells in Szechwan province has been evaporated with heat generated by the burning of natural gas from wells, conveyed through bamboo stems to the pans and burned from iron terminals. In other sections of the same province much brine is evaporated over coal fires. Alexander Hosie estimates the production of salt in Szechwan province at more than 600 million pounds annually.

Coal is here used also to some extent for warming the houses, burned in pits sunk in the floor, the smoke escaping where it may. The same method of heating we saw in use in the post office at Yokohama during February. The fires were in large iron braziers more than two feet across the top, simply set about the room, three being in operation. Stoves for house warming are not used in dwellings in these countries.

In both China and j.a.pan we saw coal dust put into the form and size of medium oranges by mixing it with a thin paste of clay. Charcoal is similarly molded, as seen in Fig. 72, using a by-product from the manufacture of rice syrup for cementing. In Nanking we watched with much interest the manufacture of charcoal briquets by another method. A Chinese workman was seated upon the earth floor of a shop.

By his side was a pile of powdered charcoal, a dish of rice syrup by-product and a basin of the moistened charcoal powder. Between his legs was a heavy ma.s.s of iron containing a slightly conical mold two inches deep, two and a half inches across at the top and a heavy iron hammer weighing several pounds. In his left hand he held a short heavy ramming tool and with his right placed in the mold a pinch of the moistened charcoal; then followed three well directed blows from the hammer upon the ramming tool, compressing the charge of moistened, sticky charcoal into a very compact layer. Another pinch of charcoal was added and the process repeated until the mold was filled, when the briquet was forced out.

By this simplest possible mechanism, the man, utilizing but a small part of his available energy, was subjecting the charcoal to an enormous pressure such as we attain only with the best hydraulic presses, and he was using the principle of repeated small charges recently patented and applied in our large and most efficient cotton and hay presses, which permit much denser bales to be made than is possible when large charges are added, and the Chinese is here, as in a thousand other ways, thoroughly sound in his application of mechanical principles. His output for the day was small but his patience seemed unlimited. His arms and body, bared to the waist, showed vigor and good feeding, while his face wore the look of contentment.

With forty centuries of such inheritance coursing in the veins of four hundred millions of people, in a country possessed of such marvelous wealth of coal and water power, of forest and of agricultural possibilities, there should be a future speedily blossoming and ripening into all that is highest and best for such a nation. If they will retain their economies and their industry and use their energies to develop, direct and utilize the power in their streams and in their coal fields along the lines which science has now made possible to them, at the same time walking in paths of peace and virtue, there is little worth while which may not come to such a people.

A Shantung farmer in winter dress, Fig. 18, and the Kiangsu woman portrayed in Fig. 73, in corresponding costume, are typical ill.u.s.trations of the manner in which food for body warmth is minimized and of the way the heat generated in the body is conserved. Observe his wadded and quilted frock, his trousers of similar goods tied about the ankle, with his feet clad in multiple socks and cloth shoes provided with thick felted soles. These types of dress, with the wadding, quilting, belting and tying, incorporate and confine as part of the effective material a large volume of air, thus securing without cost, much additional warmth without increasing the weight of the garments. Beneath these outer garments several under pieces of different weights are worn which greatly conserve the warmth during the coldest weather and make possible a wide range of adjustment to suit varying changes in temperature. It is doubtful if there could he devised a wardrobe suited to the conditions of these people at a smaller first cost and maintenance expense. Rev. E. A. Evans, of the China Inland Mission, for many years residing at Sunking in Szechwan, estimated that a farmer's wardrobe, once it was procured, could be maintained with an annual expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum procuring the materials for both repairs and renewals.