ASIA. reserved for the emperor. Blue and white are the ordinary colours; red one of the most esteemed and expensive; and gilt figures on a black ground are in great request. In brown earthen-ware the Chinese excel, as well as in porcelain; but they know scarcely any thing about the art of making glass. They use metallic mirrors, and their windows are generally composed of transparent paper. Silk Manufactures.] Silk is manufactured to a great extent in China. The province of Che-kyang is the country from which the finest, softest, and whitest is brought; but the adjoining province of Kyang-nan has the greatest number of weavers, and all articles intended for the emperor's use are made there, particularly in its capital, Nan-king. The productions of the Chinese looms are said to be more showy than substantial; their brocades are embroidered with silk paper, and are therefore soon spoiled. Gauzes, whether flowered or plain, are the manufactures in which they excel; and those most in use are a strong dull satin, and a close taffety. The Kyen-cheu, spun by an insect somewhat differing from the grey silk-worm, and abounding in the province of Shan-tong, furnishes a thick rough material, resembling drugget, and much valued by the Chinese. The silk goods exported to Europe are manufactured in or near Canton, and the raw material is brought from Kyang-nan. Nankeens.] Kyang-nan also produces the crown cotton, which is manufactured into nankeens; particularly in the city of Nan-king, whence the name of those cotton cloths is derived. tured at Nan-king and in Fo-kyen. Linens, also, are manufac Trade and Commerce.] The external commerce of China, taking its extent into account, is inconsiderable; but its internal trade is extensive. Foreign trade is but barely tolerated by the Chinese government, for it is always at variance with that jealous policy which draws a line of perpetual demarcation between China and the rest of the world. Internal commerce, on the other hand, as it excites no apprehension of a dangerous rivalry, is encouraged. Inland navigation has been carefully improved, so that the whole distance from Canton to Peking, an interval of nearly seventeen degrees, and considerably more than a thousand miles, can, with the exception of one day's journey, be travelled by water. trade is carried on principally by foreigners; for every Chinese, who obThe external tains permission to go abroad for commercial purposes, is obliged to return within a limited period, and is treated as an outcast if he exceed that term. Canton is the only port open to Europeans; but a considerable traffic in coarse tea, cattle, furs, cloths, &c. is kept up with the Tartars and Russians upon the northern boundaries. The Chinese carry to Japan rhubarb, jinseng, silks, catgut, sweet-smelling woods, leather, cloths, and sugar, and bring back pearls, gold, copper, sword-blades, paper, and japanned-ware. To Manilla they carry silks, embroidery, varnish, drugs, porcelain, and while birds' nests, dye-woods, pearls, and bullion, are the return. To Batavia they carry tea, porcelain, tutenague, copper, and drugs; and receive silver, tin, pepper, nutmegs, cloves, tortoise-shell, and European goods. Gold, areca, and cinnamon, are brought to Canton from CochinChina; tin, camphor, resin, birds' nests, ivory, and rhinoceros' horns from Malacca and Siam. The articles exported by the East India Company to China, are lead, tin, copper, furs, camblets, long cloths, &c.; but the principal article is broad cloth, the annual export of which cannot be much less than £1,000,000 sterling. The other articles may be about £300,000; which, together with certain articles, which the officers of the tea; company's ships have the privilege of taking out, such as peltry, glass, clocks, watches, cutlery, coral, prints, paintings, &c. make the whole amount to £1,500,000. The chief article imported in return, is tea, of which Britain alone takes from 24,000,000 to 30,000,000 pounds weight annually; the rest of the cargoes consist of nankeens and raw silk. The minor articles, such as porcelain, lacquered and ivory goods, cinnabar, drugs, and mother-of-pearl, are principally confined to the private trade. The cost and charges of the total imports in the company's ships amount to about £3,300,000, and the sales to about £4,200,000 ;- - thus yielding £900,000 of clear profit to the company in its trading capacity. The trade of China with India, is principally carried on from the two presidencies of Calcutta and Bombay. The chief articles are cotton and opium. The value of the shipping and merchandise required for carrying on this trade is estimated at upwards of £2,200,000, exclusive of peckhuck, pearls, and sandal wood, &c.; and pepper, betel-nut, rattans, &c. from the east coast and the islands. For many years, the balance of trade between China and Great Britain, was greatly in favour of China, and required large sums in specie to be sent out annually; but towards the conclusion of the late war, when specie was most difficult to be procured, and its value was greatly increased, this country most fortunately drew through India a balance in bullion from China, and thus the Indian commerce with the port of Canton, became of the utmost importance. The balance in favour of India, still continues to be drawn from China, in the shape of bullion. On the northern frontier of the Birman dominions, an active trade is carried on with China and other eastern states. The chief empo. rium is at a place called Banmo, on the Chinese frontier; and at Midai, four or five miles to the northward of Amerapura, Mohammedan and Birman merchants of Ava, go to Banmo to meet the Chinese, part of whom, not unusually four or five thousand, come down to Midai. The Chinese import copper, orpiment, quicksilver, vermillion, iron pans, silver, good rhubarb, tea, fine honey, raw silk, spirits, hams, musk, verdegris, dry fruits, and a few fresh fruits, with dogs and pheasants. The Chinese travel on small horses and mules, and are said to be two months on the road. The tea that is brought by the Chinese is black, and is made up in round cakes or balls; some of it is of very fine flavour, and it is all of a very different description from any which is sold in the market of Canton-the better qualities are well adapted for Europe: the retail price is but one tikal; little more than a rupee for one vis, or nearly four pounds. This tea is used by all who can afford it, but a cheaper sort, said to be the produce of some part of the Birman territory, is an article of great and general demand. It is eaten after meals, with garlic and sesamum oil, and it is customary to offer it to guests and strangers as a token of welcome. The return of the trade with the Chinese are chiefly cotton, ivory, and bees' wax, with a small quantity of British woollens, chiefly broad cloths and carpets. The quantity of cotton is annually very considerable, it is estimated at not less than 70,000 bales of three hundred pounds each: the greater part of it is cleaned the Ava cotton of the lower provinces is of a short staple, but that of the upper, long, and of a fine texture. The cotton of Pegu, it is said, is sent to Chittagong and Dacca, and is the material of the fine Dacca muslins. The following is a table of the annual value of the trade between Great Britain and China in the years 1825-6-7 : the Company. Value of the China as above. 1825-26...£3,943,729 1826-27... 3,764,404 Money.] The only regularly stamped coin among the Chinese is the tseen or cash, as it is called by Europeans. A thousand of them make a tale. It is of copper, about nine-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a small square hole in the middle, inscribed with two Chinese words on one side, and two Tartar ones on the other. The hole is made for connecting a number of them together with a string. Silver is not coined, but is disposed of by weight, and is divided into larger or smaller pieces according as it may become necessary. Scales, weights, and scissars, are therefore for every payment. The value of an article is estimated according to the current price of an ounce of silver. Silver coin of any denomination is received according to its intrinsic value; and Spanish dollars are the sort most current. Their accounts are kept in tales, mace, candareens, and cash, thus: necessary 10 cash=1 candareen, 10 candareens=1 mace, 72 candareens make a Spanish dollar, and the exchange between China and England is usually 40 per dollar. £100 sterling would consequently be 360 tales, or 500 Spanish dollars. A tale is worth 5s. 6d. British currency. The authorized rates of interest are as high as 36 per cent., and from 15 to 18 per cent. may always be obtained. Money-lending is a trade well suited to the genius of the Chinese; and there is no country in the world where the pawnbroker's business is better understood, or more extensively practised. Weights and Measures.] The number of grains which the hwang-cong or musical reed will contain, is the basis of all the Chinese weights and measures. In our ignorance of their terms, it can be of no service to copy their tables of admeasurement. CHAP. IV.-POPULATION-MANNERS AND CUSTOMS---RELIGION --LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE. Population.] In the table of the provinces of China, given at the commencement of this article, the population will be found to be estimated at something above 143 millions. This is according to an official return made by order of the emperor, in A.D. 1790; and considerable reliance may be placed on it, as official returns, from the mode of forming them in China, have much likelihood of being materially correct. Every householder is required, under a penalty, to have a tablet, called men-p' nai (the tablet of the gate) on which all his inmates are faithfully enumerated, ready for the inspection of the officers appointed to take an account of the population, who are not allowed to examine the house when there are any women or children in the family. By this means, the number of the great body of the people may be considered as pretty accurately ascertained. The statement, also, corresponds very nearly with the report of Mr Thomas, who classed the population of China as follows: Dwellers on the land, 143,000,000 2,000,000 9,611 7,552 822,000 400,000 31,000 146,270,163. So that, between the two accounts, 145,000,000 may be taken in round numbers as the sum-total of the Chinese population. The statements of the Catholic missionaries and of lord Macartney, on this subject, are now generally considered to be quite erroneous. It is remarkable that in none of the tables of population in China are the towns or cities classed separately—the estimation being merely divided under the comprehensive heads of provinces. Manners and Customs.] The manners and customs of the Chinese, who, without being mere savages, have lived for many ages in a state of almost entire seclusion from all intercourse with the other inhabitants of the globe, form a peculiarly interesting subject of inquiry; and we therefore propose, under this general head, to enter into more detail than usual, regarding the physical constitution, habits, domestic economy, religion, &c. of this singular people. The following able summary of the general appearance of the country and its inhabitants, extracted from the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica,' will be of service in introducing our more minute details; while the view given in another chapter of the government, laws, &c. of the Chinese will afford a material assistance to the reader in forming his estimate of their national character. "When General Appearance of the Country and its Inhabitants.] an European first sets his foot in China, he will find the appearance of the country, the buildings, and the people, so totally different from any thing he had before seen, that he might fancy himself to be transported into a new world. In the long line of internal navigation between the capital and Canton, of 1,200 miles, with but one short interruption, he will observe every variety of surface, but disposed in a very remarkable manner in great masses; for many days he will see nothing but one uniform extended plain, without the smallest variety; again, for as many days, he will be hemmed in between precipitous mountains of the same naked character, and as unvaried in their appearance as the plains; and, lastly, a 10 or 12 days' sail among lakes, swamps, and morasses, will complete the catalogue of monotonous uniformity; but whether he crosses the dry plains of Petchelee and Shauntung, abounding with cotton and all varieties of grain and pulse, the more varied surface of Kiang-nan, fertile in silk, in yellow cotton, in fruits, in the staple commodity of grain, and in every thing that constitutes the luxuries, the comforts, and the necessities of the people,-the dreary swamps, morasses, and extensive lakes of the northern part of Kiang-see, where men subsist by fishing,—or its naked and picturesque mountains to the southward, famous for its porcelain manufactories, or whether he descend to the fertile plains of Quan-tung, on which almost all the vegetable products of the East may be said to be concentrated, the grand characteristic feature is still the same-a redundant population. Every where he meets with large masses of people, but mostly of one sex; thousands of men in a single group, without a single woman mixing among them.—men whose long gowns and petticoats give them the appearance of the softer sex, while these are sparingly seen at a distance in the back-ground, peeping over the mud-walls, or partially hid behind trees or bushes; whose short jackets and trowsers would make them pass for men among strangers, if their braided hair, stuck full of flowers, and their little cramped and bandaged feet, did not betray their sex. He will be pleased with the unequivocal marks of good humour which prevail in every crowd, uninterrupted and unconcerned by the bawling of some unhappy victim suffering under the lash of magisterial correction; and he will be amused at the awkward exertions of the softer sex to hobble out of sight, when taken by surprise; but his slumbers will be interrupted on the nights of the full moon by the nocturnal orgies of squibs and crackers, gongs and trumpets, and other accompaniments of boisterous mirth. A constant succession of large villages, towns, and cities, with high walls, lofty gates, and more lofty pagodas, large navigable rivers, communicating by artificial canals, both crowded with barges for passengers, and barks for burden, as different from each other, in every river and every canal, as they are all different from any thing of the kind in the rest of the world,-will present to the traveller an animated picture of activity, industry, and commerce. He will behold, in the lakes and morasses, every little islet crowned with villages and mud hovels. He will observe birds (the leutse or cormorant) catching fish; and men in the water, with jars on their heads, fishing for birds. He will see shoals of ducks issuing from floating habitations, obedient to the sound of a whistle; carts on the land, driven by the wind; and barges on the water, moving by wheels, like those recently invented in Europe, for propelling the steam-boats. Among other strange objects, he will observe, at every ten or twelve miles, small military guard-houses, with a few soldiers fantastically dressed in paper helmets and quilted petticoats, making use of the fan, if the weather be warm, and falling on their knees, if an officer of rank should pass them. He will observe that the meanest hut, with walls of clay, and a roof of thatch, is built on the same plan, and of the same shape, with the palace of the viceroy, constructed of blue bricks, and its tiled roof supported on pillars. He will notice that the luxury of glass is wanting in the windows of both; and that, while one admits a free passage to the air, the other but imperfectly resists the weather, and as imperfectly admits the light, whether through oiled paper, silk gauze, pearl shell, or horn. Nothing, perhaps, will more forcibly arrest the attention of the traveller than the general nakedness of the country as to trees and hedge-rows, of which the latter have no existence, and the former exist only in clumps near the dwellings of the public officers, or the temples of Fo, or Tao-tse. No green meadows will meet his eye; no cattle enliven the scene; the only herbage is on the narrow ridges which divide the plots of grain, or brown fallow, as in the common fields of England. The terraced hills he will probably observe to be terminated with a clump of trees, or a pagoda, the only objects in the distance that catch the eye. But the bridges on |