Children eating their meal
Among the peasantry and labouring people of China, all are cooks. A little earthen-ware stove and an iron pan is all that is required. Rice is their principal food, which is simply boiled, and then a little fat of pork or a salt fish put into the pan to mix with it and give it a relish; they drink little else besides water, which is usually carried about in a gourd slung on the back; and they require no table nor chairs. Each person has his bowl and his chop-sticks, and squatting down on his haunches before the pan, he makes a hearty and contented meal. It is quite gratifying to see a party of youngsters making their dinner in this way in the open air.
Trackers Regaling
THe figure represents a groupe of the common peasantry of the country eating their rice. The particular employment of these, here designated, is that of tracking barges on the canals; the pieces of wood lying by them being those which they place across the chest to drag forward the vessels. It will be seen from the other prints, that the common mode of carrying burthens is that of swinging baskets from the two extremities of a bamboo, which is laid by the middle across the shoulders.