are extremely moderate eaters and mostly
tea-drinkers, even the wealthy confining themselves to few and simple
dishes of pork, fowl, or fish, with the ever-present accompaniment of
rice. The puppy-dog, on which the people are popularly believed to live,
as the French on frogs, is a stall-fed animal, and has always been, and
still is, an article of food; but the consumption of dog-flesh is really
very restricted, and many thousands of Chinamen have never tasted dog in
their lives. According to the popular classification of foods, those
who live on vegetables get strong, those who live on meat become brave,
those who live on grain acquire wisdom, and those who live on air become
divine.

At banquets the scene changes, and course after course of curiously
compounded and highly spiced dishes, cooked as only Chinese cooks know
how, are placed before the guests. The wine, too, goes merrily round;
bumpers are drunk at short intervals, and the wine-cups are held upside
down, to show that there are no heel-taps. Forfeits are exacted over the
game of "guess-fingers," for failure to cap a verse, or for any other
equally sufficient (or insufficient) reason; and the penalty is an extra
bumper for the loser.

This lively picture requires, perhaps, a little further explanation.
Chinese "wine" is an ardent spirit distilled from rice, and is modified
in various ways so as to produce certain brands, some of which are of
quite moderate strength, and really may be classed as wine. It is always
drunk hot, the heat being supplied by vessels of boiling water, in which
the pewter wine-flasks are kept standing. The wine-cups are small, and
it is possible to drink a good many of them without feeling in the least
overcome. Even so, many diners now refuse to touch wine at all, the
excuse always being that it flushes the face uncomfortably. Perhaps
they fear an undeserved imputation of drunkenness, remembering their own
cynical saying: "A bottle-nosed man may be a tee-totaller, but no one
will believe it." To judge from their histories and their poetry, the
Chinese seem once upon a time to have been a fairly tipsy nation:
now-a-days, the truth lies the other way. An official who died A.D.
639, and was the originator of epitaphs in China, wrote his own, as
follows:--

Fu I loved the green hills and white clouds . . .
Alas! he died of drink!

There are exceptions, no doubt, as to every rule in every country;
but such sights as drunken