So many dreadful things have been said about Chinese cooking, that I think it indispensable to devote a chapter to the rehabilitation of our culinary art. I do not pretend to make your mouths water, but I should like at least to be able to show you that my countrymen do not eat the extraordinary things attributed to them by certain prejudiced travellers. Our ordinary meal consists of eight dishes—two vegetables, eggs, a fish, some shell-fish, a bird, two dishes of meat, pork and goat in the south, and mutton and beef in the north. Besides this, a large tureen of soup is served with the rice, which takes the place of bread at our tables, and is our substitute for wine and tea, which are only served on very great occasions at meal times. Food being extremely cheap, the cost of three daily meals, similar to the one described, never exceeds fivepence per person. A pound of meat costs only twopence halfpenny, or threepence, whilst the price of a good fowl is sixpence, or, at the most, sevenpence.

In 1882, I embarked on board a Chinese ship at Hong-Kong, on my way home. Not being able to accommodate myself with the fare on board, I told a servant that I should like a chicken for lunch, and gave him a dollar to buy it with, this sum representing the usual cost of a chicken in France. A minute or two later he came to ask me how he was to prepare it. “Cut it up and stew it in its juice,” I said, “and season well.” Shortly afterwards he brought me a huge trencher, resembling a tub, filled with a fricassee of little pieces of smoking chicken.

“What! All that?” I cried.

“Yes, sir. With your dollar I got twelve chickens, and have cooked them as you told me to do.”

At the sight of this quantity of meat, and of the pantagruelic dish in which they were served, my appetite disappeared, and I made him carry the dish away, and distribute it among the servants in the kitchen. I mention this to show how little provisions cost at home. A workman earning one franc, or tenpence a day can keep a wife and two children in comfort, and still put by half his earnings.

When I was at the military school, where the cadets mess like officers, all I had to pay for my food was fourpence a day, and was so well fed for this money that I never had any cause for complaint. It is easy to understand the reason why things are so cheap in China. There are no taxes at home on articles of food. According to statistics, each inhabitant of the Empire pays two francs, or eighteenpence, in taxes per annum, but no part of this sum represents any tax on food. Europeans who complain that they spend far too much money in China have only themselves to blame. I have never heard of any European who cared to live as we live. Parisian dishes, already very expensive in this country, are naturally trebly so in China, in spite of the fact that raw materials cost so little. Besides, the cuisine of each country depends on its climate. Since I have been in France I have accustomed myself to French cookery, reputed the best of all. Whenever I return to China, and am invited to dinner by French people, I get quite upset, and often feel quite ill after dinner. Coffee irritates my stomach, and cigars make my nose bleed. Now, when I am in Europe I cannot do without my coffee and my cigar after dinner. It is not surprising, then, that Europeans cannot enjoy life in China, persisting as they do in eating only what suited them at home. When a friend calls on you in China to take pot-luck with you, you usually ask him to a restaurant, and order a dinner in his honour. These dinners usually cost six dollars, that is to say, twenty-four shillings for eight persons. The dinner is a very complete meal, as may be judged by the following bill of fare:—

These last four dishes finish the repast. As a rule, nobody touches them, and their appearance on the table is the signal for rising. The price of ceremonial dinners rarely exceeds twenty dollars, or four pounds, for eight persons. The list of dishes is a much larger one, and includes two roasts, which are served at the middle of the dinner, together with little pieces of bread cooked in the bain-marie.

A servant, armed with a very sharp carving-knife, removes the skin of the roast, be it wild duck, goose, or sucking pig, and serves each guest with a little in a saucer. At the same time, another servant hands each guest a small cup, into which he pours rice brandy. I forgot to say that the table is cleared before the roasts are served, just as in Paris before coffee is brought on to table. Pastry is always served at our dinners, and is brought on between the courses. With salt pastry, containing meat, a cup of chicken broth is served, whilst with sweet pastry almond milk is handed round. I must add that dinner always begins with hors d’oeuvres including fruit, and ends with a bowl of rice, which may be eaten or not, according to the tastes of the guests. Tea is served immediately after dinner, and at the same time each guest receives a napkin dipped in hot water.

The diners sit at a square table, two on each side. The first and third face the second and fourth, the sixth and the fifth face the courtyard, to which the seventh and eighth turn their backs. The eighth is always the master of the house, whose special function it is to fill the glasses of his guests with wine. When there are more than eight, several tables are used. If four tables are needed, the third and fourth are near the courtyard, whilst the first and second are near the drawing-room. Hors d’oeuvres include, besides fruit, ham, gizzards, grated meat grilled, dried shrimps, and preserved eggs. The latter, thanks to their coating of lime, will keep for an indefinite period; after twenty-five years they are exquisite to the taste, having undergone a kind of transformation, the result of which is that the yellows have become a kind of dark brown in colour, and the whites, also brown, resemble meat jelly. I once made some European friends of mine taste some of these eggs, as well as other Chinese dishes, and they were delighted with them, all prejudice apart.

Once, however, a Berlin lady, after having found that our cooking was delicious, asked the name of each of the dishes of one of our interpreters, who, not knowing the exact translation of the technical expression, “sea-slug,” answered that the dish in question was “sea hedgehog,” or See-Igel in German. This was enough to disgust our amiable guest, who refused to continue her dinner. I was sitting next to her, and she told me that she could feel it crawling in her throat still, which shows how great is the force of imagination. Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys gave a Chinese dinner during the Exhibition of 1867, and Cham, the famous caricaturist, drew the menu. There were some abominable things in this bill of fare, and the faces of the guests after they had glanced at it was a sight to be seen. It took the marquis all his eloquence to reassure them. I will not deny that there are people in China who eat these extraordinary dishes, but these are the exceptions to the rule. I repeat here, that never in my life have I seen or heard of any one who ate cat or dog, a practice which only quite recently a writer in the Figaro accused us of. Apropos of this, I must relate a very curious thing that befell us, when, in the spring of 1878, our Legation first settled in Paris. One day I received a call from a footman in livery, who desired to speak to me in the name of his mistress, a Polish countess of very high position. This lady had amongst her pets twelve little Chinese dogs, those hairless little bow-wows that everybody has seen. She loved them dearly, and, being frightened lest the Chinese colony might eat up her darlings, sent me word, considering us apparently as wild beasts or savages, to the effect that if one of her pets should disappear she would set fire to the Embassy building. I reassured the good old lady, and sent her word that none of my countrymen had an appetite for dog-meat, and that should she miss one of her pets one day it would be much wiser on her part, before committing the crime of arson with premeditation, to go round to the police-station or to the dogs’ home.

In short, we eat very much as you do, with rather more variety, thanks to the productiveness of our country and of our sea. But never are disgusting or even curious dishes seen on our tables. It is true that we prepare our dishes in a different manner. For instance, we cut the food up into very little pieces, in consequence of which the nature of the dish is not to be recognised, but our dishes are none the less delicious on that account. I could call in witness of what I assert all Europeans who have lived in China.

Cooking, moreover, is in exact ratio to the state of civilisation of each nation—the more developed the one, the more recherchÉ and the more perfect the other. France is the country in Europe which was civilised the first, and its cuisine is the most perfect in the West. So, instead of asking us whether we are in the habit of preparing such and such a fantastic dish, the European would do better to ask from what year our civilisation dates. The answer to this question would at once show him that it is absurd to attribute to us the consumption of disgusting dishes, and that this is the work of mere imagination, vivid perhaps, but completely in the wrong.