"The tea-houses also sell alcoholic liquor, but the eating-houses and the taverns drive the largest trade in it.
"We cannot speak of the process of the manufacture of tea, nor of the vast amount of labour it employs: the subject properly belongs to southern China; we will only say that the use of tea is as common in the north as in the south. The moment you enter a house, tea is offered to you--it is a sign of hospitality to do so. It is given to you in profusion; the moment your cup is empty, a silent attendant fills it, and your host will not permit you to mention the subject of your visit till you have drunk a certain quantity. The tea-houses are as numerous as cafés and taverns in France; the elegant manner in which they are furnished, and their high charges, distinguish some from others. The rich trader and the idle man of fashion, not caring to mix with the grimy handed workman or the coarse peasant, only frequent those houses that have a fashionable reputation. Tea-houses can be recognized by the large range at the end of their rooms, fitted up with huge kettles and massive tea pots, with ovens and stoves supplying with boiling water immense caldrons as big as a man. A singular kind of time-piece is placed above the range; it is made of a large moulded bar of incense divided off by equidistant marks, so that the lapse of hours can be measured by its combustion. The Chinese can thus literally use the expression, "consuming the time." Morning and evening the rooms are full of customers, who for two sapecas, the price of entrance, can sit there and discuss their business, play, smoke, listen to music, or amuse themselves by looking at the feats of tumblers, jugglers, and athletes. For the two sapecas they have also the right to drink ten cups of tea (certainly extremely small ones), with which, on trays covered with cakes and dried fruits, a crowd of waiters keep running to and fro.
"One day," says a letter of M. X., a French officer in the 101st Regiment of the Line, "we determined to dine _à la chinoise_ in a Chinese eating-house. Our coolies arranged beforehand that the price was to be two piastres a head, a large sum for this country, where provisions are so cheap. As a preparation for dinner, we had to thread our way through a labyrinth of lanes, crowded with dens in which crouched thousands of ragged beggars, poisoning the atmosphere with their exhalations. At the entrance to the open space in front of the eating-house stood a quantity of heaps of refuse, composed of old vegetable stalks, rotten sausages, and dead cats and dogs, and in every hole and corner a mass of filth as disagreeable to the nose as to the eye. It required a strong stomach to retain an appetite after running the gauntlet of such a horrible mess. A few tea drinkers and card players were seated at the door, and seemed to care very little for the pestilential character of the neighbourhood. We tried to be equally courageous, and after admiring two immense lanterns which adorned the entrance, and the sign inscribed in big letters, 'The three principal Virtues,' we ventured to hope that honesty would prove one of them, and that the tavern keeper would give us our money's worth.