Canton is the strangest of all strange cities, and perhaps the most representative one in China. With a population of a million and a half, it has not a street within its walls over eight feet wide. Horses and vehicles are unknown. Even the useful and comfortable jinrikisha could not be used here, where everything to be moved must be transported on human shoulders. The city extends to about a distance of four miles on the banks of the Pearl River, and fully a hundred thousand people live in boats along the river front. The families occupying these sampans will average at least four individuals; a man and wife with two children,--frequently there are half a dozen of the latter. These boats are about twenty feet long and five wide. But a small portion of the after part has any covering, and the cooking is done in the bow. Here the family live,--cook, eat, and sleep, knowing no other home. The youngest children are often seen tied to the thwarts, and if they tumble overboard they are easily pulled back again.
There are hundreds of temples distributed over the city, many of which were visited and found to be crowded with idols and idlers, though we never saw a Chinaman praying in them. The corner of nearly every street, as well as numerous stores and dwelling-houses, have each an idol and small shrine on which incense is kept burning all the time, and every day of the year. The whole city is permeated with the smell of this highly scented incense, and though used in such small individual quantities the consumption in the aggregate must be very large. Of the numerous temples and pagodas in Canton probably the most famous is that of the Temple of the Five Hundred Gods, containing that number of gilded statues of Buddhist sages, apostles, and deified warriors. The expressions on the features of this large number of statues were remarkable in the fact that they all differed essentially from each other; otherwise they were exceedingly commonplace.
Every sort of manufacture or business is performed in the most primitive manner by hand, machinery of any sort being scarcely known; but personal service or labor is so cheap that it even competes with machinery. One is surprised as to how such a crowded community can exist in such an inconsiderable space; whole families live and sleep in a single small room. The Chinese, in point of domestic comfort and cleanliness, are a century behind the Japanese; and this remark will apply as well to nearly all the relations of life. There is less of nudity here than in the latter country; but, so far as one can judge by brief observation and inquiry, morality is at a lower gauge in China than in Japan. It is doubtless as true here as elsewhere, that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin," but you lack the touch of nature. With the Japanese the traveler feels himself sympathizing. He goes among them freely, he enters their houses and drinks tea with them, but not so with the Chinese; here we realize no sense of affiliation, but rather one of repulsion. The universal amusement is that of gambling, and the means whereby the people gratify this passion are endless. Dominos, and several similar games, are most popular in connection with cards, the latter game, however, differing very materially from our own. The Chinese cards number a hundred to the pack. Cock fighting is universal, and is as much of a national game as at Manilla.