Shanghai city itself is a dirty place, and poorly built. The houses are mostly made of bluish square brick, imperfectly burned; and the walls are constructed in a cellular manner by placing bricks on their edges, and covering them with stucco. The streets are about eight feet wide, paved with stone slabs, and in the daytime crowded with people. Silk and embroidery, cotton, and cotton goods, porcelain, ready-made clothes, beautiful skins and furs, bamboo pipes of every size, bamboo ornaments, pictures, bronzes, specimens of old porcelain, and other curiosities, to which the Chinese attach great value, attract the stranger’s notice. Articles of food form the most extensive trade of all; and it is sometimes a difficult matter to get through the streets, owing to the immense quantities of fish, pork, fruit, and vegetables, which crowd the stands in front of the shops. Dining-rooms, tea-houses, and bakers’ shops, are met with at every step, from the poor man who carries around his kitchen or bakehouse, altogether hardly worth a dollar, to the most extensive tavern or tea-house, crowded with customers. For a few cash, a Chinese can dine upon rice, fish, vegetables, and tea; nor does it matter much to him, whether his table is set in the streets or on the ground, in a house or on a deck, he makes himself merry with his chopsticks, and eats what is before him.[51] The buildings composing the Ching-hwang miao, and the grounds attached to this establishment, present a good instance of Chinese style and taste in architecture. Large warehouses for storing goods, granaries, and temples, are common; but neither these, nor the public buildings, present any distinguishing features peculiar to this city alone.
The contrast between the narrow, noisome and reeking parts of the native city, and the clean, spacious, well-shaded and well-paved streets and large houses of the foreign municipalities, is like that seen in many cities in India. The Chinese are ready enough to enjoy and support the higher style of living, but they are not yet prepared to adopt and maintain similar improvements among themselves. The difficulty of being sure of the co-operation of the rulers in municipal improvements deters intelligent natives from initiating even the commonest sanitary enterprise of their foreign neighbors.