As the winter approached the weather became extremely cold, and in December and January the ice on the ponds and canals was of considerable thickness. The most attractive shops in the city now, were the different clothing establishments, where all articles of wearing apparel were lined with skins of various kinds, many of them of the most costly description. The very poorest Chinese has always a warm jacket or cloak lined with sheep skin, or padded with cotton, for the winter; and they cannot imagine how the Europeans can exist with the thin clothing they generally go about in. When the weather was cold, I used always to wear a stout warm great coat above my other dress, and yet the Chinese were continually feeling the thickness of my clothes, and telling me that surely I must feel cold. Their mode of keeping themselves comfortable in winter, differs entirely from ours: they rarely or never think of using fires in their rooms for this purpose, but as the cold increases, they just put on another jacket or two, until they feel that the warmth of their bodies is not carried off faster than it is generated. As the raw damp cold of morning gives way to the genial rays of noon, the upper coats are one by one thrown off, until evening, when they are again put on. In the spring months, the upper garments are cast off by degrees, and when the summer arrives, the Chinese are found clad in thin dresses of cotton, or in the grass cloth manufactured in the country. In the northern towns the ladies sometimes use a small brass-stove, like a little oval basket, having the lid grated to allow the charcoal to burn and the heat to escape; this they place upon their tables or on the floor, for the purpose of warming the hands and feet. Nurses also carry these little stoves in their hands under the feet of the children. Such, however, is the thickness and warmth of their dresses, that it is only in the coldest weather they require them. Little children in winter are so covered up, that they look like bundles of clothes, nearly as broad as they are long, and when the padding is removed in warm weather, it is difficult to imagine that you see before you the same individuals.
I never felt so cold in England as I did during this winter in the north of China, and yet, as may be seen from the chapter on temperature, the thermometer did not indicate a very low degree. The house in which I lived was so open, that the wind rushed in at every crevice; the windows were large, not glazed, as with us, but papered, and in many places perfectly open. During the day I got on very well, as I was always out and moving about from morning until dark. But the long evenings, with the wind whistling through the windows, and blowing upon my candle, were dreary and cold enough.