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| Excerpts from the Chinese Repository | | Date Created: Feb 05, 2005, 07:41 AM |
The Chinese Repository was a paper published in Canton in the 19th Century. Although not strictly about life on our little mangrove swamp island, I have included some excerpts here because the observations the British passed on the Chinese in Canton are similar to what they said about the Chinese in Singapore.
On the diet of the Chinese, 'the universal use of oil, not always the
sweetest or purest, and of onions, in their dishes, together with the
habitual neglect of their persons, causes an odor, almost insufferable to a
European... as 'the repose of putrefied garlic on a much used blanket.'
March 1844
'Seven Month's Residence at Ningpo', communicated by WC Milne
'It is an error, by no means uncommon for foreigners, who have never
partaken of a good and substantial dinner at a Chinese table, to imagine
that the dishes must be lothsome; that they are made up of dog's flesh,
earth-worms, rats, mice, &c., swimming in liquid hog's lard. A mistake most
egregious! A taste foolishly fastidious! A prejudice without foundation!'
Also notes it is common for woman's milk to be sold on the streets
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