The Costume of China / Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese

Chapter 15: Plate XIV. A PORTER CARRYING GOODS.

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About This Book

An illustrated volume presents fifty colored engravings with descriptive text that surveys dress, occupations, and social customs across urban and rural settings. Plates depict court and military attire with insignia indicating rank, everyday laborers, domestic servants, entertainers, religious practitioners and rituals, market and transport scenes, and tools and weapons, often accompanied by explanations of materials, costume elements, and local practices such as fishing methods and funerary observances. The commentary mixes observational notes on appearance and behavior with practical details about trades, ceremonies, and the visual markers of status.

Plate XIV.

A PORTER CARRYING GOODS.

It has long been known that the ingenious Chinese, taking advantage of the constancy with which the wind blows in the same direction, applied a sail to assist the progress of their land carriages; but the late British Embassy has furnished us with the precise manner in which these sails are applied, and it appears that they are meant only to aid a sort of wheelbarrow, different however in its structure; that in the present drawing resembling very much the same machine which is used in the Western world, and differing from that which has already been given in a former volume exhibiting the Costume of China.

China—Plate 15