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

Chapter 47: Plate XLVI. TRACKERS REGALING.

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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 XLVI.

TRACKERS REGALING.

There is little to observe on the annexed engraving. It represents a groupe of the common peasantry of the country eating their rice. The particular employment of these, here designated, is that of tracking barges on the canals; the pieces of wood lying by them being those which they place across the chest to drag forward the vessels. It will be seen from the other prints, that the common mode of carrying burthens is that of swinging baskets from the two extremities of a bamboo, which is laid by the middle across the shoulders.

China—Plate 47