Art. I. Sir G. Staunton's Account of the Embassy of China. (osia)

The Monthly Review, November 1797


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(s. 126-127)

Several circumstances, independently of the arrival of strangers, contributed to throng so wide a street. A procession was moving towards the gate, in which the white or bridal colour, according to European ideas, of the persons who formed it, seemed at first to announce a marriage ceremony; but the appearance of young men over-whelmed with grief shewed it to be a funeral, much more indeed than the corse itself, which was contained in a handsome square case, shaded with a canopy, painted with gay and lively colours, and preceded by standards of variegated silks. Behind it were sedan chairs covered with white cloth, containing the female relations of the deceased; the white colour, denoting in China the affliction of those who wear it, is sedulously avoided by such as wish to manifest sentiments of a contrary kind: it is therefore never seen in the ceremony of nuptials (met soon afterwards), where the lady (as yet unseen by the bridgegroom) is carried with a gilt and gaudy chair, hung round with festoons of artificial flowers, and followed by relations, attendants, and servants, bearing the paraphernalia, being the only portion given with a daughter, in marriage, by her parents.


[...]

(s. 246)

The white colour in Europe is the emblem of joy and festivity, of youth and innocence: in China, the same colour betokens lamentation and sorrow: - it is rigorously proscribed in scenes of gaiety, and exclusively employed in funeral processions.

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(s. 248)

The Chinese manufacture cloth from the fibres of the dead nettle, and make paper from those of hemp and from the straw of rice; vol. ii. p. 170. The momordica serves for cucumber; a carduus is eaten as a relish with rice; the carthamus affords their finest red: they dye black with the cup of the acorn; and the leaves of the ash are substituted for those of mulberry in feeding silk worms.