SLANG

Although native scholars in China have not deemed it worth while to compile such a work as the “Slang Dictionary,” it is no less a fact that slang occupies quite as important a position in Chinese as in any language of the West.  Thieves have their argot, as with us, intelligible only to each other; and phrases constantly occur, even in refined conversation, the original of which can be traced infallibly to the kennel. Why so much paint? is the equivalent of What a swell you are! and is specially expressive in China, where beneath a flowered blue silk robe there often peeps out a pair of salmon-coloured inexpressibles of the same costly material. They have put down their barrows, means that certain men have struck work, and is peculiarly comprehensible in a country where so much transport is effected in this laborious way.  Barrows are common all over the Empire, both for the conveyance of goods and passengers; and where long distances have to be traversed, donkeys are frequently harnessed in front.  The traditional sail is also occasionally used:  we ourselves have seen barrows running before the wind between Tientsin and Taku, of course with a man pushing behind. The children have official business, is understood to mean they are laid up with the small-pox; the metaphor implying that their turn has come, just as a turn of official duty comes round to every Manchu in Peking, and in the same inevitable way.  Vaccination is gradually dispelling this erroneous notion, but the phrase we have given is not likely to disappear.

A magistrate who has skinned the place clean, has extorted every possible cash from the district committed to his charge—­a “father and mother” of the people, as his grasping honour is called. That horse has a mane, says the Chinese housebreaker, speaking of a wall well studded at the top with pieces of broken glass or sharp iron spikes. You’ll have to sprinkle so much water, urges the friend who advises you to keep clear of law, likening official greed to dust, which requires a liberal outlay of water in the shape of banknotes to make it lie.  A flowery bill is understood from one end of China to the other as that particular kind in which our native servants delight to indulge, namely, an account charging twice as much for everything as was really paid, and containing twice as much in quantity as was actually supplied.  A flowery suit is a case in which women play a prominent part. You scorched me yesterday is a quiet way of remarking that an appointment was broken, and implying that the rays of the sun were unpleasantly hot. Don’t pick out the sugar is a very necessary injunction to a servant sent to market to buy food, &c., the metaphor being taken from a kind of sweet dumpling consumed in great quantities by rich and poor alike.  Another phrase is, Don’t ride the donkey,