It is a lamentable fact that although China has now been open for a considerable number of years both to trade and travellers, she is still a sealed book to the majority of intelligent Europeans as regards her manners and customs, and the mode of life of her people.  Were it not so, such misleading statements as those lately published by a young gentleman in the service of H.I.M. the Emperor of China, and professing to give an account of a Chinese dinner, could never have been served up by half-a-dozen London newspapers as a piece of valuable information on the habits of Chinamen.  There is so much that is really quaint, interesting, and worthy of record in the social etiquette observed by the natives of China, that no one with eyes to see and ears to hear need ever draw upon his imagination in the slightest degree.  We do not imply that this has been done in the present instance.  The writer has only erred through ignorance.  He has doubtless been to a Chinese dinner where he “sat inside a glass door, and cigars were handed round after the repast,” as many other brave men have been before him,—­at Mr Yang’s, the celebrated Peking pawn-broker.  But had he been to more than that one, or taken the trouble to learn something about the subject on which he was writing, he would have found out that glass doors and cigars are not natural and necessary adjuncts to a Chinese dinner.  They are in fact only to be found at the houses of natives who have mixed with foreigners and are in the habit of inviting them to their houses.  The topic is an interesting one, and deserves a somewhat elaborate treatment, both for its own sake as a study of native customs, and also to aid in dispelling a host of absurd ideas which have gathered round these everyday events of Chinese life.  For it is an almost universal belief that Chinamen dine daily upon rats, puppy-dogs, and birds’-nest soup; whereas the truth is that, save among very poor people, the first is wholly unknown, and the two last are comparatively expensive dishes.  Dog hams are rather favourite articles of food in the south of China, but the nests from which the celebrated soup is made are far too expensive to be generally consumed.

A dinner-party in China is a most methodical affair as regards precedence among guests, the number of courses, and their general order and arrangement.  We shall endeavour to give a detailed and accurate account of such a banquet as might be offered to half-a-dozen friends by a native in easy circumstances.  In the first place, no ladies would be present, but men only would occupy seats at the square, four-legged “eight fairy” table.  Before each there will be found a pair of chopsticks, a wine-cup, a small saucer for soy, a two-pronged fork, a spoon, a tiny plate divided into two separate compartments for melon seeds and almonds, and a pile of small pieces of paper for cleaning these various articles as required.  Arranged upon the table in four equidistant rows are