A Chinese family sit around a small cooking stove eating by the side of the road. Coloured lithograph after W. Alexander.

1800-1899

1 print : lithograph, with watercolour

Wellcome Collection 33147i

After: an etching after William Alexander published as a plate to Picturesque representations of the dress and manners of the Chinese, illustrated in fifty colored engravings, with descriptions, London: John Murry, 1814, plate XL ("Children eating their meal. Among the peasantry and labouring people of China, all are cooks. A little earthen-ware stove and an iron pan is all that is required. Rice is their principal food, which is simply boiled, and then a little fat of pork or a salt fish put into the pan to mix with it and give it a relish ; they drink little else besides water, which is usually carried about in a gourd slung on the back ; and they require no table nor chairs. Each person has his bowl and his chop-sticks, and squatting down on his haunches before the pan, he makes a hearty and contented meal. It is quite gratifying to see a party of youngsters making their dinner in this way in the open air.")