Page:Chinese Characteristics.djvu/155

Rh with which most Chinese are very familiar, but there are few who seem to regard parasites as a preventable evil, even if they are recognised as an evil at all. The nets which are used to keep winged torments at bay, are beyond the means of all but a small proportion even of the city population, and, so far as we know, are rarely heard of elsewhere. Sand-flies and mosquitoes are indeed felt to be a serious nuisance, and occasionally faint efforts are made to expel them by burning aromatic weeds, but such pests do not annoy the Chinese a thousandth part as much as they annoy us.

One of the typical instances of different standards of comfort is in the conception of what a pillow ought to be. In Western lands, a pillow is a bag of feathers adjusted to support the head. In China a pillow is a support for the neck, either a small stool of bamboo, a block of wood, or more commonly a brick. No Occidental could use a Chinese pillow in a Chinese way without torture, and it is not less certain that no Chinese would tolerate under his head for ten minutes the bags which we use for that purpose.

We have spoken of the singular fact that the Chinese do not to any extent weave wool. It is still more unaccountable that they take no apparent interest in the feathers which they pluck in such vast quantities from the fowls which they consume. It would be exceedingly easy to make up wadded bedding by employing feathers, and the cost of the feathers would be little or nothing, since they are allowed to blow away as beneath the notice even of the strict economy of the Chinese. Yet, aside from sale to foreigners, we do not know of any use to which such feathers are at present put, except that the larger ones are loosely tied to sticks to serve as dusters, and in western China, feathers are sometimes thickly sprinkled on growing wheat and beans, to prevent their being eaten by animals turned out to forage for themselves.

To an Occidental the ideal bed is at once elastic and firm.