Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/354

 334 The Chinese immigrants, it is true, rarely erect buildings of their own, but fit themselves to what they find. They fit themselves in with all their peculiar industries, their smells of tobacco and cooking-oil, their red and yellow signs and hand-bills, opium pipes, high-soled slippers, sticks of India ink, silver pins, and packets of face-powder, their fruits and fish, their curious groceries and more curious butcher's meat—they have fitted all this into the Yankee buildings, and taken such absolute possession that we are no longer in America, but Shanghai or Hong-Kong. The restaurants make the nearest approach to the national façades, but this is brought about by adding highly-decorated balconies, lanterns, and inscriptions, and not building outright.

I had the curiosity to try one of the best of the restaurants—quite a gorgeous affair, at the head of Commercial Street—and found the fare both neatly served and palatable. There was a certain monotony in the bill, which I ascribed to a desire to give us dishes as near the American style as possible. We had chicken-soup, with flour paste resembling macaroni; a very tender chicken, sliced, through bones and all, in a bowl; a bowl of duck; a pewter chafing-dish of quail with spinach. All the food is set out in bowls, and each helps himself, with ebony chopsticks, to such morsels as he desires. The chopsticks, held in the fingers of the right hand, somewhat after the manner of castanets, are about as convenient to the novice as a pair of lead-pencils. We drank saki, or rice brandy, in infinitesimal cups, during the dinner, and at dessert very fine tea.

The upper story of these places is reserved for guests of the better class. Those of slender purses are accommodated below. To these is served a second drawing of the same tea which has been used, and such meats as re-