Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/29

Statistics recently collected indicate that the area of cultivated land in China is 400 million acres, approximately, which figure bears about the same ratio to the waste land as is the case in England; and inasmuch as the Chinese do not devote any land to purposes of pasture, but employ every available spot for the production of bread-stuffs, means of subsistence for a vast population are evidently furnished by such a large expanse of cultivated fields. Yet the severity of the struggle for existence forces itself upon the attention of every observer, and would certainly be much accentuated did the people adopt meat diet. At present the staple articles of food are rice, millet, and sweet potatoes—the addition of this last in recent years having immensely augmented the nation's resources. These bread-stuffs are supplemented by vegetables of all kinds, obtained from the land and from the sea, by vast quantities of fish, by pork, by poultry, by ducks, by geese, and by game abundantly found in some districts. There is no pasture land. Oxen, horses, mules, and donkeys, used almost entirely for purposes of agriculture and transport, are fed upon grain, straw, vegetables, or grass cut from the hills. Further, unutilised refuse is reduced to a minimum by the operation of a custom, possessing almost the force of law, that every family must keep one or more pigs. In the cities the art of economising space has been fully developed: comparatively few large pleasure-