Show IN THE fAil EAST I How the Asiatic Nations Keep I Themselves Cool LOOSE CLOTHES FOR SUMMER The Koreans and Their WickerWork Bustles Hot Springs of Japan Homes of Half tho World WASHINGTON Juno 25 1S90 Special correspondence of Tnc HERALD J Washington Wash-ington is sweltering under a mIdsummer sun The statesmen at the capitol are in their summer clothes end every man has his recipe for keeping cool I know of a Senator who takes twelve baths a week at the government expense and there arc fifteen fif-teen members of tho lower House who wear seersucker coats and flannel shirts I visited the National museum today to seethe see-the appliances which the people of the tropic trop-ic have TO KEEP THEMSELVES COOL The Korean gentleman has a wickerwork shirt which keeps his clothes away from tuo body and acts as a ventilator lying between twee his abdomen and his gown He has wicker cuffs which run from his wrist to his elbow and which are made of the finest i rf stiff straw These keep the sleeves TBffay from the person and the Korean embassy em-bassy at Washington is the coolest of all the legations It is from these wicker bustles worn over tho belly that the Koreans Ko-reans get their reputation for being such a fat race They are fat but not half so fat as is supposed It is this wicker arrangement arrange-ment that increases their anparent avoirdupois avoir-dupois and as fatness in Korea is a sign of wealth there is no hesitancy shown by a thin man in trying to make himself look like the fat man in the dime museum The Korean has the lightest summer hat known to the world It is of the sugar lout variety vari-ety is made of horsehair and it weighs but a few ounces ouncesTIIE THE TAX COLLECTION of the museum represents sill l the countries of tuo east Even the Sandwich Islanders jliavc ia saad oine s of the South Sea maidens T maid-ens hide their nudity behind a fan made of fraKint crass and not mere than six inches in diameter Tho palm leaf fans oft of-t is c untry and Europe are all made at Canton in China and the Chinese are anii rg the duo fan makers of the world During niy trip around the world I visited Peking and a number of other Chinese cities and I found whole streets devoted to the half oi fans and lanterns Swatoxv is II city lying on the coast between Shanghai and Hoar Kong which is noted for its Jiiie fans These fans are of fine paper stretched on a frame which curves at the top and winch thus produces a sort of bow I catching the wind and making them do I lightfully cooling The fans arc beauti F fully painted and the pictures on them aro the best exhibition of Chinese art Every Japanese man and woman carries a fan and the fans which we get from Japan are of tho cheapest variety In Japan the gentlemen usually use folding fans and they carry them in their bosoms under their collars or stuck into their girdle It is the ladies who use the flat fans and it would bo contrary to etiquette for a man to appear on the street with a fan that would not fold up Japan has its fan etiquette and there is as much a language of tho fan as a language of flowers The pretty Yum Yums of Tokio and Kiota express through fanning what American lovers convey by kissing for the hot osculation of America is unknown among the Japanese either in the summer or in winter The Japanese have autograph fans as we have and many of the oung people make fan collections containing the signatures of their friends or verses of poetry written by then One of the most striking characters of Tokio is an old fan seller She is a woman of about eighty who goes around with fans and brooms and who cries her wares from house to house AN IMIOUTANT COOLING ItECIlE 7 of the far east is the bath and the hot bath Is taken by the Japanese several times a day The bathing is done in the public bith rooms or in the private tub and no soap is used Many Japanesso arc now parboiling themselves in water raised to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the whole family fam-ily bathes in the same tub There is a model of ono of these tubs at the National museum and the average Japanese bathtub bath-tub is about three feet high oval in shape and it has a little furnace with a stove pipe running ap above the top of the tub set into one end of it A board keeps this stovepipe i stove-pipe from touching the skin and a few mo 1 tncnts will heat the bath to boiling The 1 n Japanese have no false modesty as to the showing of their person and it is not an 1 uncommon thing in a Japanese house to see a lady at her bath or if you be a guest to have one of tho female servants como in and offer to rub you down Carter Harrison Harri-son of Chicago was much surprised at this during his stay in Japan and he scalded the flesh off his fat calves in jump ing into the tub to get out of the way of the almond eyed beauty who came in to assist as-sist him I know a wealthy man in Washington Wash-ington who was traveling in Japan the same time that I was who could not get enough of these hot baths and who made a uumber of trips into the interior of the country in order that he might have them with all their old Japanese flavor In many of the public bath houses of Japan both sexes bathe together and on I a hot day of July of August they splash and play with one another as innocent as our parents were before the faiL Tn Tokio and the other largo cities of the empire the foreign influence has produced an order I against this common bathing tho sexes but in tho villages where such an order has been made all the people haVodono is to I draw a string through the centra of the bath Sat and the women and children are on the one side while the men are on the other At a famous hot springs in the Japanese mountains I saw both sexes hopping hop-ping around together in the water splashing splash-ing each other and enjoying the sulphurous fumes without a thought that there was anything indecent about their actions THE SIAMESE AM SO NEAR THE EQUATOR that they have about the same hot weather the year round Every man woman and child in Bangkok takes a plunge into the river at least threw times a day Of the 700000 people in the city at least 500000 live in floating houses and inasmuch as the summer costume of the lower classes consists con-sists of a garment about the size of a Turkish Turk-ish towel it is not much trouble for them togo to-go in bathing They bathe on the steps of their houses and stand up to the waist in the water grunting delightfully as they pour bucket after bucketful over themselves them-selves and their neighbors The Burmese man and woman take a bath every night after dinner This bath is merely pouring water over the person Snap is never used and particular care is taken not tw wet the hair At New Years when tho weather is as hot as our summer these people have what they call a water feast and at this time the hole nation throw water unon one another All the pretty girls go out with buckets and the boys have squirt guns and for three days there is nothing but watersplashing The foreigners of Rangoon Ran-goon also engage in this and the Chinese celebrate the feast with the rest One Chinaman rigged up a hydrant with a two inch pipo during the last feast and as his l house = was on the main street he had the bulge as it were on everyone else UP engaged a coolie to work the marline all day and as he was soiling water works he had a good advertisinent in addition to his fun A swell Englishman arrived in Bur mah last year during the feast He went to call on one of the leading men of Rangoon Ran-goon in tall silk hat and black clothes and was met at the door by a girl with a bucket of water The girl asked him in Burmese as to whether he was observing the water feast and he supposing that she wanted to know whether he had come to see her father nodded his head and with that nod this whole bucket of water went over his silk hat and down tho back of his collar completely drenching him During the same time another party of Englishmen were told that some girls were coming to throw water on them The had tho servants ser-vants bring out the bath tub and put it on the veranda and when tho girls came they got possession of the bath tub and splashed the Englishmen until one of them rushing in seized ono of tho maidens and lifting her dropped her into the tub This was considered con-sidered very impolite and the young man who did it suffered by receiving no further attentions from the Burmese beauties ALONG TUG GANGES in India it is a sacred duty of the Hindoos to bathe once every day and they can wash away their sins while they are washing their bodies I have seen ten thousand bathing at the same time at the holy steps of Benares There is however no fun about the Hindoo bath It is all religion and the bather prays during tho whole I time Both sexes bathe in the river at the same time but they keep their clothes on and they do not mix together The finest bath houses of India are those belonging to the Rajahs The Mabommcdans have perhaps per-haps the finest baths of the far east and thcMahommedans of India spend fortunes on their baths The most costly baths o > all Asia were those of the Mahommedan kings at Agra and Delhi In tho great palace of Akbar at Agra there is a vast bath room down under ground the walls of which are mosaic of many pieces of colored col-ored glass set with mirrors as big around as your thumb nail These mirrors are numbered by the tens of thousands and tho whole brilliantly lighted must have been dazzling in the spray of the fountains Hero Akbar used to bathe with his harem and ho reminds me of the Khedive of Egypt who cooled himself by riding around tho lakes in his palace grounds with his fairest beauties and now and then giving one a shoo over board to see if she could swim I saw at Delhi in one of tho palaces of Shah Jehan the man who made the peacock pea-cock throne which cost 00000000 a bathroom bath-room which cost a fortune It had room after room of marble and there were hot I pipes and cold fountains and it is said that one of this mans successors when he suspected sus-pected one of his wives to bo unfaithful was I wont to lock her up in this bath turn on the hot water and forget all about her The I result was she awoke in heaven The Turks of Egypt and of Turkey spend a I great part of their time in the bath and tho I Turkish bath is too well known in the United States to need description THE KAJAHS OF INDIA have got the art of keeping cool down to a science One of the finest cities of the far east is that of Jeypore It is the capital cap-ital of a native state All of its buildings are rosecolored ana they were all bunt after one style of architecture The palace of the Rajah is in vast gardens through which rivers of water flow in marble beds and in which tho luxuriant flowers and trees of tropics bloom The I harem of the Rajah of Jeyporo looks out upon tbis garden and its fair ladies me kept cool by tanning mills turned by hand It takes scoreof men to turn tho crank to keep these maidens cool and I maniovcr has much to do with tho 10 Irfreators of tho east There are thousands thou-sands of foreigners Americans English I and French now at work in Asia and I I eaoh of these does his bookkt oping under = j I the breeze of the Punkah Too Punkah I i is a long fanlike strip of cloth fastened to abeam which is i hung by ropes from tho ceiling over the mans head To the middle mid-dle of tLi3 beam a rope is fastened and this rope is put through a pulley and so arranged thata man sitting out of doors and pulling it will make the fan go backward back-ward t n 1 forth over the bookkeepers Tho native pulls away all day long a id I most foreigners have such a rigg n put I up o Jcr that b 3ds and keep tie breezes n this way all night 101 can get a Cl ituI I man to do this for abous fifty cent a day I and you servant in Inuia will wont even cheaper Now and then you PuiiKah mm goes to sleep and you notice the st p jago I of the air Allyou have to do iu this case is to lift up a bucket of water and tarowit outof tho window A good drench I jnj wakes up the Punkahwalla and he goes to work again I have seen thirty of I I those Punkahs at work in a chuch while I the J i iicopjlian minister was reading the sere a and tne breeze added to the sermon was d cUedly soporitic II Tnib church was at Singapore just mourn MILES rrOM THE EQtI TOil I where sun rises and sets the same hcur the year around Here I saw a lawn tennis match Tl e participants were 1010 goers the ladies dressed IOil linen I costume and the men in while flannel suits Each player had a servant to run after the ball for him when it happened togo to-go snttile the bounds and they did not take a bit more cicrcise than was nec csairi ruo mOdc of exercise in the far I east are of interest to people who want I to keep cool and still maintain a htal Jiy condition in hot weather Foreigners in Asia get up at daybreak take a good ride across tho country or a walk before tho san gets up They take a sleep in tho middle of the day and work on into the I evening They drink a great deal of whisky but whether this has a cooling influence I in-fluence or not I do not know A great part of tho hard work of the east is done at night and this is especially so in the great government departments The King of Korea holds all his audiences at night and the Emperor of China takes alibis sleep in the daytime This is so with the King of Siam and the Sultan of Turkey never goes to sleep until oclock in the morning run QUEST1ON Or WATER in thfc far cast is an important one and tho water carriers form one of the largest castes of India Both here and in Egypt they carry their water in skins upon their backs and they sell it by the cup and by tho skinful These skmbacs are made of hog skins or goat skins and the ordinary skin will hold ten gallons Water is worth abouta cent a skin and the streets of Calcutta Cal-cutta are watered by these men who sprinkle the water from tho skin upon the dust The street waterworks of Korea consist of a set of men who go around with buckets of water on their backs and in Japan the streets are kept cool by a man who carries two buckets of water fastened to a pole over his shoulders and lets the water out through little holes in their bottoms bot-toms Both in Korea and in Japan tho water used for this purpose is taken rom the gutters which farm to a largo extent the sewers of tho city and the cooling of the airis by no means a purification of it THE QUESTION OF KEEPING COOL is largely a matter of dress Mr Rockhill the American who pushed his way into Thibet last year wore a Chinese costume during the journey and ho tells me it is far cooler than the American All the nations of tho east dress much better in this respect re-spect than we do Tho Japanese during tho summer has practically nothing but a cotton gown to cover his person and his legs are bare If he is n working man of one of tho poorer classes ho takes off every stitch of clothing withtha exception of a cloth around tho loins and trusts to tho tattooed marks of his back and legs to cover his nakedness This modo of dressing dress-ing is now prohibitctl tho cities but itis not at all uncommon in the country and ingoing in-going through Japan you see both women and men clad in a dress d not much more extensive than that worn by Adam and Eve in the garden A woman who is washing clothes thinks noticing notic-ing of pulling her dress down to her waist and the man who palls your jinriksha into the country frequently takes off his clothes and runs naked with the exception of his loin cloth One of the nicest old foreign ladies in Japon during the past few years has been the wife of our consulgeneral at Yokohama She came from Kentucky and she could not get reconciled to this nakedness naked-ness of the people Whenever the Jinriksha map attempted to take off his coat or his shirt when ho was pulling her carriage she decidedly objected and when she first came to Japan I am told that she often stopped the pretty little Jap girls on tho streets and pinned their dresses close up to the throat telling them that it was immodest immod-est to show so much of their bosoms THE CHINEESE PANTALOONS I are very full and no ono wears drawers The Korean has pants so baggy that they will veachclearap tohis neck though he fastens them about his waist and theKorean woman wraps her skirts around her bosom just under tne arms and there is often six inches of brown skin showing between this and the little sacque which covers her shoulders A Siamese working woman frequently fre-quently wears nothing over her shoulders and breasts and she wraps the cloth about her waist and pulls it in through tho legs tucking it in at the back in such a way that her limbs are bare to the knee It is tho same with the Malay women as far as the upper part of the dress is concerned and over in Borneo you will see plump round girls with little more than a breecn cout to cover their nakedness The Burmese Bur-mese woman dresses in the finest of silks but her dress consists of ono long piece which she wraps around her waist and lets fall i to hor feet This is tied at the front and the opening is at this place but the girls have from long practice acquired a graceful I grace-ful kicking with the feet by which they are enabled to keep their gowns ti gether I and avod any exposure of the person They wear sacques and aro the brightest bright-est and prettiest women of the East A greater part of tho Indians both men and women dress in wnite cotton sheets and tho common people of Egypt wear blue cotton gowns As to children those of the orient wear practically nothing and I have seen girls of ten on the streets of Bangkok as naked as when they were born You see potbellied youngsters wad tiling around in the attire of cupid throughout through-out the streets and country roads of Korea and though Japanese children wear clothes like their parents when the weather is at all cold they often shed them when it is hot There are a great many mosquitoes mosqui-toes in Siam and the Siamese have a yellow yel-low powder which they rub over the bodies of their children to keep oil the insects It turns the bathes to a rich chrouo color and under tho sun makes them shine like gold THE noises or THE FAR EAST aro better adapted to tho weather than ours The Japanese houso is formed of sliding walls or paper bo made that he can take them out throw his whole home into one room or make his house consist of a roof and a floor His floors arc usuutly some distance from tile ground and there is a draught of air under them They are covered with matting and are not cluttered up with furniture The Japanese house of tho better class has a heavy roof but it has none of the sanitary conveniences None of the Siamese houses have windows and those which are on the water havo breezes blowing continually through them Tho land houses aro built high up on piles and tho same is truo of the nouses of Burmah The Egyptian houses have very thick walls their roofs are flat and thiuic and their interiors are wonderfully cool In most of the Egyptian villages and cities tho business is done in the ba zars and the streets are covered with matting mat-ting which is stretched from roof to roof from the houses on each side so that the customers never get in the sun in going from one store to another Tho bazars of Rangoon and Burmah are all under one roof and the vast business of Constantino plo is made up of miles of little booths arranged ar-ranged in streets under one vast roof Among the coolest houses of the far east aro those of Jerusalem The people hero live in places that look like caves and their houses aro in tho shape of caves Tho roofs are very thick and each has a little dome built in the top of it The roofs are flat and many of tho people during tho hot weather bring out their beds and sleep on tho house tops FRANK G CAIIIENTER |