A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People by Daguan Zhou

Author:Daguan Zhou [Zhou, Daguan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Silkworm Books
Published: 2007-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

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UTENSILS

Ordinary families have houses but nothing else by way of tables, chairs, jars, or buckets. They use an earthenware pot to cook rice in, and make sauce with an earthenware saucepan. For a stove they sink three stones into the ground, and for spoons they use coconut husks.

When serving rice they use earthenware or copper dishes from China; sauce comes in a small bowl made from the leaves of a tree, which doesn’t leak even when it is full of liquid. They also make small spoons from the leaves of the nypa palm, which they spoon liquid into their mouths with, and throw away after using. Even when they are making offerings to the gods and to the Buddha, they do things the same way.

They also have a tin or earthenware vessel on one side which they fill with water and dip their hands in. They do this because they eat rice with just their hands, and it sticks to their hands and won’t come off without water.

When they drink wine they do so from a pewter vessel called a qia that holds about three or four small cupfuls. When serving wine they do so with a pewter pot, though poor people use a clay jug.94 In the great houses and wealthy homes, silver or even gold is used for everything. In the palace they often use receptacles of gold, different from the others in style and shape.

On the ground they lay out grass mats from Mingzhou, or rattan matting, or the pelts of tigers, leopards, muntjaks, deer, and so on.95 Lately people have started using low tables, about a foot high. When they sleep they just lie on the ground on bamboo mats. Lately, again, they have taken to using low beds, usually made by Chinese.

At night there are a lot of mosquitoes, so they use cloth nets. In the king’s quarters the nets are made of fine silk with gold filigree work, all of them the gifts of seafaring merchants.

For husking rice they don’t use millstones, just pestle and mortar.

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