Ningpo to Shanghai in 1857/Jin-zek to Say-chee and Ping-bong
Jin-zek, another large town on the Canal's banks, is about five miles from Nan-Dzing; and half a dozen miles further on, in a North easterly direction, is Say-chee, also a place of considerable size. The next place of note, after passing Say-chee, and about Three miles east of it is Ping-bong. This is a very interesting place, the principal trade being in oil and oil cake of which there are several manufactories. By the Eastern entrance is a pretty Temple (Kwei-shin-kwok) with a shrine to Te-chang-wan the Goddess of Earth—the view from the top of the Pagoda to the southward and westward being over lagoons and streams for immense distances—Northward and eastward the country is flat for miles, and cultivated with the yellow flowered grassicher spoken of and with beans;—and in a Lake close by, there is a picturesque temple on a small islet called Jow-bing-boo-doe. Eastward runs the Canal to Shanghae. At the entrance of the temple beneath the Pagoda, the unbeliever in the virtue of Buddhism feels a strong inclination to laugh at the very jolly appearance of an idol, the whole of whose body is hidden but the face, which peers through a round aperture at its devotees, speaking as plainly as inanimation can speak—"What fools you are to think I can do any good for you!" Only two priests are attached to this temple;—a censer in the Court bearing date the 52d year of the Emperor Kang-he, so leading to the inference that that was the period when the establishment was created.
The process of manufacturing Oil cake, and obtaining the Oil is as follows. Beans, Calavancas, the common white bean of commerce, are first thrown into a shot. Leading, in small quantities, as permitted by a crank worked by a cog wheel, down to a large flat stone, on which two very heavy rollers are moved by blinkered water bullocks. So macerated under the rollers, the meal is removed to another shoot leading to a pair of fluted mill stones, and thence thrown into a bin by which is a furnace and two small boilers. These boilers have apertures on their tops, through which the quickly generated steam is permitted to escape into wicker topped recesses of small half peck measures of an oval shape. In these wicker tops are placed the Bean meal, and five seconds' passage of the steam through them is quite sufficient to convert the meal into cakes. Speedy as thought these cakes are then transferrad from the forms to twisted rattan hoops,—of similar shape, then covered with thin grass, and, in a pile of some two dozen at a time, transported to a square horizontal frame, where they are compressed by wedges until the oil exudes into a tank beneath. So pressed, the cakes are again moved, stripped of their grassy wrap pings, placed in piles to dry, afterwards wrapped in straw, and, finally, sold as required. Either as manure for the ground, or food for cattle, these bean cakes are much coveted (31).