Street vendors - Public domain albumen print photogrpaph

Photograph shows a Chinese food vendor with a customer eating out of a bowl.
Title from front and back of item.
Caption on back : "Street vendors. As a rule a large portion of the lower class of Chinese, especially in towns, may be termed peripatetic feeders for a few cash they obtain from street vendors "All hot" a small quantity of Rice seasoned with various condiments: fish, pork, soy, &c., washed down with little portions of tea a couple of chop-sticks, used with wonderful dexterity, serve instead of knives, forks, and spoons and a short whiff of a pipe completes the meal. With this light food they are satisfied and moreover on this alone they do an amount of laborious work, which would suprise an English Navvy, whose nourishment is of so much more substantial a nature."
Photograph taken by John Thomson in Shanghai, 1870-72. (Source: Regine Thiriez, 2009)
In album: Japanese and Chinese portraits, [p. 48, lower left].