Bit of background info for anyone who is interested.

In mainland China the Yangtze (also spelled Yangtse) is called the Chang Jiang which means Long River. The name Yangtze is taken from Cantonese, now known as Guangdonghua (Guangdong dialect). The name still emans the Long River however. Chang Jiang is Mandarin (now referred to in China as Putonghua, common speach).

The reason that Cantonese would have been used was the reliance in the early days of opening up China to the west on translators from the Hong Kong and Macau area whose mother tongue would have been Cantonese not Mandarin.

The reference to dumplings might not be to dim sum, which are small dumplings steamed in bamboo wicker baskets but to the larger ones called mantou, these are much bigger and could be plain or filled with either meat or a mix of chopped veggies.

Hard boiled eggs could be a reference to what are sometimes called Tea Eggs. Chicken eggs boiled in a mix of black tea, soy and water. This blackens the shell and darkens the egg white and yolk. Quite tasty and bloody hot when you first get them in your hands. Ditto the dumplings.

Pumpkin seeds are still a favourite snack here, they are roasted and ypu often see people with a bag of them cracking them between their teeth to husk them. Girls with Pumpkin seed like eyes were considered beauties, Ditto the reference to bound feet. This was no ordinary girl but one of class who was expected not to work. Footbinding made normal work impossible, and it was supposed to to enhance the beauty of a girl and make her more marriageable.

Bumboats was a general Naval reference to small boats that would come alongside ships at anchor to sell veggies, fruit, any anything else a sailor needed. Often the goods were of the female kind a sort of miniature floating brothel.

Whatever, Goerge Willis certainly knew China, he was probably part of the Yangtze Squadron which was an early example of joint naval operations against the Chinese who were rather more than upset about the opium being imported by all the foreign nations in that period. This led to the two Opium Wars.

Piracy was also rife up and down the coast of China. Though there was an established Imperial government in Beijing (Peking) it could not control the warlords in the country side. Many of these warlords also had their own fleets which were better armed than the Chinese navy of the time.