As A Chinaman Saw Us Part 1

As A Chinaman Saw Us.

by Anonymous.

PREFACE

Since the publication in 1832 of that cla.s.sic of cynicism, The Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Mrs. Trollope, perhaps nothing has appeared that is more caustic or amusing in its treatment of America and the Americans than the following pa.s.sages from the letters of a cultivated and educated Chinaman. The selections have been made from a series of letters covering a decade spent in America, and were addressed to a friend in China who had seen few foreigners. The writer was graduated from a well-known college, after he had attended an English school, and later took special studies at a German university. Americans have been informed of the impressions they make on the French, English, and other people, but doubtless this is the first unreserved and weighty expression of opinion on a multiplicity of American topics by a Chinaman of cultivation and grasp of mind.

It will be difficult for the average American to conceive it possible that a cultivated Chinaman, of all persons, should have been honestly amused at our civilization; that he should have considered what Mrs.

Trollope called "our great experiment" in republics a failure, and our inst.i.tutions, fashions, literary methods, customs and manners, sports and pastimes as legitimate fields for wit and unrepressed jollity. Yet in the unbosoming of this cultivated "heathen" we see our fads and foibles held up as strange G.o.ds, and must confess some of them to be grotesque when seen in this yellow light.

It is doubtless true that the ma.s.ses of Americans do not take the Chinaman seriously, and an interesting feature of this correspondence is the att.i.tude of the Chinaman on this very point and his clever satire on our a.s.sumption of perfection and superiority over a nation, the habits of which have been fixed and settled for many centuries. The writer's experiences in society, his acquaintance with American women of fashion and their husbands, all ingeniously set forth, have the hall-mark of actual novelty, while his loyalty to the traditions of his country and his egotism, even after the Americanizing process had exercised its influence over him for years, add to the interest of the recital.

In revising the correspondence and rearranging it under general heads, the editor has preserved the salient features of it, with but little essential change and practically in its original shape. If the reader misses the peculiar idioms, or the pigeon-English that is usually placed in the mouth of the Chinaman of the novel or story, he or she should remember that the writer of the letters, while a "heathen Chinee," was an educated gentleman in the American sense of the term. This fact should always be kept in mind because, as the author remarks, to many Americans whom he met, it was "incomprehensible that a Chinaman can be educated, refined, and cultivated according to their own standards."

With pardonable pride he tells how, on one occasion, when a woman in New York told him she knew her ancestral line as far back as 1200 A. D., he replied that he himself had "a tree without a break for thirty-two hundred years." He was sure she did not believe him, but he found her "indeed!" delightful. The author's name has been withheld for personal reasons that will be sufficiently obvious to those who read the letters.

The period during which he wrote them is embraced in the ten years from 1892 to 1902.

HENRY PEARSON GRATTON.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, May 10th, 1904.

AS A CHINAMAN SAW US

CHAPTER I

THE AMERICAN--WHO HE IS

Many of the great powers believe themselves to be pa.s.sing through an evolutionary period leading to civic and national perfection. America, or the United States, has already reached this state; it is complete and finished. I have this from the Americans themselves, so there can be no question about it; hence it requires no little temerity to discuss, let alone criticize, them.

Yet I am going to ask you to behold the American as he is, as I honestly found him--great, small, good, bad, self-glorious, egotistical, intellectual, supercilious, ignorant, superst.i.tious, vain, and bombastic. In truth, so very remarkable, so contradictory, so incongruous have I found the American that I hesitate. Shall I give you a satire; shall I devote myself to eulogy; shall I tear what they call the "whitewash" aside and expose them to the winds of excoriation; or shall I devote myself to an introspective, a.n.a.lytical _divertiss.e.m.e.nt_?

But I do not wish to educate you on the Americans, but to entertain, to make you laugh by the recital of comical truths; so without system I am going to tell you of these Americans as I found them, day by day, month by month, officially, socially; in their homes, in politics, trade, sorrow, despair, and in their pleasures.

You will remember when the Evil Spirit is asked by the modest Spirit of Good to indicate his possessions he tucks the earth under one arm, drops the sun into one pocket, the moon into another, and the stars into the folds of his garment. In a word, to use the saying of my friends, he "claims everything in sight"; and this is certainly a characteristic of the American: he is all-perspective, he claims to have all the virtues, and in his ancestry embraces the entire world. At a dinner at the ---- in Washington during the egg stage of my experience I sat next to a charming lady; and having been told that it was a custom of the French to compliment women, I remarked that her cheeks bloomed like our poppy of the Orient. She laughed, and responded, "Yes, I get that from my English grandfather." "But your eyes are like black pearls," I continued, seeing that I was on what a general on my right called the "right trail." "I got them from my Italian grandmother," she replied.

"And your hair?" I pressed. "Must be Irish," was the answer, "for my paternal grandmother was Irish and her husband Scotch." It is true that this charmingly beautiful and composite G.o.ddess (at least she would have been one had she not been naked like a geisha at a men's dinner) was the product of a dozen nations, and a typical American.

The original Americans appear to have been English, despite the fact that the Spaniards discovered the country, though a high official, a Yankee whom I met at a reception, told me that this was untrue. His ancestor had discovered North America, and I believe he had written a book to prove it. (_En pa.s.sant_, all Americans write books; those who have not, fully intend to write one.) I listened complacently, then said, "My dear ----, if I am not mistaken the Chinese discovered America." I recalled the fact to his mind that the northwestern Eskimos and the Indians were essentially Asiatic in type; and it is true that he had never heard of the ethnologic map at his National Museum, which shows the location of Chinese junks blown to American sh.o.r.es within a period of three hundred years. I explained that junks had been blown over to America for the last _three thousand_ years, and that in my country there were many records of voyages to the Western land, ages before 1492.

You see I soon began to be Americanized and to claim things. China discovered America and gave her the compa.s.s as well as gunpowder. The first Americans were in the nature of emigrants; men and women who did not succeed well in their own country and so sought new fields, just as people are doing to-day. They came over in a ship called the "Mayflower," and were remarkably prolific, as I have met thousands who hail from this stock. At one time England sent her criminals to Virginia--one of the United States--and many of the refuse of the home country were sent to other parts of America in the early days. Younger sons of good families were also sent over for various reasons. Women of all cla.s.ses were sent by the ship-load, and sold for wives. I reminded a lady of this, who was lamenting the fact that in China some women are sold for wives. She was absolutely ignorant of this well-known fact in American history, and forgot the selling of black women. Among the men were many representatives of old and n.o.ble families; but the bulk, I judge from their colonial histories, were people of low degree. Very soon other countries began to ship people to America. Italy, Germany, Russia, Norway, Sweden, and other lands were drawn upon for constantly increasing numbers as years went by. All tumbled into the American hopper. Imagine a coffee-grinder into which have been thrown Greek, Roman, Jew, Gentile, and all the rest, and then let what they call Uncle Sam--a heroic, paternal, and comical figure, representing the government--turn the handle and grind out the American who is neither Jew, Gentile, Greek, Roman, Russe, or Swede, but a new product, _sui generis_, and mostly Methodist.

This process has never ceased for an hour. America has been from 1492 to the present time, in the language of the American "press," the "dumping-ground" of the nations of the world, the real open door; yet this grinding a.s.similation has gone on. It is, perhaps, due to the climate, perhaps the water, or the air; but the product of these people born on the soil is described by no other word than American. It may be Irish-American, very offensive; Dutch-American, very strenuous, like the Vice-President;[1] Jewish-American, very commercial; Italian-American, very dirty and reeking with garlic; but it is American, totally unlike its progenitor, a something into which is blown a tremendous energy, that is very wearisome, a bombast which is the sum of that of all nations, and a conceit like that possessed by ---- alone. You see it is incurable, also offensive--at least to the Oriental mind. Yet I grant you the American is great; I have it from him and from her; it must be so.

You have the spectacle here of the nations of the world pouring a stream, that is not pactolean, and not perfumed with the gums of Araby, flowing in and peopling the country. In time they had grievances more fancied than real, yet grievances. They rose against the home government, threw off the English yoke, and became a republic with a division into States, which I will write of when I tell you of the American politician. This was the first trust--what they call a merger--but it occurred in politics. They have killed off a fair percentage of the actual owners of the soil, the Indians, swindling them out of the balance, and driving them back to a sort of ever-changing dead-line. Without delay they a.s.sumed the form of a dominant nation, and announced themselves the greatest nation on the earth.

Immigration was resumed, and all nations again sent their refuse population to America. I have facts showing that for years English poorhouses and hospitals were emptied of their inmates and shipped to America. It was a distinct policy of the anti-home-rule party in Ireland to encourage the poor Irish to go to America; and now when there are more Irish in America than in Ireland the fate of Ireland is a.s.sured.

Yet the American air takes the fight out of the Irishman, the rose from his cheek, and makes a natural-born politician out of him. America still continued to receive immigrants, and not satisfied with the natural flow of the human current, began to import African slaves to a country founded for the benefit of those who desired an asylum where they could enjoy religious and political freedom. The Africans were sold in the cotton belt, their existence virtually creating two distinct political parties. America long remained a dumping-ground for nearly all the nations of the world having an excess of population. Great navigation companies were built up, to a large extent, on this trade. They sent agents to every foreign country, issued pamphlets in every European language, and uncounted thousands were brought over--the sc.u.m of the earth in many instances. There was no restriction to immigration until the Chinese were barred out. After accepting the outlaws of every European state, the poor of all lands, they shut the door on our "coolie" countrymen.

In this way, briefly, America has grown to her present population of 80,000,000. The remarkable growth and a.s.similation is still going on--a menace to the world, but in a constantly decreasing ratio, which has become so marked that the leading Americans, the cla.s.s which corresponds to our scholars, are aghast at the singular conditions which exist.

Non-a.s.similation shows itself in labor riots, in the murder of two Presidents--Garfield and Lincoln--in socialistic outbreaks in every quarter, and in signal outbreaks in various sections, at lynchings, and other unlawful performances. I am attempting to give you an idea of the const.i.tuents of America to-day; but so interesting is the subject, so prolific in its warnings and possibilities, that I find myself wandering.

To glance at conditions at the present time, about 600,000 aliens are coming to America yearly. What is the result? I was invited to meet a distinguished German visiting in New York last month, and at the dinner a young lady who sat by my side said to me, "I wish I could puzzle him."

"Why?" I asked, in amazement. "Oh," was her reply, "he looks so cram full of knowledge; I would like to take him down." "Ah," I said. "Ask him which is the third largest German city in the world. It is New York; he will never guess it." She did so, and I a.s.sure you he was "puzzled," and would scarcely believe it until a well-known man a.s.sured him it was true. There are more Germans in Chicago than in Leipsic, Cologne, Dresden, Munich, or a dozen small towns joined in one. Half of the Chicago Germans speak their own tongue. This city is the third Swedish city of the world in population. It is the fourth Polish city and the second Bohemian city. I was informed by a professor in the University of Chicago that, in that strange city, the number of people who speak the language of the Bohemians equaled the combined inhabitants of Richmond, Atlanta, Portland, and Nashville--all large cities. "What do you think of it?" I asked. "We are up against it," was the reply. I can not explain this retort so that you would understand it, but it had great significance. The professor, a distinguished philologist, was worried, and he looked it. A lady who was a club woman--and by this I do not mean that she was armed with a club, but merely a member of clubs or societies for educational advancement and social aggrandizement--said it was merely his digestion.

I learned from my friend, the dyspeptic professor, that over forty dialects are spoken in Chicago. About one-half only of the total population speak or understand English. There are 500,000 Germans, 125,000 Poles, 100,000 Swedes, 90,000 Bohemians, 50,000 Yiddish, 25,000 Dutch, 25,000 Italians, 15,000 French, 10,000 Irish, 10,000 Servians, 10,000 Lutherans, 7,000 Russians, and 5,000 Hungarians in Chicago. You will be surprised to learn that numbers do not count. The 500,000 Germans are not the dominating power, nor are the 100,000 Swedes. The 10,000 Irish are said absolutely to control the political situation. You will ask if I believe that this monster foreign element can be reduced to a h.o.m.ogeneous unit. I reply, yes. Fifty years from to-day they will all be Americans, and a majority will, doubtless, show you their family tree, tracing their ancestry back to the Mayflower.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This pa.s.sage was written just before the a.s.sa.s.sination of President McKinley.

CHAPTER II

THE AMERICAN MAN

Hash--and I do not mean by this word a corruption of hasheesh--is a term indicating in America a food formed of more than one article chopped and cooked together. I was told by a very witty and charming lady that hash was a synonym for _E pluribus unum_ (one from many), the motto of the Government, but I did not find it on the American arms. This was an American "dinner joke," of which more anon; nevertheless, hash represents the American people of to-day. The millions of all nations, which have swarmed here since 1492, may be represented by this delectable dish, which, after all, has a certain h.o.m.ogeneity. Englishmen are at once recognized here, and so are Chinamen. You would never mistake one of our people for a j.a.panese; an Italian you would know across the way; but an American not always in America. He may be a Swede, a German, or a Canadian; he is not an American until he opens his mouth. Then there is no mistake as to what he is. He has a nasal tone that is purely American.

All the old cities, as Boston, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia, have certain nasal peculiarities or variants. The Bostonian affects the English. The New Englander, especially in the north, has a comical tw.a.n.g, which you can produce by holding the nose tightly and attempting to speak. When he says _down_ it sounds like _daoun_. It is impossible for him not to overvowel his words, and nothing is more amusing than to hear the true Yankee countryman talk. The Philadelphian is quite as marked in tone and enunciation. A well-educated Philadelphian will say where is _me_ wife for _my_. I have also been asked by a Philadelphian, "Where are you going at?" It would be impossible to mistake the intonation of a Philadelphian, even though you met him in the wilds of Manchuria in the depths of night.

Among the most charming and delightfully cultured people I met in America were Philadelphians of old families. The New Yorker is more cosmopolitan, while the Southern men, to a certain extent, have caught the inflection of the negro, who is the nurse in the South for all white children. The Americans are taught that the princ.i.p.al and chief end of man is to make a fortune and get married; but to accomplish this it is necessary first to "sow wild oats," become familiar with the vices of drink, smoking, and other forms of dissipation, a sort of test of endurance possibly, such as is found among many native races; yet one scarcely expects to find it among the latest and highest exponents of perfection in the human race.

The American pretends to be democratic; scoffs at England and other European lands, but at heart he is an aristocrat. His tastes are only limited by his means, and not always then. Any American, especially a politician, will tell you that there is but one cla.s.s--the people, and that all are born equal. In point of fact, there are as many cla.s.ses as there are grades of p.r.o.nounced individuality, and all are very unequal, as every one knows. They are included in a general way in three cla.s.ses: the upper cla.s.s (the refined and cultivated); the middle cla.s.s (represented by the retail shop-keepers); and last, the rest. The cream of society will be found in all the cities to be among the professional men, clergymen, presidents of colleges, long-rich wholesale merchants, judges, authors, etc.

The distinctions in society are so singular that it is almost impossible for a foreigner to understand them. There are persons who make it a life study to prepare books and papers on the subject, and whose opinions are readily accepted; yet such a person might not be accepted in the best society. What const.i.tutes American society and its divisions is a mystery. In a general sense a retail merchant, a man who sold shoes or clothes, a tailor, would under no circ.u.mstances find a place in the first social circles; yet if these same tradesmen should change to wholesalers and give up selling one article at a time, they would become eligible to the best society. They do not always get in, however. At a dinner my neighbor, an attractive matron, was much dismayed by my asking if she knew a certain Mr. ----, a well-known grocer. "I believe our supplies (groceries) come from him," was her chilly reply. "But," I ventured, "he is now a wholesaler." "Indeed!" said madam; "I had not heard of it." The point, very inconceivable to you, perhaps, was that the grocer, whether wholesale or retail, was not readily accepted; yet the man in the wholesale business in drugs, books, wine, stores, fruit, or almost anything else, had the _entree_, if he was a gentleman. The druggist, the hardware man, the furniture dealer, the grocer, the retailer would const.i.tute a cla.s.s by themselves, though of course there are other subtle divisions completely beyond my comprehension.

At some of the homes of the first people I would meet a president of a university, an author of note, an Episcopal bishop, a general of the regular army (preferably a graduate of the West Point Academy), several retired merchants of the highest standing, bankers, lawyers, a judge or two of the Supreme Bench, an admiral of good family and connections. I have good reason to think that a Methodist bishop would not be present at such a meeting unless he was a remarkable man. There were always a dozen men of well-known lineage; men who knew their family history as far back as their great-grandparents, and whose ancestors were a.s.sociated with the history of the country and its development. The men were all in business or the professions. They went to their offices at nine or ten o'clock and remained until twelve; lunched at their clubs or at a restaurant, returned at one, and many remained until six before going to their homes. The work is intense. A dominating factor or characteristic in the American man is his pursuit of the dollar. That he secures it is manifest from the miles of beautiful residences, the show of costly equipages and plate, the unlimited range of "stores" or shops one sees in large cities. The millionaire is a very ordinary individual in America; it is only the billionaire who now really attracts attention. The wealth and splendors of the homes, the magnificent _tout ensemble_ of these establishments, suggests the possibility of degeneracy, an appearance of demoralization; but I am a.s.sured that this is not apparent in very wealthy families.

It is not to be understood that wealth always gives social position in America. By reading the American papers you might believe that this is all that is necessary. Some wealth is of course requisite to enable a family to hold its own, to give the social retort courteous, to live according to the mode of others; yet mere wealth will not buy the _entree_ to the very best society, even in villages. Culture, refinement, education, and, most important, _savoir faire_, const.i.tute the "open sesame." I know a billionaire, at least this is his reputation, who has no standing merely because he is vulgar--that is, ill-bred. I have met another man, a great financier, who would give a million to have the _entree_ to the very best houses. Instances could be cited without end.

Such men and women generally have their standing in Europe; in a word, go abroad for the position they can not secure at home. A family now allied to one of the proudest families in Europe had absolutely no position in America previous to the alliance, and doubtless would not now be taken up by some. You will understand that I am speaking now of the most exclusive American society, formed of families who have age, historical a.s.sociations, breeding, education, great-grandparents, and always have had "manners." There are other social sets which pa.s.s as representative society, into which all the ill-mannered _nouveau riche_ can climb by the golden stairs; but this is not real society. The richest man in America, Rockefeller, quoted at over a billion, is a religious worker, and his indulgences consist in gifts to universities.

Another billionaire, Mr. Carnegie, gives his millions to found libraries. Mr. Morgan, the millionaire banker, attends church conventions as an antipodal diversion. There is no conspicuous millionaire before the American public who has earned a reputation for extreme profligacy.

There is a leisure cla.s.s, the sons of wealthy men, who devote their time to hunting and other sports; but in the recent war this cla.s.s surged to the front as private soldiers and fought the country's battles. I admire the American gentleman of the select society cla.s.s I have described. He is modest, intelligent, learned in the best sense, magnanimous, a type of chivalry, bold, vigorous, charming as a host, and the soul of honor.

It is a regret that this is not the dominating and best-known cla.s.s in America, but it is not; and the alien, the stranger coming without letters of introduction, would fall into other hands. A man might live a lifetime in Philadelphia or Boston and never meet these people, unless he had been introduced by some one who was of the same cla.s.s in some other city. Such strange social customs make strange bedfellows. Thus, if you came to America to-day and had letters to the Vice-President, you would, without doubt, if properly accredited, see the very best society. If, on the other hand, you had letters to the President at his home in the State of Ohio you would doubtless meet an entirely different cla.s.s, eminently respectable, yet not the same. It would be impossible to ignore the inference from this. The Vice-President is in society (the best); the President is not. Where else could this hold? Nowhere but in America.

The Americans affect to scorn caste and sect, yet no nation has more of them. Sets or cla.s.ses, even among men, are found in all towns where there is any display of wealth. The best society of a small town consists of its bank presidents, its clergymen, its physicians, its authors, its lawyers. No matter how educated the grocer may be, he will not be received, nor the retail shoe dealer, though the shoe manufacturer, the dealer in many shoes, may be the virtual leader, at least among the men. Each town will have its clubs, the members ranging according to their cla.s.s; and while it seems a paradox, it is true that this cla.s.sification is mainly based upon the refinement, culture, and family of the man. A well-known man once engaged me in conversation with a view to finding out some facts regarding our social customs, and I learned from him that a dentist in America would scarcely be received in the best society. He argued, that to a man of refinement and culture, such a profession, which included the cleaning of teeth, would be impossible; consequently, you would not be likely to find a really cultivated man who was a dentist. On the same grounds an undertaker would not be admitted to the first society.

With us a gentleman is born; with Americans it is possible to create one, though rarely. An American gentleman is described as a product of two generations of college men who have always had a.s.sociation with gentlemen and the advantages of family standing. Political elevation can not affect a man's status as a gentleman. I heard a lady of unquestioned position say that she admired President McKinley, but regretted that he was not a gentleman. She meant that he was not an aristocrat, and did not possess the _savoir faire_, or the family a.s.sociations, that completely round out the American or English gentleman. I asked this lady to indicate the gentlemen Presidents of the country. There were very few that I recall. There were Washington, Harrison, Adams, and Arthur. Doubtless there were others, which have escaped me. Lincoln, the strongest American type, she did not consider in the gentlemen cla.s.s, and General Grant, the nation's especial pride, did not fulfil her ideas of what a gentleman should be.

You will perceive, then, that what some American people consider a gentleman and what its most exclusive society accepts for one, comprise two entirely different personages. I found this emphasized especially in the old society of Washington, which takes its traditions from Washington's time or even the pre-Revolutionary period. For such society a self-made man was impossible. Such are the remarkable, indeed astounding, ramifications of the social system of a people who cry to heaven of their democracy. "Americans are all equal--this is one of the gems in our diadem." This epigram I heard drop from the lips of a senator who was the recognized aristocrat of the chamber; yet a man of peculiar social reserve, who would have nothing to do with the other "equals." In a word, all the talk of equality is an absurd figure of speech. America is at heart as much an aristocracy as England, and the social divisions are much the same under the surface.