The Pacific Triangle Part 15

At the opposite end of the city is the quarter where the concubines abound. Life there does not begin till eight o'clock in the evening, if as early. The clanging of cans and the effort at music is terrifying.

Hotels of from four to five stories, with all their balconies illuminated, gave an effect of festive cheerfulness which the rest of the city lacked utterly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN CHINA DRINKING-WATER, SOAP-SUDS, SOUP AND SEWERS ALL FIND THEIR SOURCE IN THE SAME STREAM]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHANGHAI YOUNGSTERS PUTTING THEIR HEADS TOGETHER TO MAKE US OUT]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS OLD WOMAN IS LAYING DOWN THE LAW TO THE WILD YOUNG THINGS OF CHINA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHINA COULD TURN THESE MUD HOUSES INTO PALACES IF SHE WISHED--SHE IS RICH ENOUGH]

Upon the ground floors, which opened directly upon the street, the women could be seen dressing for the evening. Nothing in their behavior or dress would indicate their profession,--so unlike the licensed districts of j.a.pan. The women never as much as noticed any stranger on the street. At the appointed time each little woman emerged, dainty, clean and sober, and pa.s.sed from her own quarters to the hotels and restaurants where she was to meet her chartered libertine. Her decorum approximated saintly modesty, and she moved with a childlike innocence.

There was throughout the district no rowdyism, no disorderliness.

Everything was businesslike and according to regulation. Strange, that with so much self-control should go so much licentiousness. But it is part of the mystery of the Orient.

5

Yet, this is no stranger than that with so much of excellence in Hong-Kong, there should also go the perpetuation of coolieism; to paraphrase, that with so much dignity and honesty in trade should go so much inhumanity in the treatment of men. That is the mystery of Britannia,--and her success. America went into the Orient and immediately began educating it. In answer to a German criticism of British educational work in Hong-Kong, the "j.a.pan Chronicle" (British) says:

Considering how much greater British interests in China have hitherto been than American, the Americans are far more guilty of the abominable crime of educating the Chinese than the British, having spent a great deal of money, and induced young Chinese to come to America and get Americanized. Most people, including impartial British subjects, would find fault rather with the narrow limits of English education in China than with its intentions.

Hongkong has been for many years the center of an enormously profitable trade, and had things been done with the altruism that one would like to see in international relations, there would be ten universities instead of only one and a hundred students sent to England for college or technical training where only one is sent to-day.

Hitherto, it has been Britain's success that she has not interfered with the habits of the races she has ruled. In Hong-Kong she has built a modern city out of nothing, but has permitted Asiatic defects to find their place within it.

For instance, there was no sewerage system in Hong-Kong,--a fact than which no greater criticism could be made of Britain, or of any other nation pretending to be civilized. In this no question of altruism is involved, but purely one of self-interest. And if greater concern for such matters were manifest, doubtless it would work its way back through concubinage, ancestor worship, charlatanism in public and private life.

Having taken my chances with criticism, I shall risk praise. Englishmen have never, to my knowledge, been given credit for the possession of romantic souls; yet nothing but a deep love of romance could be responsible for the manner in which Britain has preserved Hong-Kong's Chinese face. Despite the fact that it is entirely Western in its structure, I never felt the Oriental flavor more in all j.a.pan than I did at Hong-Kong. The sedan-chairs that take one up the steeps and remind one of the swells on the China Sea in their motion, the thousands of rickishaws that roll swiftly, quietly over smoothly paved streets, the particularly attractive Chinese signs that lure one into dazzling shops with unmistakable Eastern atmosphere, the money-changers and the markets dripping with Oriental messes, left an impression on my mind that none of my later experiences can dispel.

CHAPTER XI

CHINA'S EUROPEAN CAPITAL

1

Under the benign influence of a Salvation Army captain, my feet were guided safely through some of the lesser evils of Shanghai. The greater could not be fathomed in the short time allotted to me in the European capital of China. Miss Smythe, who resented being called Smith, in a manner that revealed she had long since ceased to be shy of mere man, belonged to New Zealand by birth and heaven by adoption. She chose Hong-Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo as temporary resting-places. It was her task, every five years or so, to make a complete tour of the Orient to collect funds for the Salvation Army. Hence her captaincy.

I was walking along Queens Street, Hong-Kong, somewhat lone in spirit, when a rickshaw pa.s.sed quickly by. The occupant, a fair lady, bowed pleasantly to me and disappeared in the melee. I could not recall ever having seen her face and wondered who in Hong-Kong she could be. Then it struck me that she wore a hat with bright red on it. Later that day, as I stepped into the launch to be taken across to the _Tamba Maru_, who should appear but this selfsame lady. We greeted each other, both surprised at the second meeting and at the coincidence of our joining the same ship.

"I thought I had met you when I greeted you on the street this morning,"

she said.

All the way from Hong-Kong to Shanghai she was as busy going from cla.s.s to cla.s.s as she was on sh.o.r.e, spreading the faith, placing literature where it could be found and read, organizing hymn parties and discouraging booze. The j.a.panese on board took her good-naturedly. She spoke their language fluently, but I could not see that they drank one little cup of sake the less for her.

When we arrived at Shanghai she would have nothing else but that I should go with her to some friends of hers for dinner. Into one rickshaw she loaded her bags, into another me, with the manner of one handling cargo, and then deposited herself in a third. The train made its way along the Bund and out of confusion. And that was the way I was shanghaied.

Somewhere in a street that might for all the world have been in Chicago, our train drew up. It was quiet, had a little open park in it, where two streets seemed to have got mixed and, scared at losing their ident.i.ty like the Siamese twins, ran off in an angle of directions. Here at a brick-red building with balconies and porticoes, and a dark, damp door, we made our announcement and were received. Now what would the world have thought if a Salvation Army man had picked up a strange young woman on a steamer and haled her into a strange house? None but a Salvation Army La.s.sie could have done what Miss Smythe,--not Smith, mind you!--dared to do. We were welcomed as though the appearance of a stranger were in the usual course of events, and I was asked to stay for dinner. The hostess, a quiet woman, with her pretty young daughter, kept a boarding-house, and was always prepared for extra folk.

It was a boarding-house like any I should have expected to find in America. The rooms were s.p.a.cious, hung with framed prints, and dark and slightly damp, according to Shanghai climate. There was something haunting about the house, but to a homeless vagabond like myself it seemed the acme of comfort. And to one who had had no real home meal in five weeks or more, but only ship's food, the spread we sat down to was delicious.

Miss Smythe did not enjoy her dinner as much as I did, for she feared all along that she would not be able to get to church on time. Then it was too late for me to regain my ship, so I was invited to spend the night under a roof instead of a deck.

The next day I wandered off by myself, but not till I had promised to return for Chinese "chow." In the meantime Miss Smythe had spread my fame among others of her profession, and made a date for me to go to a "rescue house" or some such place that evening. It was a mission home for j.a.panese, run by a woman who, if she wasn't from Boston, I'm sure must have come from Brookline. The only thing Oriental about that mission was its j.a.panese. A sumptuous dinner was served which, despite the fact that I had had "chow" only twenty minutes before, I was compelled to eat. With two heavy meals where one is accustomed to berth, accommodations were somewhat crowded.

Everything would have gone well if I hadn't promised to give the residents a talk on my travels. I began. Miss Smythe felt that I wasn't emphasizing the presence of G.o.d in the numerous regions I had visited. I took His omnipresence for granted, but she kept breaking into my talk at every turn. Two meals inside of two people who both tried to lecture at once didn't go very well, especially at a mission in China run by Europeans and attended by j.a.panese. It seemed that there was not over-much love lost on the part of the sons of Tenno for those of the Son of Heaven, nor did the European missionaries at this place encourage the intermarriage of these ill.u.s.trious spirits. The Bostonian in exile on more than one occasion spoke disparagingly of the cleanliness of the Chinese, much to the satisfaction of the j.a.panese. But then, she was winning and holding them to the Son of G.o.d, and when they reached heaven they would all be one. Miss Smythe afterward apologized to me for interrupting me during my talk, and we parted as cordially as we had met. Some months later I found her roaming the streets of Kobe, j.a.pan, as active as ever in the militant cause. Her insinuations about what goes on in j.a.panese inns seemed to me unjustifiable. So I asked her whether it was fair to the j.a.panese and Chinese for her to be forever repeating hearsay when she would resent it were I to repeat what I had heard about the morality of the Australians. It took her aback, but I am sure that she is still pursuing vice and drink and irreverence, aided and abetted by the dollars which she extracts from foreign business men and reprobates throughout the East.

2

But I must get back to Shanghai, even though Miss Smythe is so attractive. As long as I remained under her wing I had taken virtually no notice of China. So it is in Shanghai; one cannot see the Orient for the Occidentals. For if Hong-Kong is an example of adulterated British imperialism, Shanghai is one of European internationalism grafted upon China. At Shanghai the forces of two contending racial streams meet, like the waters at the entrance of Port Philip, and here, though the surface is smooth and gla.s.sy, there are eddies and whirlpools within, which are a menace to any small craft that may attempt to cross.

How strange to wander about streets and buildings quite European but to see only here and there a white face! It is an ultra-modern city built upon a flat plain. The streams of Chinese that come wandering in from regions unknown to the transient, give him a sense of contact with a vast, endless world beyond. They might be coming from just round the corner, but their manner is of plainsmen bringing their goods and chattels to market. In comparison with the Southern Chinese, these are giants, but still dirty and most of them chestless. In constant turmoil and travail, beggars pleading for a pittance with which to sustain their empty lives, limousines making way for themselves between rickshaws and one-wheeled barrows, coolies pulling and carrying loads, some grunting as they jig their way along, others chanting in chorus,--yet all in the "foreign" settlement, amid buildings that are alien to them, and largely for men who see only the gain they here secure. I wonder if the Chinese say of the Europeans as Americans are often heard to say of Italians and Orientals,--that they come only to make money and return to spend it?

Yet the white have built Shanghai. Shanghai is not Chinese. Had it not been for the white men, the plain would still be swampy, would still be a litter of hovels with here and there a mansion flowering in the mud.

The mud still messes up the edge of things in Shanghai. The creek is an example. There are the sampans and barges, some loaded with pyramid-like stacks of hay, some with heavy, thick-walled mahogany coffins, the myriads of families huddling within the holds, and the murky tides washing in and washing out beneath them. Here the s.e.xes live in greater intimacy, it seemed to me, than in Hong-Kong. I actually saw one woman place her hand in what I was sure was an affectionate way on the shoulder of a man: and some were mutually helpful. But otherwise, despite the great conglomeration and greater cooperation, in the entire ma.s.s one cannot see how ancestor-worshipers can show so little regard for one another.

In the market-place the confusion is more orderly. Here even white women come to stock up their kitchens, and here j.a.panese women move about, sober by nature and by virtue of the superiority they possess as conquerors in their husbands' rights. Two girls are quarreling vociferously and the more self-controlled look on both sympathetically and antipathetically. The washed-down pavement of the market floor is no place, however, for a serious bout.

Through the long hours of early evening I wandered into one street and out the other. I had become more or less reconciled to the alien aspects of Shanghai, to good stores selling good goods, to fashionable hotels and s.p.a.cious residences, but one thing was inalienably alien to it, and that was a second-hand book-shop. It had not occurred to me that foreigners in China would part with their books if they ever got hold of them. And for a moment I was altogether transported, and my magic carpet lay in San Francisco, in Chicago, in New York all at once. But it was chilly and the rain made the city worse than a washed-down market, for it depopulated the streets, leaving me as dreary in heart as in body. I was glad when the hour came for me to make my appearance at the kind woman's house for chow.

Though I was sorry to hear the missionary at the mission decry the Chinese to the satisfaction of her j.a.panese patrons, and felt that it turned me slightly against both, still both j.a.panese and missionaries were kind and attentive to me. In the evening, a young j.a.panese business man called for a motor-car and took us out in the bleak, wet night to see the great white way of Shanghai. The rain deflected the strange glimmers of electric light through the isingla.s.sed curtains of the car.

For a time we skidded along over slushy streets, turning into the theater district as the attraction supreme. Here the gonfalons drooped in the watery air, while Chinese mess merchants stood in out of the rain with their little wagonettes of steaming portions. In a whirl we were through the cluttering crowds and making for the residential districts.

Then wide avenues opened out in serpentine ways, s.h.a.ggy trees dripping overhead, the slippery pavement swinging us from side to side as our dare-devil Chinese driver sped on to Bubbling Well. For an hour we rode, I did not know whither, but everywhere at my right and left were palatial Chinese and foreign residences. Without knowing it we had turned and were back in Shanghai, and presently within doors again,--and asleep.

3

Next day, this same j.a.panese business man volunteered to escort me to Chinese City. I would have gone by myself, but every one looked horrified at the idea; so I accepted this knightly guide. At the appointed time I presented myself at his office. He had asked his Chinese clerk to accompany us for protection, and ordered three rickshaws. Though he had lived in Shanghai for years, he had never gone to see Chinese City, and was glad to avail himself of an excuse for doing so now. The j.a.panese is a natural-born cicerone.

In a few minutes we had left the international section of the settlement--that jointly occupied by Britain and America--and wobbled into the French district. Suddenly we stopped, and our carriers lowered their shafts to the ground. We were at a narrow opening three or four feet wide, and I could not understand why we should pay our respects to it. "From here we have to walk," said the Chinese, and in single file we entered, dropping out of Shanghai as into a bog. That was real China, but only as little Italy in New York is real Italy.

The whole of Chinese City can be summed up hastily and in but a few words. Narrow, dirty little thoroughfares laid out in broken stone paving, tiny shops where luxuries, necessities, and coolie requisites are sold,--dark, dirty, open to the damp! What dest.i.tution is the inheritance of these thousands of years of civilization!

The first thing to greet us, standing out against the general wretchedness, was not beautiful. To one accustomed to hard sights and scenes, to one not easily perturbed by human degradation, that which pa.s.sed as we entered was sufficient to unnerve him. Upon the wet, filthy street rolled a legless boy. He had no crutches; his business required none. He was begging: howling, chanting, and rolling all at the same time. I could not say "Poor child!" Rather, poor China, that it should come to this!

Immediately after, though having no business connections, came an old man. Came? Walked crouching, bowing his gray head till it touched the filthy pathway. He was kotowing before the menials of China, not its empress.

The third was the worst of all. One old, ragged, broken beggar was carrying on his back what might have been a corpse, but was another beggar; the two--one on top of the other--were not more than four feet above the ground.

I felt as though Mara, the Evil One, was trying to frighten me by an exhibition of his pet horrors so that I might not go farther. I was not being perturbed, the horrors ceased.

But what beauties or treasures were they meant to guard? What was there that I was not to see? What ogre dwelt within? Nothing but a bit of business, so to speak, in a social bog.

Beside a tideless creek, advertised as a lake, stood a paG.o.da-like structure, just a broken reflection imaged in the mud. As we approached we were immediately taken in charge by a Chinese guide and led along a path crudely paved with cobblestones into an "ancient" tea-garden. The wall around it was topped with a vicious-looking dragon that stretched around it. A tremendous monster of wood, it lay there; and perhaps it will continue to lie there long after China shall have forsaken the dragon. Then from chamber to chamber we strolled, past tables of stone and shrines and effigies, and into the heart of China's superst.i.tious soul. Though in itself not ancient, what a peep it afforded into antiquity,--dull, dead, yet powerful!

For within these secret chambers there were displayed endless numbers of emperors and their dynastic celebrities. In one chamber, blue with smoke and stifling incense, lighted with red candles, burning joss-sticks, behung with lanterns, and crowded with lazy Chinese, we found several "emperors" with red-painted wooden effigies of their wives. To me the smoke was choking; not so to them. The incense was sweet in their nostrils, and nourishing. And in payment for the sacrificial generosity and the prayers of fat, wealthy Chinese women who fell upon their knees, rose, and fell again, bowing and repeating incantations, they were to make the husbands of these women--too busy to come themselves--meet with success in business. Seriousness and earnestness marked the features of these women, and who can say their faith was ignored?