Part 4 (1/2)
His Excellency fixed his eyes on me and uttered a deliberate, musical sentence. ”He says,” translated Mr. Sowerby, ”that you have come to help China.” I am afraid I blushed at this. It had not occurred to me to state my mission in just those words. I replied that I had come, as a journalist, to learn the truth about the opium question. We talked for an hour about the wonderful warfare which China is waging against her besetting vice. ”China is sincere in this struggle,” he said. ”Public opinion was never more determined.” He asked me if I had investigated the new Malay drug which had lately been heralded as a specific for opium-poisoning. ”If,” he said, ”you should learn of any real cure, while you are investigating this subject, I wish you would advise me about it.”
I promised him I would do so. I had already heard from a number of sources that Ting was personally giving two to three thousand taels a month (a tael is about seventy-five cents) to the support of opium refuges and for the purchase of drugs for distribution among the poor. ”China is sick,” he said; ”she must be cured so that she may hold up her head among the nations.”
Shortly after we had driven back through the rain and had mounted the stairs to Mr. Sowerby's library, a Yamen runner was shown into the room, bearing presents from the provincial judge. The runner bowed to me and presented his tray. On it, beside the large red ”card” of Ting Pao Chuen, were four bottles of native wine, or ”shumshoo,” two cans of beef tongue, and two cans of sauerkraut!
V
SOWING THE WIND IN CHINA--SHANGHAI
In her development China is dependent on the adoption of Western ideas and is influenced by the example set by Western civilization. This modernizing influence is strongest at the point where the Westerner meets the Chinaman, where the two civilizations come into direct contact. At Shanghai, Tientsin, Hankow, Hongkong, and the other ports there are some thirty to forty thousand Europeans, Englishmen, and Americans. They build splendid buildings and lay good pavements. They bring with them the best liquors. The life they live gives about as accurate an impression of Western civilization--of what the Western nations stand for--as the great majority of the Chinese (a most observing race) are ever likely to receive. We have examined into China's sincerity, now let us examine into the honesty of purpose of the foreign ”concessions” and ”settlements”
which fringe the China Coast. If these communities are representing our civilization out there, it seems fair to ask whether they are representing it well; for if they are misrepresenting us, if they are contributing to the sort of international misunderstanding which breeds trouble, we may as well know it.
When, in the course of her gropings and strugglings towards civilization, China turns for enlightenment to the great, successful nations of Europe and America, what does she see? Well, for one thing, she sees Shanghai.
Shanghai has been called the Paris of the extreme East. It is the paradise of the adventurer and the adventuress, of the gambler, the beach-comber, and the long-chance promoter. Midway of the China Coast, at the mouth of the mighty Yangtse River, it is the princ.i.p.al port of entrance into China.
From England, Germany, France, Australia, j.a.pan, the United States, and Canada comes an endless column of steams.h.i.+ps to Shanghai. To Hongkong, Saigon, Bangkok, Singapore, Chefoo, Tientsin, and the uppermost ports of the Yangtse, 1,250 miles inland, go endless columns of steams.h.i.+ps from Shanghai. And of the travellers on these s.h.i.+ps nearly all have, or expect to have, or have had, business or pleasure at Shanghai.
It is the most truly cosmopolitan city in the world; for Paris, after all, is mainly French; London, after all, is mainly English; New York, after all, is mainly American. Shanghai has its French hotels, its imposing German Club, its English Country Club, its race-track, its Russian Bank, its j.a.panese mercantile houses, its American post-office. It is ruled by a council of Englishmen, Germans, and Americans. It is policed by English bobbies, Irishmen, Sikhs from India, and Chinamen. On the Bubbling Well Road, of a sunny spring afternoon, where the latest thing in motor cars weaves through the line of smart carriages, you may see Spaniard elbowing Filipino, Portuguese jostling Pa.r.s.ee, Austrian chatting with Bavarian; and they all talk, gamble, drink, and buy in pidgin English.
This settlement of fifteen thousand Europeans, living apart from that public opinion which compells the maintenance of a social standard in every European country, and indifferent to that local public opinion which keeps up a certain curious standard among the Chinese themselves, seems to have practically no standard at all. The problem of every decent American or Englishman who finds himself established in business is whether he dare bring his wife and family and introduce them into circles so degraded that families disintegrate and children grow up under disheartening influences. The heavy drinking of the China Coast ports is proverbial, yet the drinking seems little more than an incident in a city where the social atmosphere is tainted and altogether unwholesome.
I stood one night in the barroom of one of the big hotels. It was one o'clock in the morning, and nearly every one of the dozen white men in the room was more or less drunk. They were roaring out maudlin songs, and shouting incoherent cries. Two men, well-dressed gentlemen, were on the floor. And behind the bar, yawning, waiting for an opportunity to close up and go to sleep, stood two Chinese men and one boy. They were neat, respectful, and perfectly sober. Their almond eyes flitted about the room, taking in every detail of that beastly scene. It would be impossible to say what they were thinking, but I observed that they did not smile as a Chinaman usually does. Perhaps, to the reader who does not know the China Coast, it seems unfair to cite this case as an example of the active influence of our civilization in China. I will not do so. I will merely ask if you could ever hope to make those three young Chinamen believe that our civilization is superior to theirs.
Where such a low moral tone prevails, in a self-governing community, it is bound to limit the perception and the power of the government of that community. Let any observing visitor acquaint himself with Shanghai and its social and moral standards (which will not be difficult, for these will be thrust upon him soon after his arrival) and he will soon see for himself that the residents of Shanghai, while they freely and hotly criticize their council, never accuse it of priggishness or of moral restraint. This is enough to show that the council makes no effort to oppose the prevailing sentiment. The gambling business attains, in Shanghai, to the alt.i.tude of a considerable industry. During the race weeks, spring and fall, the vacant lots near the race-track are rented at high rates by those gamblers of all nations who have no regular quarters, and the games go on merrily in the open air, within full view of the crowds in the road. Now seven of the nine members of the council are Englishmen. English ideas are supposed to prevail in the settlement, feebly seconded by German and American. And the laws under which Shanghai is theoretically governed forbid gambling.
All the lower forms of organized vice combine to form a large and highly profitable branch of Shanghai's commerce. Partly because of the willingness of the locally stronger nations to shoulder off the responsibility for a disgraceful state of things, and partly because of the number of adventurous and unprincipled Americans who have drained off to the China Coast, America has had to endure more than her share of the blame for this condition. For years every degraded woman who could speak the language has called herself an ”American girl”; until the term, which at home arouses a natural pride, has grown so unpleasant that decent Americans have chafed under the insult. To-day it is best not to use the phrase ”American girl” on the China Coast.
Of the other and less vicious sorts of adventurers who turn up like bad pennies at Shanghai, the beach-comber is easily the most picturesque. Many writers, notably Robert Louis Stevenson, have employed him as a character in fiction. The majority of the beach-combers probably are or have been seafaring men. Next in numerical order, probably, come the discharged soldiers and the deserters. It takes either a certain amount of money or a certain amount of ability for any unattached American or European to get out to the China Coast, and an equal amount for him to get back. Therefore the stranded soldiers and sailors, brought out there at the cost of nation or s.h.i.+p owner, beating their way from port to port, drinking, gambling, starving, ready for any dubious enterprise that promises quick returns on a small investment, are a sorry lot. The sharps, swindlers, and shadowy promoters, on the other hand, are men necessarily possessed either of money or wit sufficient to get them out to China, and not unnaturally they represent the higher grades of their various crafts. From Peking to Hongkong, the coast is infested with these gentlemanly rascals, each with impressive garments and a convincing story. Josiah Flynt once wrote a tale of some enthusiastic young promoters who undertook, at a considerable outlay in capital and in personal risk, to sell a steam calliope to the Grand Lama of Thibet. After a brief acquaintance with the diverse and ingenious schemes that sprout, flower, and go to seed on the China Coast, this tale seems not nearly so improbable as it perhaps sounds to the casual reader.
Other, and more recent, types of adventurers are the stranded free-lance journalist and camp-followers who were lured Eastward by the prospect of pickings along the trails of the j.a.panese and Russian armies during the late war, and who later found themselves unable to get back home. In 1906, Consul-General Rodgers, of Shanghai, reported as follows on the subject of unscrupulous Americans who have been imposing on the Chinese to the detriment of American trade:
”There are many things which can be given as current reasons for r.e.t.a.r.ding American trade in the Orient. The advent of a cla.s.s of Americans, like those who came from Manila after a brief experience there, and those who tried their fortunes in connection with the events of the Russo-j.a.panese War, has done a great deal to injure the American name and reputation with the Chinese. This cla.s.s, usually indigent, has, by reason of imposition upon the Chinese, destroyed to some extent a confidence which has existed for many years and which had borne good fruit. There are good reasons for saying that every American firm which contemplates sending a representative to China should be very certain of his character, and, other things being equal, should choose the quiet, orderly person rather than the reverse type, in spite of the current opinion that such are indicated for the Orient.”
If Shanghai is the sort of a place that it would here appear to be, if it sets a vicious example in its government, in its business practice, and in the character of many of its inhabitants, the fact would seem to indicate that it is most decidedly misrepresenting out there the sort of civilization that we, Europeans as well as Americans, have always supposed that we stood for. It would appear that the Chinese, at the point of contact with our civilization, are getting a false impression of us. It would be easy to dismiss as remote and unimportant the vicious example set by a group of adventurers and promoters on the China Coast; but unfortunately this little group is the most important single contributing factor in the exceedingly delicate matter of the rapidly developing relations between China and the great Christian nations.
The influence of the Shanghai example on China is real and positive.
Geographically, Shanghai commands the trade of the middle coast, the immense Yangtse Valley, and the Grand Ca.n.a.l. Every night a big river steamer leaves for Hankow and the intermediate river ports. Every day a big river steamer comes in from the same cities. Trading junks and small steamers innumerable ply between the river and coast ports and Shanghai.
Chinese merchants come from hundreds of miles around to trade with the foreigners or with the native ”compradores” attached to foreign houses. On their return to their various interior cities or villages these traders spread tales of the foreign devils who inhabit the great city near the sea. Foreign merchants, travelling salesmen, engineers, and insurance agents travel up and down the great river, up and down the coast; they penetrate, by steamer, railroad, mule-litter, or cart, into the interior cities of the great provinces, leaving everywhere on plastic minds distinct and ineffaceable impressions of their manners, business methods, and morals.
In the foreign settlement of Shanghai, and apart from the population of the native city which adjoins it, there are, roughly, 450,000 Chinese who have chosen to dwell in the territory and under the laws of the white men.
This population is not fixed, but fluctuates as the floating element comes and goes; and everywhere that this floating element travels when out of the city it leaves an impression--a story, a bit of gossip, an example of the sharp dealing learned from the foreigner--of the manners, business methods, and morals of Shanghai. The native newspapers comment frankly on life and conditions in the great seaport, and their comments are reprinted in the papers of the interior. Shanghai exerts a direct and result-breeding influence on fifty to seventy-five million native minds, and an indirect influence on all China. How many scores of fair-minded, straightforward merchants, how many thousands of scattered missionaries and teachers will it take, think you, to counteract that influence?
China, grappling with the problem of decay, fighting desperately against an evil which the most nearly Christian of the Christian nations has fastened on her, looks westward for enlightenment, and sees--Shanghai. And Shanghai--well Shanghai plays the races and the roulette wheel, and drinks, and forgets the sacred significance of marriage and the economic importance of the home, and goes to the club, and except in casting up profits gives never a thought to that vast, muttering populace that waits--waits--for the day of the under-dog to come.
Such was the condition of things when the Chinese war on opium began to a.s.sume effective proportions during the spring of 1906. Now, Shanghai--the ”settlement,” that is--was in a peculiar, an unfortunate, condition as regarded the anti-opium crusade. I have already given, in an earlier chapter, the estimate of Robert E. Lewis, general secretary of the Y. M.
C. A., at Shanghai, that there were, in 1906, nearly 22,000 places in the international settlement, little and big, where opium could be purchased, more than 19,000 of which kept pipes, lamps, and divans on the premises for smokers. All of the dens which were openly conducted were paying a regular license fee to the munic.i.p.al government, amounting last year to 98,000 Shanghai taels, or about $70,000 in gold. It is against the law to permit women or children to enter the smoking-dens, and a clause to this effect is printed on the license as a condition in granting it; yet when Captain Borisragon, the chief of police, was asked how many regular women inmates were in the dens, he replied, in writing, that there were at least 3,200 women so kept, and doubtless a great many more who did not appear on his records. When the tax and license department was asked why this clause was not enforced, the reply was made, without the slightest attempt at excuse or explanation, that when a license was issued to the keeper of an ”opium brothel” the clause prohibiting women inmates was erased.