Part 15 (1/2)
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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p.
”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.