Part 5 (1/2)
The Carabao Cart in the Philippines.
The Carabao or Water Buffalo is the Filipinos' Chief Beast of Burden. The Cart is Crude and Heavy, With a Home-made Yoke. The Buffalo is also Used for Ploughing and Other Farm Work]
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XXIV
The Nipa Hut of the Filipino. This Style of House, With Bamboo Frame and Thatched Sides and Roof of Nipa Gra.s.s, Costs About Fifty Mex. or Twenty-Five Dollars in United States Gold Coin. It Is Usually About Six Feet From the Ground]
HONGKONG, CANTON, SINGAPORE AND RANGOON
HONGKONG, THE GREATEST BRITISH PORT IN THE ORIENT
The entrance to the harbor of Hongkong is one of the most impressive in the world. The steamer runs along by the mainland for several miles.
Then a great island is descried, covered with smelting works, huge dockyards, great warehouses and other evidences of commercial activity.
This is the lower end of the island of Victoria, on which the city of Hongkong has been built. The island was ceded by China to Great Britain in 1842, after the conclusion of the opium war. It is separated from the mainland of China by an arm of the sea, varying from one mile to five miles in width. This forms the harbor of Hongkong, one of the most s.p.a.cious and picturesque in the world. It is crowded with steamers, ferryboats, Chinese junks with queer-shaped sails of yellow matting, sampans, trim steam launches and various other craft. As the vessel pa.s.ses beyond the smelting works and the dry docks it rounds a point and the beauty of Hongkong is revealed.
The city is built at the foot of a steep hill nearly two thousand feet in height. Along the crescent harbor front are ranged ma.s.sive business buildings with colonaded fronts and rows of windows. Behind the business section the hills rise so abruptly that many of the streets are seen to be merely rows of granite stairs. Still farther back are the homes of Hongkong residents, beautiful stone or brick structures, which look out upon the busy harbor. With a gla.s.s one can make out the cable railroad which climbs straight up the mountainside for over one thousand feet and then turns sharply to the right until the station is reached, about thirteen hundred feet above sea level.
Hongkong differs radically from Yokohama, Tokio, Kobe, Nagasaki or Manila, because of the blocks of solid, granite-faced buildings that line its water front, each with its rows of Venetian windows, recessed in balconies. This is the prevailing architecture for hotels, business buildings and residences, while dignity is lent to every structure by the enormous height between stories, the average being from fifteen to eighteen feet. This impression of loftiness is increased by the use of the French window, which extends from the floor almost to the ceiling, all the windows being provided with large transoms.
The feature of Hongkong which impresses the stranger the most vividly is the great mixture of races in the streets. Here for the first time one finds the sedan chair, with two or four bearers. It is used largely in Hongkong for climbing the steep streets which are impossible for the jinrikisha. The bearers are low-cla.s.s coolies from the country, whose rough gait makes riding in a chair the nearest approach to horseback exercise. The jinrikisha is also largely in evidence, but the bearers are a great contrast in their rapacious manners to the courteous and smiling j.a.panese in all the cities of the Mikado's land.
Queen's road, the main business street of Hongkong, furnishes an extraordinary spectacle at any hour of the day. The roadway is lined with shops, while the sidewalks, covered by the verandas of the second stories of the buildings, form a virtual arcade, protected from the fierce rays of the sun. These shops are mainly designed to catch the eye of the foreigner, and they are filled with a remarkable collection of silks, linens, ivories, carvings and other articles that appeal to the American because of the skilled labor that has been expended upon them.
Carvings and embroidery that represent the work of months are sold at such low prices as to make one marvel how anyone can afford to produce them even in this land of cheap living.
The crowd that streams past these shops is even more curious than the goods offered for sale. Here East and West meet in daily a.s.sociation.
The Englishman is easily recognized by his air of proprietors.h.i.+p, although his usual high color is somewhat reduced by the climate. He has stamped his personality on Hongkong and he has builded here for generations to come. The German is liberally represented, and old Hongkong residents bewail the fact that every year sees a larger number of Emperor William's subjects intent on wresting trade from the British.
Frenchmen and other Europeans pa.s.s along this Queen's road, and the American tourist is in evidence, intent on seeing all the sights as well as securing the best bargains from the shopkeepers. All these foreigners have modified their garb to suit the climate. They wear suits of white linen or pongee with soft s.h.i.+rts, and the solar topi, or pith helmet, which is a necessity in summer and a great comfort at other seasons. The helmet keeps the head cool and shelters the nape of the neck, which cannot be exposed safely to the sun's rays. Instead of giving health as the California sun does, this Hongkong suns.h.i.+ne brings heat apoplexy and fever. All the Orient is represented by interesting types. Here are rich Chinese merchants going by in private chairs, with bearers in handsome silk livery; Pa.r.s.ees from Bombay, with skins almost as black as those of the American negro; natives of other parts of India in their characteristic dress and their varying turbans; Sikh policemen, tall, powerful men, who have a lordly walk and who beat and kick the Chinese chair coolies and rickshaw men when they prove too insistent or rapacious; Chinese of all cla.s.ses, from the prosperous merchant to the wretched coolie whose prominent ribs show how near he lives to actual starvation in this overcrowded land; workmen of all kinds, many bearing their tools, and swarms of peddlers and vendors of food, crying their wares, with scores of children, many of whom lead blind beggars.
Everywhere is the noise of many people shouting l.u.s.tily, the cries of chair coolies warning the pa.s.sersby to clear the way for their ill.u.s.trious patrons.
The Chinese seem unable to do anything without an enormous expenditure of talk and noise. Ordinary bargaining looks like the beginning of a fierce fight. Any trifling accident attracts a great crowd, which becomes excited at the slightest provocation. It is easy to see from an ordinary walk in this Hongkong street how panic or rage may convert the stolid Chinese into a deadly maniac, who will stop at no outburst of violence, no atrocity, that will serve to wreak his hatred of the foreigner.
Although Hongkong has been Europeanized in its main streets, there are quarters of the city only a few blocks away from the big hotels and banks which give one glimpses of genuine native life. Some of these streets are reached by scores of granite steps that climb the steep mountainside. These streets are not over twelve or fifteen feet wide, and the shops are mere holes in the wall, with a frontage of eight or ten feet. Yet many of these dingy shops contain thousands of dollars'
worth of decorated silks and linens, artistic carvings, laces, curios and many other articles of Chinese manufacture. Unlike the j.a.panese, who will follow the tourist to the sidewalk and urge him to buy, these Chinese storekeepers show no eagerness to make sales. They must be urged to display their fine goods, and they cannot be hurried. The best time to see these native streets is at night. Take a chair if the climate overpowers you, but walk if you can. Then a night stroll through this teeming quarter will always remain in the memory. Every one is working hard, as in j.a.pan, for the Chinese workday seems endless. All kinds of manufacture are being carried on here in these narrow little shops; the workers are generally stripped to the waist, wearing only loose short trousers of cheap blue or brown cotton, the lamplight gleaming on their sweating bodies. Here are goldsmiths beating out the jewelry for which Hongkong is famous; next are scores of shops in all of which shoes are being made; then follow workers in willow-ware and rattan, makers of hats, furniture and hundreds of other articles. In every block is an eating-house, with rows of natives squatted on benches, and with large kettles full of evil-smelling messes. The crowds in the streets vie with the crowds in the stores in the noise that they make; the air reeks with the odors of sweating men, the smell of unsavory food, the stench of open gutters. This panorama of naked bodies, of wild-eyed yellow faces drawn with fatigue and heat pa.s.ses before ones' eyes for an hour. Then the senses begin to reel and it is time to leave this scene of Oriental life that is far lower and more repulsive than the most crowded streets in the terrible East Side tenement quarter of New York on a midsummer night.
Hongkong, both in the European and native quarters, is built to endure for centuries. Most of the houses are of granite or plastered brick. The streets are paved with granite slabs. Even the private residences have ma.s.sive walls and heavy roofs of red or black tile; the gardens are screened from the street by high walls, with broken gla.s.s worked into the mortar that forms the coping and with tall iron entrance gates.
These residences dot the side hill above the town. They are built upon terraces, which include the family tennis court. The roads wind around the mountainside, many of them quarried out of solid rock. All the building material of these houses had to be carried up the steep mountainside by coolies and, until the cable railway was finished, the dwellers were borne to their homes at night by chair coolies.
This cable railway carries one nearly to the top of the peak back of Hongkong, and from the station a short walk brings one to the summit, where a wireless station is used to flash arrivals of vessels to the city below. The view from this summit, and from the splendid winding road which leads to the Peak Hospital, not far away, is one of the finest in the world. The harbor, dotted with many s.h.i.+ps and small boats, the indented coast for a score of miles, the bare and forbidding Chinese territory across the bay, the big city at the foot of the hill; all these are spread out below like a great panorama.
The British are firmly entrenched at Hongkong. Not only have they actual owners.h.i.+p of Victoria Island, on which Hongkong is built, but they have a perpetual lease of a strip of the mainland across from the island, extending back for over one hundred miles. The native city across the bay is Kowloon, and is reached by a short ride on the new railroad which will eventually connect Hankow with Paris. On the barren sh.o.r.e, about a mile from Hongkong, has been founded the European settlement of Kowloon City. It comprises a row of large warehouses, or G.o.downs, a big naval victualling station and coaling depot, large barracks for two regiments of Indian infantry and several companies of Indian artillery, with many fine quarters for European officers. The city in recent years has become a favorite residence place for Hongkong business men, as it is reached in a few minutes by a good ferry. Near by are the great naval docks at Hunghom, extensive cement works and the deepest railway cut in the world, the material being used to fill in the bay of Hunghom.
A VISIT TO CANTON IN DAYS OF WILD PANIC
Every traveler who has seen the Orient will tell you not to miss Canton, the greatest business center of China, the most remarkable city of the empire, and among the most interesting cities of the world. It is only a little over eighty miles from Hongkong, and if one wishes to save time it may be reached by a night boat.