A Visit to Chinatown—Its Boundaries—A Terra Incognita—Fond ofMongrels—My Licensed Guide—The Study of the Signs—Men of AllCallings—Picture of the Chinaman—Devoid of Humour—Confucius—GreatMen from Good Mothers—Confucius to Women—Mormonism andMohammedanism—How to Regenerate China—Slaves of the Lamp—ChinamenImpassive—Aroused to Wrath—How They Dress—The Queue—"Pidgin"English—Payment of Debts—Bankrupt Law—Suicide.
When in the City of the Golden Gate you will not fail to visit the Chinese Quarter, or "Chinatown," as it is popularly called. Just as in an Oriental city like Jerusalem or Constantinople you find different nationalities or races living apart from each other, so here in San Francisco you have "Little China" in the heart of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. It is as if you had unfolded to your wondering eyes in a dream some town from the banks of the Pearl River, the Yangtse-Kiang, or the Hwangho or. Yellow River; and it seems strange indeed that, without the trouble or expense and danger of crossing the waters of the Pacific, you can by a short walk from the midst of the teeming life of an American City, be ushered into streets that are foreign in appearance and where scenes that are unfamiliar to the eye attract your attention on every hand. With the exception of the houses, which, as a rule, take on a European or an American style of architecture, you might imagine that you were in Canton or some other Chinese city. The life is truly Asiatic and Mongolian in its character and in its display as well as in its customs. The home of the sons of the Flowery Kingdom in San Francisco is in the north-eastern section of the city, and may be said to be in one of the best portions of the metropolis of the West, sheltered as it is from the winds of the Pacific by the hills which are back of it, and with a commanding view of the Bay and its islands and the magnificent landscapes to the east, valleys and hills running up to the heights of the Sierras. The locality is bounded by Jackson, Pacific, Dupont, Commercial, and Sacramento streets, and embraces some eight squares; and within this space, crowded together, are the twenty-five or thirty thousand Chinese who form a part of the population of the city. There are Chinamen here and there in other parts of San Francisco, but nearly all live here in this quarter which we are now approaching. Here there are the homes of the people who came from the land of Confucius, here the famous shops, the theatres, the Joss-houses where heathen worship is maintained. As soon then as you set foot within the area described you feel that you are in a strictly foreign country; and if this is your first visit, the place is to you a sort of terra incognita. You will need a guide to take you through its labyrinths and point out to you its hidden recesses and explain the strange sights and interpret for you the language which sounds so oddly to your ears. If you have not some man to conduct you, a dragoman or courier, you will be likely to make mistakes as ludicrous as that related of an English woman. Sir Henry Howarth, the author of the "History of the Mongols," a learned and laborious work, was out dining one evening. It fell to his lot at his host's house to escort a lady to the dinner table; and she, having a confused idea of the great man's theme, surprised him somewhat by the abrupt question, "I understand, Sir Henry, that you are fond of dogs. Are you not? I am too." "Dogs, madam? I really must plead guiltless. I know nothing at all of them!" "Indeed," his fair questioner replied; "and they told me you had written a famous history of mongrels!" It is best then always to take a guide, and you will have no trouble in finding one, who will charge you from two to three dollars an hour. If you go with a small party, which is best, all can share the expense. It will take about three hours to explore the town thoroughly and study the life. The writer went through Chinatown on two evenings at an interval of a few days, and saw this Asiatic Quarter of San Francisco to great advantage. The first time was with a licensed guide of long experience, and the second time it was under the direction of a police-detective. Some five friends were in the party; and we started on our tour of exploration about half past nine o'clock at night. The night is the best time in which to study the life, for then you can see the Chinese in their houses and at their amusements, as well as many others who still are at work; for some of the Chinese artisans toil for sixteen hours a day, and long into the hours of the night. Here among them are no strikes for fewer hours, but patient toil, as it were in a treadmill, without a murmur. My licensed guide was Henry Gehrt, a man about fifty-five years old, of German parentage. He had been in the business for twenty-seven years, and he maintained an office on Sacramento Street. His badge was No. 60. All guides must wear badges according to law. As we went hither and thither we met occasionally groups of sight-seers, among them some of our friends, members of the Convention, Bishops, and clerical and lay deputies, who felt this was a rare opportunity to study heathendom; and I am sure all went away from this strange spot thanking God for our noble Anglo-Saxon civilisation, as well as for the knowledge of His Revelation.
The houses, I observed, are three, and sometimes four stories high, with balconies and windows, which give them a decidedly Oriental appearance. On most of them were signs displayed in the Chinese language. You also see scrolls by the doors of the private houses and on the shops. The signs are a study in their bright colours and their mythological and fantastic adornments. Yellow is the predominant colour, and the dragon is in evidence everywhere. This emblem of the Celestial Empire is represented in gorgeous array and with a profusion of ornament. A splendid dragon is the sign and trade mark of "Sing Fat and Co.," who keep a Chinese and Japanese Bazaar on Dupont Street. On their card they give this warning, "Beware of firms infringing on our name;" and it seems as if the dragon on the sign would avenge any invasion of their rights. The signs are a study, and if you are ignorant of the language, you ask your learned guide to interpret them for you. He will tell you that Hop Wo does business here as a grocer, that Shun Wo is the butcher, that Shan Tong is the tea-merchant, that Tin Yuk is the apothecary, and that Wo-Ki sells bric-a-brac. Some of the signs, your guide will tell you, are not the real names of the men who do business, that they are only mottoes. Wung Wo Shang indicates to you that perpetual concord begets wealth, Hip Wo speaks to you of brotherly love and harmony, Tin Yuk means a jewel from Heaven, Wa Yun is the fountain of flowers, while Man Li suggests thousands of profits. Other of the signs relate to the muse. They do not at all reveal the business carried on within. The butcher, for example, has over his shop such elegant phrases as Great Concord, Constant Faith, Abounding Virtue. There are many pawn-brokers who ply their vocation assiduously. They tell you of their honest purpose after this fashion: "Let each have his due pawn-brokers," and, "Honest profit pawn-brokers." In the Chinese restaurant, to which we will go later, you will be edified by such sentiments as these,—The Almond-Flower Chamber, Chamber of the Odours of Distant Lands, Garden of the Golden Valley, Fragrant Tea-Chamber. The apothecary induces you to enter his store with inviting signs of this character: Benevolence and Longevity Hall, Hall of Everlasting Spring, Hall of Joyful Relief, Hall for Multiplying Years. Surely if the American druggist would exhibit such sentences as these over his shop he would never suffer for want of customers. All are in pursuit of length of years and health; and I think the Chinese pharmacist shows his great wisdom in offering to all who are suffering from the ills to which flesh is heir a panacea for their ailments. It takes the fancy, it is a pleasing conceit for the mind, and the mere thought that you are entering Longevity Hall gives you fresh courage!
You will find here in Chinatown men of all callings, the labourer who is ready to bear any burden you lay on him, the artisan who is skilled in his work, the grocer, the clothes' dealer, the merchant, the apothecary, the doctor, the tinsmith, the furniture-maker, the engraver, the goldsmith, the maker of paper-shrines for idols, the barber, the clairvoyant, the fortune-teller, and all others of every calling which is useful and brings profit to him who pursues it. But we are deeply interested in the men whom we meet. At first view they all seem to look alike, you can hardly distinguish one from another. They are a study. Look on their solemn faces, sphinx-like in their repose and imperturbability. They are a riddle to you. You rarely ever hear them laugh. They are like a landscape beneath skies which are wanting in the sparkling sunbeams. They seem to you as if they had continual sorrow of heart, as if some wrong of past ages had set its seal on their features. The Chinaman has very little sense of the ludicrous, and he is lacking in the elements of intellectual sprightliness and vivacity which lead a Frenchman or an American to appreciate and enjoy a sally of wit, a bon mot, or a joke. Life indeed is better, and a man can bear his burdens with more ease if he has a sense of humour. Some of the great characters in history have often come out of the depths with triumph by reason of the spirit within them which could perceive the flash of wit and apply its medicine to the wounds of the heart. I think it may be said, as a rule, that the Asiatic has not the power to appreciate wit and humour like the old Greek or the Teuton or the Celt. He is not wanting in his love of the beautiful, in his appreciation of poetry, in the vision which perceives the flowers blooming by the waters in the desert, and in the hearing which catches the sound of the harmonies of his palm-trees and lotus flowers, but in the sense or faculty to seize on mirth and appropriate her to his service in burden-bearing he is sadly deficient. He is but a child in this respect. While the Chinaman has inventive faculties and keen intellect and wonderful imitative powers, yet in other respects he is behind the progressive races of the world. He has made little advance for thousands of years. His isolation, his narrow sphere, his simple life, and his religion even, which, while some of its maxims and tenets are admirable, still is lacking in the knowledge of the true God and in lofty ideals, have had a marked effect upon his thoughts and habits and pursuits. His great teacher, Confucius, who flourished five centuries before the Christian era and who spoke some sublime truths, was nevertheless ignorant of a Revelation from heaven and inferior in his grasp of religious truth to such sages of Greece as Socrates and Plato. In his system also woman is practically a slave. She is simply the minister of man, and therefore unable to rear up children, sons who would reflect the greatness of soul of a noble motherhood. It has often been remarked that great men have had great mothers. I think experience and observation will bear out this statement. Glance over the pages of history, and eminent examples will rise up before the view. Whence spring the Samuels and the Davids, whence a Leonidas and a Markos Bozzaris, whence the Scipios and the Gracchi, whence the Augustines and the Chrysostoms, whence the Alfreds and the Gladstones, whence the Washingtons and the Lincolns, whence the Seaburys and the Doanes, and many another? Are they not all hewn from the quarries of a noble motherhood? Are they not sprung from the fountain of a womanhood whose living streams are clear as crystal and sweet and refreshing? The first Chavah, Eve, is rightly styled the mother of all living; and a generation or race of men to be living, active, noble in achievement, distinguished in virtues, must issue from a well-spring which vitalises and beautifies and magnifies the spirit and the intellect, as Engannim waters her gardens, and Engedi nourishes her acacias and lotus-plants, and Enshemesh reflects the sun's golden beams the livelong day. But what, you ask, are the exact teachings of the sage Confucius, who influences Chinese society even to this day, with regard to woman? Hear him: "Moreover, that you have not in this life been born a male is owing to your amount of wickedness, heaped up in a previous state of existence, having been both deep and weighty; you would not then desire to adorn virtue, to heap up good actions, and learn to do well! So that you now have been hopelessly born a female! And if you do not this second time specially amend your faults, this amount of wickedness of yours will be getting both deeper and weightier, so that it is to be feared in the next state of existence, even if you should wish for a male's body, yet it will be very difficult to get it." Again another saying of Confucius is: "You must know that for a woman to be without talent is a virtue on her part." With such teaching then ever before them, do you wonder that Chinese women do not excel in virtue, and that they are the mothers of a race of men who are practically like standing water instead of a flowing fountain to refresh the waste places of human life? The teachings of Mormonism and Mohammedanism with regard to woman also degrade her and rob her of the beautiful crown which her Maker has put upon her head; and hence it is that such peoples are not virile and progressive like the nations where woman is looked upon as man's helpmeet, where she stands upon his right hand as a queen. The Mormons are better in many respects than their faith; and if the first generation was hardy and aggressive and brave in subduing the desert and changing Rocky Mountain wastes into a blooming garden, it was because they had been trained in the school of Christianity and had imbibed lessons of wisdom at the fountain of a pure faith and inherited from Christian fathers and mothers those qualities which are stamped on the soul through upright living and a creed that is formulated in true doctrine. But Mormonism is dying out, and woman in Utah is receiving the rightful place assigned her by her Creator in the work of building up the race and perpetuating the virtues and forces of a true manhood. The followers of Mohammed are still numerous and powerful, and the Religion of the Koran has shown great vitality for centuries. The nobility of character, however, which has manifested itself in such lives as that of Saladin the Great is the product of other causes than the specific teachings and views of Islam respecting domestic life and the position and office of woman. The destinies of men have been determined often by their environments. We must also bear in mind that from time to time, under the sway of the Crescent, different sections of the civilised world have been brought under the rule of the Sultans, and all that was good and noble in the lives of peoples newly incorporated into the faith of the Arabian Prophet has contributed in no small degree to the strength of a system which has in its own bosom the seeds of decay and which will ultimately become effete and pass away. Mohammed Ali, the founder of the present Khedivial house of Egypt, had in his veins old Macedonian blood, and his views respecting marriage and domestic life, as well as the traditions of his family in his old home at Kavala, had much to do with the development of his character and his brilliant career; and hence neither he nor others like him in the Turkish Empire can be singled out to prove that a religion which looks upon woman as an inferior being to man is excellent in its tendencies and produces a noble fruitage. What Napoleon once said with respect to France, that she needed good mothers, is true as regards China. Where woman is held in honour and where the domestic virtues are woven into a beautiful chaplet of spring-time blossoms to bedeck her brow, there you will find good and great men. Our own nation is an example of this. To regenerate China then, to improve the morals of Chinatown in San Francisco, or Chinatown in New York where there are between seven and eight thousand sons and daughters of the Flowery Kingdom, you must create pure homes, and to do this you must first of all sweeten them with the precepts of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Confucius will fail you. The Son of God will reform you and save you! Such thoughts and reflections as these naturally sprang up in my mind in my walks through Chinatown. I saw its people on every hand. Sometimes they were in twos, again in groups of a half a dozen or more. They scarcely noticed us as we walked by them; they showed no curiosity to observe us, but went on their way as though intent on one object. They moved about like automatons, as if they were a piece of machinery; and such as were at work in shops heeded us not even when we stood over them and watched them as they handled their tools. It was work, work. They were doing their masters' bidding like the genii of the lamp; and in the glare of the light in which they wrought on their bench or at their stand the workers in gold and silver, the makers of ornaments and jewelry, were like some strange beings from another world. They work to the point of endurance. They have their amusements, their holidays, as the Chinese New Year which comes in February, their processions from time to time, but their great indulgence is in the use of opium. Once or twice a month the ordinary labourer or workman gives himself up to its seductive charms, to its power more fatal to his manhood than intoxicating drinks taken to excess. The Chinaman is so stolid and impassive that it is hard to arouse his wrath. He will bear insults without a murmur for a long time, but in the end he will be stung into madness and he will give force to all his pent up fires of hate that have slumbered like a volcano. He may wait long without having punished his oppressor, but he will bide his time. So it was with the Boxers in China whose story is so painfully fresh in the memories of the great legations of the world in Pekin.
The men and women of Chinatown dress very nearly like each other; though you do not meet many women. The Chinaman wears a blouse of blue cotton material or other cheap, manufactured goods. This is without a collar, and is usually hooked over the breast. There are no buttons. Wealthy Chinamen, and there are many such, indulge in richer garments. As a rule they have adopted the American felt hat of a brownish colour. The shoe has the invariable wooden sole with uppers of cotton or some kind of ordinary cloth. The hair is the object of their chief attention, however, in the making up of their toilet. It is worn in a queue or pigtail fashion as it is commonly styled. It is their glory, however, this long, black, glossy braid. It is the Chinaman's distinguishing badge. It gives him dignity in the presence of his countrymen. If cut off he feels dishonoured. He can never go back to the home of his ancestors, but must remain in exile. He wears this mark of his nationality either hanging down his back or else coiled about the head. When at work the latter style is preferred, as it is then out of the way of his movements. Some of the men whom you meet have fine intellectual heads. The merchants and scholars whom I saw answer to this description. As a rule they can all read and write. They have a love of knowledge to a certain point, and a book is prized by them. The great desire of the Chinamen who reach our shores is to learn the English language. They know it gives them an advantage. It is the avenue to success. Sometimes they will become members of an American Mission or Bible-class in order to learn the language. They still, however, have their mental reservations with regard to their native Joss-houses and worship. But they are not singular in this respect. Mohammedans and Jews in the East allow their children to attend schools where English is taught, because with the knowledge of this they can the more readily find employment among tourists and in places of exchange. This is particularly true in Egypt and in Syria. But the Chinaman in his attempt to learn the Anglo-Saxon tongue finds great difficulties. Very many speak only what is called "Pidgin" or "Pigeon" English, that is Business English. Business on the lips of the new learner becomes "Pidgin." They like to end a word with ee as "muchee," and they find it next to impossible to frame the letter R. For example the wordricebecomeslicein a Chinaman's mouth, and a Christian is a Chlistian, while an American is turned into an Amelican. Of course this does not apply to the educated Chinaman who is polished and gifted in speech as is the case with any well-trained Chinese clergyman or such as minister Wu Ting-Fang in Washington.
All debts among the Chinese are paid once a year, that is when their New Year comes around in our month of February. There are three ways in which they may cancel their debts. First, they pay them in money, if they are able, when accounts are cast up between creditor and debtor. If in the second place they are unable to pay what they owe they assign all their goods and effects to their creditors, and then the debtor gets a clean bill and so starts out anew with a clear conscience for another year. This in few words is the Chinese "Bankrupt Law." But, in the third place, if a man has no assets, if he be entirely impoverished, and cannot pay his debts, he considers it a matter of honour to kill himself. Death pays all debts for him, settles all scores, and he is not looked upon with aversion or execrated. Even Chinese women have resorted to this extreme method of settling their accounts. But what of their settlement with their Maker who gave them life, who holds all men responsible for that gift, who expects us to use the boon aright? A Chinaman does not value life with the same feeling and estimate as an Anglo-Saxon. Should he fail in any great purpose, should he meet with defeat in some cherished plan, he will seek refuge in the bosom of the grave; he will voluntarily return to his ancestors whom he has worshipped as gods. In the late war between China and Japan, in which China was vanquished, some of her generals committed suicide. It presents, alas, a degenerate side of human nature. It is most pathetic. Better far to live under the smart of defeat and bear its shame, carry the cross, endure the stings of conscience, and meet the frowns of the world, than flee from the path of duty, than dishonour our manhood. The greatest victory is to conquer one's proud heart, and to suffer, and do God's will. The teachings of Christ show us the value of life, tell us how to live, how to die, how to win the divine approbation. To Him we bow and not to Confucius.
In Chinatown—A Chinese Editor—His Views of Chinese Life—A DailyPaper and the Way in Which it is Printed—A Night School—The Missionof the English Language—A Widow and Her Children—Pair of SmallShoes—Binding of the Feet and Custom—Mrs. Wu Ting-Fang on SmallFeet—Maimed and Veiled Women—The Shulamite's Feet—An Opium-joint—AWretched Chinaman—Fascination of Opium—History and Cultivationof the Poppy—The East India Company and the Opium War—An OpiumFarmer—How the Old Man Smoked—De Quincey and His Experiences—"IWill Sleep No More."
As my guide and I went forth to visit the places of interest in Chinatown, we directed our steps first of all to the Chinese newspaper office. This is located at No. 804 Sacramento street, corner of Dupont street. On being ushered in I met with a cordial welcome from the managing editor, Mr. Ng Poon Chew, who, before I bade him good-bye, exchanged cards with me. He, I learned, is a Christian minister and is the pastor of a Chinese church in Los Angeles. His literary attainments and business capacity peculiarly fit him for his work on the Chinese paper, and he is held in high esteem by Chinamen generally. He is a man about four feet five inches in stature, and possibly forty years old. It is hard, however, to tell a Chinaman's age, and so he may be five or ten years older. He is what you would call a handsome man, with a fine head and a beaming countenance. He showed great warmth in his greeting—and this was the more remarkable as the Chinaman is generally cool and impassive. He was dressed in the Chinese fashion with the traditional queue hanging down behind. He presented altogether a striking appearance, and you would single him out from a crowd as a man of more than ordinary cultivation and ability. He talked English fluently, and it was a pleasure to listen to him. He has well defined views regarding China and other countries. When questioned about the Flowery Kingdom, he said that the people were very conservative, that they do not wish for change, and that Chinese women dress as they did thousands of years ago. He remarked, however, that there is a younger generation of Chinamen who long for a change and for reform in methods, I suppose after the manner of the so-called "Young Turks" in the Sultan's dominions. They would like the improvements of European and American life, and would shake off the trammels of the past to a large extent, just as Japan has shaken off the sleep of centuries and is marching towards greatness among the strong nations of the world. With the modern appliances and advances in civilisation and armies well drilled like those of England or the United States of America, and with great war-ships well manned, they would be able to meet the world and to defend themselves and repel every invader from their country. He says the Chinese have good memories, that they will never forget the manner in which opium came to them, and the opium war of 1839. When he was a child he was taught to pray to a wooden god, and he had to rise as early as 3:30 A.M. to go to school to study the teachings of Confucius. As the custom is to go so early in the morning to school, the children sometimes drop to sleep by the way as they are hastening on. Chinamen will tell you that they have the religion which is best for them. This is the doctrine of Confucius; but Confucius, while a great scholar, was not a saint. He taught men "to improve their pocket," but did not teach them much about their soul. In order to see the real effect of the teachings of Confucius, you must go to China. Confucius may make men whom you may admire, but he cannot make men whom you can respect. The religion of Confucius is dreary and is lacking in the warmth and blessing which come from a belief in the Bible.
It is most certainly refreshing to hear this learned Chinaman talking and giving his impressions and opinions about matters of such vital importance. Ng Poon Chew, at my request, gave me the business card of the newspaper. This states that the paper, which is published daily in Chinese, is called "Chung Sai Yat Po," and that it has the largest circulation of any Chinese paper published outside of the Chinese Empire. The card further tells us that "this paper is the organ of the commercial element in America and is the best medium for Chinese trade." In addition to the daily issue of the newspaper, "English and Chinese Job Printing" is done in the office. The work of interpreting the English and Chinese languages is carried on here. Mr. Ng Poon Chew spoke with evident pride about his paper, and informed me that he gave a daily account of the proceeding's of the General Convention, then in session in Trinity Church, San Francisco, in the "Chung Sai Yat Po."
The editing of a Chinese newspaper is no easy matter. The printing of the paper is difficult and requires great skill and patience. There are, for example, forty thousand word-signs, all different, in the Chinese language, and to represent these signs there must be separate, movable type-pieces. It is said that it takes a long period of time to distribute the type and lay out "the case." The typesetter must know the word by sight to tell its meaning, otherwise he will make serious blunders. Then it is a hard matter to find intelligent typesetters. The editor, too, must be a man of business. The paper is watched by spies of the Chinese Government, and if the editor expresses himself in any manner antagonistic to the Emperor or the Dowager Empress or any of the viceroys of the provinces, his head would be cut off if he ever ventured to set foot in China. There is another obstacle in the way of a Chinese newspaper of liberal views, like the "Chung Sai Yat Po." It cannot get its type from China, as the Government is opposed to every reform paper. The type for such a journal is cast in a Japanese foundry in Yokohama. It is said that about ten thousand word-signs are used in the printing of the newspaper. The type-case is usually long, for the purpose of allowing all the type-pieces to be spread out. The type runs up and down in a column, and you read from right to left as in Hebrew or other Shemitic languages. The characters are as old in form as the days of Confucius. The "Chung Sai Yat Po" has a very large circulation and finds its way to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and into China.
From the newspaper office we wended our way to a little Baptist mission chapel for the Chinese. There were about forty persons congregated here, among them some ten or twelve Americans who were teaching the Chinese the English language. This night school is popular with young, ambitious Chinamen, for when they learn our language it is much easier for them to obtain work in stores and offices, and even as house servants. The books used had the Chinese words on one page and the English sentences opposite. Sometimes converts to Christianity are made through the medium of the night school, but it takes time and patience to win a Chinaman from the religion of Confucius. It is worth the labour, however. The difficulties in the mastery of English are a great barrier to conversions. Nevertheless they do occur. A Chinaman is readily reached through his own language. Hence the importance of raising up native teachers of the Gospel who can speak to the hearts as well as to the understanding of their countrymen. As we observed in the foregoing chapter, in the Orient, as in Syria and Egypt, Jews and Mohammedans sometimes allow their children to attend the English schools, and to a large extent from a worldly motive. The Syrian or Arab who can speak English is in demand as a dragoman, an accountant, an office clerk in the bazaar, or a camp-servant or boatman. Indeed a great revolution is now taking place all through the East. Nearly all the young Egyptians can talk English, and this is the first step towards their conversion to the faith of the Gospel. When they are able to read the books of the Christians in the English, they are led to look favourably on the Church. They catch the spirit of belief in Jesus Christ from the Christian tourist. They lose the narrowness and bigotry which the mosque or the synagogue fosters, and in time they examine the claims of a religion which has built up the great nations of Europe and America. The future has in store great developments for the Church in Palestine and the old land of the Pharaohs through the agency of the English schools, and I believe the readiest way in which to convert the Chinese people, whether in Chinatown in San Francisco, or in China itself, is to teach them our language and give them access to the Holy Scriptures in our noble tongue. Our Church schools in China are doing a great work in this respect. So is St. John's College in Shanghai. They should all be liberally supported with offerings from America, and what we sow in this generation will be reaped in the next, a splendid harvest for Christ and His Church!
After leaving the night school our guide conducted us up narrow stairs to the rooms occupied by a Chinese woman. She was a widow with four children, daughters, and rather petite in form, and lacking the physical development and beauty of the Caucasian race. They seemed shy and timid, for Chinese women are not accustomed to the society of men. In fact there is among them no such home-life as we are familiar with. They were dressed in a measure after the fashion of our girls, and had long, black hair. The mother said a few sentences in broken English, and welcomed us with an air of sincerity, though not a little embarrassed. She was a woman of about forty years, and from the expression of her face had evidently met with trials. Brought over to San Francisco from Canton when a young girl, she had married Shan Tong with all the ceremony and merry-making which characterise a Chinese wedding, with its processions and feasting and the noise of its firecrackers; but some four or five years ago death claimed her husband, and she was left to do battle alone, while he was laid to rest in the Chinese burying-ground at the west end of Laurel Hill Cemetery. But she did not suffer from want, for Chinamen are kind to the needy of their own race. Among the objects which excited our curiosity were the tiny shoes of the small-footed woman. These were not quite three inches in length, and looked as if they were more suited for a doll's feet than for a full grown woman's. Yes, here was the evidence of a barbarous custom which deprives a human being of one of nature's good gifts, so necessary to our comfort and happiness. Think what you would be, if, through infirmity, you were not at liberty to go hither and thither at will like the young hart or gazelle! We grieve naturally if our children's feet are deformed or misshapen at birth, but what a crime it is to destroy the form and strength of the foot as God has made it! It is true that the Manchu women in China rejoice in the feet which the beneficent Creator has given them. The Dowager Empress—of whom we have read so much of late, and who rules China with an iron rod, has feet like any other woman; but millions of her countrywomen have been robbed of nature's endowment through a foolish and wicked custom which has prevailed in China from time immemorial. The feet are bound when the child is born, and they are never allowed to grow as God designed, as the flower expands into beauty from the bud. Chinese women realise that it is foolish, that it is a deformity, but it is the "custom," and custom prevails. It is like the laws of the Medes and Persians which alter not. Women are powerless under it. It is in vain to a large extent that they oppose it. There is in China an Anti-foot-binding League, which receives the support of men of prominence. Even centuries ago imperial edicts were issued against it, but custom still rules. It was Montaigne who declared that "custom" ought to be followed simply because it is custom. A poor reason indeed. There should be a better argument for the doing of what is contrary to reason and nature. Nature is a wise mother, and she bestows on us no member of the body that is unnecessary. The thought of her fostering care was well expressed by the old Greeks who lived an out-door life, in their personification of Mother Earth under the creation of their Demeter, perfect in form and beautiful in expression and noble in action. This is far above the conceptions of nature or of a presiding genius over our lives, taking into account social order and marriage vows, which we find in Chinese literature or mythology. It is not difficult to perceive the reason why the Greeks, who rule the realms of philosophy and art and literature to-day, after the lapse of many centuries, are the superior people. Well does that master-mind, Shakespeare, characterise evil custom:
"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,Of habits devil."
But a better day is coming for Chinese women. Wherever Christianity has touched them in the past they have been uplifted and benefited. The sun seems now to rise in greater effulgence on the Kingdom of the Yellow Dragon. The wretched custom of dwarfing and destroying the feet of a child whose misfortune, according to Confucius, it is to be born a female, is giving way under pressure from contact with the enlightened nations of the world. The teachings of the Christian Church are having their salutary effect and Chinamen are beginning to learn the value of a woman's life from the Biblical standpoint, and the daughters of the Flowery Kingdom will, as time goes on, become more and more like the polished corners of the Temple, or the Caryatides supporting the entablature of the Erechtheum at Athens. It is Madame Wu Ting-Fang, wife of the Chinese Minister at Washington, who has recently returned from a visit to her old home, who says: "The first penetrating influence of exterior civilisation on the customs of my country has touched the conditions of women. The emancipation of woman in China means, first of all, the liberation of her feet, and this is coming. Indeed, it has already come in a measure, for the style in feet has changed. Wee bits of feet, those no longer than an infant's, are no longer the fashion. When I went back home I found that the rigid binding and forcing back of the feet was largely a thing of the past. China, with other nations, has come to regard that practice as barbarous, but the small feet, those that enable a woman to walk a little and do not inconvenience her in getting about the house, are still favoured by the Chinese ladies."
The custom of binding and destroying the feet, no doubt, arose from the low views entained by Chinese sages concerning woman, and from a lack of confidence in her sense of honour and virtue. She must be maimed so that she cannot go about at will, so she shall be completely under the eye of her husband, held as it were in fetters. It is a sad comment on Chinese domestic morality, it fosters the very evil it seeks to cure, it destroys all home life in the best sense. The veiled women of the East are very much in the same position. If a stranger, out of curiosity or by accident, look on the face of a Mohammedan wife, it might lead to her repudiation by her jealous husband, or the offender might be punished for his innocent glance. The writer recalls how at Hebron, in Palestine, he was cautioned by the dragoman, when going up a narrow street to the Mosque of Machpelah, where he had to pass veiled women, not to look at them or to seem to notice them, as the men were very fanatical and might do violence to an unwary tourist. The Chinese women of small feet, or rather no feet at all, walk, or attempt to walk, in a peculiar way. It is as if one were on stilts. The feet are nothing but stumps, while the ankles are large, almost unnatural in their development. It is indeed a great deformity. The feet are shrunken to less size than an infant's; but they have not the beauty of a baby's feet, which have in them great possibilities and a world of suggestion and romance and poetry. If the Chinese custom had prevailed among the ancient Hebrew people, think you that King Solomon in singing of the graces of the Shulamite, who represents the Church mystically, would ever have exclaimed,—"How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter!" We should have lost, moreover, much that is noble in art, and the poetic creations of Greek sculptors would never have delighted the eye nor enchained the fancy.
In our perambulations about Chinatown, we must next visit an opium-joint. This mysterious place was situated in a long, rambling building through which we had to move cautiously so as not to stumble into some pit or dangerous hole or trap-door. Here were no electric lights to drive away the gloom, here no gas-jets to show us where we were treading, nothing but an occasional lamp dimly burning. Yet we went on as if drawn by a magic spell. At last we were ushered into a room poorly furnished. It was not more than twelve feet square, and in the corner was an apology for a bed. On this was stretched an old man whose face was sunken, whose eyes were lusterless, whose hand was long and thin and bony, and whose voice was attenuated and pitched in a falsetto key. The guide said that this old Chinaman was sixty-eight years of age, and that he had had a life of varied experience. He was a miner by profession, but had spent all his earnings long ago, and was now an object of charity as well as of pity. Indeed he was the very embodiment of misery, a wretched, woebegone, human being! He had lost one arm in an accident during his mining days. Chinamen in the thirst for gold had mining claims as well as Anglo-Saxons. This desire for the precious metal seems to be universal. All men more or less love gold; and for its acquisition they will undergo great hardship, face peril, risk their lives. This aged Chinaman for whom there was no future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the interested traveller who might come to his forlorn abode. But what a fascination the opium drug has for the Chinaman, and not for him alone, but for children of other races—for men and women who, when under its spell, will sell honour and sacrifice all that is dear in life, and even forego the prospect and the blessed hope of entering at last into the bliss of the heavenly world! But what is opium, what its parentage and history? The Greeks will tell you it is their opion or opos, the juice of the poppy, and the botanist will point out the magic flower for you as the Papaver Somniferum, whose home was originally in the north of Europe and in Western Asia; but now, just as the tribes of the earth have spread out into many lands, so has the poppy which has brought much misery as well as blessing to men, found its way into various quarters of the globe, particularly those countries which are favoured with sunny skies. It is cultivated in Turkey, India, Persia, Egypt, Algeria and Australia, as well as in China. I now recall vividly the beautiful poppy fields at Assiut, Esneh and Kenneh, by the banks of the Nile, in which such subtle powers were sleeping potent for ill or good as employed by man for deadening his faculties or soothing pain in reasonable measure. These flowers were of the reddish kind. In China they have the white, red and purple varieties, which, as you gaze on them, seem to set the fields aglow with fire and attract your gaze as if you were enchained to the spot by an unseen power. The seeds are sown in November and December, in rows which are eighteen inches apart, and four-fifths of the opium used in China is the home-product, though it was not so formerly. In March or April the poppy flowers according to the climate, the soil, and the location. The opium is garnered in April or May, and prepared for the market. The Chinese merchant values most of all the Shense drug, while the Ynnan and the Szechuen drugs take next rank. The opium is generally made into flat cakes and wrapped up in folds of white paper. It is said that it was introduced into China in the reign of Taitsu, between the years A.D. 1280 and 1295; but it is worthy of note that up to the year 1736 it was imported only in small quantities and employed simply for its medicinal properties, as a cure for diarrhoea, dysentery, and fevers, hemorrhage and other ills. It was in the year 1757 that the monopoly of the cultivation of the poppy in India passed into the hands of the East India Company through the victory of Lord Clive over the Great Mogul of Bengal at Plassey; and from this time the importation of the drug into China became a matter of great profit financially. In 1773 the whole quantity imported was only two hundred chests. In 1776 it had increased to one thousand chests, while in 1790 it leaped up to four thousand and fifty-four chests. The Chinese Emperor, Keaking, becoming alarmed at its growing use and its pernicious effect when eaten or smoked, forbade its importation, and passed laws punishing persons who made use of it otherwise than medicinally, and the extreme penalty was sometimes transportation, and sometimes death. Yet the trade increased, and in the decade between 1820 and 1830 the importation was as high as sixteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven chests. The evil became so great that in 1839 a royal proclamation was put forth threatening English opium ships with confiscation if they did not keep out of Chinese waters. This was not heeded, and then Lin, the Chinese Commissioner, gave orders to destroy twenty thousand, two hundred and ninety-one chests of opium, each containing 149-1/3 pounds, the valuation of which was $10,000,000. Still the work of smuggling went on and the result was what is known as the Opium War, which was ended in 1842 by the treaty of Nanking. China was forced by Great Britain to pay $21,000,000 indemnity, to cede in perpetuity to England the city of Hong Kong, and to give free access to British ships entering the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochoofoo, Ningpo and Shanghai. The importation of opium from India is still carried on—but the quantity is not so great as formerly, owing to the cultivation of the plant in China. The Hong Kong government has an opium farm, for which to-day it receives a rental of $15,500 per month. The farmer sells on an average from eight to tentinsof opium daily, the tins being worth about $150 each. His entire receipts from his sales of the drug are about $45,000 per month. This opium farmer is well known to be the largest smuggler of opium into China; and not without reason does Lord Charles Beresford, in his book "The Break-up of China," say: "Thus, indirectly the Hong Kong government derives a revenue by fostering an illegitimate trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government. It is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of the British Empire." It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking. I was told that Europeans and Americans sometimes sought the opium-joints for the purpose of indulgence in the vice of smoking. Even women were known to make use of it in this way. The old man whom I visited was lying on his left side, with his head slightly raised on a hard pillow covered with faded leather. He took the pipe in his right hand, the other, as I have already said, having been cut off in the mines. Then he laid down the pipe by his side with the stem near his mouth. The next movement was to take a kind of long rod, called a dipper, with a sharp end and a little flattened. This he dipped in the opium which had the consistency of thick molasses. He twisted the dipper round and then held the drop which adhered to it over the lamp, which was near him. He wound the dipper round and round until the opium was roasted and had a brown colour. He then thrust the end of the dipper with the prepared drug into the opening of the pipe, which was somewhat after the Turkish style with its long stem. He next held the bowl of the pipe over the lamp until the opium frizzled. Then putting the stem of the pipe in his mouth he inhaled the smoke, and almost immediately exhaled it through the mouth and nostrils. While smoking he removed the opium, going through the same process as before, and it all took about fifteen minutes. What the old man's feelings were he did not tell us, but he seemed very contented, as if then he cared for nothing, as if he had no concern for the world and its trials. But one must read the graphic pages of Thomas De Quincey in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," in order to know what are the joys and what the torments of him who is addicted to the use of the pernicious drug. It was while De Quincey was in Oxford that he came under its tyranny. At first taken to allay neuralgic pain, and then resorted to as a remedy on all occasions of even the slightest suffering, it wove its chain around him like a merciless master who puts his servant in bonds. But though given to its use all his life afterwards, in later years he took it moderately. Still he was its slave. A man of marvellous genius, a master of the English tongue, he had not full mastery of his own appetite; and one of such talent, bound Andromeda-like to the rock of his vice, ready to be devoured in the sea of his perplexity by what is worse than the dragon of the story, he deserves our pity, nay, even our tears. He tells us how he was troubled with tumultuous dreams and visions, how he was a participant in battles, strifes; and how agonies seized his soul, and sudden alarms came upon him, and tempests, and light and darkness; how he saw forms of loved ones who vanished in a moment; how he heard "everlasting farewells;" and sighs as if wrung from the caves of hell reverberated again and again with "everlasting farewells." "And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no more!'"
In Chinatown—A Musician's Shop—A Secret Society—Gambling Houses—"TheHeathen Chinee"—Fortune-telling—The Knife in the Fan-Case—A BoardingHouse—A Lesson for Landlords—A Kitchen—A Goldsmith's Shop—TheRestaurant—Origin of the Tea-Plant—What a Chinaman Eats—The Tobaccoor Opium Pipe—A Safe with Eight Locks—The Theatre—Women byThemselves—The Play—The Stage—The Actors—The Orchestra and theMusic—The Audience—A Death on the Stage—The Theatre a GatheringPlace—No Women Actors—A Wise Provision—Temptations—Real Acting—Menthe Same Everywhere.
The reader will now accompany us to a musician's shop in our wanderings through Chinatown. This is located in a basement and is a room about fifteen feet wide and some twenty feet deep. This son of Jubal from the Flowery Kingdom was about fifty-five years old and a very good-natured man. He received us with a smile, and when he was requested by the guide to play for us he sat down before an instrument somewhat like the American piano, calledYong Chum. The music was of a plaintive character, and was lacking in the melody of a Broadwood or a Steinway. Then he played on another instrument which resembled a bandore or banjo and was namedSem Yim. Afterwards he took up a Chinese flute and played a tune, which was out of the ordinary and was withal of a cheerful nature. He then showed us something that was striking and peculiar—a Chinese fiddle with two strings. The bow strings were moved beneath the fiddle strings. The music was by no means such as to charm one, and you could not for a moment imagine that you were listening to a maestro playing on a Cremona. The Chinese, while they have a reputation for philosophy after the example of their great men, like Confucius and Mencius, and while there are poets of merit among them like Su and Lin, yet can not be said to excel in musical composition and rendering. The tune with which our Chinese friend sought to entertain us on his fiddle was, "A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night." He thought this would be agreeable to our American ears. Meanwhile I glanced around this music-room and among other things I saw, and which interested me, were several effigies of men, characters in Chinese history. Some were no doubt true to life while others were caricatures of the persons whom they represented. It might be styled an Eden Musée.
Leaving the musician's, after giving him a suitable fee for entertaining us, we turned our footsteps towards theChee Kung Tong. This is a Chinese secret society. The Chinese are wont to associate themselves together, even if they do not mingle much with men of other nations. They have their gatherings for social purposes and for improvement and pastime, and, like the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin races, they have their mystic signs and passwords. Of course we were not permitted to enter theChee Kung TongHall, however much we desired to cross its mysterious threshold. The door was well guarded, and Chinamen passing in had to give assurance that they were entitled to the privilege. On the night when the detective from Police Headquarters accompanied us we made an attempt to enter a Chinese gambling house. The entrance even to this was well guarded; although the sentinel unwittingly left the door open for a moment as a Chinaman was passing in. The detective seeing his opportunity went in boldly and bade us to follow him. In a few moments all was confusion. We heard hurrying feet in the adjoining room, and then excited men appeared at the head of the passage way and waved their arms to and fro while they talked rapidly in high tones. Outside already some fifty men had collected together, and these were also talking and gesticulating wildly. The detective then said to us that it would be wise to retreat and leave the place lest we might meet with violence. We did so, but the uproar among the Chinese did not subside for some time. We pitied the poor sentinel who had allowed us to slip in, for we knew that he would be severely punished after our departure. The Chinese are noted for their gambling propensities, and there are many gambling houses in Chinatown. This vice is one of their great pastimes, and whenever they are not engaged in business they devote themselves either to gambling, the amusements of the theatre, the pleasures of the restaurant, or the seductive charms of the opium pipe.
Later in my saunterings I went into a kind of restaurant, where I saw a number of Chinese men and boys playing cards and dominoes and dice. They went on with the games as if they were oblivious to us. I noticed there were Chinese coins of small value on the tables, and some of the players were apparently winning while others were losing. The latter, however, gave no indication that they were in the least degree disappointed. Of course, as a rule they play after their own fashion, having their own games and methods. Minister Wu, of Washington, when asked recently if he liked our American games, replied that he did not understand any of them. No doubt this is true of the majority of Chinamen in the United States. In thinking of the Chinese and gambling one always recalls Bret Harte's "Plain Language From Truthful James of Table Mountain," popularly known as "The Heathen Chinee," one of the best humorous poems in the English language. You can fairly see the merry eyes of the author of the "Argonauts of '49" dancing with pleasure as he describes the game of cards between "Truthful James," "Bill Nye" and "Ah Sin."
"Which we had a small game,And Ah Sin took a hand;It was euchre: the sameHe did not understand;But he smiled as he sat by the tableWith a smile that was childlike and bland.
"Yet the cards they were stackedIn a way that I grieve,And my feelings were shockedAt the state of Nye's sleeve,Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,And the same with intent to deceive.
"But the hands that were playedBy that heathen Chinee,And the points that he made.Were quite frightful to see—Till at last he put down the right bower,Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
"Then I looked up at Nye,And he gazed upon me:And he rose with a sigh,And said, 'Can this be?We are ruined by Chinee cheap labour'—And he went for that heathen Chinee."
There are all kinds of jugglers in Chinatown and among them are numerous fortune-tellers. This kind of pastime is as old as the human race, and you find the man who undertakes to reveal to you the secrets of the future among all peoples. The Orientals are always ready to listen to the "neby" or the necromancer or the fakir or the wandering minstrel, who improvises for you and sings for you the good things which are in store for you. We see this tendency among our own people who would have their destiny pointed out by means of a pack of cards, by the reading of the palm of the hand, in the grounds in the tea-cup, and by other signs. It was with some interest then that we glanced at the mystic words and signs which adorned the entrance to Sam Wong Yung's fortune-teller's place.
Passing on, we next visited a hardware shop, where you could purchase various kinds of Chinese cutlery. Among other things that attracted my attention was a simple-looking Chinese fan, apparently folded up. On examining it I found that inside of the fan-case was a sharp knife or blade like a wide dagger. This could be carried in an unsuspecting manner into the midst of a company of men, and in a moment, if you had in your breast the wicked spirit of revenge, your enemy could be weltering in his life blood at your feet. It suggested all kinds of tragedies, and no doubt its invention had behind it some treacherous impulse. The writer ventured to purchase it, but he hastens to announce to his friends that his purposes are good and innocent. Though in the same category as the sword or dagger hidden in a walking-stick or a concealed weapon, this bloodthirsty knife will repose harmlessly in its fan-case like a sleeping babe in his cradle.
A Chinese boarding house next claimed our inspection. It was rather a forbidding place, but no doubt the Chinaman was well content with its accommodations. It was a long, rambling structure, and it seemed to me as if I were going through an underground passage in walking from room to room. The various halls were narrow, indeed so narrow that two persons meeting in them could not without difficulty pass each other. The beds, which brought a dollar a month, were one above another in tiers or recesses in the walls. Generally a curtain of a reddish hue depended in front of them. They reminded one of the berths in a ship or of the repositories of the dead in the Roman Catacombs. Two hundred and twenty-five persons were lodged in this dark, mysterious labyrinth. In another house there were five hundred and fifty people lodged in seventy-five rooms. Possibly the owners of tenement houses in our large cities, who crowd men and women into a narrow space and through unpitying agents reap a rich harvest regardless of the sufferings of their fellow-beings, have been taking lessons from the landlords of Chinatown. I said to myself, as I went to and fro through these narrow passages, dimly lighted with a lamp, and the lights were few and far between, if a fire should break out, at midnight, when all are wrapt in slumber, what a holocaust would be here! And whose would the sin and the shame be? There are good and ample fire-appliances for the protection of the city, but the poor Chinamen hemmed in, as in a dark prison-house, would surely be suffocated by smoke or be consumed in the flames. When the old theatre was burned down, twenty-five men, and probably more, perished, although there were means of escape from this building. I was told that the wood from which the largest hotel in Chinatown, its Palace hotel so to speak, was constructed in the early days, was brought around Cape Horn, and cost $350 per thousand feet. This was before saw-mills were erected in the forests among the foothills and on the slopes of the Sierras. The kitchen of the big boarding house was a novelty. It was nothing in any respect like the well-appointed kitchens of our hotels with their great ranges and open fire-places where meats may be roasted slowly on the turnspit. On one side of the kitchen there was a kind of stone-parapet about two feet and a half high, and on the top of this there were eight fire-places. As the Chinamen cook their own food there might be as many as eight men here at one time. I asked the guide if they ever quarreled. His answer was significant. "No! and it would be difficult to bring eight men of any other nationality together in such close proximity without differences arising and contentions taking place; but the Chinamen never trouble each other." There was only one man cooking at such a late hour as that in which we visited the kitchen, about half-past ten o'clock at night. He used charcoal, and as the coals were fanned the fire looked like that of a forge in a blacksmith's shop.
On our way to the Chinese Restaurant we stepped into a goldsmith's shop. There were a few customers present, and the proprietor waited on them with great diligence. At benches like writing desks, on which were tools of various descriptions, were seated some half a dozen workmen who were busily engaged. They never looked up while we stood by and examined their work, which was of a high order. The filagree-work was beautiful and artistic. There were numerous personal ornaments, some of solid gold, others plaited. The bracelets which they were making might fittingly adorn the neck of a queen. I learned that these skilled men worked sixteen hours a day on moderate wages. Their work went into first-class Chinese bric-a-brac stores and into the jewelry stores of the merchants who supply the rich and cultured with their ornaments.
But it is time that we visit the restaurant. This is located in a stately building and is one of the first class. It overlooks the old Plaza, though you enter from the street one block west of the Plaza. You ascend broad stairs, and then you find yourself in a wide room or dining hall in two sections. Here are tables round and square, and here you are waited on by the sons of the Fiery Flying Dragon clad in well-made tunics, sometimes of silk material. As your eye studies the figure before you, the dress and the physiognomy, you do not fail to notice the long pigtail, the Chinaman's glory, as a woman's delight is her long hair. The tea, which is fragrant, is served to you out of dainty cups, China cups, an evidence that the tea-drinking of Americans and Europeans is derived from the Celestial Empire. The tea-plant is said, by a pretty legend, to have been formed from the eyelids of Buddha Dharma, which, in his generosity, he cut off for the benefit of men. If you wish for sweetmeats they will be served in a most tempting way. You can also have chicken, rice, and vegetables, and fruits, after the Chinese fashion. You can eat with your fingers if you like, or use knives and forks, or, if you desire to play the Chinaman, with the chop-sticks. In Chinatown the men and the women do not eat together. This is also the custom of China, and hence there is not what we look upon as an essential element of home-life—father and mother and children and guests, if there be such, gathered in a pleasant dining-room with the flow of edifying conversation and the exchange of courtesies. Confucius never talked when he ate, and his disciples affect his taciturnity at their meals. Though in scholastic times, in European institutions and in religious communities, men kept silence at their meals, yet the hours were enlivened by one who read for the edification of all. The interchange of thought, however,—the spoken word one with another, at the family table, is the better way. Silence may be golden, but speech is more golden if seasoned with wisdom; and even the pleasant jest and thebon mothave their office and exercise a salutary influence on character and conduct.
The food of Chinamen generally is very simple. Rice is the staple article of consumption. They like fruits and use them moderately. They eat things too, which would be most repulsive to the epicurean taste of an Anglo-Saxon. Even lizards and rats and young dogs they will not refuse. But these things are prepared in a manner to tempt the appetite. After you have partaken of your repast in the Chinese Restaurant, if you request it, tobacco pipes will be brought in, and your waiter will fill and light them for you and your friends. You can even, with a certain degree of caution, indulge in the opium pipe, the joy of the Chinaman. As you draw on this pipe and take long draughts you lapse into a strange state, all your ills seem to vanish, and you become indifferent to the world. The beggar in imagination becomes a millionaire, and for the time he feels that he is in the midst of courtly splendours. But, ah! When one awakes from his dream the pleasures are turned into ashes, and the glory fades as the fires of the pipe die.Sic transit gloria mundi! On the walls of the restaurant were various Chinese decorations. The inevitable lantern was in evidence. Here also were tablets with sentences in the language of the Celestials. But there was one thing that struck me forcibly as I examined the various objects in the rooms. In the rear half of the restaurant, on the north side of the room, stood a Chinese safe, somewhat in fashion like our ordinary American safe. It was not, however, secured with the combination lock with which we are all familiar. It shut like a cupboard, and had eight locks on a chain as it were. Every lock represented a man whose money or whose valuables were in the safe. Each of the eight men had a key for his own lock, different from all the other seven. When the safe is to be opened all the eight men must be present. Is this a comment on the honesty of the Chinaman? Is this indicative of their lack of confidence in each other? And yet as a house-servant the Chinaman is trusty and faithful and honest. He is also silent as to what transpires in his master's house and at his employer's table. The writer has conversed with people who have had Chinamen in their service, he has also visited the homes of gentlemen where only Chinese servants are employed in domestic work, and all bear testimony to their excellence and faithfulness and honesty.
No visit to Chinatown would be complete without an inspection of its theatre and a study of the audience. Here you see the Celestialsen masse, you behold them in their amusements. Let us repair then to the Jackson Street Theatre. The building was once a hotel, now it is a place of pastime; and singularly under the same roof is a small Joss-House,—for the Chinaman couples his amusements with his religion. It rather reminds one of those buildings in Christian lands, which, while used for religious services, yet have kitchens and places for theatrical shows and amusements under the same roof. But the play has already begun. Indeed it began at six o'clock—and it is now nearly eleven P.M. It will, however, continue till midnight. This is the rule; for the Chinaman does nothing by halves, and he takes his amusement in a large quantity at a time. The theatre had galleries on three sides and these were packed with men and women as well as the main floor. There were altogether a thousand persons present, and it was indeed a strange sight to look into their faces, dressed alike as they were, and all seemingly looking alike. The women were seated in the west gallery on the right hand of the stage by themselves. This is an Eastern custom which Asiatic nations generally observe. Even in their religious assemblies the women sit apart. The custom arose primarily from the idea that woman is inferior to man. In the Jewish temple as well as in the synagogue, the sexes were separated. It is so to-day in most synagogues. Among the Mohammedans, too, woman is ruled out and is kept apart; and so strong is custom it even affected the Christian church in Oriental lands in the early days. You see a trace of it still in the East in church-arrangements.
A Chinese play takes a number of weeks or even months in which to complete it. It may be founded on domestic life or on some historic scene. Sometimes the history of a province of the Chinese Empire is the theme. The plays are mostly comedy. There are no grand tragedies like those of the old Greek poets. The Chinese have had no such writers as Sophocles or Euripides, no such creators of plays as Shakespeare, and they have no such actors as a Garrick or an Irving. We were invited to seats on the stage—which had no curtains, everything being done openly. In order to reach the stage the guide conducted us down the passageway or aisle through the midst of the audience. Then we ascended a platform at the end of the stage and went behind it into a long room where the actors were putting on costumes of a fantastic shape and painting their faces with bright coloured pigments. Some of them also put on masks that would frighten a person should he meet the wearers suddenly. The majority of the masks were caricatures of the human face and were comical in expression. We felt quite at home on the stage at once; for here, seated on either side with the actors in the midst of the company, were many of our friends lay and clerical, men and women, looking on in wonder at the strange performance. An orchestra of six or seven members was here on the back part of the stage—and the music! It consisted of the beating of drums, the sounding of gongs and other outlandish noises. Now and then above the din you could catch the sound of a clarionet and the feeble strains of a banjo. It was indeed pandemonium! Yet above all the noise and confusion you could hear the high pitched voices of the actors as they shouted and gesticulated. The audience, I noticed, was most attentive and decorous. They were evidently well pleased with the play; and what was quite remarkable they seemed to have neither ears nor eyes for their visitors. Of course they must have seen us, but with an indifference that almost bordered on contempt they paid no attention to us.
In the play one of the actors died on the stage, but the death had nothing of the tragic or heroic in it. After a brief interval he rose up and walked off amid the merriment of the audience.
Many Chinamen come here to spend their evening. The admission is fifty cents, which entitles one to a seat. As the play runs through six hours at a time, they feel that they get the worth of their money. They meet their friends there also; and although they are not very demonstrative towards each other, like the warm blooded races of Italy and Greece and Northern Europe and the United States, yet they are very happy in the presence of men of their own race and nation. The theatre is about the only place where they can meet on common ground, at least in large bodies, and then, as we have already intimated, the theatre is something more than a place of amusement in their eyes. Their forefathers liked such plays, and they believe that the spirits of the dead are in a certain sense present to share in the enjoyments of men in the body.
Only men and boys act on the Chinese stage. There are no women, though the female sex is personated. This has its advantages. Woman is kept out of harm; she is not subject to the indignities and temptations which beset her among other peoples who employ her services. Of course there are good and virtuous women on the stage—very many, I trust! But it will be admitted that the life of an actress is one of trial. She must of necessity be brought into intercourse with an element whose moral ideals are not the loftiest, and she must have unusual strength of character to preserve her integrity. She can do it! I believe that men and women can resist temptation in all spheres, in all vocations of life; I have great faith in humanity, especially when sustained by divine helps; but we must not subject the bow to too much tension lest it break. The personating of characters which have in them a spice of wickedness, the taking of the part in a play which represents the downfall of a virtuous person, the setting forth of the passions of love and hatred, must in time produce a powerful effect on the mind of a young woman, and there is danger that the neophyte on the stage will be contaminated with the base things of life before strength of character is developed. The Chinese are to be commended in this respect, whatever their motive in excluding their women from the stage. The reproduction of Greek plays, in some of our universities, where only men take the parts, shows what could be done among us on the stage, and successfully.
The Chinese actors whom I saw, exhibited a great deal of human nature in their acting. There was the full display of the human passions; and they entered into their work with zest as if it were real life. Some of the men in the audience were smoking cigars, others cigarettes. The Asiatic has a fondness for cigarettes. You see the men of the East smoking everywhere, whether in Syria, or Egypt, or Nubia, or Arabia. And is it not true that men are much the same the world over, in their pastimes and pursuits, their loves and their pleasures?