Chapter 11

ISLAND LINKS IN BRITAIN'S CHAIN OF EMPIRE

If one be a sufferer from anglophobia, a tour of the globe by conventional paths may produce rather more irritation than is good for man--to such a traveler the British Empire is a chronic nightmare, for the red flag is everywhere. Every harbor seems choked with English shipping, if not guarded by a British warship; and Tommy Atkins is the first man met ashore. If your prejudice against Great Britain be unjustly conceived, you will probably revise your judgment before the earth is half circled; at least you must confess that Britain is great from the standpoint of area.

A globe-trotter who has had "Britannia Rules the Wave" ringing in his ears from Gibraltar to Ceylon, connects again with the "thin red line" the moment his ship emerges from the Bay of Bengal. Penang then is the link in the interminable chain of colonies upon which the sun never sets. "Well, this is but an island, and a small one at that; consequently I won't let it worry me," soliloquizes the anglophobe.

Penang is doubly remarkable. Firstly, the tourist is there made to understand that he has finished with that great division of the earth known as "the East," and is at the portal of the Far East, the realm wherein the Chinaman, Malay and Japanese teem in uncounted millions. Besides, Penang is the premier tin port of the universe. Seven tenths of this metal used by the world starts for market from Penang and its neighboring ports in the Malacca Straits.

"Rule Britannia" is played next at Singapore, likewise an island, and, as is Penang, a place almost wholly given over to Chinese and their shops. Few coastal towns in China possess a greater percentage of Celestials than England's city at the tip end of the Malay peninsula and abutting on the equator. Sir Stamford Raffles placed Englishmen--and Chinamen--under everlasting obligation when he brought Singapore into being. Raffles possessed the empire-building instinct, surely, and earned the honor of interment in Westminster Abbey.

Singapore harbor commands one of the greatest natural turnstiles of commerce. Shipping has no other option than to use it. While Englishmen have administered the port and city since Raffles's time, thousands of Chinamen have there waxed extremely fat. The 'rickshaw coolie of Singapore, even, is physically perfect, and consequently in agreeable contrast to the Indian of calfless legs, and his Cingalese colleague of weak lungs. The Chinese 'rickshawman whisks a visitor about Singapore with the stride of a race-horse. For a city only a degree north of the equator, Singapore offers creature comforts in sufficient number to make human existence there extremely attractive.

Nabobs and well-conditioned humanity of Polynesia esteem Singapore much as Europeans and Americans regard Paris--an estimable place of consort, and scores of these men there lead a life not based on the simple ideas of Charles Wagner. Island sultans are usually as numerous in Singapore as princes in Cairo; and European adepts in equatorial government find frequent need of repairing to the gay metropolis of the Straits. An interesting potentate frequently seen is Rajah Brooke, a cultivated Englishman who is philanthropic despot over a slice of Borneo twice the area of England and Wales. Sarawak, his country, has been called the best governed tropical land in the world. Another English celebrity affecting Singapore is Governor Gueritz, administrator of the North Borneo Company, destined, maybe, to become as profitable as the East India Company of old. The Sultan of Sulu (not the hero of George Ade's comic opera) enjoys a sojourn in Singapore. He is young, wears the garb of a Mohammedan who has been to Mecca, and is not displeased by the stare of tourists. The Sultan of Johore, in the hands of money-lenders through unfortunate turf ventures, spends as much time in the city as in his Malay sultanate. A prince of the Siamese king's ministry, in Singapore to bestow orders for bridges and river steamers, goes nightly to witness a feeble production of "The Girl from Kays," and whistles "Sammy" as he promenades hotel verandas.

Down at the quays great steamships are fed with coal by Chinese coolies who toil silently and expeditiously. A Chinese swell is on the pier superintending the lading of queer-looking cases containing birds' nests, consigned to epicures in Hong Kong and Canton. The Chinaman's greatest dainty is soup made from glutinous birds' nests found in Borneo caves. A single case of moderate dimensions contains nests to the value of twelve hundred Mexican dollars--at least, it is insured for that amount.

Great Britain's next station in the Far East is Hong Kong, likewise an island, and one that might claim the long distance championship as a rain-center. Next to hills, the characterizing feature of Hong Kong is moisture--represented either by rain or humidity. The Briton professes that the climate of this crown colony is good; but for months at a stretch his clothing has to be hung daily in the open air to keep it from becoming water-logged, and everything of leather has to be denuded each morning of green mold. At the hotels one's apparel is kept in a drying-room, and issued costume at a time for use.

The globe-trotter reaching Hong Kong in March risks irreparable injury to his temper, unless he prefers dripping clouds and wet feet to warmth and sunshine. Out of a fortnight there may be a day when the elements will be accommodating enough to allow the glories of the harbor to be seen from the Peak, and two pleasant days in the fortnight would be remarkable. Official figures show that the average March has but twenty-nine and a fraction hours of sunshine. Complain of the rains and the patriotic resident will probably remark: "Rains! These are not rains--they only begin in June." Your book of local information corroborates the resident's statement, for you may read that March ordinarily has a rainfall of but three and a half inches, while June shows twenty, and August twenty-eight. On the 25th of August in 1905 the downpour registered eleven and one-quarter inches--this almost turned Hong Kong into an eastern Venice. November, December, January and February are the pleasant months, statistically, in Hong Kong.

The Briton has displayed his sturdiness of character by forcing a home in Hong Kong, for nature fashioned the north shore of this island to be an abiding-place for birds and animals. Adventurers from the British Isles have won a plateau from the sea by piling and filling in, and by executing engineering feats that have converted a precipitous mountain side to blossom with villa sites and roads and foot-paths leading to them. A railway scaling the mountain height at a topsy-turvy angle did the rest. Hong Kong is a splendid example of what determined men possessed of the colonizing spirit may accomplish. The founders of Venice did no more in the lagoons of the Adriatic. A man responsible for much of Hong Kong's filling in and excavation is Sir Paul Chator, a British subject of Armenian birth, gifted to an unusual degree with foresight. He has done more for the colony than any other person--and Hong Kong has made him a millionaire.

The legal name of the city is Victoria, but this fact apparently is known only to the postmaster and at Government House. Were a visitor to speak of Victoria, the dweller would believe that something back in England, or in Australia, was meant. When China ceded the rocky isle of Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1842 it was the haunt of fisherfolk and pirates prosecuting their callings in the estuary of the Canton River. The acquisition of Hong Kong was due to the refusal of the Chinese to allow British traders to live peaceably at Canton. Driven out of the city, they took temporary refuge in the Portuguese settlement of Macao; but, being pursued by Chinese hostility, the official trade superintendent transferred the English depot to Hong Kong, which was forthwith occupied by a British expeditionary force, and, at the end of the Opium War, finally ceded to Great Britain by the treaty of Nankin. The name "Hong Kong" is variously interpreted, but the generally accepted meaning is "Fragrant Streams."

Just as Singapore guards the south entrance into the China Sea, so does Hong Kong, fifteen hundred miles away, guard the north. On the south the entrance is through the Straits of Malacca, on the north through the Straits of Formosa. Had Great Britain, according to the usual custom of war, retained possession of Manila, which she had conquered in 1762, instead of giving it back to Spain at the end of the Seven Years' War, her hold of the China Sea would have been as firm to-day as is her hold of the Mediterranean. As the situation now stands, the acquisition of the Philippine Islands gives Uncle Sam a fortified naval base on the flank of the British line of communications between Singapore and Hong Kong. Based on Manila, and given the possession of sufficient naval force, an American admiral can strike right or left, compelling his opponents to fight where it best suits his own purposes. England and America are fortunate in being on terms of complete international amity, but none the less has the conquest of the Philippines by the United States profoundly modified the strategical conditions as they existed in the Pacific when the islands belonged to a weak naval power like Spain.

Hong Kong's population and traffic double every ten years, and no harbor has a greater tonnage. Were Hong Kong a port of origin, instead of a port of call, its commercial importance would be greater than that of London. A few years ago the British Government induced China to lease a slice of the mainland of goodly dimensions, to accommodate Hong Kong's swelling trade. There, a mile and a half across the harbor, to-day stand miles of modern docks and warehouses, and shipyards and engine-building works, that would do credit to Tyne or Clyde. This addition to Hong Kong is called Kowloon, and it has residential districts that range well into the hinterland.

Hong Kong's streets are among the most interesting in the great East, for they strike the key of true cosmopolitanism. Along them 'rickshaws pass in endless procession, electric cars roar, and sedan-chairs swing. The chair borne by four bearers provides the acme of transportation in fine weather. Eighty per cent, of Hong Kong's people are Chinese, and to this multitude the human contributions of Europe and America form necessarily a thin relief. Extremely picturesque are the compradore and taipan in costumes of the richest of silks, more so than is the poor coolie in dirty short trousers and jacket, pigtail coiled for convenience about the head, whose face is none too familiar with soap and water. In and out of the ever-moving multitude glide the tall, bright-eyed sons of India, the Sikhs, who are everywhere in the East. Soldiers in regimentals; jack tars of many nations; policemen, white, yellow, and black, are included in the picture. Here is the somber Britisher with confident stride and air of proprietorship, there the unromantic German slowly but surely capturing Oriental trade. Frenchmen and Scandinavians rub shoulders along the Queen's Road with the matter of fact American and the dark man from Italy; whilst now and then a peculiar gait or unusual costume distinguishes a South American or a son of the Philippines. Here, in short, within this congested square mile of the European quarter are daily to be picked representatives of the world's nations. A study of the crowd is an education in itself.

The splendid buildings speak of commercial prosperity--banks, shops, offices and clubs. Nearly every structure is the seat of prosperous commercial ventures in Hong Kong and China proper; and tiers of water-front warehouses locally called "godowns," are filled with foodstuffs and manufactures that in time will be distributed through every town of importance in the Flowery Kingdom. Hong Kong boasts that her docks can accommodate the largest ships afloat (a fact until the _Minnesota_ and _Dakota_, loaded with American flour, vainly sought wharfage), and that she possesses the largest sugar refinery in the world. But these circumstances are subordinate to the British government's real interest in Hong Kong--to make it the base of naval power in Asia, with dockyards and repair-shops equal to any demand, and with coal-bins stacked with the prerequisite to sea-power.

The horse is included in no grouping in Hong Kong, where coolie takes its place as bearer of burdens and hauler of vehicles. The sights of the place are so strange and interesting that a traveler is sometimes there for days before the fact dawns upon his vision that it is a city innocent of horse-flesh. True, there are the runners and polo ponies at Happy Valley race-course. Wherever the Briton plants his abiding-place, there the horse and dog are brought--but in Hong Kong the former requires a deal of attention, for it is only used in making a Briton's holiday. The race-course is set in an intervale, and has cemeteries overlooking grand-stand and entrances. A transplanted sportsman whose every effort to name a winning steed at a Happy Valley meeting has failed signally, finds superabundance of food for introspection as he runs the gauntlet of cemetery portals on the way back to the city, and very likely indulges in mental speculation as to the purpose in giving the name of Happy Valley to a race-track whose betting ring is overshadowed by burial grounds.

The "chit" as a moral pitfall is more potent in Hong Kong than in India or other Eastern lands possessing a sprinkling of Europeans. A newcomer's ears hear little but "chit." Every sentence uttered by friends, every proposal of obsequious native merchant, is freighted with the little word. You decide at last to cast off your ignorance and be of the elect--to know what chit means and if possible become a chitter. Very disappointed are you when told that chit is simply Asian for memorandum, in popular phrase, an "I. O. U.," hurriedly penciled and given in lieu of cash.

Its purpose? Merely to pander to the European's convenience; to differentiate the white man from brown or yellow, by placing him on the unassailable pedestal of a person of honor.

"This chit idea is great," says the newcomer. "I don't load my pockets down with money any more. When I buy a cigar or drink I give a chit, and that's all there is to it. These Eastern people are away ahead of us in more ways than one." And he hourly signs innocent memoranda, because of the convenience. At hotel and club a chit brings what he wants, it sends a basket of flowers to a charming woman, produces suits of clothing that he doesn't need, even pays 'rickshaw and chair coolies.

But alas; pay-day comes at the end of the month! And scheme as he may, the newcomer cannot solve the fiscal problem of making a hundred dollars settle three hundred dollars of debts. He then comprehends that the insidious chit is loaded; is pregnant with the disgrace germ, if he cannot raise the wherewithal to redeem the sheafs of them reposing in a dozen tills--so many notes going to protest with every tick of the clock. "I'll write home for funds," he decides; "but how am I to live while awaiting the remittance?" By giving more chits, only. He does this with a bold front for another month or so, and is doubly insolvent when the remittance finally comes to hand. Then he gives still more chits, and awaits another money supply.

Hong Kong is filled with unfortunate "remittance men," good fellows at heart, whose downfall dates from their introduction to the chit. A visitor can read no announcement more pathetic than that conspicuously displayed in the waiting-rooms of the Kowloon ferry, saying "Positively no chits received"--and this ruthless pronouncement in connection with a trip costing but the equivalent of three American cents!

There is commendable practicability in the method employed by large hotels in the East for placing patrons in a position to connect with dishes on the bill of fare appealing to their appetites. In Hong Kong hotels, where young Chinamen knowing practically no English are employed as waiters, and where elaborate lists of dishes are the order, the plan is indispensable. It is this: Every dish is indicated on the margin of the card by a number, and instead of saying to the waiter, "Bring me some roast beef, mashed potatoes and a cup of tea," you give the numbers of these several articles, or point to them,--and they are fetched. It is easy enough to get a second helping, but if you desire your meat rare, or well done, or your eggs fried on both sides, then you have good cause for cursing the confounding of tongues at the Tower of Babel. A Hong Kong hotel is not a place for a person predisposed to irritability.

For keen realization of the Far East, Hong Kong, with its streets of Chinese shops, and water front massed with sampans, affords a full and most satisfying opportunity.