Part 1

Chapter 13,638 wordsPublic domain

THE GATEWAY TO CHINA

PICTURES OF SHANGHAI

MARY NINDE GAMEWELL Author of “We Two Alone in Europe”

_ILLUSTRATED_

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 N. Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

TO MY HUSBAND

PREFACE

Shanghai is a little world, where all China in miniature may be studied at close range. Thither drift Chinese from every province in the country, who for the most part in the new environment follow their age-long customs and cherish their inherited traditions. But the city is also remarkable for its rapid and constant changes. A member of a local book-firm declared not long since, “We have never tried to publish a guide to Shanghai because in six months it would be out of date.” To an Occidental the chief fascination of this busy metropolis lies in the curious commingling of things old and new, practices ancient and modern, which meet one at every turn. More strikingly than any other city in the Far East, Shanghai represents the Orient in transition. To catch and portray some of these shifting scenes, the following “Pictures” have been drawn, with the hope that they may stimulate interest in China and awaken a new love and admiration for the Chinese people. It need hardly be explained that no attempt has been made at a complete study of the subjects described. This is particularly true of the last chapter, where several phases of missionary activity have been touched upon by way of illustration, while societies and organizations doing an equally valuable work have not been mentioned. The history of the Christian Literature Society, for example, reads like a romance and it is a well-established fact that its books had much to do in shaping the radical policy of the late Emperor Kuang Hsü and the liberals of that period, which eventuated in the dawn of progress and a New China. To all friends, Chinese and foreign, whose suggestions and criticisms have helped make possible this little book, warmest thanks are extended.

M. N. G.

METHODIST EPISCOPAL MISSION, SHANGHAI, CHINA.

CONTENTS

I. EVOLUTION OF A CITY 13

II. CIVIC FEATURES 20

III. STREET RAMBLES 42

IV. THE LURE OF THE SHOPS 57

V. HOUSEKEEPING PROBLEMS 73

VI. SOMETHING ABOUT VEHICLES 91

VII. A PEEP INTO THE SCHOOLROOM 106

VIII. A WIZARD PUBLISHING HOUSE 127

IX. THE CHINESE CITY 140

X. CUSTOMS OLD AND NEW 155

XI. A TYPICAL SHANGHAI WEDDING 172

XII. FOREIGN PHILANTHROPIES 185

XIII. CHINESE SUCCESSES IN SOCIAL SERVICE 199

XIV. THE ROMANCE AND PATHOS OF THE MILLS 217

XV. A PAGE FROM THE STORY OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 234

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mr. Bao on Left, One of the Three Founders of the Commercial Press, with Other Members of the Staff _Title_

Chinese Policemen Drawn up for Inspection 20

Some Shops on Nanking Road 58

High, Black Rickshas Outside the Foreign Settlement 92

Advertising Singer Sewing Machine Products 106

Miss Zee’s New School Building. Kindergarten in the Rear 120

Chinese Composing Room 128

The Original Willow Pattern Tea House 140

A Modern Chevalier and His Happy Family 156

The Coffin in a Funeral Procession 160

School Girls in Gymnasium Drill 168

Rescued Child Just Brought to the Children’s Refuge--Old Men at the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor 186

Rescued Kidnapped Children as They Were Photographed for Advertisement in the Chinese Daily Newspapers 200

On the Way to the Mill 218

Chinese Boy Scouts 234

Corner Stone of Boys’ Building, Y. M. C. A. 244

EVOLUTION OF A CITY

From time immemorial the Yangtsekiang has deposited at its mouth quantities of silt borne downward from the far West on its mighty yellow tide. Little by little, water gave place to mud flats, and mud flats to green fields. On this alluvium a handful of fisher-folk settled a thousand or so years ago, and from their straggling village gradually evolved the Shanghai of today. Shanghai means “Mart on the Sea,” but the city is now sixty miles inland. The Whangpoo River, a branch of the Yangtse, that flows past it, has during the past fifty years narrowed one-third, and only by constant dredging is the channel kept open.

For many years the obscure fishing-station gave no promise of its future greatness; but all things come to them that wait, and Shanghai’s prosperity began when an official in charge of shipping and customs was stationed there in 1075. Five hundred years later, the place had blossomed out into a kind of Oriental Athens, celebrated for its musicians, poets, prose writers, and statesmen. It gave birth, also, to women of repute, praised far and wide as models of virtue and filial piety. The city, like human beings, had its vicissitudes. Again and again, it was infested by Chinese and Japanese pirates, swept by typhoons, inundated by torrential rains. Although in the latitude of Savannah, Georgia, one piercingly cold winter it was almost buried under snow, the river covered with ice, and men and animals frozen to death.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Shanghai’s population was estimated at over half a million, and her star was in the ascendant. A forest of masts from a thousand quaint junks, each gaily painted to represent a fish, with staring eyes--for how, say Chinese mariners, can a ship see where to go without eyes?--thronged the anchorage. Shanghai was the busy seaport for the central provinces reached by the Yangtse and for points up and down the coast. Long before ever a foreigner settled within her borders her commercial possibilities had been largely realized and her position as “Queen of the Sea” assured.

In 1842 occurred the great epoch in her history, when with four other cities she was forced by Great Britain to throw open her gates as a treaty port. The first Occidentals to reside within the city were the British Consul and his suite. The most pressing business that confronted the resident British was to secure land for a permanent foreign settlement. They soon discovered that it was one thing to select the site but quite another to get it. The territory chosen lay to the north and west of the Chinese City and for the most part consisted of cultivated fields, dotted here and yonder with a village, and always and everywhere graves, rising in pyramidal grass-grown mounds. As usual, the chief difficulty was over the graves, which the purchasers agreed should remain undisturbed. When finally the British were in complete possession of the land, they decided the struggle had been even more severe and nerve-racking than the capture of the City. The French followed close on the heels of the British, demanding from the Chinese a concession of their own, something that the Americans a little later, with less friction and noise, simply quietly appropriated.

In 1848, five years after the opening of the Settlement, it is recorded that the foreign population numbered over one hundred, including a few women. How imagination takes wings to itself and pictures the conditions under which the community lived at that time! There were no hill resorts to flee to for a refreshing breeze in summer, no electric fans to temper the heat, no ice-cooled drinks, no screens to shut out the flies and mosquitoes. A stroll on the street was robbed of its pleasure by lack of sanitation, and a ramble even in the near suburbs almost unendurable because of the excrement used on the fields as a fertilizer. Cholera, plague, and other Oriental diseases waxed rampant, and in the first foreign cemetery many a tiny mound watered with tears wrung from aching hearts, told an eloquent story of young lives sacrificed to make possible the Shanghai of to-day.

An outstanding event in the history of Shanghai was the investment of the city in the early 60’s by the T’aiping rebels, those fanatical hordes that for fourteen years kept the country in a ferment, and well-nigh overthrew the Manchu dynasty. As the excited rebels advanced from the west the populace around fled before them to Shanghai. In the original Land Regulations drawn up by the foreigners Chinese were forbidden to reside in the Settlement. The panic-stricken refugees, however, could not be restrained. They camped first on the outskirts, but soon afterward pushed in and overran the Settlement without let or hindrance. Shacks were built to house them. They went up by the hundreds, like mushrooms, in a night, and real estate speculators reaped a rich harvest, for often the refugees were people of wealth and paid handsome rentals. Many of these same speculators, who, carried away by their good fortune, continued to build at a mad rate, suffered heavy losses, and some even bankruptcy, when at the close of the Rebellion the crowds began emptying out as fast as they had poured in. One reason for the wholesale exodus of the Chinese was their dislike of the sanitary regulations at that time in force in the Settlement, and they were in great fear lest the foreigners might gain sufficient control over the Chinese officials to put the same hated rules into operation in the interior cities. Though so many refugees returned to their homes just as soon as it was safe to do so, large numbers remained, enjoying the protection offered them in the Settlement. Efforts were made from time to time to eject them, but without avail, while others gradually drifted into this desirable haven. Thus began what Shanghai has ever since continued to be, an asylum for the lawless from all parts of China. The class of respectable unfortunates is also numerous. A Chinese “Who’s Who” for Shanghai, if accurately compiled, would astonish the reader with its list of half-forgotten, erstwhile famous personages, deposed officials, bankrupt aristocrats, antiquated scholars, men who figured prominently in the affairs of the world, but, having lost “face,” favor, and fortune, find the cosmopolitan metropolis a safe retreat in which to end their days.

“First things” always possess a peculiar interest, and of these Shanghai can lay claim to her full share. The first railroad ever laid in China ran between Shanghai and the forts at Woosung, twelve miles distant, where the Whangpoo River joins the Yangtse. The two men sent out to survey the line had a hard time of it and one of them was nearly killed by the infuriated people, who declared he should not desecrate the graves of their ancestors that lay in the path of the proposed road. This line was completed in 1876, but it was destined to a short existence. The stealing of window-glass and the blue silk window curtains by Chinese passengers, unable to comprehend their utility except as a means to fill their pockets with coveted cash, was a small matter. The road roused the deep-seated resentment of all classes, and from the first was doomed. The grand finalé came when a group of Shanghai officials perfunctorily inspected the entire line from their sedan-chairs, scorning to stoop to the indignity of riding on the train, and gravely pronounced it a menace. Soon after this the rails were tom up and it was long before others were laid in their places. But the world moved even under the reign of the Manchus, and before their sun had set the shriek of the locomotive was heard many times every day between Shanghai and Woosung, while in the “most pro-foreign city in the world” sedan-chairs are almost as great a novelty as trains were formerly.

It seems strange that it should have been during the stressful period of the T’aiping Rebellion that one of the greatest boons China ever fell heir to was conferred on the distracted nation. That was the inauguration in Shanghai of the Imperial Maritime Customs, called by one writer “the most telling Western leaven ever introduced into China.” The story of the Customs service under the Chinese is one long, tiresome record of failure, graft, and loss, and it was not till 1854, when the management was assumed by foreigners, whose probity became at once the wonder and delight of the natives, that a change was effected. Guided through half a century by the master hand of Sir Robert Hart, to whom must also be given much of the credit of the National Chinese Postal System established during his incumbency, the work has gone on growing steadily and yielding an increasing revenue. It is eminently fitting that a statue of Sir Robert in characteristic pose, should recently have been unveiled in the Bund Park close by the Custom House.

Shanghai has not yet reached the zenith of her prosperity. The Customs receipts last year were larger than ever before. Twenty and more vessels bound for as many different ports often leave her docks in a single day. Never was there as much building in progress, especially of Chinese houses. The Western traveller who looks out upon the wide Bund, flanked by handsome foreign buildings, with automobiles and carriages speeding to and fro, almost wonders whether he is not arriving at a European capital instead of a city in China. The native population has grown to over a million. Of the twenty-one thousand resident foreigners, including Japanese and East Indians, about five thousand are British and fifteen hundred Americans. The city is a political theatre where plots are hatched and reforms initiated. It is the national headquarters of missionary work, the chief seat of commerce, the home of progress, in short the nerve-centre of China whose influence reaches out to the remotest corners of the land. Shanghai faces problems and dangers peculiar to the Orient, but her future is bright with the promise of boundless development.

CIVIC FEATURES

“The quaintest little republic in the world” is what Shanghai is often called. Certainly there is no city like it in China. Within its present limits are peoples from many countries, eighteen having consular representation, and all living, in the main, amicably together under a polyglot governing body whose members are elected by popular vote. The working out of the present system of autonomy was a difficult task. The city fathers long ago fought their way through more than one bitter controversy, for there were many minds as well as many nationalities. The Land and Municipal Regulations now in use are practically the same as those adopted back in 1869. Ten years after Shanghai became a treaty port the French withdrew from the union and set up a government of their own. The others formed themselves into the “International Settlement,” latterly known as the “Model Settlement.” Truth compels the admission, however, that it is not in all respects as worthy a “model” as its wellwishers would like to see it. Still it has admirable features, and as self-respecting a metropolis as Hongkong was urged by one of her citizens in a recent appeal to wake up and emulate the example of stirring, progressive Shanghai.

The centre around which everything political revolves is the Municipal Council. The consuls of the International Settlement each spring call a meeting of the rate-payers or electors. Any foreigner who owns or rents property of a fixed value possesses the right of franchise. The rate-payers elect the members of the Municipal Council, and that done they retire from the public gaze till the following year, unless convened for special business. The Council holds weekly sessions. Its nine members are unsalaried business men. Chinese are not eligible to membership, but Japanese are, though as a matter of fact there never had been a Japanese member, greatly to this people’s displeasure, until a year ago, when one succeeded in getting elected. Judicial authority is vested in the consuls. Each consul arbitrates for his own nationals except in the cases of the three countries having fully organized law courts with resident judges. These are England, America, and Germany. The English court was established years ago; the American held its first session in 1907. The Chinese are extremely sore on the subject of extraterritoriality. That it does not exist in Japan only adds to their grief and mortification. Since the New Law Codes have been framed the nation is more insistent than ever that this thorn in its flesh shall be removed and foreign courts abolished. But the new laws are not widely operative, and until the old methods of bribery and torture are forever relegated to the past the Treaty Powers will continue to claim exclusive rights over their subjects, and the subjects to demand protection.

A unique institution peculiar to Shanghai, indeed, as some one has called it, “the most unique institution ever dedicated to justice,” is the Mixed Court. In the early days, when Chinese were made prisoners in the International Settlement, they were turned over to the Chinese City officials for trial and punishment, but justice was rare, and cruel or unduly lenient treatment the rule. To protect the Chinese, and insure fair dealing in those cases in which foreigners were involved, as well as to try the cases of foreigners having no consular representation, the Mixed Court was established in 1865. It has not proved a wholly satisfactory solution of the difficulty, for the law in force is the Chinese law, and the foreign assessor, an Englishman, American, or German, according to the day of the week, who occupies a seat on the judicial bench beside the Chinese judge, ranks as little more than a figurehead, acting merely in an advisory capacity. Practically though, it must be said, and this is particularly true since 1911, he is coming to be the real power behind the throne, and to exercise pretty much of a controlling influence. At the time of the revolution the management of the Mixed Court passed from the hands of the Chinese to the control of the Municipal Council. The change was effected quietly, so that while the Chinese were well aware of what was going on they could appear not to know, and thus save their “face.” If only “face” can be preserved facts are of small moment.

A morning spent in visiting the Mixed Court is to most people an experience of absorbing interest, as it throws innumerable side-lights on Chinese life and character. At half-past nine each morning, the hour of opening court, the foreign assessor and the Chinese judge walk in and take their seats, each flanked by his interpreters and clerks of solemn mein. The witnesses, Chinese and foreign, assemble on opposite sides of the room, the prisoners, most of them poor forlorn specimens of humanity, file into the docket closely guarded by Sikh and Chinese policemen, with an English sergeant-at-arms on duty near by, while in the hall, around the door and pressing as far inside as they dare, gathers the curious, motley crowd of onlookers, many of them relatives and friends of the prisoners, but stolidly immobile during all the proceedings. Is there another place in the world where such a variety of cases is heard as at the Shanghai Mixed Court, cases civil and criminal, tragic, pathetic and comic? Some are intricate enough to tax the wisdom of a Solomon, and some are simple as a child’s play. An old couple appeared one morning to petition for a divorce. Their faces wore such a kindly expression, they seemed so at peace with mankind in general and each other in particular, that the judge was puzzled. “Have you quarreled?” he asked. “Oh, no.” “Don’t you live happily together?” “We are most happy and that is why we are here,” hastily explained the old woman. Then the whole story was poured out. An evil omen had convinced them that in the future they would quarrel frightfully, separate, and die apart of broken hearts, so in order to avert such a calamity they had determined to take time by the forelock and part company while they were still good friends. A few words of advice and assurance set matters all right, and it was not long before the aged lovers, for that is what they really were, passed smilingly out of the courtroom, hand in hand, to return to their humble home. No executions take place in the Settlement. Prisoners sentenced to capital punishment are handed over to the Chinese authorities, and here again “face” is considered, for while the death sentence has actually been passed the court in the Chinese City is allowed to assume that it has not, and proceed as if the prisoner was condemned on its own initiative.

The building occupied by the Mixed Court is bounded on the right by the Woman’s Prison and on the left by the Debtor’s Prison. Under the Chinese regime discipline was practically nil and affairs were left largely to run themselves. Inmates of the Debtor’s Prison might smoke opium and gamble to their heart’s content, provided they could get the money, while dancing-girls furnished them entertainment. In the woman’s prison conditions were even worse. The top floor was set apart as a rendezvous for the young children of the prisoners, wretched, neglected little ones, exposed to every kind of evil influence. Their mothers in the cells below did pretty much as they liked. One of their tricks was to thrust their hands between the iron rods at the windows, and tear away by main force the corrugated iron screen so that they could chatter noisily with the people in the street below, and by letting down a string draw up food or anything else their friends were minded to tie on the end. The wardresses (the only man about the place is the gatekeeper) were deceitful, faithless, open to bribes, in fact little better than the women behind the bars.