Part 10

More common still are the peripatetic restaurants. The outfit of the manager of the Liliputian establishment is a model of convenience and compactness. A simple bamboo frame, easily borne by one man even with all the appurtenances, is divided into two sections. On one side in a pocket rests a clay stove, with a place underneath for holding the wood. On the other is a series of drawers of various sizes, in which the dough, sugar, and spices are kept. A little kneading board pulls out from a slit between the drawers, and on it the baker deftly fashions his cakes and meat pies, frying them in vegetable oil in a shallow iron basin, or if they are to be baked, plastering them against the inner sides of the clay stove above the fire. Despite the dirt, dust, and flies, even the ultra fastidious can not deny that the finished product is decidedly appetizing.

Not a foot of valuable land in the Chinese City is wasted on sidewalks. Hence everybody and everything is right on the street, and the very narrow passages are badly congested. Rickety jinricshas, a few sedan chairs which are fast disappearing from Shanghai, burden-bearers and pedestrians hurry continually to and fro, shouting in shrill falsetto tones to one another to clear the way and running in imminent danger of colliding with the unwary and trampling on children. Yet not all the streets are mere alleyways. A few, but it must be admitted a very few, are wide enough to allow a carriage to pass through with comparative ease, and they seem in comparison like boulevards. Then there are others along which a carriage can manage to creep providing the driver is skillful and the people hug the sides of the roads or retire precipitately into the shops out of harm’s way, but this is too risky a venture to be indulged in often and is seldom permitted by the police. Once in a while it happens that a carriage gets wedged into a tight place where it can neither move forward, back out nor even find room to turn at right angles into a cross street. The only thing then is to unhitch the horse, lead him out, pull the carriage back, and finally lifting it up bodily, turn it around and harness the horse to it again.

Not all the city is laid out in streets, for there are some open places and even flourishing vegetable gardens which quite suggest the country. That this is possible in so densely populated an area seems a marvel, and where and how the people are all hidden away is a puzzle. In the poorer sections, with the closing down of night they vanish as if by magic, except in hot weather when many camp on the streets, and in the morning the crowds swarm forth as mysteriously, like rats from their holes.

The best known and most popular breathing spot in the city is that about the lake or pond, in whose centre on a small island rises the far-famed Willow Ware Tea-House, for the identical tea-house pictured on the much sought for willow-ware porcelain is located in the Chinese City. This to the average globe-trotter is the city’s chief attraction, but alas, never was the saying “Distance lends enchantment” more truly applicable, for while the pictures of the old tea-house are undeniably charming, with its graceful upturned gables and the zigzag bridges leading to it, made zigzag to ward off evil spirits who are said to travel in straight lines, yet seen near at hand how quickly the enchantment is dispelled! Filth, rottenness, and roistering are the main present-day characteristics of this tea-house of fair renown. Instead of reflecting the blue sky above, the water is covered with a thick vegetable scum, green and unwholesome. The shores around are made lively with a colony of small vendors whose wares are set on tables or spread out over the ground. They evidently reap a paying harvest from the sale of scrolls, pottery, towels, sheepskin coats, toys, and all manner of cheap foreign knickknacks which are much sought after by the people. Switches of long, jet black hair, especially plentiful since queues went out of fashion, are given places of prominence. Many doubtless are sent abroad to add beauty to the coiffures of dames of high degree.

The business of the man who deals in rags must flourish like the green bay tree judging from the number engaged in it. What a sight is a rag-man’s shop, rags, rags everywhere, stuffed in baskets and bags, hanging from the walls, covering the floor in huge piebald bundles and mounds, germ-infected, poisonous, alive with vermin, gathered up and brought in from heaven knows where! Yet every day women and children spend long hours industriously picking them over and making them up into mops and the soles of Chinese shoes, for which they find a ready sale.

Shanghai once boasted a supremely great citizen. He lived back in the sixteenth century, a veritable Chinese Maecenas. Besides being a man of letters and encouraging Western learning, he rose to the highest position in the empire, as Premier and Chancellor of the Privy Council. His name will be of little consequence to the outside world, but it is Siu Kuang-ki, should any one care to know it. He was converted to Christianity under the Jesuit Fathers, and lived a pure, consistent, devoted life, dying so poor in spite of large emoluments that his funeral expenses had to be paid from the public treasury. He built in the Chinese City the first Christian church ever seen in these parts. During the exigencies of later years it was converted into a temple sacred to the god of war, but was afterward redeemed and restored to its original use. This church is still standing, a striking edifice back a little from the noisy street, with a typical Chinese roof, and below it on the front outside wall, a beautiful gilded cross.

The present war god’s temple is near the temple of Confucius, with its grass-grown court and deserted halls. Once a year, in the early dawn, the military governor of Shanghai and the city officials enter the sanctuary dedicated to the god of war and conduct a weird pageant-like ceremony in honour of two local military heroes. The tutelary deities of the Chinese City, black and repelling, occupy a large centrally located temple more frequented by worshippers than any other. The roomy outer court, like the temple court in Jerusalem, is given up to buying and selling, also to eating and drinking, gambling and fortune-telling, and there is no busier, noisier mart in all the city.

The local official in the Chinese City is called the “Chih-hsien,” or District Magistrate, and is appointed from Peking. His official residence styled the Yamen, is a common, ordinary building, approached through several untidy courts lined with the low one-story quarters of the Yamen retainers and petty officials. Every day, in three small, bare rooms of the Yamen, court is held, the Chinese judges in their professional gowns looking distinctly out of keeping with their surroundings. To the left and back of the Yamen is the City Prison and adjoining it a much smaller one for women. Stories are afloat regarding the unsanitary condition of the prison and the treatment of prisoners that cause one to cringe and dread an investigation, but whatever may have been the state of affairs under the old régime, and the prison manager is frank to confess that things were very different ten years ago, there is now little to criticise and a great deal to commend. The grey brick buildings are in thoroughly good repair, the cells of the four hundred men and the fifty women prisoners, clean and fairly well lighted and ventilated, though, as the manager himself will hasten to tell the visitor, too crowded for health. A few carefully tended plants are growing in the centre of each of the courts, a praiseworthy effort to introduce a touch of the æsthetic. Industrial work on a considerable scale is carried on in the men’s prison, though the grant of money from the government is too small to keep all at work. Wooden and rattan furniture, towels, mats, shoes, and clothing are made. A very little industrial work is given the women in the way of cutting out and making garments, but from lack of funds to supply workrooms and material, most of the poor creatures are forced to pass their days in idleness. The wardens of the women’s prison are women. The discipline is excellent, yet not severe, the prisoners look well fed and well cared for, and the men especially, happy and contented. Provision is made to send sick prisoners to a Chinese hospital, where they receive the best of care.

The Yamen, disappointing as it is in appearance, yet witnesses some stirring scenes, as when, not long ago, a quantity of opium and opium-smoking utensils were burned on the open ground in front of it in the presence of an interested throng of spectators. Not an opium den or shop exists in the Chinese City. Long ago they were effectually closed by order of the government.

The city is well policed. There has been a wonderful shaking up of the dry bones in that department in recent years, particularly since the revolution. The Chief of Police is chosen on the recommendation of the local military governor by the provincial governor at Nanking, but the Chief of the Fire Department is the choice of the people, and affairs of the department are wholly under their control. All the seven hundred members of the Fire Brigade are volunteers and serve without pay. Of late the brigade has attained a high grade of efficiency, and in the engine stations scattered over the city may be seen a very creditable equipment of modern machinery including some small motor cars. They must of necessity be small in order to get through the narrow streets. At the central station between the east and south gates stands a splendid tower supporting a bell weighing 6,000 lbs. which sounds the fire alarm not only in the city itself, but in the surrounding territory included in the Chinese municipality. This tower is the work of Shanghai’s engineering genius Nicholas Tzu, who patterned it after a small model of the Eiffel tower, but with changes that adapted it more perfectly to its present use. At a recent large fire in the city, the chiefs of the International and French Fire Brigades were present and looked on, but their assistance was not asked for nor was it needed, though the Chinese firemen were obliged to fight valiantly for three hours before they got control of the flames.

That the Chinese City is taking on thoroughly up-to-date airs will be generally conceded when it is known that strikes are becoming rather general. The latest one to break out was in the Dyers’ Union. The masses of the people in China dress in blue cotton. Indeed, so universally is it worn, that it might almost be called the national dress, consequently the business of dyeing is one of the most common and the Dyers’ Union is very strong. Since a Presidential mandate had gone forth that every labor union must be approved by the police, and as in this case the police interfered to put down the strike, it failed of its object. But a strike last winter was more successful. The women working in a silk filature mill within the Chinese precincts, though outside the Chinese City, were roused to fury by a reduction in their wages. Early one morning ninety or a hundred of them gathered at the mill gate and made such a clamour, pounding and shouting as only enraged Chinese women can, that the authorities, realizing that after all right was on the side of the strikers, were glad to effect a speedy and satisfactory compromise.

X

CUSTOMS OLD AND NEW

A student in a mission school for girls received an invitation from a young gentleman of her acquaintance to accompany him on a certain evening to a place of amusement. The note fell into the hands of the missionary in charge who sought an interview with the man. “It is against the rules of the school for our girls to go out unchaperoned,” she told him, “besides why do you make such a request? You know it is not Chinese custom.” “Ha, ha,” laughed the youth derisively, “perhaps it was not formerly, but now that we have a Republic we can do _anything_.”

Great changes and grave dangers accompanied the birth of the republic, and nowhere are they as apparent as in Shanghai. Old things are passing away and the new order is not yet firmly established. Young women are particularly sensitive to the changed conditions. In their eagerness to imitate the ways of the West, the real meaning of which many do not fully understand, liberty and license are often confused. But the girls must not be judged too harshly, for while some are unblushingly bold, others are like imprisoned birds who, suddenly finding the cage door ajar, pant to try their wings in the open. It is scarcely to be wondered at if sometimes they fly too far afield and drop back weary and bruised. The better class of students who have studied abroad are helping to set matters right. They show how it is possible for friends of both sexes to meet on the tramcars, on the street, or in one another’s homes and chat together naturally and yet modestly. It was with great gusto that a young matron who had never been out of China but associated freely with those who had, told of a picnic enjoyed by the mixed choir of the Chinese church to which she belonged. “We went down the river in a launch, taking our supper with us.” “Wasn’t it hard to carry Chinese food in baskets?” “Oh, we had foreign food--cake and sandwiches. I made some peanut sandwiches and every one seemed to like them.” “Were the picnickers all married people?” “No, some were not,” was the laughing reply. A Wellesley graduate who had been absent eight years from her Shanghai home was asked on her return what impressed her most. “The way my sister-in-law goes about the streets alone and even shops in the big stores.” “Wouldn’t she have done that before you went to America?” “I should say not! But now she doesn’t seem to think anything of it.” “How about your mother, does she go out too?” “No, mother prefers to follow the old customs, but she makes no objection to what we do.”

It is easy enough to view the social changes with fear and trembling and many of them are bad enough in their trend to justify any amount of anxiety, but there is a bright side and perhaps in deprecating the evil it has been too often overlooked. Nothing is more commendable than the loving comradeship that is growing up between husband and wife. This might be expected among students who have lived abroad and are used to foreign ways, but it is by no means confined to that class. “You have a pretty home,” commented a foreign friend to a bride of a year. Her husband was the editor of a popular Chinese daily and neither of them had ever been away from their native land. The bride beamed with pleasure. “Your lace curtains are hung so tastefully,” continued the caller. “Wasn’t it hard to show your servant how to do it?” “My husband and I hung them. We worked evenings after he came home from the office,” replied the blushing little wife. A few months later, when an expectant mother, she displayed with shy satisfaction, an exquisitely dainty layette, each tiny garment made with her own hands after a foreign pattern. “What a fine baby!” exclaimed another friend to the jubilant parents of their firstborn. “It is a boy, isn’t it?” “No, a girl,” corrected the father, gazing with fond pride into the tiny face of the rosy mite, “but she cries a good deal. I was up with her for three or four hours last night and had to walk with her most of the time to keep her from disturbing my wife.” “I was very glad to see your wife at my party on Friday,” remarked an American lady to a busy Chinese secretary. “Yes, I got off early from the office and went home to take care of the children so she could go. I wouldn’t have had her miss that pleasure for anything. My Margaret is such a good wife.”

When charming little Mrs. F. sailed for America to see a brother graduate at the University of California her husband was at the jetty looking after the baggage, and went with her on the launch down the river to where the ocean liner was anchored. Dr. Wu Ting Fang, ex-Minister to the United States and one of Shanghai’s best known citizens, meeting Dr. F. soon afterward, twitted him facetiously: “Oho, it used to be the custom in China for the husband to go away and the wife to stay at home with the family, and now it seems to be just the other way and the wife goes while the husband stays at home.” Dr. F., who, with the help of his mother and sister, was caring for his three little ones in Mrs. F.’s absence, laughed goodnaturedly and explained that it was he who had urged this trip on his wife. Once when this same husband was presiding at a formal banquet, it was noticed by those near him that in the midst of the festivities he quietly left his place and passed down to the other end of the long table. Mrs. F., detained it may be by putting the children to bed, had just come in, and Dr. F., not too engrossed in conversation to be watching for his wife, rose to draw out her chair and seat her in it with all the gallantry of a chevalier. The afternoon Mr. and Mrs. C. gave their “tea,” the young husband greeted the incoming guests at the door, while his wife, clad in soft white Chinese silk with a wreath of tiny pink rosebuds nestling against her black hair, presided over the tea-table with all the ease and grace of a society belle, and withal a sweet modesty which every society belle does not possess.

Perhaps these incidents, trifling in themselves, will possess small significance for the reader who has never lived in China, but to those who have they are encouraging signs that the leaven is working which of a certainty will by and by raise women all over the land from the position of mere chattels whose chief business is the bearing of children to be the equals and companions of their husbands. Dr. Arthur H. Smith, an authority in things Chinese, said recently in conversation, “I believe that the reorganization of the life of women in China is the most important sociological and educational event of modern times.”

Bound feet are becoming less and less the fashion in Shanghai. The increasing spread of physical training in all the schools is a great aid in favour of anti-footbinding, for the popular exercises can not well be taken on tiny feet. A medium course at present much in vogue is neither to let the feet alone nor bind them tightly, but by the use of comparatively loose bandages to prevent their growing too large. The little bound feet of old, common enough still in the interior, are in Shanghai generally looked upon with shame by the younger generation, who if they are so unfortunate as to own them, try to conceal their crippled members underneath long skirts or by wearing large shoes. It is not the women alone who frown upon bound feet. In many instances their husbands are equally opposed to them, men who a few years ago would have spurned a woman not swaying uncertainly on her much admired “Chinese Lilies.” A native teacher, supposed to be of the “old school,” was telling his foreign pupil of the recent death of his wife. “She fell down when crossing our courtyard and never regained consciousness.” “That was remarkable,” was the surprised answer. “How did she happen to fall?” “It was her small feet that did it. She lost her balance. But her feet were bound before I married her, or they never would have been bound.” “Then you disapprove of the custom and probably do not intend to bind the feet of your little daughters?” The man’s voice rose to an indignant pitch and with a vehemence quite unusual for a Chinese he ejaculated, “_I shall not!_”

Young men back from years of study in America or Europe, and there are many such in Shanghai, wear foreign clothes and look well in them. Some indeed are quite dudish in their attire. Many older men of the upper class on state occasions array themselves in dress suits and high hats, but in private life they ordinarily lay aside the torturing starched shirt and choking collar and resume their loose, comfortable Chinese garments. Women students on returning to China usually drop back at once into native dress, wherein they show their good sense, for besides the comfort of this style, nothing becomes them quite so well. Some years ago two girls from the interior arrived in Shanghai on their way to study medicine in America. They were told that in order to attract less attention on shipboard it would be well at once to adopt foreign dress, so they did, corsets and all. The older one’s description of her sensations is most amusing. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eat. The food had no room to go down. I never felt so miserable.” “What did you do?” “I took the corsets off.” “How long had you worn them?” Mary held up a little forefinger, as she announced solemnly, “Just one awful day.”

The ultra-stylish dress of the “fast set” among young women in Shanghai is tight trousers, short tight jacket with short tight sleeves, and very high collars. To Western eyes this is neither pretty nor modest, and Chinese from the interior look upon it askance. Instead of bare heads, girls in winter are coming to wear, not hats, except those who have adopted foreign dress, but worsted caps, usually trimmed with coloured ribbon or artificial flowers. There is a shop on a busy street, called “Love Your Country Shop,” which deals largely in these fancy articles. Foreign shoes are also gradually taking the place of the cloth-soled, satin-topped Chinese shoes, and it is a wise change if women are to go much abroad in this city of heavy and frequent rains.

The old-time wedding procession is no longer an every day sight in the International Settlement, though happily for lovers of the antique, still common about the Chinese City. Carriages have to a large extent superseded the gorgeous sedan chairs, draped with embroidered crimson satin, and pale pink silk the orthodox crimson satin wedding gown. Veils are much worn too, and occasionally a very up-to-date bride is decked out in a gown of white silk or satin made in the most extreme Western fashion. More often, however, there is a painfully inartistic combination of Chinese and foreign styles. Little Miss Y. invited her foreign friends to inspect her trousseau shortly before her marriage. Garment after garment, evolved from heavy brocaded satin, sheeny silks, and gauzy web-like stuffs, was unfolded before admiring eyes. Finally the grand climax was reached when the wedding gown was brought in. The marvelous embroidery on the delicate pink silk evoked “Ohs” and “Ahs” of rapture, accompanied by exclamations such as “A perfect dream,” “I never saw anything so beautiful!” But when a common pink net veil, cheap white imitation flowers and coarse white cotton gloves bought at a foreign department store and plainly regarded as the crowning touches to the outfit were laid beside the exquisite Chinese gown, there were inward groans from the disappointed visitors. Miss Y. wore on the third finger of her left hand a heavy ring set with diamonds and pearls. On her wedding day she would have her band of gold like a Western bride. “You are very fond of the gentleman, of course,” some one asked her. The bright eyes dropped quickly as the low answer came back, “I have seen him only once.” “Were you alone?” “No, my aunt was in the room.” Plainly then, notwithstanding her foreign finery, this was not one of the so-called present day “liberty girls.”