Part 3

Tuberculosis is the Chinaman’s Nemesis, and too often pursues him from the cradle to the grave. It is also frightfully common among the poor Eurasians who herd together under lamentable conditions. The only remedy for this prevailing malady seems to be to educate, educate, educate, and that is being done as thoroughly and effectively as possible. The Society of King’s Daughters recently did a fine thing. They planned a Tuberculosis Exhibit, which was held for a week or more in an empty down town store. Much of the exhibit was loaned and set up by the Young Men’s Christian Association that is itself carrying on a telling campaign against China’s “White Scourge.” Maps, charts, pictures, devices of all kinds for arresting the attention and teaching a lesson, were arranged attractively, but two things in particular produced a profound impression. One was a bell that every thirty-seven seconds clanged ominously. Over it hung a placard announcing in Chinese and English that every time the bell tolled some poor victim in China died of tuberculosis. The other design was more conspicuously placed in one of the large show windows and always attracted a crowd of absorbed, silent Chinese. The sight that held them spell-bound was a perfect model of a Chinese house, out of which stepped a Chinaman, who, after walking a few steps, fell into a Chinese coffin that instantly disappeared in the earth. This happened every eight seconds and each drop of the coffin represented a death from tuberculosis somewhere in the world.

Before 1898 there was practically no Health Department and no health campaign. If progress at times seems slow, one has only to look back to realize what a marvellous change for the better has been wrought in a decade and a half. Perhaps more to the Health Department than to any other branch of the Municipal Government Shanghai owes its right to be called “The Model Settlement.” The group of Central Municipal Buildings covering an entire square in the heart of the city forms one of the finest plants of the kind to be found in the Far East.

III

STREET RAMBLES

“I have lived in China nearly twenty-five years, yet I never go on the street without seeing something new and interesting,” exclaimed a vivacious little missionary doctor to a group of fresh arrivals. Her remark was made about Peking, but the outdoor life in Shanghai has its own unique charm.

To begin with, in the International Settlement there are no “streets” at all, so called; only roads. Some of the byways, to be sure, too narrow and short to be dignified as roads, go by the name of “lane,” and the city boasts a “Broadway,” or, to be exact, “Broadway Road.” It is unnecessary to explain that this lies in the district originally ceded to the Americans. The Shanghai Broadway makes no pretense of emulating in appearance or importance its western prototype, though quite a brisk trade is carried on in the modest shops near its lower end.

The first permanent foreign settlement was along the Bund, beginning with the site occupied by the British consular offices and residence. The splendid Bund, bounded on one side by sightly bank and club, steamboat and insurance buildings, and on the other by the Whangpoo River, is the city’s pride and glory. It is hard to realize that this wide, white road, humming with life and swept by costly automobiles, was once nothing but a well-trodden tow-path bordering a marsh. Away to the south, across what until recently was an ill-smelling creek but is now being rapidly metamorphosed into a handsome boulevard, begins the French Bund, with its wharves and warehouses, and where it ends the Chinese Bund starts.

The characteristic feature of the Chinese Bund is its boat population. For more than half a mile little boats called sampans, protected by a low arched covering of bamboo mats, line the shore and extend well out into the river. Each tiny sampan swarms with life as if it were an ant-hill. The occupants are permanent householders and their habitations are anchored. Many of them were originally famine refugees from the north. Most of the men earn a living as wharf coolies. The wives add a little to the income by gathering rags to make into shoe soles and by patching and darning old garments for coolies without families who pay a few cash in return. Planks set on stakes serve as footpaths to connect the boats with the shore, and little toddlers run about on the narrowest of them at will, yet rarely tumble into the water or soft mud below. Births, marriages, and funerals lend variety to the life of the boat people. Two or three empty coffins usually stand about on the wharf ready for an emergency, and are meanwhile useful as benches, especially for the women when they sew.

The International Bund on its water side is unobstructed with buildings, except at the Customs jetty, and is laid out in grass plots which gradually widen near the Garden Bridge into the Public Gardens. This charming little park in the heart of the city, with its lawns, flowers, shade trees, and a band-stand where the celebrated Municipal Band plays in summer, is a favorite resting place for weary pedestrians and a rendezvous for parents and nurses with young children. Chinese are not admitted to the Gardens, except nurses with foreign children, unless dressed in foreign clothes or accompanied by a foreigner. This is to keep the grounds from being overrun by the coolie class. The Customs jetty has witnessed many a stirring scene. Trim launches carry outgoing passengers twelve miles down the river to the anchored ocean liners beyond the “bar” and bring them up the river on arrival. Its sheltering roof has caught the echo of sobs and laughter, tremulous good-byes and joyous welcomes.

The river at this point is half a mile wide and presents an animated picture. Every variety of craft floats on its waters, from the busy sampan to the light-draught coasting vessel or man-of-war. Whether seen beneath the radiance of the noonday sun, or under a starlit sky, reflecting myriads of twinkling lights, it is a never-failing delight to resident and visitor alike.

The most picturesque, as well as the leading business street in Shanghai is Nanking Road, or as the Chinese call it, “The Great Horse Road.” “Great,” however qualifies “Road” and not “Horse,” for while numerous horses travel over it, most of them are the small swift-footed Mongolian ponies, whose clattering little hoofs are heard early and late. Indeed the name “Great Horse Road” strikes one as rather out of date in these days of the ever-present automobile, of which there are already more than eight hundred in Shanghai. Nanking Road starts at the Bund with the Palace Hotel, and following the windings of a former creek, ends at the race course. For a short distance west of the Bund it is given up mainly to foreign stores, the largest and finest in the city. Then the street widens and becomes an avenue of high grade Chinese shops, many of them with the national flag afloat and all displaying aloft the characteristic vertical signboard in black and gold. The vista in either direction on a bright day is quite dazzling, and especially at night when the avenue from end to end is ablaze with electric lights. Then crowds of Chinese going to and from the theatres and tea-houses, or simply out for a stroll, jostle each other on the sidewalks and pour over into the road, where they narrowly escape being knocked down by rapidly moving vehicles. Conspicuous everywhere are the Chinese “Women of the Street,” or rather the girls and children, for nearly all are pitifully young. Bedecked and bejeweled, they stand sometimes in the bright glare, but oftener within the shadow of a closed doorway, or at the entrance to a lane, usually in groups under the care of an older woman who acts as “business agent.” A notable hour on Nanking Road is between five and six on Saturday afternoon, when it seems as if the whole city turns out to loaf or saunter in quest of pleasure. A babel of shrill voices rings in the ear, mingled with the shouts of ricsha coolies and the tooting of motor cars. It is a gay, panoramic scene, such as could hardly be duplicated anywhere else in China.

A Britisher in Shanghai once made the remark, “There are two things an Englishman must have, a king and a race-course.” The Shanghai race-course, with the Public Recreation Grounds adjoining, covers about sixty-six acres in a part of the city where property is valued the highest. The land was bought up years ago. So much open space in that locality could scarcely be secured to-day at any price.

Bubbling Well Road is a synonym for the patrician quarter of Shanghai. It is a continuation of Nanking Road and takes its name from the effervescent pool enclosed by a low cement wall at its terminus. Near by Bubbling Well is the foreign cemetery, a shady, restful spot. Every thirtieth of May the Americans gather within its gates for a national memorial service. They represent all creeds and callings, merchant and missionary, tourist and adventurer, aliens on a distant shore, drawn together by a common love for a common flag. The American corps of the Shanghai Volunteers and the “Regulars” from the American cruisers anchored in the river, march up from the Bund with bugle and fife and salute in front of the flower-strewn mounds. A few of these graves date back more than sixty years.

Some of the handsomest residences on Bubbling Well Road are owned by wealthy Chinese. Pleasant afternoons and evenings automobiles by the score flash up and down this wide, smoothly-paved road and on to the delightful suburbs beyond, many of them crowded to overflowing with merry-making Chinese, women as well as men.

In the French Concession, the avenue formerly called “Paul Brunat,” after the first French Consul, but since the outbreak of the war changed to Avenue Joffre, vies with Bubbling Well Road in the elegance of its residences, which some prefer because of their more varied style of architecture. Being a newer thoroughfare, this avenue lacks in a measure the abundant shade trees and fine old gardens which are among the chief attractions of Bubbling Well Road. It is frequently pointed out to strangers as one of the few long roads in Shanghai which is also a straight one, running most of its entire length of between two and three miles with scarcely a jog.

The “tenderloin” district centres about Nanking and Foochow Roads. The latter is a narrow street with nothing at first sight to arrest the attention, but men shake their heads at the mention of it and women avoid it if possible. Its mark of distinction is the number and character of its tea-houses. They are entered directly from the street. A wide staircase leads to the restaurant which occupies the second story, the ground floor being used for business. Along the front of the building and on the side as well, if it happens to be on a corner, runs a narrow veranda, a much-sought-for gathering place in mild weather, where idlers can chat and sip their tea or wine while enjoying a view of all that is going on in the street below. The tea-houses, often richly furnished with carved black-wood from the south, are practically deserted till the latter part of the afternoon, when a few loungers make their appearance. But it is at night that the crowds pour in. Then the tables fill up, Chinese musicians rend the air with what to foreign ears seems a riot of discord and by nine or ten o’clock everything is in full swing. In and out among the square tables, filling the brilliantly lighted rooms, trail slowly little processions of young girls. Nearly all are pretty and very young. Clad in silk or satin, adorned with jewelry, their faces unnatural with paint and powder, they follow the lead of the woman in charge of each group. She stops often to draw attention ingratiatingly to her charges and expatiate on their good points. When one is chosen she leaves her to her fate and passes on to dispose of others. Multitudes of victims, innocent of any voluntary wrong, having been sold into this slavery when too young to resist and not uncommonly in babyhood, are kept up hour after hour in the close atmosphere of the tea-room awaiting the pleasure of their prospective seducers. Out on the street, by ricsha and on foot, women continue to hurry to the tea-houses with their living merchandise, and still they keep arriving till the night is far advanced and business at a stand-still.

Opposite the Public Gardens, where Soochow Creek empties into the river, stand three consulates in close proximity, with their nation’s flag floating in the breeze from the flagpole. They represent Japan, America, and Germany, other Consulates occupying roomy mansions on Bubbling Well Road. The new Russian Consulate that is being built next to the German will soon be completed and add considerably to the sightliness of the river front. Across the street on the corner of Broadway stands the Astor House, the oldest hostelry in Shanghai. This district, once a part of the American Concession and now known as “Hongkew,” does not bear a very fair reputation, though some of the best families still reside within its boundaries. But nothing can be said in disparagement of Hongkew Market, by far the largest and best in the city. Housekeepers on Bubbling Well Road, miles distant, have been known on occasion to send their cooks to the Hongkew market and bewail the fact that they could not go every day. What Covent Garden Market is to London this market is to Shanghai. The saying, that one of the quickest ways of getting acquainted with a city is to visit its markets, is singularly applicable here. An hour or two spent in the early morning walking, or edging one’s way through the noisy square where all nationalities congregate, is worth an entire guide-book of ordinary information. The market covers a whole block, has cement floors and wooden pillars holding up the tiled roof, running water for keeping fresh the fish and vegetables, clean stalls, and very decent people in charge of them. The women are not as numerous as the men but they manage to make their presence felt, and discuss prices and provender in shrill voices that rise above the din and tumult of the multitudes. Vendors without stalls line the sidewalks, squatting close by their baskets, and between sales sip tea or gulp down hot rice and bean curd with well-worn chop-sticks. The money-changers’ tables, protected by a strong net-work of wire, dot the place here and there, for “small money” is always a necessity, the big heavy coppers and “cash” being most in evidence.

Yangtsepoo Road, meaning Poplar-Tree-Shore Road, is a continuation of Broadway, and as it is chiefly a street of mills, stands rather low in the social scale. It runs parallel with the river and should have been a residential avenue, the most beautiful in Shanghai, but somehow the mills got there first and then there was no help for it, although the fresh breezes and fine outlook are lost on the tired mill hands shut up behind brick walls from dawn to dawn.

One of the best known streets in the city and one of the longest, although it lays claim to no other distinction, is Szechuen Road. It starts at the Chinese city, changing at Soochow Creek to North Szechuen Road, then to North Szechuen Road Extension, and pursues its devious way northward far beyond Hongkew Public Park, which by the way is not in Hongkew at all. This park of forty-five acres is the largest in Shanghai, and a genuine godsend to foreigners remaining in the city during the summer. Those living in the neighbourhood seek it in the early morning and late afternoon for golf and tennis, securing the exercise so necessary to health in this Eastern climate, and from far and near people resort there in the evening to rest and listen to the band play. Along its northern end, outside the limits of the International Settlement, Szechuen Road winds back and forth like a corkscrew. Some say it follows an old buffalo path, but most agree that the road’s meanderings are due to the unwillingness of the original Chinese property owners to sell their land, since to do so might affect their “good luck.” Perhaps some old graves blocked the way, and albeit no one living cherished any sentiment regarding them, still they must not be removed for fear of offending the spirits of the dead. Or possibly the terrible dragon inhabiting the nether regions in this vicinity would resent an innovation like a paved road above his domains, and naturally it would never do to arouse his ire. Hence the road-builders were obliged to let the street follow the line it could and not the one of their preference. Apropos of the superstitious fear aroused in the minds of the common people by the building operations of foreigners, the case of the Methodist chapel in the French Concession is a good illustration. When this mission church was erected many years ago, the Chinese in the neighbourhood were thrown into a state of great consternation. What would their outraged tutelary deities say and do now? How could they escape the afflictions that unquestionably would be visited upon them by the evil spirits hovering about the foreign worship house? But necessity is the mother of invention, and the terrified residents at last hit upon a happy ruse to deceive the inimical spirits which seemed to be efficacious. Any one visiting that corner to-day may see on the roof of the house just across the road from the chapel two bottles with long necks pointing toward it. The bottles represent cannon which, as the most stupid spirit may guess, are likely to belch forth fire and destruction the moment that so much as a threatening glance is cast that way!

Many of the most travelled thoroughfares in Shanghai are inconveniently narrow, and in addition have scarcely any sidewalk, so that it is necessary for pedestrians to use the road. Yet the early settlers who laid out the Foreign Settlement almost quarrelled among themselves over what seemed to some an altogether unnecessary width of twenty-five feet allowed for the streets. As for sidewalks they were apparently not taken into consideration at all. The Municipal Council has now decreed that whenever a building that abuts on the street is torn down, the new one, at whatever sacrifice, must be put back several feet. This law, which is strictly enforced, is gradually working a vast improvement in the appearance and comfort of the city. All the Shanghai streets inside the foreign settlements are paved. A large number of them are macadamized, though it has been found that in the purely Chinese districts, chip paving on a bed of concrete and tar is more suitable and economical. Road repairing is constantly going on, for as the soil is alluvial, the innumerable heavy wheelbarrows and trucks cause rapid deterioration. Several of the streets, notably the Bund and Nanking Road, have received what promises to be a permanent paving, consisting of wood and lithofelt blocks on a foundation of concrete. If the public funds were sufficient to treat all the streets in the same way it would be a boon to the city and a matter of rejoicing to the populace.

It is surprising how muddy and disagreeable the streets become after only a few hours’ rain, while actual floods in the low-lying sections accompany a downpour, and this in spite of the excellent sewers. It is equally interesting to note how quickly the streets dry. Almost as soon as the rain stops the water-sprinkler is out laying the dust. The Municipal street sweepers are always busy. They wear for uniform a bright red cotton jacket showing below it their faded blue trousers, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a broad red cotton band, both band and jacket stamped with three large letters, S.M.C. (Shanghai Municipal Council). Each one is furnished with a bamboo dustpan and a small reed broom with which he ploddingly sweeps up the detritus. This débris is not wasted. Indeed in China scarcely anything is thrown away, and besides, there is no place to throw it, since all the ground is sown with crops. The Foreign Municipality utilizes the street sweepings either for fertilization or in raising low land. And right here the creeks which intersect Shanghai prove their usefulness, for the refuse is dumped from zinc-lined carts onto native boats and poled along at little expense to the place where it is needed. Shanghai could hardly do without its tidal creeks, offensive as they often are when the tide is out.

Shanghai is nothing if not a city of contrasts. Right among the elegant homes, club-houses, and private hotels on exclusive Bubbling Well Road squat the insignificant shops of “the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.” In front of its fashionable gardens pass fantastic idol processions, displaying as one of their prominent devices mammoth paper dragons, of variegated colours, whose opening and closing jaws and writhing scaly bodies, manipulated with cunning art by men carrying them, are gruesomely realistic. In the busiest section of Nanking Road an inconspicuous passageway leads a few yards back to a grimy Buddhist temple that seems as far apart from the hurrying crowds and bustle of street traffic outside as if it were on another planet. An occasional worshiper slips in to bow before the blackened altar, where red wax candles drip grease and incense wafers are forever smouldering. In a side room, gloomy as the entrance to Dante’s Inferno, are seated tiers of black idols streaked with gilding and paint. They are a repulsive sight and one turns with relief to the living shaven-headed priests in dull grey gowns lolling about the court.

The most modernized Shanghai thoroughfares sometimes witness quaint scenes. The following was described by an eye-witness: An old Chinese woman, with all her winter padding on, tried to cross a down-town street through the maze of traffic. Ten yards or so from the pavement an electric tram car caught her full in the chest and propelled her neatly on to the further track, where another car caught her in the back. The second car pushed her staggering under the feet of a ricsha coolie drawing a Chinese cook home from market with a load of vegetables, a ham and two live ducks. By the time the old lady had disentangled a flapping duck from her elaborate headdress and the coolie had wiped the ham clean with his dirty sleeve, all the traffic of motor-cars, wheelbarrows, and broughams had been held up, and it took some minutes more of hard work to get the innocent cause of the trouble safely back to the spot from which she started.