FIRST AID DEPARTMENT
CALIFORNIA
The Red Cross and the Dragon.
By William Lathrop McClure.
Going to the smart new office building of the Canton Bank, passing shops filled with the weird and bizarre merchandise of the Orient, passing blouse-clad forms shuffling by on heelless boat-shaped sandals—truly, I think, this cannot be the old Chinese quarter of San Francisco. These are clean streets, these buildings are handsome, this public school is of concrete faced with bright blue tiles and filled with smiling little Chinese men and women. Sanitary? Yes, but still picturesque. Soon this ancient race will weave exotic mystery and charm about steel-girdered walls and balconies will bulge with great globular lanterns of oiled paper swinging in the wind. For some days to come Chinese ladies with “lily feet” will look down over their tulips upon the crowded street, and wish for the Good Lady Festival that they may wear their brocade and gold abroad, even as “other” women.
NEW CHINESE QUARTER. SAN FRANCISCO.
But the old order changeth. New China does not brook the “cycle of Cathay.” And here, in the Canton Bank Building, under the wing of the American National Red Cross, has grown a flourishing offshoot of the Grand Legion of the Red Cross, of the California Branch, that has, in the vernacular of the street, “made good.” For a while—a short while—it was contented to be one detachment: then it became a twin; now its membership has reached about the hundredth mark, with supporting members. We watch this changeling with surprise. It needs no nursing.
THE CHINESE RELIEF COLUMN OF THE CALIFORNIA RED CROSS.