They wear a uniform that consists of blue overalls, a blue coat, and no shirt whatever, which, I think, is bad advertising for their national trade. They brought shirts with them, it seems, but are more comfy without.
The minimum wage is three francs a day. Two-thirds of what they earn is paid them here, the other third given to their families in China. The system of hiring is unique. No names are used, probably because most Chinks have Sam Lee as a monniker, and the paymaster would get all mixed up with an army of Sam Lees. They are numbered and their finger prints are taken by an agent in China. He sends these identification marks to the camp here, and when the Chinks arrive they are checked up by a finger-print expert from Scotland Yard. This gentleman said there had been several cases where the Chinaman landing here was a ringer, some “friend” back home having signed up and then coaxed the ringer to come in his place, believing, apparently, that the plot would not be detected and that his profit would be the one-third share of the wage that is paid in China. The ringer’s family would be done out of its pittance, but that, of course, would make no difference to the ringer’s friend. The finger-print system serves not only to prevent the success of cute little schemes like that, but also to amuse the Chinks, who are as proud of their prints as if they had designed them.
We went into the general store, which is conducted by a Britisher. The Chinese had just had a pay-day and were wild to spend. One of them said he wanted a razor. The proprietor produced one in a case, and the Chink handed over his money without even looking at the tool. Another wanted a hat. The prop. gave him a straw with a band that was all colors of the rainbow. The Chinaman paid for it and took it away without troubling to see whether it fitted.
A block or so from the store we ran across two Chinks who had been naughty. Each was in a stock, a pasteboard affair on which was inscribed, in Chinese, the nature of his offense. One of them had been guilty of drinking water out of a fire bucket. The other had drunk something else out of a bottle—drunk too much of it, in fact. They looked utterly wretched, and our guide told us the punishment was the most severe that could be given: that a Chinaman’s pride was his most vulnerable spot.
The gent who had quenched his thirst from the fire bucket was sentenced to wear his stock a whole day. He of the stew was on the last lap of a week’s term.
We talked with one of the Lee family through an interpreter. We asked him if he knew that the United States was in the war against Germany. He replied, No, but he had heard that France was.
Just before we left the settlement a British plane flew over it. A Chink who was walking with us evidently mistook it for a Hun machine, for he looked up and said: “Bloody boche!”
From Chinatown we were driven to the American Visitors’ Château, where gentlemen and correspondents from the United States are entertained. It’s a real château, with a moat and everything. The major is our host. The major has seen most of his service in India and China.
He said he was glad to meet us, which I doubt. The new arrivals, Mr. Gibbons, the Harvard professor and myself, were shown our rooms and informed that dinner would occur at eight o’clock. Before dinner we were plied with cocktails made by our friend, the captain. The ingredients, I believe, were ether, arsenic and carbolic acid in quantities not quite sufficient to cause death.
Eleven of us gathered around the festal board. There were the major and his aids, three British captains, one with a monocle. There was the Harvard professor, and the head of a certain American philanthropical organization, and his secretary. And then there were us, me and Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O’Flaherty and Mr. Somner, upstarts in the so-called journalistic world.