The opera, for such it appeared to be, was already under way. The lady, the Chinese equivalent of a prima-donna––dressed in silks emblazoned with gold spangles, tinsel and glass jewels, with a strange head-dress, three feet high, consisting of feathers and pom-pons––was holding forth in what was intended to be song. It occurred to Phil that he had thrown old boots at tom-cats in Mrs. Clunie’s back-yard for giving expression to what was sweet melody in comparison.
The actress’s face was painted and powdered to a mere mask. Her finger nails were two inches longer than her four-inch-long feet. She rattled those fingers nails in a manner that made Phil’s flesh creep, although this action seemed highly pleasing to the audience in general. The lady, Phil learned from the Chinaman at his side, was a famous beauty.
The scenery required no description, being merely a number of plain, movable partitions, draught-screens and chairs. There was no drop-curtain, and the scene shifters worked in full view of the audience, removing furniture and knocking down partitions with hammers during the vocal rendering of some of the thrilling passages of the opera. On another platform, behind the stage, the orchestra was making strenuous, and at times, very effective attempts to drown the squeals of the Leading Lady, who did not seem to mind it a bit. The conductor, in his shirt sleeves, was laying on, alternately, to a Chinese drum and what looked like two empty cocoanut shells, whacking out a species of rag-time all on his own, while the two other members of the band were performing on high-pitched Chinese fiddles, determined evidently on keeping up the racket at all costs.
Phil noticed no evidence of sheet music, so familiar in a white man’s orchestra. These were real artists and they played entirely from memory.
In an endeavour to be enlightened, Phil touched a Chinaman in front of him––for the familiar one at his side had slipped quietly to some other part of the hall.
“John,––what all this play about––you know?” he asked.
Without turning round, the Oriental sang to him in a top-storey voice:––
“Lu-wang Kah Chek-tho, chiu-si. Tung-Kwo chi Ku-su. Savvy?”
Phil did not “savvy,” but another Chinaman, more obliging and more English, who introduced himself as Mee Yi-ow, told him the gist of the tale in pigeon English, up to the point where Phil had come in, so that he was able to follow the performance with some intelligence, from there on.