Baseball games are played here the year round, and the Filipino clubs make a good showing.
Good steamship accommodation could formerly be had for $125 on intermediate ships from Manila to San Francisco, but recently the rate has advanced $50. On the larger ships, first-class, the fare is $250. The sailing time between the two points is about a month, the distance being 8,000 miles. Much cheaper rates can be had on Japanese ships, second-class, but if one can afford the difference in price the $175 rate is worth the increased sum in accommodation. The increase of $50 on the intermediate vessels has diverted considerable travel from American to Japanese ships, because many people cannot afford to pay the higher sum.
CHAPTER IV
We left Manila with passage paid to San Francisco. Out through the splendid bay we sailed, when the ship was headed for Hongkong, where ships were changed. Leaving at night, a flare of light in the business center of Hongkong gradually tapered up the side of the mountain to the fort on the summit, nearly 2,000 feet. We had started for Shanghai, China. Every ship that leaves Hongkong for San Francisco, of whatever nationality, has Americans aboard. After two and a half days' sailing the ship anchored off Wusung, where the sea was yellow with the muddy water of the great Yangtse River delta. A ship tender was boarded and a start made up the Huangpu River, which was crowded with ships, and along and away from the banks smoke-stacks towered for 14 miles, when the boat was made fast to a wharf at Shanghai. From the wharf, looking over a strip of green, there rose a wall of big, solid, clean-looking business buildings, nearly as good as one will find in any city of the world.
One has a varied choice of post offices in Shanghai, as there are seven, representing as many nationalities. These are French, Russian, German, American, British, Japanese and Chinese. Shanghai is another Chinese city known as a "treaty port," which signifies that China had granted land concessions to one or more nations, on which to build cities—forts, if necessary—and collect revenues from imports, and in some instances from exports, passing through the treaty port. Chinese live in some of the concessions, but they make their home in these districts only by sufferance of the country, or countries, to whom these tracts have been granted. The Chinese residents have neither voice nor vote in the smallest matters pertaining to the general government of treaty settlements. Large numbers of Chinese living in both the French and International Settlements found protection under these flags during native wars, when their own country could not offer them a place of safety.
In 1843 British troops occupied Shanghai, and by that means a land concession was gained from China. About the same time the United States was granted a similar concession, and seven years later France had also acquired a land grant there. The American and British concessions were amalgamated in 1863, but France would not join the two English-speaking nations in the formation of one foreign settlement. The title of the American and English land tract is "The Foreign Community of Shanghai North of the Yangkingpang," but the territory is commonly termed "The International Settlement." Since the pooling of interests by England and the United States additional territory has been acquired from China, until the International Settlement now comprises an area of 6,000 acres of land; while France, choosing independence, has only the original concession, 358 acres. Self-governing powers are exercised by the International Settlement, which includes imposing taxation and policing the territory. A council governs the Settlement, and the members are elected by European residents who pay a house rental of $400 and by landowners whose property valuation would bring that sum annually if rented. Land cannot be bought outright for building or speculative purposes, as the land was conceded on terms of perpetual lease. No matter how much interests a Chinaman may have within the Settlement boundary he cannot vote on municipal matters. Harbor dues, import and export taxes—any revenue from commerce passing in or going out through the section of the harbor owned by the respective countries—is collected by the officials of that country. The United States has the better section of the water-front, but English and Japanese ships practically control the trade of that important port.
Shanghai is the distributing center for the commerce of the thickly populated sections on the Yangtse River. Large ships can travel on the Yangtse in certain seasons of the year as far inland as Hankow, 600 miles from the delta. Then smaller vessels go on to Ichang, 400 miles still further inland, and river craft from there carry cargoes to Soufu, 500 miles further, or 1,500 miles inland from Shanghai. The total length of the Yangste, which rises in the mountains of Thibet, with its tributaries, is 3,000 miles. The width of the river at the delta is 30 miles. Shanghai is mentioned in history dating back 2,000 years.
Professional mourners, or weepers, at funerals is an occupation in China that brings in a good fee, if the weeper be a good crier. Preceding a funeral is what one may term a band, the instruments producing noise being brass pans or trays, beaten by men. After the pan-beaters come several Chinese, wearing high, fluffy hats. The coffin, which is generally a log of wood shaped out and of cylindrical form, follows the men wearing the strange headgear. The coffin is borne on two bamboo poles, two Chinamen at each end—four carriers in all. Relatives and friends of the deceased follow, either walking or riding in a ricksha, wheelbarrow, or carriage. Among this group a woman will be heard crying lustily. It is really touching to hear the deep intonations of grief as vented in a loud, mournful sound, until it becomes known that the apparently grief-stricken woman is a professional mourner, never having known the deceased in life.
Women and men do not play parts together on a Chinese theatrical stage. The actresses generally wear long beards and mope around the stage, showing no more life than that of a snake when the frost is being thawed out of his body by an early springtime sun. To a European the plot is long drawn out, lifeless, and even tedious. But the Chinese have a way of overcoming this, as tea drinking seems to be as much a factor of the playhouse as the performance. Small tables resting on bamboo-pole legs are placed about the seating space of the theater. One will no sooner have got settled in the seat than a waiter will appear and place a teapot and cup and saucer before the attendant. Neither milk nor sugar accompanies the tea, and the charge is ten cents. In a short time another waiter, carrying in his hand a stack of steaming towels, will stop at the table and lay a hot cloth over the teapot. He pauses, for the price of the towel is five cents. Later, still another towel fellow stops, removes the one the first man placed over the teapot, puts a fresh steaming cloth over it, waits until he has received the five cents, and walks on. The hot towel serves a dual purpose—keeps the tea warm, and is used on the face and hands to regale the weary theatergoers while enduring the mopy performance. In the cheaper section of a theater, what looks like a store counter is built, from which the "gallery gods" drink tea.