An unfriendly feeling seemed to be harbored toward Americans by other Europeans living in the Chinese coast cities. It was claimed that since American occupation of the Philippines the cost of living had advanced 50 per cent., as the influx of Europeans to the islands had created a greater demand for Chinese meat, vegetables and other necessities. Hotel expenses were very reasonable in Shanghai, however, as $1.50 a day only was paid.
Bombay, India, was the most attractive city visited in the East, and Shanghai, China, with a population of a million inhabitants, was the second best city. Between the landing place on the river and the splendid front of buildings that give a visitor his first impression of the metropolis of the Yangtse is a stretch of green, grass-covered land, known as the Bund. To the right, opening off the park strip, are the Public Gardens. A good street car system is a feature of the city, and electric lights are numerous. In any direction one may look, enterprise and good management are in evidence. The river is teeming with craft, large and small vessels loading and unloading at each side of the waterway, and high smoke-stacks, rising from cotton and paper mills and shipbuilding yards, add much to the thrifty surroundings; then large oil tanks, busy warehouses, and the gunboats of great nations anchored in the river give the place a metropolitan appearance, while the buildings at every turn are good. The streets are crowded with people, and the stores filled with purchasers, most of the merchants in that section of the city being Europeans. The attractive buildings on the Bund do not comprise all of the good buildings of Shanghai, for some of the homes, built of red and gray-colored brick, two and three stories in height, are good to look at. Then there are sidewalks to the Shanghai streets, which are well paved with asphalt and granite blocks, and these are kept clean. Many churches are to be seen. Schools are frequently met with, and parks have been placed at convenient sections; also a horse racecourse, sports grounds, and good hospitals. In fact, both English and United States officials have done well in the upbuilding of the International Settlement.
Down the Huangpu River, the channel walled by merchant ships and gunboats, we sail to Wusung, where an American ship was boarded for Japan. Most of the passengers came from Manila, and were returning to the States to regain their health and seek employment in a country where people can drink water and eat raw fruit or vegetables, whether grown in the ground or on trees. The first thing noticed among the passengers was the absence of strong drink during meals. Stimulants are a feature at mealtime with almost every other nationality traveling in the Far East. A day and a half's sail through the base of the Yellow Sea brought us to Nagasaki, Japan.
After the vessel had anchored, flat boats or scows loaded with coal, and also with Japanese men and women, were seen heading toward her. The women were to help load the ship with bunker coal. Each woman and girl had over her head a white cloth, with large, black Japanese characters stamped in the print. Grass baskets, that hold but a shovelful, are used to coal ships at this Japanese port. The scows have been made fast to the ship, the baskets are being filled, the coal passing line is formed from the barge to the vessel, extending up a ladder to a hatch over the bunkers. The tidy looking women are now passing baskets from one to the other as quickly as one would hand a plate to another if needed at once. A stream of these is constantly being tossed from one to the other, and small girls are engaged at returning the empty ones to the scow. Two, and even three, streams of coal run into the bunkers from one scow by means of the handleless baskets, and, as from three to five scows will be unloading at the same time from both sides of the vessel, it will be understood what a large quantity of fuel can be emptied into a ship from ten to fifteen of these coal lines. The time required to furnish a vessel with bunker coal in this manner is from four to five hours. The wages of the coal passers are based on the amount of coal a ship takes on, as an equal sum is paid the coalers. This amounts to from 15 to 25 cents each. As many as 500 Japanese—mostly women—keep life in their bodies by this means of employment.
The harbor was attractively dotted with partly green islands, and in front the country was hilly and mostly terraced. The terraced hills are the "farms" of the people. Every inch of land that can be built up with rock to a level surface is used to grow vegetables and other products.
Oxen, hitched to carts and wearing grass shoes, was something that had not been seen—the grass shoes—in other countries. A grass string passed between the hoofs, which was connected with another grass string or rope wound about the fetlock. These held on the shoe, or grass mat, protecting the hoofs from wear on the roads.
In India boards are sawed from logs while sticking in the air at an angle of 35 degrees, with one man on the log pulling a crosscut saw, and another under, on a platform, pulling the saw downward after the fellow on top had pulled the saw up. At Nagasaki boards were being cut from logs by hand also, but the sawyer stood on the ground and ripped the log from the side, in the same way that meat is carved. The saw was two feet long and a foot wide, with deep teeth, and with that implement slabs were being ripped off logs 20 feet in length. Like the Indian, the Jap pulls a plane toward him, while a white carpenter shoves a plane from him. Still, one may see any day in New York City men "chopping" wood with granite blocks.
While the rest of Japan was closed to foreigners, Nagasaki, for 200 years before the country was thrown open to the world, was an open port, and even then life was none too safe, as missionaries had been killed in that section. Nagasaki has a population of 150,000, and most of the people are engaged at coaling ships, working in a shipyard, or in pottery works. The streets are narrow, but tidier than those seen in some cities left behind, and the homes small, none higher than two stories, mostly of wood construction. Ricksha pullers in this place were a pest.