5
Yet, this is no stranger than that with so much of excellence in Hong-Kong, there should also go the perpetuation of coolieism; to paraphrase, that with so much dignity and honesty in trade should go so much inhumanity in the treatment of men. That is the mystery of Britannia,—and her success. America went into the Orient and immediately began educating it. In answer to a German criticism of British educational work in Hong-Kong, the "Japan Chronicle" (British) says:
Considering how much greater British interests in China have hitherto been than American, the Americans are far more guilty of the abominable crime of educating the Chinese than the British, having spent a great deal of money, and induced young Chinese to come to America and get Americanized. Most people, including impartial British subjects, would find fault rather with the narrow limits of English education in China than with its intentions. Hongkong has been for many years the center of an enormously profitable trade, and had things been done with the altruism that one would like to see in international relations, there would be ten universities instead of only one and a hundred students sent to England for college or technical training where only one is sent to-day.
Hitherto, it has been Britain's success that she has not interfered with the habits of the races she has ruled. In Hong-Kong she has built a modern city out of nothing, but has permitted Asiatic defects to find their place within it.
For instance, there was no sewerage system in Hong-Kong,—a fact than which no greater criticism could be made of Britain, or of any other nation pretending to be civilized. In this no question of altruism is involved, but purely one of self-interest. And if greater concern for such matters were manifest, doubtless it would work its way back through concubinage, ancestor worship, charlatanism in public and private life.
Having taken my chances with criticism, I shall risk praise. Englishmen have never, to my knowledge, been given credit for the possession of romantic souls; yet nothing but a deep love of romance could be responsible for the manner in which Britain has preserved Hong-Kong's Chinese face. Despite the fact that it is entirely Western in its structure, I never felt the Oriental flavor more in all Japan than I did at Hong-Kong. The sedan-chairs that take one up the steeps and remind one of the swells on the China Sea in their motion, the thousands of rickishaws that roll swiftly, quietly over smoothly paved streets, the particularly attractive Chinese signs that lure one into dazzling shops with unmistakable Eastern atmosphere, the money-changers and the markets dripping with Oriental messes, left an impression on my mind that none of my later experiences can dispel.