2
But I must get back to Shanghai, even though Miss Smythe is so attractive. As long as I remained under her wing I had taken virtually no notice of China. So it is in Shanghai; one cannot see the Orient for the Occidentals. For if Hong-Kong is an example of adulterated British imperialism, Shanghai is one of European internationalism grafted upon China. At Shanghai the forces of two contending racial streams meet, like the waters at the entrance of Port Philip, and here, though the surface is smooth and glassy, there are eddies and whirlpools within, which are a menace to any small craft that may attempt to cross.
How strange to wander about streets and buildings quite European but to see only here and there a white face! It is an ultra-modern city built upon a flat plain. The streams of Chinese that come wandering in from regions unknown to the transient, give him a sense of contact with a vast, endless world beyond. They might be coming from just round the corner, but their manner is of plainsmen bringing their goods and chattels to market. In comparison with the Southern Chinese, these are giants, but still dirty and most of them chestless. In constant turmoil and travail, beggars pleading for a pittance with which to sustain their empty lives, limousines making way for themselves between rickshaws and one-wheeled barrows, coolies pulling and carrying loads, some grunting as they jig their way along, others chanting in chorus,—yet all in the "foreign" settlement, amid buildings that are alien to them, and largely for men who see only the gain they here secure. I wonder if the Chinese say of the Europeans as Americans are often heard to say of Italians and Orientals,—that they come only to make money and return to spend it?
Yet the white have built Shanghai. Shanghai is not Chinese. Had it not been for the white men, the plain would still be swampy, would still be a litter of hovels with here and there a mansion flowering in the mud. The mud still messes up the edge of things in Shanghai. The creek is an example. There are the sampans and barges, some loaded with pyramid-like stacks of hay, some with heavy, thick-walled mahogany coffins, the myriads of families huddling within the holds, and the murky tides washing in and washing out beneath them. Here the sexes live in greater intimacy, it seemed to me, than in Hong-Kong. I actually saw one woman place her hand in what I was sure was an affectionate way on the shoulder of a man: and some were mutually helpful. But otherwise, despite the great conglomeration and greater coöperation, in the entire mass one cannot see how ancestor-worshipers can show so little regard for one another.
In the market-place the confusion is more orderly. Here even white women come to stock up their kitchens, and here Japanese women move about, sober by nature and by virtue of the superiority they possess as conquerors in their husbands' rights. Two girls are quarreling vociferously and the more self-controlled look on both sympathetically and antipathetically. The washed-down pavement of the market floor is no place, however, for a serious bout.
Through the long hours of early evening I wandered into one street and out the other. I had become more or less reconciled to the alien aspects of Shanghai, to good stores selling good goods, to fashionable hotels and spacious residences, but one thing was inalienably alien to it, and that was a second-hand book-shop. It had not occurred to me that foreigners in China would part with their books if they ever got hold of them. And for a moment I was altogether transported, and my magic carpet lay in San Francisco, in Chicago, in New York all at once. But it was chilly and the rain made the city worse than a washed-down market, for it depopulated the streets, leaving me as dreary in heart as in body. I was glad when the hour came for me to make my appearance at the kind woman's house for chow.
Though I was sorry to hear the missionary at the mission decry the Chinese to the satisfaction of her Japanese patrons, and felt that it turned me slightly against both, still both Japanese and missionaries were kind and attentive to me. In the evening, a young Japanese business man called for a motor-car and took us out in the bleak, wet night to see the great white way of Shanghai. The rain deflected the strange glimmers of electric light through the isinglassed curtains of the car. For a time we skidded along over slushy streets, turning into the theater district as the attraction supreme. Here the gonfalons drooped in the watery air, while Chinese mess merchants stood in out of the rain with their little wagonettes of steaming portions. In a whirl we were through the cluttering crowds and making for the residential districts. Then wide avenues opened out in serpentine ways, shaggy trees dripping overhead, the slippery pavement swinging us from side to side as our dare-devil Chinese driver sped on to Bubbling Well. For an hour we rode, I did not know whither, but everywhere at my right and left were palatial Chinese and foreign residences. Without knowing it we had turned and were back in Shanghai, and presently within doors again,—and asleep.
3
Next day, this same Japanese business man volunteered to escort me to Chinese City. I would have gone by myself, but every one looked horrified at the idea; so I accepted this knightly guide. At the appointed time I presented myself at his office. He had asked his Chinese clerk to accompany us for protection, and ordered three rickshaws. Though he had lived in Shanghai for years, he had never gone to see Chinese City, and was glad to avail himself of an excuse for doing so now. The Japanese is a natural-born cicerone.