September 27th.—I was up and dressed at dawn and mounted half asleep on deck. The rising tide was beginning to put all the anchored vessels afloat. The entrance into the harbour of Shanghai being rather dangerous, we put out signs calling the pilot, and soon perceived his fragile skiff, which the waves seemed to swallow up at every moment. Our sailors had to pull the pilot up by means of a rope, after which we went up the Woosung river, of dirty dark brown colour. The banks are low and scattered all over with habitations. The pilot brought us into the port, filled with cruisers of all nationalities.
CHAPTER LXXVIII
SHANGHAI
After having said a hearty farewell to our captain and his officers, we mounted a canoe steered with one oar, and went ashore. Mr. Redding, our Consul, was on the quay to meet us. He proposed for us to put up at his house, but the invitation was declined with thanks. We preferred to stop at the Hôtel des Colonies, situated in the French Concession, to which we drove in Mr. Redding’s carriage. The French Concession is a real French corner with its own law court, municipality, police, etc.
The city rather disappointed me with its modern appearance, and wide crowded streets bearing French names, lined with houses of European architecture and brilliant shops. Shanghai is the city of great international commerce in the extreme Orient. The French, English and Americans possess concessions which they rent from the Chinese Government. Each concession has its own Consul.
All the first storey of our hotel is put to our disposal, each apartment has its own bathroom. I had to lock myself in to avoid the native merchants, who enter without knocking at the door, all smiles and making funny little bows.
In the afternoon we started in a litter, carried on the shoulders of four porters, to inspect the curiosities of the native town. It was a new mode of locomotion to us. The streets for the most part are two or three yards broad, and full of local colour. I looked out at everything with wondering eyes, it’s all so strange! The houses of the rich are built of stone, and those of the poor, with lumps of earth mixed with chopped straw. Nearly every house has a small courtyard surrounded by a high wall, a low door is cut in this wall giving access to the street. We see a fat Chinese merchant dressed in a blue silk robe, sitting in front of one of these doors, fanning himself in a melancholy manner. At the next door a barber is shaving his client in the open air. We are carried now through a street full of shops; their fronts disappear completely behind gilded planks hung up vertically, bearing hieroglyphic signs. The shopkeeper sits on the floor of his shop, surrounded by his various goods. He never rises to customers, for everything is within reach of his hand. Women never meddle with trade, which is solely in the hands of the men. “Ladies first,” we say in the west; in the east it is “ladies last”; their sphere is the back-room. The whole duty of a woman is to worship and wait upon her husband, who is lord and master in its most exacting sense.
The streets are full of life and movement. Chinese women, enveloped in long blue shirts, plod on their deformed feet. Fat, grotesque-looking Chinese maggots sprawl in splendid victorias. Curious one-wheeled vehicles are pushed by a vigorous coolie, bearing one passenger only, sitting at one end of a plank put on the top of the enormous wheel, making balance to his goods and chattels placed on the other end of the plank. As “time is not money” in the Orient, the fare of a run which lasts sometimes half-a-day, with many halts, is only one farthing! We met a “towkee,” or mandarin, arrayed in a marvellous costume embroidered with silk and gold, who was conveyed in a rich palanquin, surrounded by many attendants who beat the drum all the way. Further on our carriers stopped to make way for a funeral procession, preceded by Chinamen sounding the horn and beating the drum. The deceased is carried in a large box ornamented with a metal dragon. Behind came the hired women mourners, with their plaintive wail. The whole procession is arrayed in white, the mourning colour in China. On our way back we passed along the Bund, in the English section, a pleasant little park to which no Chinaman, be he a coolie or a mandarin, was admitted, and traversed the broad, grassy Maidan, the European rendezvous, where Englishmen and Americans, in spotless flannels, played cricket or football. On the pier we saw a flag signalling a tempest coming on. How annoying! We shall have to wait here until the typhoon passes away. In different places placards announced the arrival of Antoine Kontski, the celebrated pianist, Beethoven’s last disciple.
September 28th.—My husband was invited by the French authorities to visit Zi-ka-wai, a small colony established by the Jesuits, two miles from Shanghai. The reverend fathers on leaving France take an oath never to return to their native land. On arriving in this far-away country, they put on the Chinese costume, and, cross in hand—their only weapon—they go about fearlessly, preaching Christianity in the very centre of fanaticism and hatred of the white race. Sergy saw a group of monks sitting under the palms, watching their long-tressed pupils who played tennis.
September 29th.—To-day our Consul gave a dinner-party at which Kontski was present. The old mæstro is 82 years old, but does not appear more than 60. He has much humour in him, and kept the attention of the whole table with his amusing anecdotes.