The Pacific Triangle

A long, narrow street stretched across the city. Spanish buildings tinted pink and delicately ornamented, lined the sides. White stone buildings, chipped and seamed with use and age, lined the way. Broad entrances permitted glimpses of sumptuous patios, refreshed by tropical plants; low stone steps leading up to dark vault-like chambers; windows barred but without glass,—spacious retreats built by caballeros who thought they knew the value of life. Indeed, they knew how to build against invasion of the sun and the Oriental pirate, but not against the invasion of time. Perhaps they live better as Spaniards to-day than they lived as conquerors yesterday.

Here, within the walled city, everything looks as though change were not the order of eternity. Everything is as it was, yet nothing is so. Trolley-cars clank, motor-cars of the latest models throb quietly, pony-traps and bullock-carts stir the ancient quiet. One wonders how so much new life can find room to move about in such narrow streets with their still narrower sidewalks that permit men to pass in single file only, and angular corners and low buildings. But there they are, and there they bid fair to remain. Even the unused cathedrals, whose doors are here and there nailed shut, stand their ground. Some of them even close the street with their imposing fronts, the courage of fervent human passion in their crumbling façades.

At that early hour there was little sign of human life. Into some of the cathedrals native women crept for prayer. Here and there a confined human being passed across the glassless windows; here and there a tourist flitted by in search of sights. And I soon realized that within the walls, intramuros, there was nothing. Across the park, across the Pasig River, there one finds life.

Yet within that ancient crust there is new life. Some old buildings have been turned into government offices, high schools, a public library fully equipped, an agricultural institute, everything standing as in days of old, but new flowers and plants growing in those crude pots,—old surroundings with a new spirit. Something mechanical in that spirit,—typewriters clicking everywhere under native fingers; still, typewriters don't click without thoughts.

Here, then, is the conflict in growth between the ends of time, heredity struggling with environment, the fountains of youth washing the bones of old ambitions. They may not become young bones, but may we not hope they will at least be clean? May not time and patience remold antiquity, absorb its bad blood and rejuvenate it? Typewriters clicking everywhere; tongues born to Filipino, then turned to Spanish, now twisting themselves with English. The trough has been brought to the horse. Will he drink? The library was full of intelligent-looking young Filipinos, the cut of their clothes as obviously American as the typewriters clicking behind doors. Both typewriters and garments indicated efficiency, but I could no more say what was the impulse in the being within those clothes than what thoughts were being fixed in permanence to the sound of an American typewriter.

The most symbolical thing of all was the aquarium built beneath one wing of the great wall round this little village. If in the hard shell of American possession arrangement can still be made for the freedom, natural and unconfining, of the native Filipinos, we shall not lay ourselves open to censure. The natives may not be satisfied, they may prefer the open sea; but that is up to them to achieve. As long as we keep the water fresh and the food supplies free, they can complain only of their own crustaceous natures and nothing else.

3

All Manila does not live within the walls, however,—not even a goodly portion of it,—and the exits are numerous. Passing through the eastern gate, one comes into a park which lies between the walled city and the Pasig River. Beyond the river and on its very banks is Manila proper. As I got my first glimpse of the crowded, dirty waterway, I could not say much in reply to my companion, whose patriotic fervor found expression in criticism of American colonization. It was like looking into a neglected back yard. The Englishman did not seem to see, however, that to have done better in so short a time would have been to inflict hardships on the natives which no amount of progress ever justifies. Still, with memories of Honolulu as a basis for judgment I was not a little disappointed. How to change people without destroying their souls,—that is the problem for future social workers for world betterment to solve.

Meanwhile I had succeeded in eluding my burden of seventy-three years and opened my eyes to the life round about me. There was still a bridge to cross. It was narrow, wooden and crowded. It was only a temporary structure, built to replace the magnificent Bridge of Spain which was washed away in the great flood of September, 1914. During the few minutes it took me to saunter across it, the traffic was twice blocked. Perhaps to show me how full the traffic was, for in that moment there lined up as many vehicles and people and of sufficient variety to illustrate the stepping-stones in transportation progress. There were traps, motor-cars, carts drawn by carabao, or water-buffalo, bicycles, and trolley-cars. Everybody seems to ride in some fashion.

Yet everybody seems to walk, and in single file at that. Gauze-winged Filipino women,—tawdry, small and ill-shod, or, rather, dragging slippers along the pavement—insist on keeping to the middle of the narrow walks. Frequently they are balancing great burdens on their heads, with or without which they are not over-graceful or comely. Their stiff, transparent gauze sleeves stand away from them like airy wings. One hasn't the heart to brush against them lest these angelic extensions be demolished, and so one keeps behind them all the way.

The men also shuffle along. They wear embroidered gauze coats which veil their shirts and belts and trousers. There is something in this lace-curtain-like costume that seems the acme of laziness. Neither stark nakedness nor the durability of heavy fabrics seem so prohibitive of labor as does this thin garment. No inquiry into the problem of the Philippines would seem to me complete without full consideration of the origin of this costume.

But one is swept along over the bridge, and is dropped down into Manila proper by way of a set of steps, through a short alley. The main street opens to the right and to the left. It is brought to a sudden turn one block to the left and then runs on into the farther reaches of the city; to the right it winds its way along till it encompasses the market-place and confusion. This chiseling out of streets in such abrupt fashion is puzzling to the person with notions of how tropical people behave. Why such timidity in the pursuance of direction and desire? The obstruction of the bridge promenade by the main street and of the main street by a side street have a tendency to shoot the seer of sights about in a fashion comparable to one of those games in which a ball is shot through criss-cross sections so that the players never know in what little groove it will fall or whether the number will be a lucky one or not.

I first fell into a bank, and the amount of money one can lose in exchanging Australian silver notes into American dollars is sufficient to dishearten one. The shops were too damp and insignificant to attract me much, however, so I ventured on into the outer by-ways of the city. There the dungeon-like stores and homes and Chinese combinations had at least the virtue of ordinary Oriental manner in contrast to our own. The Chinese cupboard-like stores, that seem to hang on the outside of the buildings like Italian fruit-stands, held few attractions. There was an obvious utilitarianism about them which, strange as it may seem, is the last thing the man with no fortune to spend enjoys. Shops and museums afford the unpossessing compensation for his penury.

As I made my way ahead to a small open square, my attention was arrested by a performance the full significance of which did not at first appear to me. At the gateway of a large cigar-factory from which came strolling male and female workers, sat two individuals—two women at the women's gate, two men at the men's—and each worker was examined before leaving. As a woman came along, the inspector passed her hands down the side of the skirts, up the thighs, over the bosom,—then slapped her genially and off she went. Through it all, the girls assumed a most dignified manner, absolutely without self-consciousness and oblivious of the gaze of the passers-by. What is more certain to break down a man's or a woman's self-respect than becoming indifferent to the opinion of the public as to the method of being searched? A Freudian complex formed to the point of one's believing oneself capable of theft, the next thing is to live out that unconscious thought of theft and to care nothing for the censure of the world.

When at work, these girls possessed a sort of sixth sense. The cigarettes are handed over to them at their benches to be wrapped in bundles of thirty. They never stop to count them—just place the required number in their left hands encircling them with thumb and fingers, reject an odd one if it creeps in, and tie the bundle. I counted a dozen packets, but did not find one either short or over, and the overseers are so certain of this accuracy that they never count them either.

But what a different world is found at the public school not very far from the factory! The building was not much of a building,—just an old-fashioned wooden structure with a court. Its sole purpose seemed to be to furnish four thousand children with training in the use of a new tongue. "Speak English," stared every one in the face from sign-boards nailed to pillars. I listened. The command was honored more in the breach than in the observance, yet where it was respected strange English sounds tripped along tongues that were doubtless more accustomed to Tagalog and Spanish. There was nothing shy in the behavior of these boys and girls. They moved about with a certain monastic self-assurance, less gay than our children, more free than most Oriental youngsters. In a few years they will be advocating Filipino independence, in no mistaken terms,—if they have not been caught by the factory process.

I went straight ahead and found myself on my way back into the city,—but from a side opposite that from which I had left it. The squalor and the dungeon-like atmosphere were indeed nothing for American efficiency to be proud of. Slums in the tropics fester rapidly. One cannot say these places were slums; but they certainly were not native villages. One felt that here in Manila America's heart was not in her work. Why build up something that would in the end revert to the natives, to be laid open to possible aggression and conquest! One felt further that the Filipinos did not exactly rejoice in being Americans. What they actually are they have long since forgotten. Once foster-children of Philip of Spain. To-day the adopted sons of America. To-morrow? How much more fortunate their Siamese cousins or relatives by an ancient marriage! Yet all who know Manila as it was ten years ago agree that there have been vast improvements in a decade. One does not include in this generalization the residences and hotels of the foreigners, for obvious reasons; still, the welfare of a community is raised by good example.

That afternoon I stretched in the shade of one of the walls of the old walled citadel with its fine gateways. I pondered the significance of those stones against which I was resting. One gains strength from such structures as one does from the sea,—not only in the actual contact, but in the thought that that which human effort accomplished human effort can do again. My septuagenarian had returned to the ship for rest. I thought of his criticisms of the American occupation of Manila, of his suggestions that England would have made of it a fine city. I wondered what drove the Spanish to build this wall. To protect themselves against Chinese pirates? There is not a country in the world that has not tried to safeguard itself against invasion by the process of invasion. Yet any attempt to do otherwise is decried as impractical. All the while, decay weakens the arm of the conqueror.

But more luring scenes distracted my thoughts. The sinking sun stretched the lengthening shadows of the wall as a fisherman, at sunset, spreads his serviceable nets. Filipinos passed quietly to and fro; cars, motor-cars, and electric cars cut a St. Andrew's cross before me. The scent of mellow summer weighted the air. Slowly everything drew closer in the net of night.

Two days later I was in Hong-Kong, where the Oriental dominates the scene. I was at the third angle of the triangle, and hereafter the subject is Asia.

CHAPTER X
BRITAIN'S ROCK IN ASIA

Full families of them on their shallow sampans cooperating with one another against odds which would sicken the stoutest-hearted white folk. Yet in that Oriental mass there was the ever-present exultation of spirit. Laughter and good-natured bullying, full recognition of the other man's right to rob and be robbed. No smug morality teaching you to be shy and generous in the face of an obviously bad world, a world ordered so as to make goodness the most expensive instead of the least expensive quality. But I soon discovered that beneath that external jollity only too frequently fluttered a fearful heart, filled with dread of the slightest change of circumstances.

The distance between the ship and the shore was not like Charon's river Styx, but it was a way between the Elysium of an alien metropolis and a Hades of hopeless nativity, none the less. Beyond stood the towering hills of Hong-Kong with its massive palaces in marble at the very summit. Chinese will to live had builded these, but the people had not, it seems, enough will left to build for themselves. From the very foot of the hills upward rose a steady series of buildings which looked surprisingly familiar, yet somewhat alien to my expectations. It was something of a shock to me to find that Hong-Kong was Chinese in name and character only, while being European-owned and ordered. I felt fooled. I had gone to see China, but found only another outpost of Great Britain. My American passport had had most fascinating Chinese characters on the back of it. But the "Emergency Permit" issued to me in Sydney, had none. Between British ports one can always expect British courtesy and that largeness of heart which comes from having taken pretty nearly all there is worth while in the world without being afraid of losing it. So I made some hurried mental adjustments as we chugged our way across, amidst bobbing sampans, and convinced myself that it might have been worse.

In that great future which will put modern civilization somewhere half-way between the Stone Age and itself, the stones of Hong-Kong will give investigators much to think about. Everything in Hong-Kong is concrete and stone. From the spacious office buildings that stand along the waterfront, to the palaces upon the peak, stone is the material out of which everything is built. What achievement! What a monument to Britain! But as the stones become harder beneath one's feet, one senses the toil embodied in them. Male and female coolies still trudge over these stony paths, carrying baskets of gravel, tar, or sand higher and higher. These structures seemed to me like human bridges which great leaders of men sometimes lay for their armies to pass over. Where do they lead to? Perhaps to England's greatness; perhaps to the world's shame.

At first one is prone to be rigid in one's judgment. There seems too much evidence of desire to build securely, rather than humanely or beautifully. The Orient, one hears, builds more daintily, more softly, more picturesquely; America builds more comfortably and more thoroughly. One might add, apologetically, that had not the masters driven these coolies to such stony tasks, the poor creatures would simply have built another Chinese wall at the behest of one of their own tyrants. Cheap labor makes pyramids and walls, and palaces on the peaks of Hong-Kong. But it also makes an unsightly slough of humanity about itself. Considering how costly pyramids and palaces such as those at Hong-Kong are, considering the plodding toil it took to build them, for the sake of humanity it is better that they were built of stone, so that rebuilding may never be necessary.

Everywhere as we climb we pass rest stations, coolies buying a few cents' worth of food, coolies carrying cement. While far beneath lies murky, moldy Hong-Kong with its worm-like streets, its misty harbor waters, its hundreds of steamers, sail-boats, sampans, piers, and dry-docks, and all around stand the peaks of earth and the inverted peaks of air. Returning by another route, down more winding and more precipitous paths, one passes great concrete reservoirs, tennis-courts, an incline railway, water-sheds,—and the city again.

2

The days draw on even here, and sunlight is curtained by dim night. The din of human voices loses its shrill tone of bargaining, the rickshaw men trot regularly but more slowly. Carriers of sedan-chairs lag beneath their loads; their steps slow down to a walk. Women by the dozen slip by, still with their burdens, but their voices have a note of softness, pleasing sadness. And now comes the time of day when no matter in what station one's life may be cast, spirit and body shift to better adjustment. And through the dim blue mist the shuffling of feet is heard, or the sounding of loose wooden slippers like drops of water in a well. Whatever revived activities may follow this twilight hour, now, for the world entire, is rest,—even in toil-worn, grubbing, groveling China, which seems not to have been born to rest.

"Business" is not yet gone from the streets of Hong-Kong, though it is now wholly dark. Every one is working as though the day were but just beginning and it were not Sunday night. It is impossible to select "important" things from out this heap of human debris. Filth, odors, activity, jewelry, dirty little heaps and packets of food,—all are handled over and over again, and each one is content with a lick of the fingers for the handling. Then when quite worn out one may rest his bones on the pavement covered with straw or mat, or if more fortunate, may have a hovel or a house in which to breed. The number of homeless wretches sleeping on the inclined stone pavements of Hong-Kong was simply appalling. And Hong-Kong is British made. Hong-Kong was a barren island twenty-nine miles in area when seventy-five years or so ago Britain demanded it from China; to-day its population is nearly a tenth of that of the whole continent of Australia. But what a difference in the status of that population! Certainly no man who sees the result of over-population in proportion to a people's industrial ingenuity can blame Australia for keeping herself under reproductive self-control.

A few of the things one sees as a matter of course in Hong-Kong will illustrate. As I was coming down Pottinger Street I was horror-struck at the sight of a small boy on his knees groaning and wailing as though he were in unendurable agony. I thought at first he was having a fit, but it became obvious that there was method in his madness. He was repeating some incantation, bowing his head to the ground, tapping frantically with a tin can on the stones, and chanting or shrieking out his blessings or his curses, which ever the case may have been. He was a blind beggar, and though he must have received more money than many a coolie does (for even Chinese have coins to give) and in a way certainly earned it, I could not but smile at his wisdom,—for at its worst it was no worse than the labor of the coolie. Yet from many passers-by he evoked only slight amusement.

Upon some steps in an unlighted thoroughfare stood a Chinese haranguing a crowd. His voice was not unpleasant, his manner was persuasive. But what to? Had he been urging China to stop breeding, to cease this worm-like living and reproducing, I should have regarded him as a public benefactor. For it made me creepy, this proximity to such squirming numbers.

Beside a dirty wall around the corner was a medicine man selling a miraculous bundle of herbs. He screeched its powers, gave each a smell, which each one took since it cost nothing, and then he went into frightful contortions to demonstrate that which these herbs could allay. But from the expression on his face it was obvious they could not allay his disappointment that the purchasers were few.

At an open store was a crowd. I edged my way up to see the excitement. It was a "doctor's operating-room." Upon a bench sat an old man, gray-haired and almost toothless. The "doctor" stood astride the patients' knees and with a steel instrument, somewhat rusty, calmly and carelessly stirred about in the old man's eyeless socket. All the sufferer did was to mutter "Ta, ta, ta," pausing slightly between the ta's, but never stirring. No guarding against infection out on the open, dusty, dirty thoroughfare.

The crowd looked on without any sign of emotion. A few women sat on a bench inside, but seemed quite indifferent. There was one exception. A little mother with a boy of about six contemplated the performance with a pained expression. Her boy's eyes were crossed and turned upward. He had to be treated, too.

Finally even these things end. It is nine o'clock. Shops are closing, the crowds on the streets die down. And for one brief spell the world will rest.

Here we have four examples of life in China. When we examine them closely, haphazardly chosen as they have been, there is a strange uniformity and contradiction in their basic situations. The blind beggar-boy, the charlatan advocate and medicine man, the careless surgeon,—at bottom all charlatans, yet all essentially sincere. That ranting little beggar howled his lying appeals, but at home, no doubt, were other mouths to be fed for which he—blind head of the family—was responsible. The herb-specialist seemed, from the tone of his voice, sincere in the belief in his remedies; the surgeon, certain of his operation. Yet that is what China is suffering from most, and because of the faith in their crude panaceas and the conviction that five thousand years of tradition gives folk, the Rockefeller Foundation will have to work for many generations before it will make China prophylactic.

3

There was another incident that illustrated, to me at least, China's ailment. Hong-Kong seemed possessed one night. I thought a riot or a revolution had broken out, but it was only a house on fire. Thousands of Chinese scurried about like rats looking for ways of escape. From the littered roof and balcony of a five-story tenement a flame leaped skyward as though itself trying to escape from the unpleasant task of consuming so dirty a structure. The curious collected in hordes from everywhere.

I made my way into this mass not unaware of being quite alone in the world. It was interesting to be in this sort of mob. The reason for China's subjugation showed itself in the ease with which it was controlled. One single white policeman, running back and forth along the length of a block, kept the whole mob well along the curb. It was amazing to watch the crowd retreat at the officer's approach and then bulge out as soon as he passed by. One young Chinese stood out a little too far. The officer came up on his rear, yanked him by the ear, and sent him scurrying back into the mob. They who dared rushed timidly across the street. I remarked this to the policeman. He was pleased. "If you want to get closer up, just walk straight ahead," he said. And so I did, as did other white men who arrived, without being stopped. That was it: we were quite different; we could go. Later a host of special police, Chinese and Indian regulars, arrived and relieved this lone white officer.

This incident seemed to me to symbolize China's present state. No leader, no cohesion, no common thinking. Had the mob been resentful,—what then! It was a mob the like of which I had never seen before. A dull murmur sounded through all the confusion. It seemed to be of one tone, as though all the notes of the scale were sung at once and they blended into one another like the colors of the spectrum. The people seemed wonderfully alert. Their hearing was keen. Two tram-car conductors conversed forty feet away from each other, with dozens of yapping Chinese between.

Thus, China enjoys a oneness like that of water. Easily separated, lightly invaded, rapidly reunited, her masses flow on together when directed into any channel, and it matters little where or why. And the white policeman assured me that when the Chinese still wore queues a policeman raided a den and tied the queues of fifteen Chinese together and with these as reins drove them to prison.

4

Yet, what nation or race in the world has maintained such indivisibility against so much separation! Think of what the family is and has been to China,—its creeds, its government, its entire existence. Yet the family and concubinage obtain side by side.

There was evidence of this in British Hong-Kong. Upon the street one day I saw another crowd. It was waiting for the appearance of the Governor of Canton. When the worthy governor emerged from a very unworthy-looking building, the crowd cheered and gathered close around the automobile.

A well-dressed young Chinese in European clothes emerged from the hall. I asked him what was toward, surmising his understanding. He spoke English fluently and seemed pleased to inform me. So we strolled down the street together. He was not very hopeful about Chinese democracy as yet, but believed in it and expressed great admiration for America. Britain, he said, was not well liked. He spoke of his religion, his belief in Confucianism. He regretted that Hong-Kong had no temples and that he and his friends were compelled to meet at the club for prayer.

Yet though he was a Confucianist, he decried the family system. "Chinese cling too much to family," he said. "One man goes to America, then he sends for a brother simply because he is a relative. The brother may be a very bad character, but that doesn't matter. So it is in official circles in China to-day. Graft goes on, jobs are dispensed to relatives worthy or unworthy, efficient or inefficient. And the country is getting deeper and deeper into difficulties."

As though to prove the truth of his assertions, he told me of his own experiences as a child. "Chinese obey," he said. "My father paid for my education, therefore my duty toward him should know no bounds." His father had had ten children, only two of whom survived,—he and an elder sister. When his father died, he became the head of the family. Therefore he had to marry, even though then only fifteen years of age. He had been married for sixteen years. I should never have believed it, to judge from his appearance. He seemed no more than a student himself, but he assured me he had five children,—one daughter fifteen years old. Birth-control! Limitation of offspring! Why bother? If his father could "raise" a family of ten on "nothing" and then just let them die off,—why not he? So does duty keep the race alive.

And duty tolerates that which is sapping the very foundation of the race,—not only the enslavement of the wife in such circumstances, but the entertainment of the concubine. I saw the way that works.

At the opposite end of the city is the quarter where the concubines abound. Life there does not begin till eight o'clock in the evening, if as early. The clanging of cans and the effort at music is terrifying. Hotels of from four to five stories, with all their balconies illuminated, gave an effect of festive cheerfulness which the rest of the city lacked utterly.

Upon the ground floors, which opened directly upon the street, the women could be seen dressing for the evening. Nothing in their behavior or dress would indicate their profession,—so unlike the licensed districts of Japan. The women never as much as noticed any stranger on the street. At the appointed time each little woman emerged, dainty, clean and sober, and passed from her own quarters to the hotels and restaurants where she was to meet her chartered libertine. Her decorum approximated saintly modesty, and she moved with a childlike innocence. There was throughout the district no rowdyism, no disorderliness. Everything was businesslike and according to regulation. Strange, that with so much self-control should go so much licentiousness. But it is part of the mystery of the Orient.

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:

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.

CHAPTER XI
CHINA'S EUROPEAN CAPITAL

All the way from Hong-Kong to Shanghai she was as busy going from class to class as she was on shore, spreading the faith, placing literature where it could be found and read, organizing hymn parties and discouraging booze. The Japanese on board took her good-naturedly. She spoke their language fluently, but I could not see that they drank one little cup of saké the less for her.

When we arrived at Shanghai she would have nothing else but that I should go with her to some friends of hers for dinner. Into one rickshaw she loaded her bags, into another me, with the manner of one handling cargo, and then deposited herself in a third. The train made its way along the Bund and out of confusion. And that was the way I was shanghaied.

Somewhere in a street that might for all the world have been in Chicago, our train drew up. It was quiet, had a little open park in it, where two streets seemed to have got mixed and, scared at losing their identity like the Siamese twins, ran off in an angle of directions. Here at a brick-red building with balconies and porticoes, and a dark, damp door, we made our announcement and were received. Now what would the world have thought if a Salvation Army man had picked up a strange young woman on a steamer and haled her into a strange house? None but a Salvation Army Lassie could have done what Miss Smythe,—not Smith, mind you!—dared to do. We were welcomed as though the appearance of a stranger were in the usual course of events, and I was asked to stay for dinner. The hostess, a quiet woman, with her pretty young daughter, kept a boarding-house, and was always prepared for extra folk.

It was a boarding-house like any I should have expected to find in America. The rooms were spacious, hung with framed prints, and dark and slightly damp, according to Shanghai climate. There was something haunting about the house, but to a homeless vagabond like myself it seemed the acme of comfort. And to one who had had no real home meal in five weeks or more, but only ship's food, the spread we sat down to was delicious.

Miss Smythe did not enjoy her dinner as much as I did, for she feared all along that she would not be able to get to church on time. Then it was too late for me to regain my ship, so I was invited to spend the night under a roof instead of a deck.

The next day I wandered off by myself, but not till I had promised to return for Chinese "chow." In the meantime Miss Smythe had spread my fame among others of her profession, and made a date for me to go to a "rescue house" or some such place that evening. It was a mission home for Japanese, run by a woman who, if she wasn't from Boston, I'm sure must have come from Brookline. The only thing Oriental about that mission was its Japanese. A sumptuous dinner was served which, despite the fact that I had had "chow" only twenty minutes before, I was compelled to eat. With two heavy meals where one is accustomed to berth, accommodations were somewhat crowded.

Everything would have gone well if I hadn't promised to give the residents a talk on my travels. I began. Miss Smythe felt that I wasn't emphasizing the presence of God in the numerous regions I had visited. I took His omnipresence for granted, but she kept breaking into my talk at every turn. Two meals inside of two people who both tried to lecture at once didn't go very well, especially at a mission in China run by Europeans and attended by Japanese. It seemed that there was not over-much love lost on the part of the sons of Tenno for those of the Son of Heaven, nor did the European missionaries at this place encourage the intermarriage of these illustrious spirits. The Bostonian in exile on more than one occasion spoke disparagingly of the cleanliness of the Chinese, much to the satisfaction of the Japanese. But then, she was winning and holding them to the Son of God, and when they reached heaven they would all be one. Miss Smythe afterward apologized to me for interrupting me during my talk, and we parted as cordially as we had met. Some months later I found her roaming the streets of Kobe, Japan, as active as ever in the militant cause. Her insinuations about what goes on in Japanese inns seemed to me unjustifiable. So I asked her whether it was fair to the Japanese and Chinese for her to be forever repeating hearsay when she would resent it were I to repeat what I had heard about the morality of the Australians. It took her aback, but I am sure that she is still pursuing vice and drink and irreverence, aided and abetted by the dollars which she extracts from foreign business men and reprobates throughout the East.

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.

In a few minutes we had left the international section of the settlement—that jointly occupied by Britain and America—and wobbled into the French district. Suddenly we stopped, and our carriers lowered their shafts to the ground. We were at a narrow opening three or four feet wide, and I could not understand why we should pay our respects to it. "From here we have to walk," said the Chinese, and in single file we entered, dropping out of Shanghai as into a bog. That was real China, but only as little Italy in New York is real Italy.

The whole of Chinese City can be summed up hastily and in but a few words. Narrow, dirty little thoroughfares laid out in broken stone paving, tiny shops where luxuries, necessities, and coolie requisites are sold,—dark, dirty, open to the damp! What destitution is the inheritance of these thousands of years of civilization!

The first thing to greet us, standing out against the general wretchedness, was not beautiful. To one accustomed to hard sights and scenes, to one not easily perturbed by human degradation, that which passed as we entered was sufficient to unnerve him. Upon the wet, filthy street rolled a legless boy. He had no crutches; his business required none. He was begging: howling, chanting, and rolling all at the same time. I could not say "Poor child!" Rather, poor China, that it should come to this!

Immediately after, though having no business connections, came an old man. Came? Walked crouching, bowing his gray head till it touched the filthy pathway. He was kotowing before the menials of China, not its empress.

The third was the worst of all. One old, ragged, broken beggar was carrying on his back what might have been a corpse, but was another beggar; the two—one on top of the other—were not more than four feet above the ground.

I felt as though Mara, the Evil One, was trying to frighten me by an exhibition of his pet horrors so that I might not go farther. I was not being perturbed, the horrors ceased.

But what beauties or treasures were they meant to guard? What was there that I was not to see? What ogre dwelt within? Nothing but a bit of business, so to speak, in a social bog.

Beside a tideless creek, advertised as a lake, stood a pagoda-like structure, just a broken reflection imaged in the mud. As we approached we were immediately taken in charge by a Chinese guide and led along a path crudely paved with cobblestones into an "ancient" tea-garden. The wall around it was topped with a vicious-looking dragon that stretched around it. A tremendous monster of wood, it lay there; and perhaps it will continue to lie there long after China shall have forsaken the dragon. Then from chamber to chamber we strolled, past tables of stone and shrines and effigies, and into the heart of China's superstitious soul. Though in itself not ancient, what a peep it afforded into antiquity,—dull, dead, yet powerful!

For within these secret chambers there were displayed endless numbers of emperors and their dynastic celebrities. In one chamber, blue with smoke and stifling incense, lighted with red candles, burning joss-sticks, behung with lanterns, and crowded with lazy Chinese, we found several "emperors" with red-painted wooden effigies of their wives. To me the smoke was choking; not so to them. The incense was sweet in their nostrils, and nourishing. And in payment for the sacrificial generosity and the prayers of fat, wealthy Chinese women who fell upon their knees, rose, and fell again, bowing and repeating incantations, they were to make the husbands of these women—too busy to come themselves—meet with success in business. Seriousness and earnestness marked the features of these women, and who can say their faith was ignored?

We emerged from this underground chamber upon another thoroughfare, pursuing which we came upon an open, unused plot. Here a circus had attracted a crowd. A three-year-old baby, a pretty little sister, a feminine father, and a masculine mother were the entertainers. They were acrobats. A family row—which, it would seem, is not unknown in China—was enacted without any of the details being omitted; nor did they stop at coarse and vulgar acts which would have brought the police down upon them in America. Yet the audience seemed highly amused, while some of the spectators might easily have posed for paintings of Chinese bearded saints, or have been models for some of the sacred effigies which, not more than a block away, were idols in the temple.

These are the high spots in Chinese City, a city into which I was urged not to venture alone. That human life should be considered of little worth here is not marvelous; but that any one there should consider the prolongation of his own a bit worth the taking of mine, is one of the inexplicable marvels of the world.

Is this China? By no means. It is merely the back-wash of the contact with European life which has been imposed on China without sufficient chance for its absorption. It is no more typical of China than our metropolitan slums are really typical of American life. True, they are the result of it, but where the rounding out of relationships and conditions have been accomplished there follows a graduation of elements to where good and evil obtain side by side. And Chinese City is but the worst phase of Chinese slums plastered upon Shanghai.

4

Poverty in Chinese City is one thing; in Shanghai it is another. It is all a matter of the background. Buddha the beggar is still Buddha the Prince.

After I came out of Chinese City I took much greater note of the details of the life of the coolie, the toiler in Shanghai proper. I was out on the Bund. The stone walls hemming in the river Whang-po rise at a level round the city. For five feet more the human wall of coolies shuts out the tide of poverty and despair from a world as foreign to China as water is alien to stone. From both walls a murmur reaches the outer world: the swish of the tide, the hum of coolie consolation. I let myself believe that they chant beneath their burdens to disguise their groans. Up and down the Bund they course, here at exporting, there at importing. Their gathering-places are at the godowns, and in and out they pass up and down inclined planks, each with a sack, or in couples with two or more sacks hanging from their shoulders, never resting from these rounds.

At another point they are delivering mail to the ship's launch. Two cart-loads arrive. Coolies swarm about the carts, waiting for orders. Some are mere boys, but already inured to the tread. As each lifts a bag of mail he passes a Japanese, who hands him a stiletto-shaped piece of wood with some inscription on it,—painted green to the hilt. He takes two steps and is on the gang-plank, two more, and he has burdened himself with three bags of mail, and returns; he received and returns three sticks. That is the way count is kept of the mail. I couldn't understand this close precaution. Could the coolie possibly abscond with a bag of mail under the very eyes of an officer?

Two small boys eagerly rushed a distance on, to pick up some bags that had been left there. They were acting without order,—spontaneously. They would have saved themselves some labor in that way. But the officer in charge shrieked his reprimand at them. One, in his enthusiasm, ignored the command. The officer rushed after him and boxed his ears. The boy received the punishment, but went right ahead with his burden. Hardened little sinner! calloused little soul! poor little ant!

One youngster came up, chanting the sale of some sweet-cakes. Looking into his face, I wondered what he was thinking just then. He must think! No one could be so young and have such a cramped neck, such sad eyes, such furrowed brows without hard thoughts to make them so.

In the slush and rain, under semi-poverty and destitution, barefoot, ragged, and in infinite numbers,—still they toil. Yet against the background of sturdy Shanghai, their labor and their travail does not hurt as much as it does in Chinese City. The perplexities of life—national, racial, of caste—pervaded my thoughts. Why has China remained dormant so long? Why is she now waking? How will she tackle the problem of poverty? To me it seems that nations rise and fall not because fluctuation is the inherent law of life, but simply because universally accepted glory and prestige are positions generally paid for by accompanying poverty and disease. No nation can dominate for a long time with such coolieism as that in China.

China has standards all her own. We come with our ways and claim superiority. China grants it, yet goes her own way. And when we see her sons we like them, though we may criticize, condemn, and try to change them. This is the oneness of China and the consensus of opinion is that it is lovable. People come, employ Chinese as servants, and try to train them. They may take that which they think you do not need, carry out their own and not your ideas. You in turn rave and roar, but in the end they are still there as servants and you as master. But they have educated you, you have not changed them. And when you leave China you long for them as did that American woman I met in Honolulu who fairly wailed her longing aloud to me. China has done this with whole nations, and, to the very end of time, whatever nation sets out to rule and conquer that new republic must make up its mind to be lost.

And so behind Shanghai is Chinese City, and behind that there is China, out upon the flat plains. There is another China yet beyond, and still another and as many as there are billows on the sea. Build modern buildings and cities, and the Chinese take them and turn them inside out, and they are what he wants them to be. This plastic people,—what is their destiny? And what, still, is there awaiting the world as they fulfil that destiny?

How strange it feels to call her republic! Yet China has taken to republicanism as though it had been brewing in her these thousands of years. From outward appearances one would never know that she is a republic to-day. Some say she really isn't. Coolies still are coolies, and Chinese, Chinese. And I dare say she is both empire and republic, two in one.

For centuries China has lain dormant as though stung by a paralyzing wasp. Centuries have been lost in sleep. But what are centuries, when waking is so simple and is always possible? China has wakened. She is rising. An hour's work has been accomplished in the first fresh flush of the new dawn. Perhaps that is all that will be done that day, the house put in a little better order. To-morrow is time enough for real work. A Chinese junk comes out of its night-mist retreat with its own dim lights. A shrill whistle of a passing launch echoes across the flat plains about Shanghai. The rain of yesterday remains only as a sorry mist. A vision of clearer day shimmers through, but soon grows dull again. China seems to have shaped her climate in her own image.

A two-days' steam to Moji, Japan, on the bosom of that heaving mistress the China Sea, and my journey was over for a long while. The sea was black, the sky somber; even the sun was sad as it stooped that evening to kiss the cheek of Japan good night. I did not know just then that I was to say farewell to the sea for two and a half years,—a farewell that resulted in Japan: Real and Imaginary.

CHAPTER XII
WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS
The Third Side of the Triangle