CHINAMEN "AT HOME."

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1888, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHINAMEN "AT HOME."

How the Mongols Exist in Sydney.

A writer in the ": Sydney Evening' News" says.: — I have come to-night to see my 'slant -'eyed ffiehd Jthe Chinaman at home, and -inspect Ms "arrangements ; .fend' thiß is essentially the Chinese qua'rter-of the1 town. ' After leaving Bridge-"street,' proceeding towards the^uayjthe&speet'df the street seems to undei-gp-a complete vhartge; the shops are smaller and dirtier, and or a forbidding aspect, andthe windows are not illuminated like tho sK&ps in other parts of the main' thoroughfare. .The' houses are mostly tenanted by Chinese, and groups of Mongolians can be seen reclining within, orstanding at the entrances, complacently viewing 'the scene; while' the strange and unfamiliar odour Chinese compecuiiur to' modlfcies issues 'therefrom, and" assails the olfactory organs of 'uninitiated European. But a member of the detective force is to attend me onmyirivestigations "i he is thoroughly acquainted with 'tho neighbourhood'and its denizens ; 'and 'without" him I would find it-a-matter of1 im-: possibility *to penetrate to ;>the regions, of the opium smoker and the . pafe-a-. pu man. Here he. stands : awaiting my at the . entrance <oL the famous ".Suez Canal," , perhaps the most notdribus alley way in Sydney. (It is dart-artd narrow,-tind felippery-of Jwjcent ; but to enliven and interest me my guide remarks that it has been the lot of more Hian one half drunken, tar or lumper, <6r "coalie," to reel down here in the small hours of the morning, lightly and airily attired in the latest edition of the evening paper, glad to escape even thus from tho clutches of vice arid sin into which he had fallen.

Presently I find myself in. a -sort' of open court, bounded on either side by two narrow lanes "emerging from "the mouth of the canal. Taring these lanes and closely packed together are the rookeries we have come to j _ ■ The night is "hot arid close, ; and the atmosphere hereabouts is heavy, and laden with dubious odours -suggestive of decayed cabbage and sewage gas. Here and there on the doorsteps'of-these hovels (for they are little better),, on the kerbstones Of the gutter8 .' sifc» in listleßS in' action, women upon"whose every lineament and form drunkenneps and vice have stamped their indelible" cliar&CteriL .My, detective friend, who knows gome of them personnlly, informs'mo that those women are the .paramours of tho, Chinese who, have congregated <in -this locality.; He tells me, moreover, that there may be counted among: them'many who at no fardistant period have tasted the blessings :of a pare and happy sociallife ; who have been the wives of men in good -positions,; wh6 ; have been the daughters of respectable-ana well-to-do parents, who have'known a pure mother's love; but now, after aihUihg through a course of poverty and disease, and misery and crime, the opium fiend and the drink fiend have seized them with their " adamantine grapple," from which they will be released only by death. I desire to T*iesv the interior of an opium'den, and I am conducted through a bewildering labyrinth of lanes and dark,pas3ages, -past hovels from which exhale festid and overpowering ddonrs .; my friend knocks at 'the door of one of these places; there is an unin■felligible jabber going on inside,' Varied by the monotonous thrum, thruto of a Chinese violin. After some preliminary confabulation -my conductor, by virtue of his authority's allowed to-enter. I follow, although. J. don'.t relish _the appearance ..of. things, and now, for the first time, I behold John Chinaman at home, and -Very comfortably at home does he make, himself, proving he can discover the particular description of soil to which he is indigenous —where the atmosphere is saturated with sewer gas, .and typhoid ; where the houses ,are densely packed, and the cellars are slimy, and deep and dark, and filthy enough to accommodate 'him ; where he can engender and propagate vice and disease, there he takes root and flourishes ?uid multiplies. I find'tnyself in a room ,10 feet or 12 feet square, and occupied by nine filthy .Chinamen in-all-the stages of opium intoxication, while the air is londed with its fumes : the plaster is falling from rthe walls with damp, the-window panes are 'broken and stopped with rags, and the ■place is literally stinking with all the 'Smells .of .SbepL; and they haye boon existing for-years, and will contiihiie^to^exist in this, condition. They eat, they sleep, they smoke, and die thus^l2;and'l6 Chinamen in one room for months -together. Some ■are. artisans, some storekeepers, an£trainers,, while some" ar% vTtmGve's and loafers.

From An old, weazened, dried-ip .specimen of humanity, I gather some facts with regard to 4he use of opium. To^amoVlce, one pipe "is "to attain*the'9eßired state of insensibility, bat to one who has become so habituated to the use of the drug^that he cannot-exist wfbhout it, ias many as twelve pipes are necessary. Each pipe contains one-draw, and-6«teh Ooits'him sixpence. Six shillings per night for opium "for one /man means, money-to the revenue, but the spectacle :oJP sen enervated being "With sunken jaws and ..dim or sightless eyes, having -appearairee -of a -living' corpse, «nd, moreover, .ausoeptible to eveny contagions disease, JaJar irom4jleaaantJ;o_ contemplate. One glance at a gambling .den,: My if fiend jainfl l-gotfov Jl/em?ifckrat? heart of this scene. -More alleys, more: passage* wayß,andwereach4ihepuk-a-pu den. An jevil-looking^Celestml is shuffling some coin wifch a sti6lwn a peculiar manner. Ldo riot understand'the game ; but I observessn the icrowd of eager fades around the croupier more than one European who has 'beetor sefced with fitfe abSbfßing ■.pas^ion'of ;gambliii'g; and I cannot help 'reflecting fihafc tlrat yellow disciple, of Confuciusi 'Is mucking" out his. very existence as surely "as! do his pigtailed brethren tilke the breadfrom the mouth of .'the working man andhis family through .fchfi.medium of " cheap ; labour." But I-draw a breath of relief as hve em§i!gex)nce niore mto the•in#in;street. The snopsare-still open» and scene:i§' ■one of animation, and, interest, i can 'hardly imagine thatat-a-stone's'throw lay such squalor and wretchedness !&s.TE,#avk just witnessed; hat there lay festering ;Small-pox and loathsome .disease, needing but to be engendered-to-apring forthwith : tihfe ickStrdyln§ iangel i*o 'rava^ge faSr hoth>»*6f-tfty'fell()w' cfti2elVß,"carrying 9dat!h and dlsfiguremehlTui' tneir wake.