CROWDING INTO SHANGHAI

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

CROWDING INTO SHANGHAI

By - - Marc T. Greene

' • I ~ Tiy KJJL n Austrian Refugees Are

SHANGHAI. MORE than 500 Austrian refugees have already arrived in Shanghai, and three times as many in addition are expected within the next few months. Shanghai, that is to say, the part of it not vet under Japanese control, is the only important port left in the- world to which refugees from other lands can come freely. The result is that it is thronged to-day almost to the suffocation point with people of every race and nation. Some, like the newly-arrived Austrians, are unfortunates who have been deprived of their country and left homeless upon the world's mercy. Others are in flight from one place or another for personal reasons which are in many cases kept carefully concealed. In other words, Shanghai is full of adventurers, soldiers of fortune, outcasts, and people who are not welcome elsewhere. It is also, of course, desperately overcrowded now with Chinese refugees from Japanese-possessed areas within a radius of hundreds of miles, us well as from the sections of Shanghai itself now occupied by the enemy. Under conditions like these the chances of the Austrians are not particularly bright. Twenty years ago, when the first of the "white" Russians began' 1 to flock to Shanghai from the north, ' the problem set authorities of the French Concession and the International Settlement was the most acute of its kind in Shanghai's history. There wore : thousands of Russians, and somehow they had to be kept alive. All were penniless, and few even had adequate clothing.

There was, of course, much suffering among them, despite all that could be done. In considerable measure it stilt continues, because the position is beyond the handling of a European of small size, which must deal also with the terrific problem of the hundreds of thousands of homeless, halfstarved and work less Chinese. Atop this now conies yet another problem, one which is considered to be the most difficult for Shanghai since the Russian influx after the Soviet revolution. Thousands From Europe There are already more different charitable organisations in international. Shanghai than in any community of ten. times its size elsewhere in the world. They exist mainly to care for the workless and outcast, to keep the unfortunates of all races from starving every day. Their work is energetic and earnest, and it is supported generously by the foreigners of Shanghai, as well as by wealthy Asiatics. It is the only thing that prevents suffering here 011 a scale unknown in modern times.! Now on the threshold of the cold, wet winter of North . China, doubt exists whether that prevention will be possible much longer. Certainly it will not be without substantial outside aid. In the grip of a state of things like this Shanghai now finds itself faced with the care of two thousand homeless Europeans, people who, in the main, are

unaccustomed to as low a scale of living as many Europeans, especially exist upon here. Reduced to that scale, there will be widespread suffering among them, in addition to which a weakened physical condition will render tliem easy to the unhygienic and unhealthy ! conditions now prevailing in this over- : crowded city. | The Austrians who have already ' arrived are in most cases all but penni- . less. It is stated that out of the first ' contingent ot 2i>o only one possessed as much as £3 on landing in Shanghai, j Most had nothing whatever. Every penny they had been able to scrape together had gone to pay the steerage passage from distant Europe. The succeeding arrivals arc expected to include a number of professional people of standing, some of them Jews, who are little better equipped, and who hope to establish a practice here. But even that will be difficult, for Shanghai • already lias enough of such, in addition . to which conditions since the SinoJapanese war have caused such a fallingoff in general business that the income of almost everyone has been materially reduced. The low price of the Shanghai dollar as computed in foreign currency has Jilso caused a marked increase in cost in all imports, which works much hardship to a community no per cent of whose members are paid in the local currency. It is, perhaps, one or the strangest episodes in modern times, this of a people driven out of Europe and forced to cross more than half the world to find refuge in one of the very few remaining places where arrivals are not subject to close scrutiny of various kinds or forbidden landing unless in the possession of a definite amount of money. It has

g cost these people in the neighbourhood of £30 to get here, at the very lowest g Some of them had little or nothing at the start, Austria having been one of 2 the most impoverished countries in the (1 world ever since the war. It is far y from clear how most of the refugees 7 managed even to* secure their passage money. I Charity— or Starvation g However, they are here, several liunI dreds of them, and more to come. They ' are here, and they must be taken care £ of. There is nobody to do that except tlio foreign population—that part of it c still fairly well-to-do. Such plans as Q are possible have been made and "substantial assistance" besought from the people of Shanghai. c It is a phrase that has become, grimly u familiar here through these score of j years, and of late has been voiced and 1 published more often than ever. You . are faced with pleas for money on every . hand, from the thousands of beggars on 2 the streets to the weekly "tag-days" on r behalf of some charity or other. There \ are, too, the innumerable organised t charities aforesaid/ all of which must i be supported. If they are not it means i one thing, and only one, literal starvat from hunger and exposure [ —to hundreds of human beings. The Austrian emigres were not, of - course, asked to come to Shanghai or in i any way encouraged to do so. In fact," I the position was made clear when it was I first learned that a large trek from ; Europe was starting. The difficulties > were outlined to those arranging it. ■ Nevertheless, in view of the fact that i there' was nowhere else for the outcasts ; to go, and that if they remained in

their former homes either starvation or concentration camps awaited, them, out of the rutlilessness of the usurpers of their land, Shanghai could not 'rebuff them. Such arrangements as could be made, then, have been made or are forward. A committee has gathered as much . money, as possible and rented such vacant buildings as are not already occupied to the -point of. desperate over- _ crowding by thousands ,of penniless and homeless Chinese refugees. One such place, for example, is the former British , Women's Home, which has been made * habitable for fifty people. Yet it, and " such food as is provided, must be paid for by public donations alone. "On the Land" Most of the Austrians speak little or " no English, and though they may have [ had clerical or other positions at home, 1 it .will be difficult to assimilate them into a community whose business people _ must and do speak several, languages, 3 definitely including English.- And while some of the refugees arc doctors and ' members of other professions, whose brother professional men here will be r able to aid them, as they have done other such newcomers of various I nationalities in the past, more are 1 people without either professional r attainments or craftsmanship experi--1 once. Their lot is sure to be a-hard one. ' Moreover, such is the ignorance in 5 Europe of real conditions in China, I .among the refugees are Austrian ' farmers, who arrived with the idea of 5 going iinmedi.ately "on the land" and ' perhaps teaching the hard-working and 5 frugal-living Chinese" peasants something about agriculture. The position is, then, that the coming . of these thousands of European emigres r into restricted, harassed, uncertain and overcrowded Shanghai will not only force them to a lower standard of living i than they knew even in impoverished Austria, but it will necessitate definite sacrifice on the part of Shanghai people themselves, if their Caucasian brothers and sisters are not to starve.