LONDON'S CHINATOWN

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 49, 26 February 1921, Page 7

LONDON'S CHINATOWN

A SURPKISING'CHANGE.

Unknown to London, an extraordinary thing has happened- in Chinatown—that network of narrow streets and alleys in Limehouse where the imagination of novelist and eensationmonger. has roamed co excitedly. Two months ago (writes the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian on 12th December last), Pennyfields, tho crowded, curved street which "is Hie heart of the mystery, was providing lurid "oopy" for the London newspapers. There were stories of West End giijs lured thither by the exotic fascinations of the yellow man, stories of pak-a-poo dens haunted by white men and women,' whispers of opium dens and traffic in cocaine. Chinatown became a place of pilgrimage. ■Sightseers went down in groups at night, thrilled when they rubbed shoulders with the quiet and inoffensive Chinese sailorinen_ who stood about on tho pavement waiting—as many had been .waiting for two years^-to get a ship. There was never really very much to sec.' Tha most curious things were the coloured posters in Chinese characters outside some of the doors, which to the initiated conveyed information about pak-a-poo or .lotteries. Most of the visitors saw nothing more interesting than the inside of restaurants where the Chinamen were using their chopsticks, a-nd ordmaTily, instead of sensational stories, they were told how well-behaved and gentle the ten or twelve hundred. Chinese residents were. Still the visitors poured in. iwo or three weeks ago a party of a hundred wont down to stare at the streets and to crowd into the Salvation Miesion Hall m Pennyfields, where for years a night school has been held for- the stranded Chinese lads. •

A correspondent sends me a note of a visit paid to P^ennyfiekfe last week^ since my afternoon visit of a fow weeks ago, when I found so much life and stir in Chinatown. She writes:

I had always meant to go down at night to see tho mission school at work, but I was not in the least prepared for what 1 should find. In the main street I had passed only white people and lascars, nor were there any China-men hanging about the entrance to Pennyfields. I expected I should find them at the school, and as I opened the door I had visions of sleek black heads in rows. Nothing of the kind. IJie mission hall was lighted. Tho adjutant was there, but instead of conducting a ,? )&ss 6 wa * Pkw'ns halma. with one solitary Chinese lad. Her pupils had gone. She s al d they wore on board those- longedfor ships at last, bound for China Chinatown, in fact, had practically ceased to exist. In place of the twelve hundred men who had.ortfwded the lodg-mg-houses two mon&s ago there were now poriiapa a hundred and fifty, and many of these wore new arrivals, come from Cardiit or Liverpool.-because the chance of getting a ship was better here. The lodg-ing-houses are almost empty—some have been turned into shops—and tho restaurants are closing. Tho opium dons prosumably are closed too. No longer do the white men and women of the nearer districts come hero to gamble. That invasion has ceased, and the invu«ion of white girls from the West End is clvockod. Until two months'ago, the residents say, it wae almost impossible for thoso sea-faring Chinamen to get a' iship. The beamens Jedor-ation was against them. Shipowners dared not employ them. Suddenly and mysteriously the difficulty has been overcome. Ships manned almost entiraly by Chinese are leaving our shoros. but, unhappily for the- men who want to earn their living on the sea, most of them *to to be paid oft in Chinese ports.