Modern "Shanghailanders"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 13 (Supplement)

Modern "Shanghailanders"

ONE of the most engaging features of the Chinese is their readiness to talk. They ■will answer any question you care to ask, about politics, social customs, and moral standards, as readily as a racing enthusiast will tell you what is going to win the big race. And if, in response to their information, you ask: "But is that really true?" they will answer, /( Yes, it is true so far as it goes, but it is diffici.lt to tell the whole truth." One of the first Chinese to whom I talked was a merchant from Amoy, one of the Treaty ports, a town set in a landscape the colour of apricots, and mist, and young beech leaves. I said to him that Confucius very largely represented the ideal of English public tscbool education. Ho said that mignfe well be so; but Confucius had done irreparable harm to China. He said the Confucian ideal had so occupied the Chinese mind for generations and for centuries, that no choice had been given it to acquire a modern education; and so their enemies, the Japanese, were ut a great advantage. He also told mn that the perfection of human happiness was to eat Chinese food, to marry a Japanese wife, and live in 'a European house. For Chinese food is the most |>erfectly confected and subtly flavoured in the world; a Japanese wife is admirably and 100 per cent domesticated; and a European house keeps out the rain. Flavour and Aroma He also spoke about the excellence of Chinese tea The superlative merits of its flavour and aroma, ho said, are apparent to anyone whose nose and palate are sufficiently refined. But it has also these advantages: that if through excess of/consideration for your host, you exceed tho limitu of temperance at a banquet, some three or four cups of Chinese tea will not only restoro your tongue to its pristine freshness, but redress the disabilities of indigestion, and ensure a happy awakening on the morrow. ■ Shanghai is a city of more than 3,000.000 inhabitants, and the European part of it is rich and dignified, while the outer Chinese fringes descend into unbelievable squalor. Tt is a city of appal ing contrasts, for you may live in a hotel that is repiete with all the absurd and unnecessary luxuries of cosmopolitan hotels, and at its door you will bo accosted by half a dozen rickshaw coolies whose wages are_ a few coppers a dnp, and whoso working life— si/ch is tho hardness of their labour and the insufficiency of their nourishment—is :do more than five or six years. The crowds ir the streets wear fcombre colours, long, dark-blue gowns

"Beggars Rickshaws and Russians" By ERIC LINKLATER, Well-known Scots novelist. Author of " Juan in America," etc. or black tunics and trousers: but overhead there are brilliant banners of scarlet and gold, inscribed with gold or scarlet ideographs. The coolies are much given to laughter. If your car stops suddenly to avoid running down a wandering pedestrian, he will turn and laugh derisively. He doesn't owe you a grudge for frightening him; he has triumphed over you for failing to kill him. He is one up on death. A Nocturnal City ' Shanghai is largely a nocturnal city. It owns hundreds and hundreds of night-clubs, to which the Shanghailanders themselves never go except when they have visitors whom it is their duty to entertain. So, at least, they told me. ■ The night-clubs are of different kinds. Many of them are very well-conducted, and quite respectable. I remember going to one where nil the young women with whom one danced were Russians, very good looking and very agreeable. Tho girl with whom I had been dancing for a long time-—if you dance more than two dances with the same partner it is inadvisable to seek another, for the first will then become jealous—this girl, excessively lovely, with sad, sea-blue eyes and hair the colour of raw silk —at least, T think so. for to tell you the truth I have never seen raw silk —this exquisite creature was, to be frank about it, rather dumb. So, in desperation, T asked her if she knew the gipsy song "Black Eyes." Of course she did, and she began to sing it. She sang very loudly, in my right ear, and as we passed the orchestra she called enthusiastically to tho leader. He, responding with enthusiasm, cut short the mild fox-trot he was playing, and suddenly whipped his hand into the melancholv fronzy of "Black Eves." I. a staid and conservative dancer, found myself swept into the torrent of a Russian dance. Returning to onr table, presently I asked the other girl if she knew the Bonjr called "Duhiniißhka," and she began to sine it." very loudly, and byand by the orchestra took it up, and all the girls in the room joined in,

and there was a great deal of exciting noise. So with a Russian gesture, and in a Russian mood, I called for more champagne. It was very bad champagne, made, I think, from green gooseberries, but it supercharged the emotional atmosphere. The young women no longer wanted to dance, or talk, but merely to sing. And their songs grew more and more melancholy. The man with whom I shared this adventure—he was a sea-captain and a man of experience —suggested it was time to go. So we bought the girls a lot of tickets, enough to mako them free for the rest of the night—free to do nothing but sing. We said good-bye, they answered us ip song, and we went out into the darkness. The streets were curiously Bilent. Temples and Gardens In Soochow we hired rickshaws, and set off to look at temples and gardens; gardens full, not of flowers, but of rocks grotesquely shaped, and fantastic grottoes; and temples crowded with golden images, most of them placid and impersonally benign, in the heavy-lidded fashion of Buddha, but some of them laughing outright. The Chinese, I think, are the only people who have gods that laugh. But the Chinese, I am told, do not very dovoutly believe in their gods. One of our journeys took us diagonally from corner to corner, and somewhere in tho middle of the city the rickshaw coolies got lost and pulied us hither and thither, and paid no attention to us when we told them to stop. Nor could we jump out, for a rickshaw is not easy to leave when it is in motion, and tho lanes were so indescribably filthy that we did not care to risk falling. So wo resigned ourselves to fate and the rain, and then, when we were wet through, and quite numb, we came to the temple, and a host of people at the gates, to whom our coolies told their story, shouted with laughter to hear that wo had done anything so uproariously funny as to get lost in Soochow. The temple was pleasant enough, but outside was a far more interesting scene. This was a kind of beggar's market. A dozen ragged outcasts were sitting behind their merchandise, laid temptingly on the ground. Their merchandise consisted of a few rusty nails, and the lid of a cigarette tin, some dirty-coloured paper retrieved from an ash-heap, a few shreds of cloth to patch a beggar s coat, a broken key and three links of a rusty chain. There was nothing of any value, nothing but rubbish, and not even good rubbish. Who would buy such stuff? I cannot think, and where they could find a coin small enough to deal in it I do not know. But poverty in China has depths beyond our imagination.—L.l.P. (Copyright.)