“God Owes Apology To Sodom, Gomorrah, If Shanghai Endures.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17833, 29 April 1926, Page 4

“God Owes Apology To Sodom, Gomorrah, If Shanghai Endures.”

MISSIONARY QUOTED BY AUTHOR; CHINESE CITY SEES 93,000 CRIMINAL CASES PASS THROUGH MIXED COURT IN YEAR

Most of us know that Shanghai is I one of the original treaty ports open- j ed to foreign trade in 1843, and that ' it has a native quarter and various foreign quarters, but not one man m a thousand knows the truth about that great city. Many of its American and European residents have no knowledge of Chinese affairs and no interest in them. They are in Shanghai merely to make money, and have no wish to come in contact with Chinese people. Some of them despise the natives. The name “Shanghai" really denotes not one city, but an entire group of cities. The old original Shanghai is a Chinese city partiy walled and more than 2000 years old. The latest census gives the Chinese population as 827.032. and foreigners as 21.567. The British number 6500. and the Americans 3500. The area set aside for foreign residence was intended as a place where French, English and American could live alter their own fashion. free froin all annoyances of -Chinese rule. But during the Taiping reign of terror the foreign settlement was freely opened to all Chinese in a spirit of genuine hospitality. The result has in many ways been extraordinary. Tht.

foreign banks hold piles of loot committed to their care by all the scalawags of China, and as the investors are anxious merely about the safety of their money some of the banks charge them for storage instead of paying interest on their deposits. j Shanghai is truly a topsy-turvy place. ' Mr Harry A. Franck, in his 'Roving Through Southern China,” has given us a vivid realistic picture of the country where he spent, a varied, interesting. instructive year, says the Melbourne "Age." It was his object to diverge from the beaten track and get to know the people as they lived their daily lives, but he was so impressed with the novelties and anomalies of Shanghai that he could not resist the temptation to give us a racy and informing chapter entitled "Shanghai by the Back Door." He found it very uninteresting on first acquaintance. It has the same dismal railroad yards, dingy stations, noisy tramcars. honking automobiles, as any second-class American city. The modern buildings are all of the standard type with which we are familiar. and the normal European or American business man lives much the same as if he were in his own country. The offices, the clubs, the hurry hour in the evening in tramcar or motor, the round of golf or set of tennis, or riding exercise, the dinner in the home style, the newspapers, and the theatres make up the days’ doings. There is little intercourse between the various national groups of foreigners. Each

man conforms to type, has his groom, caddy and tennis ball chaser, and any deviation from what is the rule is frowned upon as eccentricity. With the Western mind dominating ideas and ideals the business man from Britain or America scorns the thought of knowing his clients or learning their language. He leaves it to his Chinese comprador to be the go-between. The missionary toils and sweats to acquire the Chinese language, but the merchant thinks he has done well if he acquires "pidgin English.” One result is that the comprador often gets richer than his employer, and another that the business man leaves China with a narrower view than when he entered it He goes home to pose an an authority on China, whereas his entire knowledge, of it scarcely goes beyond the contents of a bill of lading. There are. of course, some radiant exceptions. -but many foreign business men and their children who have spent most of their lives in Shanghai have never really been in China, " have

never set fool in the Chinese city just across the street from the. foreign settlement." They cannot say "Yes" or “Xo" in the Shanghai dialect, much less real Chinese. The Shanghai American School teaches no Chinese, forbids its pupils to speak Chinese. and has no place in its curriculum for the history, arts or classics of mankind's oldest civilisation. But the most startling feature of Shanghai is that the foreign settlement is a city of refuge for the Oh.-, nese. When the buccaneering rascals of some, native province find things getting too hot for them, they have merely to flee to the nearest foreign concession to be safe from enraged pursuers, although Chinese jurisdiction begins just across the street from their new home. Here, with their illgotten plunder, they may settle down to a luxurious old age or proceed to finance a new and daring conspiracy. The injustice is obvious. An official with a place of safety close to hand loses a powerful incentive to honest administration. A governor who was dismissed upon demand of the diplomatic body for conniving at crime calmly moved into a foreign concession and settled down to live on his spoils among the very people who demanded he should be punished. Quite Gilbertian! The Chinese in these settlements have no voice in public affairs, and their only complaint seems to be that they are excluded from the municipal parks, for which they arc taxed. They walk outside the high meshed fences and watch the foreigner inside, and envy the destitute Russians and drunken beachcombers passing through the gates, which are barred against Chinese. There is a reason. To let everyone in would quickly turn the parks into garbage heaps. for the masses have simple ideas about sanitation. The fourteen nationalities in Shanghai which are not subject to Chinese law have their regular Consular courts, in which their respective citizens may 1)6 tried by their own laws. In the mixed court there are two British and two American assessors, and any of the other favoured nations may send an assessor. Its jurisdiction extends over all foreigners within the international settlement. A Chinese Magistrate, appointed by the Consular body, sits at the other end of the mixed court bench, and has equal authority with the assessor of the day. There is an average of a capital crime a month, and no court of appeal. As one of the assessors put it: "We have the first and last guess.” Ninety-three thousand criminal cases passed through the mixed court in one year lately. Shanghai is not quite a model city. A missionary told Mr Franck "If God lets Shanghai endure He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

j It would be doing injustice to the author to leave the impression that he was concerned chiefly with Shangj hai. That great city absorbs only twenty-four pages out of a bulky volume running to 640 pages full of keen observation and shrewd judgments. The ; traveller ofl' the beaten track saw tribes ! rarely mentioned in popular works. | and provides 171 photographs take;.’ j Itv himself, as well as a map showing his route. There is no aspect of Chinese life which escapes his keen eye. He saw no great evidence of a general : anti foreign feeling in China, but reports the testimony of old missionaries . that they feel it in subtle ways, such as the decrease in politeness. He { thinks over-population is visibly j China s greatest curse to-day. ! In Shanghai the European lefuses to j adopt Chinese customs; in the interior ;of China many foreigners get China- | itis. using repetitions and shouting and changing their while they talk. Outside of Shanghai, “China in a sea that .salts everything that flows into it."