LITTLE CHINA.
“The Indians begin to be troublesome again in Trinity County. _One man
and a Chinaman_ have been killed, and a lady crippled for life.”
That the antipathy everywhere exhibited by the English to colored races
was not less strong in California than in the Carolinas I had
suspected, but I was hardly prepared for the deliberate distinction
between men and yellow men drawn in this paragraph from the _Alta
Californian_ of the day of my return to San Francisco.
A determination to explore Little China, as the celestial quarter of the
city is termed, already arrived at, was only strengthened by the
unconscious humor of the _Alta_, and I at once set off in search of two
of the detectives, Edes and Saulsbury, to whom I had some sort of
introduction, and put myself under their charge for the night.
We had not been half an hour in the Chinese theater or opera house
before my detectives must have repented of their offer to “show me
around,” for, incomprehensible as it must have seemed to them with their
New England gravity and American contempt for the Chinese, I was amused
beyond measure with the performance, and fairly lost myself in the
longest laugh that I had enjoyed since I had left the plantations of
Virginia.
When we entered the house, which is the size of the Strand Theater of
London, it may have been ten or eleven o‘clock. The performance had
begun at seven, and was likely to last till two A.M. By the
“performance” was meant this particular act or scene, for the piece had
been going on every evening for a month, and would be still in progress
during the best part of another, it being the principle of the Chinese
drama to take up the hero at an early age, and conduct him to the grave,
which he reaches full of years and of honor.
The house was crammed with a grinning crowd of happy “yellow boys,”
while the “China ladies” had a long gallery to themselves. No sound of
applause is to be heard in a Chinese place of amusement, but the crowd
grin delight at the actors, who, for their part, grin back at the crowd.
The feature of the performance which struck me at once was the hearty
interest the actors took in the play, and the chaff that went on between
them and the pit; it is not only from their numbers and the nature of
their trades that the Chinese may be called the Irish of the Pacific:
there was soul in every gesture.
On the stage, behind the actors, was a band, which played unceasingly,
and so loud that the performers, who clearly had not the smallest
intention of subordinating their parts to the music, had to talk in
shrieks in order to be heard. The audience, too, all talked in their
loudest natural tones.
As for the play, a lady made love to an old gentleman (probably the
hero, as this was the second month or third act of the play), and,
bawling at him fiercely, was indignantly rejected by him in a piercing
shriek. Relatives, male and female, coming with many howls to the
assistance of the lady, were ignominiously put to flight, in a high
falsetto key, by the old fellow‘s footmen, who were in turn routed by a
force of yelling spearmen, apparently the county _posse_. The soldiers
wore paint in rings of various colors, put on so deftly, that of nose,
of eyes, of mouth, no trace could be discovered; the front face
resembled a target for archery. All this time, a steady, unceasing
uproar was continued by four gongs and a harp, with various cymbals,
pavilions, triangles, and guitars.
Scenery there was none, but boards were put up in the Elizabethan way,
with hieroglyphics denoting the supposed locality; and another archaic
point is, that all the female parts were played by boys. For this I have
the words of the detectives; my eyes, had I not long since ceased to
believe them, would have given me proof to the contrary.
The acting, as far as I could judge by the grimace, was excellent.
Nowhere could be found greater spirit, or equal power of facial
expression. The stage fight was full of pantomimic force; the leading
soldier would make his fortune as a London pantaloon.
When the detectives could no longer contain their distaste for the
performance, we changed our quarters for a restaurant--the “Hang Heong,”
the wood of which was brought from China.
The street along which we had to pass was decorated rather than lit by
paper lanterns hung over every door; but the “Hang Heong” was
brilliantly illuminated, with a view, no doubt, to attracting the crowd
as they poured out from the theater at a later hour. The ground-floor
was occupied by shop and kitchen, the dining-rooms being up stairs. The
counter, which is on the plan of that in the houses of the Palais Royal,
was presided over, not by a smiling woman, but by grave and pig-tailed
gentlemen in black, who received our order from the detective with the
decorous solemnity of the head waiter in an English country inn.
The rooms up stairs were nearly full; and as the Chinese by no means
follow the Americans in silent eating, the babel was tremendous. A
saucer and a pair of chopsticks were given each of us, but at our
request a spoon was furnished as a special favor to the “Melicans.”
Tiny cups of a sweet spirit were handed us before supper was brought up.
The liquor was a kind of shrub, but white, made, I was told, from
sugar-canes. For first course, we had roast duck cut in pieces, and
served in an oil-filled bowl, and some sort of fish; tea was then
brought in, and followed by shark‘s fin, for which I had given a special
order; the result might have been gum arabic for any flavor I could
find. Dog was not to be obtained, and birds’-nest soup was beyond the
purse of a traveler seven thousand miles from home, and twelve thousand
from his next supplies. A dish of some strange, black fungus stewed in
rice, followed by preserves and cakes, concluded our supper, and were
washed down by our third cups of tea.
After paying our respects and our money to the gentleman in black, who
grunted a lugubrious something that answered to “good night,” we paid a
visit to the Chinese “bad quarter,” which differs only in degree of
badness from the “quartier Mexicain,” the bad pre-eminence being
ascribed, even by the prejudiced detectives, to the Spaniards and
Chilenos.
Hurrying on, we reached the Chinese gaming-houses just before they
closed. Some difficulty was made about admitting us by the “yellow
loafers” who hung around the gate, as the houses are prohibited by law;
but as soon as the detectives, who were known, explained that they came
not on business, but on pleasure, we were suffered to pass in among the
silent, melancholy gamblers. Not a word was heard, beyond every now arid
then a grunt from the croupier. Each man knew what he was about, and won
or lost his money in the stillness of a dead-house. The game appeared to
be a sort of loto; but a few minutes of it was enough, and the
detectives pretended to no deep acquaintance with its principles.
The San Francisco Chinese are not all mere theater-goers, loafers,
gamblers; as a body they are frugal, industrious, contented men. I soon
grew to think it a pleasure to meet a Chinese-American, so clean and
happy is his look: not a speck is to be seen upon the blue cloth of his
long coat or baggy trowsers. His hair is combed with care; the bamboo on
which he and his mate together carry their enormous load seems as though
cleansed a dozen times a day.
It is said to be a peculiarity of the Chinese that they are all alike:
no European can, without he has dealings with them, distinguish one
Celestial from another. The same, however, may be said of the Sikhs, the
Australian natives, of most colored races, in short. The points of
difference which distinguish the yellow men, the red men, the black men
with straight hair, the negroes, from any other race whatever, are so
much more prominent than the minor distinctions between Ah Sing and Chi
Long, or between Uncle Ned and Uncle Tom, that the individual are sunk
and lost in the national distinctions. To the Chinese in turn all
Europeans are alike; but beneath these obvious facts there lies a grain
of solid truth that is worth the hunting out, and which is connected
with the change-of-type question in America and Australasia. Men of
similar habits of mind and body are alike among ourselves in Europe;
noted instances are the close resemblance of Père Enfantin, the St.
Simonian chief, to the busts of Epicurus; of Bismarck to Cardinal
Ximenes. Irish laborers--men who for the most part work hard, feed
little, and leave their minds entirely unplowed--are all alike;
Chinamen, who all work hard, and work alike, who live alike, and who go
further, and all think alike, are, by a mere law of nature,
indistinguishable one from the other.
In the course of my wanderings in the Golden City, I lighted on the
house of the Canton Company, one of the Chinese benevolent societies,
the others being those of Hong Kong, Macao, and Amoy. They are like the
New York Immigration Commission, and the London “Société Française de
Bienfaisance,” combined; added to a theater and joss-house, or temple,
and governed on the principles of such clubs as those of the “whites” or
“greens” at Heidelberg, they are, in short, Chinese trades unions,
sheltering the sick, succoring the distressed, finding work for the
unemployed, receiving the immigrants from China when they land, and
shipping their bones back to China, ticketed with name and address, when
they die. “Hong Kong, with dead Chinamen,” is said to be a common answer
from outward-bounders to a hail from the guard-ship at the Golden Gate.
Some of the Chinese are wealthy: Tung Yu & Co., Chi Sing Tong & Co.,
Wing Wo Lang & Co., Chy Lung & Co., stand high among the merchants of
the Golden City. Honest and wealthy as these men are allowed to be, they
are despised by every white Californian, from the governor of the State
to the Mexican boy who cleans his shoes.
In America, as in Australia, there is a violent prejudice against John
Chinaman. He pilfers, we are told; he lies, he is dirty, he smokes
opium, is full of bestial vices--a pagan, and--what is far more
important--yellow! All his sins are to be pardoned but the last.
Californians, when in good humor, will admit that John is sober,
patient, peaceable, and hard working, that his clothes at least are
scrupulously clean; but he is yellow! Even the Mexicans, themselves
despised, look down upon the Chinamen, just as the New York Irish affect
to have no dealings with “the naygurs.” The Chinese themselves pander to
the feeling. Their famous appeal to the Californian Democrats may or may
not be true: “What for Democlat allee timee talkee dam Chinaman?
Chinaman allee samee Democlat; no likee nigger, no likee injun.”
“Infernals,” “Celestials,” and “Greasers”--or black men, yellow men, and
Mexicans--it is hard to say which are most despised by the American
whites in California.
The Chinaman is hated by the rough fellows for his cowardice. Had the
Chinese stood to their rights against the Americans, they would long
since have been driven from California. As it is, here and in Victoria
they invariably give way, and never work at diggings which are occupied
by whites. Yet in both countries they take out mining licenses from the
State, which is bound to protect them in the possession of the rights
thus gained, but which is powerless against the rioters of Ballarat, or
the “Anti-Chinese mob” of El Dorado.
The Chinese in California are practically confined by public opinion,
violence, or threats, to inferior kinds of work, which the “meanest” of
the whites of the Pacific States refuse to perform. Politically, this is
slavery. All the evils to which slavery has given rise in the cotton
States are produced here by violence, in a less degree only because the
Chinese are fewer than were the negroes.
In spite of a prejudice which recalls the time when the British
government forbade the American colonist to employ negroes in the
manufacture of hats, on the ground that white laborers could not stand
the competition, the yellow men continue to flock to the “Gold Hills,”
as they call San Francisco. Already they are the washermen, sweepers,
and porters of three States, two Territories, and British Columbia. They
are denied civil rights; their word is not taken in cases where white
men are concerned; a heavy tax is set upon them on their entry to the
State; a second tax when they commence to mine--still their numbers
steadily increase. In 1852, Governor Bigler, in his message, recommended
the prohibition of the immigration of the Chinese, but they now number
one-tenth of the population.
The Irish of Asia, the Chinese have commenced to flow over on to the
outer world. Who shall say where the flood will stop? Ireland, with now
five millions of people, has, in twenty years, poured an equal number
out into the world. What is to prevent the next fifty years seeing an
emigration of a couple of hundreds of millions from the rebellion-torn
provinces of Cathay?
Three Chinamen in a temperate climate will do as much arm-work as two
Englishmen, and will eat or cost less. It looks as though the cheaper
would starve out the dearer race, as rabbits drive out stronger but
hungrier hares. This tendency is already plainly visible in our
mercantile marine: the ships are manned with motley crews of Bombay
lascars, Maories, Negroes, Arabs, Chinamen, Kroomen, and Malays. There
are no British or American seamen now, except boys who are to be
quartermasters some day, and experienced hands who are quartermasters
already. But there is nothing to regret in this: Anglo-Saxons are too
valuable to be used as ordinary seamen where lascars will do nearly, and
Maories quite as well. Nature seems to intend the English for a race of
officers, to direct and guide the cheap labor of the Eastern peoples.
The serious side of the Chinese problem--just touched on here--will
force itself rudely upon our notice in Australia.
[Illustration: THE BRIDAL VEIL FALL, YOSEMITE VALLEY.--P. 228]