A BIT OF OLD CHINA By Charles Warren Stoddard China is not more Chinese than this section of our Christian city, northe heart of Tartary less American. Here little China flaunts her scarlet streamers overhead, and flanksher doors with legends in saffron and gold; even its window panes have aforeign look, and within is a glimmering of tinsel, a subdued light, andchina lamps flickering before graven images of barbaric hideousness. This description Of Old San Francisco's Chinatown has been taken fromCharles Warren Stoddard's book, entitled, "In the Footprints of thePadres, " which contains his memories of early days in California. A BIT OF OLD CHINA "It is but a step from Confucius to confusion, " said I, in a briefdiscussion of the Chinese question. "Then let us take it by all means, "replied the artist, who had been an indulgent listener for at least tenminutes. We were strolling upon the verge of the Chinese Quarter in SanFrancisco, and, turning aside from one of the chief thoroughfares ofthe city, we plunged into the busiest portion of Chinatown. From ourstandpoint--the corner of Kearny and Sacramento Streets--we got the mostfavorable view of our Mongolian neighbors. Here is a goodly number ofmerchant gentlemen of wealth and station, comfortably, if not elegantly, housed on two sides of a street that climbs a low hill quite in themanner of a tea-box landscape. A few of these gentlemen lodge on the upper floors of their businesshouses, with Chinese wives, and quaint, old-fashioned children gaudilydressed, looking like little idols, chatting glibly with one another, and gracefully gesticulating with hands of exquisite slenderness. Confucius, in his infancy, may have been like one of the least of these. There are white draymen and porters in the employ of these shrewd andcivil merchants, and the outward appearance of traffic, as conducted inthe immediate vicinity, is rather American than otherwise. Farther up the hill, on Dupont Street, from California to PacificStreets, the five blocks are almost monopolized by the Chinese. Thereis, at first, a sprinkling of small shops in the hands of Jews andGentiles, and a mingling of Chinese bazaars of the half-caste type, where American and English goods are exposed in the show-windows; butas we pass on the Asiatic element increases, and finally every trace ofalien produce is withdrawn from the shelves and counters. Here little China flaunts her scarlet streamers overhead, and flanksher doors with legends in saffron and gold; even its window-panes have aforeign look, and within is a glimmering of tinsel, a subdued light, andchina lamps flickering before graven images of barbaric hideousness. Theair is laden with the fumes of smoking sandalwood and strange odorsof the East; and the streets, swarming with coolies, resound with theechoes of an unknown tongue. There is hardly room for us to pass; wepick our way, and are sometimes curiously regarded by slant-eyed pagans, who bear us no good-will, if that shadow of scorn in the face has beenrightly interpreted. China is not more Chinese than this section of ourChristian city, nor the heart of Tartary less American. Turn which way we choose, within two blocks, on either hand we findnothing but the infinitely small and astonishingly numerous forms oftraffic on which the hordes around us thrive. No corner is too crampedfor the squatting street cobbler; and as for the pipe-cleaners, thecigarette-rollers, the venders of sweetmeats and conserves, they gatheron the curb or crouch under overhanging windows, and await custom withthe philosophical resignation of the Oriental. On Dupont Street, between Clay and Sacramento Streets--a singleblock, --there are no less than five basement apartments devotedexclusively to barbers. There are hosts of this profession in thequarter. Look down the steep steps leading into the basement and see, at any hour of the day, with what deft fingers the tonsorial operatorsmanipulate the devoted pagan head. There is no waste space in the quarter. In apartments not more thanfifteen feet square three or four different professions are oftenrepresented, and these afford employment to ten or a dozen men. Hereis a druggist and herb-seller, with huge spectacles on his nose, at theleft of the main entrance; a butcher displays his meats in a show-windowon the right, serving his customers over the sill; a clothier is in therear of the shop, while a balcony filled with tailors or cigar-makershangs half way to the ceiling. Close about us there are over one hundred and fifty mercantileestablishments and numerous mechanical industries. The seventy-fivecigar factories employ eight thousand coolies, and these are huddledinto the closest quarters. In a single room, measuring twenty feetby thirty feet, sixty men and boys have been discovered industriouslyrolling real Havanas. The traffic which itinerant fish and vegetable venders drive in everypart of the city must be great, being as it is an extreme conveniencefor lazy or thrifty housewives. A few of these basket men cultivategardens in the suburbs, but the majority seek their supplies in the citymarkets. Wash-houses have been established in every part of the city, and are supplied with two sets of laborers, who spend watch and watch onduty, so that the establishment is never closed. One frequently meets a traveling bazaar--a coolie with his bundleof fans and bric-a-brac, wandering from house to house, even in thesuburbs; and the old fellows, with a handful of sliced bamboos andchairs swinging from the poles over their shoulders, are becoming quitenumerous; chair mending and reseating must be profitable. These littlerivulets, growing larger and more varied day by day, all spring fromthat great fountain of Asiatic vitality--the Chinese Quarter. Thissurface-skimming beguiles for an hour or two; but the stranger whostrolls through the streets of Chinatown, and retires dazed with thethousand eccentricities of an unfamiliar people, knows little of themysterious life that surrounds him. Let us descend. We are piloted by a special policeman, one who is wellacquainted with the geography of the quarter. Provided with tapers, weplunge into one of the several dark recesses at hand. Back of the highlyrespectable brick buildings in Sacramento Street--the dwellings andbusiness places of the first-class Chinese merchants--there are pits anddeadfalls innumerable, and over all is the blackness of darkness; forthese human moles can work in the earth faster than the shade of themurdered Dane. Here, from the noisome vats three stories underground tothe hanging gardens of the fish-dryers on the roofs, there is neithernook nor corner but is populous with Mongolians of the lowest caste. Thebetter class have their reserved quarters; with them there is at leastroom to stretch one's legs without barking the shins of one's neighbor;but from this comparative comfort to the condensed discomfort of theimpoverished coolie, how sudden and great the change! Between brick walls we thread our way, and begin descending into theabysmal darkness; the tapers, without which it were impossible toproceed with safety, burn feebly in the double night of the subterraneantenements. Most of the habitable quarters under the ground are like somany pigeon-houses indiscriminately heaped together. If there were onlysunshine enough to drink up the slime that glosses every plank, andfresh air enough to sweeten the mildewed kennels, this highly eccentricstyle of architecture might charm for a time, by reason of its novelty;there is, moreover, a suspicion of the picturesque lurking about theplace--but, heaven save us, how it smells! We pass from one black hole to another. In the first there is a kind ofbin for ashes and coals, and there are pots and grills lying about--itis the kitchen. A heap of fire kindling-wood in one corner, a bench orstool as black as soot can paint it, a few bowls, a few bits of rags, afew fragments of food, and a coolie squatting over a struggling fire, acoolie who rises out of the dim smoke like the evil genii in the Arabiantale. There is no chimney, there is no window, there is no drainage. Weare in a cubic sink, where we can scarcely stand erect. From the smalldoor pours a dense volume of smoke, some of it stale smoke, which ourentry has forced out of the corners; the kitchen will only hold so muchsmoke, and we have made havoc among the cubic inches. Underfoot, thethin planks sag into standing pools, and there is a glimmer of poisonousblue just along the base of the blackened walls; thousands feed daily introughs like these! The next apartment, smaller yet, and blacker and bluer, and moreslippery and slimy, is an uncovered cesspool, from which a sickeningstench exhales continually. All about it are chambers--very smallones, --state-rooms let me call them, opening upon narrow galleries thatrun in various directions, sometimes bridging one another in a marvelousand exceedingly ingenious economy of space. The majority of thesestate-rooms are just long enough to lie down in, and just broad enoughto allow a narrow door to swing inward between two single beds, with twosleepers in each bed. The doors are closed and bolted; there is often nowindow, and always no ventilation. Our "special, " by the authority vested in him, tries one door anddemands admittance. There is no response from within. A group ofcoolies, who live in the vicinity and have followed close upon our heelseven since our descent into the underworld, assure us in soothingtones that the place is vacant. We are suspicious and persist inour investigation; still no response. The door is then forced by the"special, " and behold four of the "seven sleepers" packed into thisair-tight compartment, and insensible even to the hearty greeting weoffer them! The air is absolutely overpowering. We hasten from the spot, but arearrested in our flight by the "special, " who leads us to the gate of thecatacombs, and bids us follow him. I know not to what extent the earthhas been riddled under the Chinese Quarter; probably no man knows savehe who has burrowed, like a gopher, from one living grave to another, fleeing from taxation or the detective. I know that we thread darkpassages, so narrow that two of us may not cross tracks, so low thatwe often crouch at the doorways that intercept pursuit at unexpectedintervals. Here the thief and the assassin seek sanctuary; it is a cityof refuge for lost souls. The numerous gambling-houses are so cautiously guarded that only theprivate police can ferret them out. Door upon door is shut againstyou; or some ingenious panel is slid across your path, and you areunconsciously spirited away through other avenues. The secret signalsthat gave warning of your approach caused a sudden transformation in theground-plan of the establishment. Gambling and opium-smoking are here the ruling passions. A coolie willpawn anything and everything to obtain the means with which to indulgethese fascinations. There are many games played publicly at restaurantsand in the retiring-rooms of mercantile establishments. Not only arecards, dice and dominoes common, but sticks, straws, brass rings, etc. , are thrown in heaps upon the table, and the fate of the gamester hangsliterally upon a breath. These haunts are seldom visited by the officers of justice, for it isalmost impossible to storm the barriers in season to catch the criminalsin the very act. Today you approach a gambling-hell by this door, tomorrow the inner passages of the house are mysteriously changed, and it is impossible to track them without being frequently misled;meanwhile the alarm is sounded throughout the building, and veryspeedily every trace of guilt has disappeared. The lottery is anotherpopular temptation in the quarter. Most of the very numerous wash-housesare said to be private agencies for the sale of lottery tickets. Putyour money, no matter how little it is, on certain of the charactersthat cover a small sheet of paper, and your fate is soon decided; forthere is a drawing twice a day. Enter any one of the pawn-shops licensed by the city authorities, andcast your eye over the motley collection of unredeemed articles. Thereare pistols of every pattern and almost of every age, the majorityof them loaded. There are daggers in infinite variety, including theingenious fan stiletto, which, when sheathed, may be carried in thehand without arousing suspicion, for the sheath and handle bear an exactresemblance to a closed fan. There are entire suits of clothes, beds andbedding, tea, sugar, clocks--multitudes of them, a clock being one ofthe Chinese hobbies, and no room is completely furnished without atleast a pair of them, --ornaments in profusion; everything, in fact, saveonly the precious queue, without which no Chinaman may hope for honor inthis life or salvation in the next. The throngs of customers that keep the pawnshops crowded with pledgesare probably most of them victims of the gambling-table or theopium-den. They come from every house that employs them; your domesticis impatient of delay, and hastens through his daily task in order thathe may nightly indulge his darling sin. The opium habit prevails to an alarming extent throughout the country, but no race is so dependent on this seductive and fatal stimulant as theChinese. There are several hundred dens in San Francisco where, for avery moderate sum, the coolie may repair, and revel in dreams that endin a death-like sleep. Let us pause at the entrance of one of these pleasure-houses. Throughdevious ways we follow the leader, and come at last to a cavernousretreat. The odors that salute us are offensive; on every hand there isan accumulation of filth that should naturally, if it does not, breedfever and death. Forms press about us in the darkness, --forms thathasten like shadows toward that den of shades. We enter by a small doorthat is open for a moment only, and find ourselves in an apartment aboutfifteen feet square. We can touch the ceiling on tiptoe, yet there arethree tiers of bunks placed with headboards to the wall, and each bunkjust broad enough for two occupants. It is like the steerage in anemigrant vessel, eminently shipshape. Every bunk is filled; some of thesmokers have had their dream and lie in grotesque attitudes, insensible, ashen-pale, having the look of plague-stricken corpses. Some are dreaming; you see it in the vacant eye, the listless face, theexpression that betrays hopeless intoxication. Some are preparingthe enchanting pipe, --a laborious process, that reminds one of anincantation. See those two votaries lying face to face, chatting in lowvoices, each loading his pipe with a look of delicious expectation inevery feature. They recline at full length; their heads rest upon blocksof wood or some improvised pillow; a small oil-lamp flickers betweenthem. Their pipes resemble flutes, with an inverted ink-bottle on theside near the lower end. They are most of them of bamboo, and very oftenare beautifully colored with the mellowest and richest tints of a wiselysmoked meerschaum. A small jar of prepared opium--a thick black pasteresembling tar--stands near the lamp. The smoker leisurely dips a wire into the paste; a few drops adhere toit, and he twirls the wire in the flame of the lamp, where they fry andbubble; he then draws them upon the rim of the clay pipe-bowl, and atonce inhales three or four mouthfuls of whitish smoke. This empties thepipe, and the slow process of feeding the bowl is lazily repeated. It isa labor of love; the eyes gloat upon the bubbling drug which shall anonwitch the soul of those emaciated toilers. They renew the pipe againand again; their talk grows less frequent and dwindles to a whisperedsoliloquy. We address them, and are smiled at by delirious eyes; but the ravenouslips are sealed to that magic tube, from which they draw the breath ofa life we know not of. Their fingers relax; their heads sink upon thepillows; they no longer respond, even by a glance, when we now appealto them. Here is the famous Malay, the fearful enemy of De Quincey, whonightly drugged his master into Asiatic seas, and now himself is baskingin the tropical heats and vertical sunlight of Hindustan. Egypt and hergods are his; for him the secret chambers of Cheops are unlocked; healso is transfixed at the summit of pagodas; he is the idol, the priest, the worshiped, the sacrificed. The wrath of Brahma pursues him throughthe forests of Asia; he is the hated of Vishnu; Siva lies in wait forhim; Isis and Osiris confront him. What is this key which seems for a time to unlock the gates of heavenand of hell? It is the most complicated drug in the pharmacopoeia. Though apparently nothing more than a simple black, slimy paste, analysis reveals the fact that it contains no less than five-and-twentyelements, each one of them a compound by itself, and many of them amongthe most complex compounds known to modern chemistry. This "dread agentof unimaginable pleasure and pain, " this author of an "Iliad of woes, "lies within reach of every creature in the commonwealth. As the mostenlightened and communicative of the opium-eaters has observed:"Happiness may be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoatpocket; portable ecstasy may be had corked up in a pint bottle; peace ofmind may be set down in gallons by the mail-coach. " This is the chief, the inevitable dissipation of our coolie tribes; thisis one of the evils with which we have to battle, and in comparison withwhich the excessive indulgence in intoxicating liquors is no more thanwhat a bad dream is to hopeless insanity. See the hundred forms on opiumpillows already under the Circean spell; swarms are without the chambersawaiting their turn to enter and enjoy the fictitious delights of thisparadise. While the opium habit is one that should be treated at once with wisdomand severity, there is another point which seriously involves theChinese question, and, unhappily, it must be handled with gloves. Nineteen-twentieths of the Chinese women in San Francisco are depraved! Not far from one of the pleasure-houses we intruded upon a domestichearth smelling of punk and pestilence. A child fled with a shrillscream at our approach. This was the hospital of the quarter. Nine casesof smallpox were once found within its narrow walls, and with no one tocare for them. As we explored its cramped wards our path was obstructedby a body stretched upon a bench. The face was of that peculiar smokecolor which we are obliged to accept as Chinese pallor; the trunk wasswathed like a mummy in folds of filthy rags; it was motionless asstone, apparently insensible. Thus did an opium victim await hisdissolution. In the next room a rough deal burial-case stood upon two stools; taperswere flickering upon the floor; the fumes of burning punk freightedthe air and clouded the vision; the place was clean enough, for it wasperfectly bare, but it was eminently uninteresting. Close at hand stooda second burial-case, an empty one, with the cover standing against thewall; a few hours more and it would find a tenant--he who was dying inrags and filth in the room adjoining. This was the native hospitalof the quarter, and the mother of the child was the matron of theestablishment. I will cast but one more shadow on the coolie quarter, and then we willsearch for sunshine. It is folly to attempt to ignore the fact that theseeds of leprosy are sown among the Chinese. If you would have Proof, follow me. It is a dreary drive over the hills to the pest-house. Imagine that we have dropped in upon the health officer at his cityoffice. Our proposed visitation has been telephoned to the residentphysician, who is a kind of prisoner with his leprous patients on thelonesome slope of a suburban hill. As we get into the rugged edge of thecity, among half-graded streets, strips of marshland, and a semi-rusticpopulation, we ask our way to the pest-house. Yonder it lies, surroundedby that high white fence on the hill-top, above a marsh once cloudedwith clamorous water-fowl, but now all, all under the spell of thequarantine, and desolate beyond description. Our road winds up thehill-slope, sown thick with stones, and stops short at the great solidgate in the high rabbit fence that walls in the devil's acre, if I mayso call it. We ring the dreadful bell--the passing-bell, that is seldomrung save to announce the arrival of another fateful body clothed inliving death. The doctor welcomes us to an enclosure that is utterly whitewashed; thedetached houses within it are kept sweet and clean. Everything connectedwith the lazaret is of the cheapest description; there is a primitivesimplicity, a modest nakedness, an insulated air about the place thatreminds one of a chill December in a desert island. Cheap as it is andunhandsome, the hospital is sufficient to meet all the requirements ofthe plague in its present stage of development. The doctor has weededout the enclosure, planted it, hedged it about with the fever-dispellingeucalyptus, and has already a little plot of flowers by the officewindow, --but this is not what we have come to see. One ward in thepest-house is set apart for the exclusive use of the Chinese lepers, whohave but recently been isolated. We are introduced to the poor creaturesone after another, and then we take them all in at a glance, or groupthem according to their various stages of decomposition, or the peculiarcharacter of their physical hideousness. They are not all alike; with some the flesh has begun to wither and toslough off, yet they are comparatively cheerful; as fatalists, it makesvery little difference to them how soon or in what fashion they aretranslated to the other life. There is one youth who doubtless sufferssome inconveniences from the clumsy development of his case. This lad, about eighteen years of age, has a face that is swollen like a spongesaturated with corruption; he cannot raise his bloated eyelids, but, with his head thrown back, looks downward over his cheeks. Two of theselepers are as astonishing specimens as any that have ever come under myobservation, yet I have morbidly sought them from Palestine to Molokai. In these cases the muscles are knotted, the blood curdled; masses ofunwholesome flesh cover them, lying fold upon fold; the lobes of theirears hang almost to the shoulder; the eyes when visible have an inhumanglance that transfixes you with horror. Their hands are shapeless stumpsthat have lost all natural form or expression. Of old there was a law for the leprosy of a garment and of a house;yet, in spite of the stringency of that Mosaic law, the isolation, thepurging with hyssop, and the cleansing by fire, St. Luke records: "Theremet Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off; and they liftedup their voices and cried, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" And today, more than eighteen hundred years later, lepers gather on the slopesof Mount Zion, and hover at the gates of Jerusalem, and crouch in theshadow of the tomb of David, crying for the bread of mercy. Leprosy oncethoroughly engrafted on our nation, and nor cedar-wood, nor scarlet, nor hyssop, nor clean birds, nor ewes of the first year, nor measures offine flour, nor offerings of any sort, shall cleanse us for evermore. Let us turn to pleasanter prospects--the Joss House, for instance, one of the several temples whither the Chinese frequently repair topropitiate the reposeful gods. It is an unpretentious building, withnothing external to distinguish its facade from those adjoining, saveonly a Chinese legend above the door. There are many crooks and turnswithin it; shrines in a perpetual state of fumigation adorn its nooksand corners; overhead swing shelves of images rehearsing historicaltableaux; there is much carving and gilding, and red and green paint. Itis the scene of a perennial feast of lanterns, and the worshipful entersilently with burnt-offerings and meat-offerings and drink-offerings, which they spread before the altar under the feet of some colossal god;then, with repeated genuflections, they retire. The thundering gong orthe screaming pipes startle us at intervals, and white-robed priestspass in and out, droning their litanies. At this point the artist suggests refreshments; arm in arm we pass downthe street, surfeited with sight-seeing, weary of the multitudinousbazaars, the swarming coolies, the boom of beehive industry. Swamped ina surging crowd, we are cast upon the catafalque of the celestialdead. The coffin lies under a canopy, surrounded by flambeaux, graveofferings, guards and musicians. Chinatown has become sufficiently acclimatized to begin to put forth itsnatural buds again as freely as if this were indeed the Flowery Land. The funeral pageant moves, --a dozen carriages preceded by mourners onfoot, clad in white, their heads covered, their feet bare, their griefinsupportable, so that an attendant is at hand to sustain each mournerhowling at the wheels of the hearse. An orchestra heads the procession;the air is flooded with paper prayers that are cast hither at you toappease the troubled spirit. They are on their way to the cemeteryamong the hills toward the sea, where the funeral rites are observed asrigorously as they are on Asian soil. We are still unrefreshed and sorely in need of rest. Overhead swing hugeballoon lanterns and tufts of gold-flecked scarlet streamers, --a sightthat maketh the palate of the hungry Asiatic to water, for within thishouse may be had all the delicacies of the season, ranging from theconfections of the fond suckling to funeral bakemeats. Legends wroughtin tinsel decorate the walls. Here is a shrine with a vermilion-facedgod and a native lamp, and stalks of such hopelessly artificial flowersas fortunately are unknown in nature. Saffron silks flutter theirfringes in the steams of nameless cookery--for all this is but thekitchen, and the beginning of the end we aim at. A spiral staircase winds like a corkscrew from floor to floor; we ascendby easy stages, through various grades of hunger, from the economicappetite on the first floor, where the plebeian stomach is stayed withtea and lentils, even to the very housetop, where are administeredcomforting syrups and a menu that is sweetened throughout its lengthwith the twang of lutes, the clash of cymbals, and the throb of theshark-skin drum. Servants slip to and fro in sandals, offering edible birds'-nests, sharks'-fins, and beche de mer, --or are these unfamiliar dishes snatchedfrom some other kingdom? At any rate, they are native to the strangepeople who have a little world of their own in our midst, and who could, if they chose, declare their independence tomorrow. We see everywhere the component parts of a civilization separate anddistinct from our own. They have their exists and their entrances;their religious life and burial; their imports, exports, diversions, tribunals, punishments. They are all under the surveillance of the sixcompanies, the great six-headed supreme authority. They have laws withinour laws that to us are sealed volumes. ***** After supper we leaned from the high balcony, among flowers andlanterns, and looked down upon the street below; it was midnight, yetthe pavements were not deserted, and there arose to our ears a murmur asof a myriad humming bees shut in clustering hives; close about uswere housed near twenty thousand souls; shops were open; discordantorchestras resounded from the theaters; in a dark passage we saw theflames playing upon the thresholds of infamy to expel the evil shades. Away off in the Bay in the moonlight glimmered the ribbed sail of afishing-junk, and the air was heavy with an indefinable odor whichto this hour puzzles me; but it must be attributed either to sink orsandalwood--perchance to both! "It is a little bit of old China, this quarter of ours, " said theartist, rising to go. And so it is, saving only a noticeable lack ofdwarfed trees and pale pagodas and sprays of willowy bamboo; of clumsyboats adrift on tideless streams; of toy-like tea-gardens hanging amongartificial rocks, and of troops of flat-faced but complaisant peopleposing grotesquely in ridiculous perspective.