Across China on Foot | Page 4

I am one of those who believe that in China we shall
see arising a Government whose power will be paramount in the East,
and upon the integrity of whose people will depend the peace of Europe.
It is much to say. We shall not see it, but our children will. The
Government is going to conquer the people. She has done so already in
certain provinces, and in a few years the reform--deep and real, not the
make-believe we see in many parts of the Empire to-day--will be
universal.
* * * * *
Between Singapore and Shanghai the opportunity occurred of calling at
Saigon and Hong-Kong, two cities offering instructive contrasts of
French and British administration in the Far East.
Saigon is not troubled much by the Britisher. The nationally-exacting
Frenchman has brought it to represent fairly his loved Paris in the East.
The approach to the city, through the dirty brown mud of the
treacherous Mekong, which is swept down vigorously to the China sea
between stretches of monotonous mangrove, with no habitation of man
anywhere visible, is distinctly unpicturesque; but Saigon itself, apart
from the exorbitance of the charges (especially so to the spendthrift
Englishman), is worth the dreary journey of numberless twists and
quick turns up-river, annoying to the most patient pilot.
In the daytime, Saigon is as hot as that last bourne whither all
evil-doers wander--Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad
between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical

evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized
opera-house, alfresco cafés where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe
drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features
typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself
back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des
Italiennes. Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or
dirty, whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending
their disgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn,
the municipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being of
the native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity. Every
second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official. He
was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ugly French cut,
trimmed elaborately with an ad libitum decoration of gold braid and
brass buttons. All was so different from Singapore and Hong-Kong,
and one did not feel, in surroundings which made strongly for the
_laissez-faire_ of the Frenchman in the East, ashamed of the fact that
he was an Englishman.
Three days north lies Hong-Kong, an all-important link in the armed
chain of Britain's empire east of Suez, bone of the bone and flesh of the
flesh of Great Britain beyond the seas. The history of this island, ceded
to us in 1842 by the Treaty of Nanking, is known to everyone in
Europe, or should be.
Four and a half days more, and we anchored at Woo-sung; and a few
hours later, after a terribly cold run up the river in the teeth of a terrific
wind, we arrived at Shanghai.
The average man in Europe and America does not know that this great
metropolis of the Far East is far removed from salt water, and that it is
the first point on entering the Yangtze-kiang at which a port could be
established. It is twelve miles up the Whang-poo. Junks whirled past
with curious tattered brown sails, resembling dilapidated verandah
blinds, merchantmen were there flying the flags of the nations of the
world, all churning up the yellow stream as they hurried to catch the
flood-tide at the bar. Then came the din of disembarkation. Enthusiastic
hotel-runners, hard-worked coolies, rickshaw men, professional

Chinese beggars, and the inevitable hangers-on of a large eastern city
crowded around me to turn an honest or dishonest penny. Some rude,
rough-hewn lout, covered with grease and coal-dust, pushed bang
against me and hurled me without ceremony from his path. My
baggage, meantime, was thrown onto a two-wheeled van, drawn by
four of those poor human beasts of burden--how horrible to have been
born a Chinese coolie!--and I was whirled away to my hotel for tucker.
The French mail had given us coffee and rolls at six, but the excitement
of landing at a foreign port does not usually produce the net amount of
satisfaction to or make for the sustenance of the inner man of the
phlegmatic Englishman, as with the wilder-natured Frenchman.
Therefore were our spirits ruffled.
However, my companion and I fed later.
Subsequently to this we agreed not to be drawn to the clubs or mix in
the social life of Shanghai, but to consider ourselves as two beings
entirely apart from the sixteen thousand and twenty-three Britishers,
Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Danes, Portuguese, and