Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom

by Carl Crow

  The machinery of municipal government had been barely set up before new and unexpected complications were added to those which already existed. When the settlement was founded, it was distinctly understood that it was to be set aside exclusively for the use of foreigners - a kind of sanctuary from which all Chinese would be excluded. In the early days the only Chinese who lived in the settlement in theory at least - were household servants and employees of the foreign hongs. An organization to govern this small and relatively compact foreign community had just begun to function when the Taiping Rebellion swept toward Shanghai, bringing the place its first real-estate boom and with it new problems of government that are now only partially solved after more than eighty years of effort. The Chinese countryside fled in terror before the advancing rebels, and the only safe place of refuge was provided by the foreign settlements. Many of the refugees were people of wealth who had brought their valuables with them, and they were willing to pay any price for quarters and the protection of the foreign gunboats anchored in the Whangpoo. Even if all had been beggars it would have been physically impossible to keep them out.

  Their arrival seriously inconvenienced the foreigners, but brought many of them easy and unexpected wealth. The foreign community turned its attention from trading to the building of houses - any kind of a house that, being of foreign ownership, would be entitled to fly a foreign flag and presumably be safe from attack by the rebel hordes. As soon as a house had a roof there were plenty of refugees ready to move in and pay an advance rental that would cover the original cost of the structure and give the foreign owner a handsome profit, with additional revenue coming in every month.

  Some of the refugees who came to Shanghai for safety returned to their homes when the Taipings were suppressed, but a good proportion of them remained as permanent residents. Thus Shanghai became a city of refuge whose gates were open, with a welcome sign out to anyone who could pay the price. It attracted a constant trickle which civil wars turned into a flood and some always remained even after peace had been restored and they could have returned home in safety. The outstanding fortunes possessed by individual foreigners in Shanghai have not been made by trade for which the settlement was founded but by real estate, a business to which neither the Chinese nor the foreigners gave any particular attention at the time the various treaties were negotiated.

  Shanghai would have been a very different place if the original treaty provisions had been carried out and the settlement restricted to the residence of foreigners. Old maps and pictures show that the early hongs were built on park-like estates with luxurious quarters for the taipan and comfortable residences for other members of the staff. Convenience of location was sacrificed for spaciousness so that each business house had the physical appearance of a baronial estate, with the taipan and his wife fitting into the picture as baron and baroness. This feudal picture was in a raw and unfinished state when Chinese moved in by the thousands and the canvas was covered by an entirely different one. I have always been glad that I went to China before all the traces had been obliterated. Many of the managers of big companies lived on the top floor of their office buildings and there were vestiges of old flower gardens in front of business houses on The Bund.

  Shanghai has never been able completely to adjust itself to the changed conditions brought about by the fact that it became a place of residence for hundreds of thousands of Chinese. The treaties and the land regulations had not contemplated a situation in which the settlement authorities would be called upon to provide police protection for this mass of people and find methods of taxing them so that they would pay their share of municipal expenses. The foreigners took the view that the Chinese really had no business living in the settlement and should be willing to pay for the privilege. It wasn’t very long before the Chinese were paying more than half the taxes though they had nothing whatever to say about the government of the place, what the tax rate should be or how the tax money should be spent. To Chinese demands for a share of the government the foreigners responded that Shanghai had been set apart as a place for foreign residence which was logical enough, except for the fact that foreigners themselves had sacrificed that exclusiveness in order to gain the easy money to be made by giving Chinese the protection of foreign flags. Only in recent years have Chinese been added to the municipal council which now consists of 14 members - 5 British, 5 Chinese, 2 Americans, 2 Japanese. This ratio of nationalities is determined by the voters themselves and may be upset at any municipal election.

  The early days of the administration of Shanghai were beset by national differences. These never disappeared but with each new generation they grew less important. In spite of the fact that the British always held the balance of power it was never governed in the interest of Great Britain. The prosperity of the port was the only thing that really mattered.

  From the very beginning of the settlement the principle of free and equal opportunity in trade was a general rule and has so continued. There were always a few old Tories to whom the slogan “Buy British because best” had the sanctity of a Biblical text, but not many. In an international community which existed on foreign trade any attempt to set up sales along national lines was likely to cut several ways. Even the French bought some articles that were not the product of France though they always smoked the unpalatable French cigarettes.

  Americans came in for a fair share of business that would logically have gone to the British if they had been minded to make Shanghai a preserve for British trade. The first important public building to be erected in the port was the British Consulate and the contractor was an American who incidentally was the first white man to die in Shanghai. The first steam fire engine was of American manufacture. A Shanghai newspaper boasted that it was more powerful than any engine in Boston. Fire watch towers were scattered all over the city and most of the bells came from a New York foundry. The power plant, which was the largest municipal electric enterprise in the world, was staffed by British engineers but it contained a fair amount of American equipment. The power plant and the telephone system are now American properties. All the other public utilities, gas, water, tram and bus services are British.

  Everyone ate American canned goods (we called it “tinned”), Australian butter, Scotch kippers, Italian cheese, New Zealand or English marmalade, Japanese fresh fish. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom would show a preponderance of German preparations. Men’s winter suits were made from English woolens and summer suits from American Palm Beach. Only the ladies declined to follow this sensible custom of buying and using what was best and cheapest. The finest silks in the world are those produced by the hand looms of China but the memsahibs would have none of them. They insisted on imported prints from Manchester or Paris for which they paid outrageous prices. Occasionally a newcomer would buy a gorgeous piece of silk from Lao Kai Fook and have a gown made from it. When she appeared she was the cynosure of all eyes, the Dog Star of the constellation. But the women’s eyes were contemptuous and she never wore the gown again. Happily for the husbands who paid the bills this inhibition did not extend to lingerie.

  It is typical of the insularity of Shanghai’s cosmopolitan community that while a great many of the streets are named after men, none until recent years were named after men who had achieved even transient fame outside of Shanghai. Some years ago when the smelly Yang King Pang which formed the boundary between the French concession and the International Settlement was culverted and turned into a boulevard it was decided to give the boundary a new name. There were no sentimental memories connected with the time of the creek. As a gesture of Anglo-French friendship it was named Avenue Edward VII, although on the French side the name plates meticulously bore the French spelling “Edouard.” About the same time some American real-estate promoters developed a new suburban residential tract and Lincoln Avenue came into existence.

  The older roads in the old English settlement bore the names of early British dignitaries and merchants such as Elgin, Balfour, A
labaster, McGregor, Haroon, etc. Rather belatedly it occurred to the authorities that there had been a number of Americans who had played a prominent part in the building of Shanghai and so it was decided that roads in the old “American settlement” should be named after them. Astor Road, however, was named only indirectly after the famous American of that name. It fronted on the Astor House Hotel. To add to geographical consistency and make New Yorkers feel at home in this strange land the adjoining thoroughfare was named Broadway. Seward Road is not named after the famous Secretary of State who negotiated the purchase of Alaska but after an early consul of that name. To Shanghailanders he was the more important man of the two for he was very largely responsible for the amalgamation of the British and American areas and the formation of the International Settlement.

  XIV

  Dogs and Chinese not allowed

  “The crow does not roost with the phoenix.”

  According to a story which has been widely published and generally believed there was formerly a sign on the gates to a small park or public garden of the International Settlement of Shanghai reading:

  Dogs and chinese not allowed

  The little park referred to was The Bund Garden, about an acre in extent, located at the junction of Soochow Creek and the Whangpoo River. It was the pride and joy of the early foreign residents and represented the first attempt to make Shanghai a more pleasant place in which to live. Opportunity for the creation of the park came when a small Chinese junk sank in the muddy foreshore and silt formed around it. This added to the foreshore area and someone considered the daring project of constructing an embankment, filling in the land and laying out a garden.

  Considering the size of the community it was an ambitious enterprise. A Scotch gardener was brought out from home, trees and shrubs were imported and the land was laid out as nearly as possible to simulate a small park in England. It became the center of communal life for the Shanghai foreigner. Here the babies played on sunny days, and in the summer evenings the elders strolled about and listened to the band concerts. It was here that the foreigner could find the most complete escape from his environment.

  Chinese were excluded but not in the gratuitously insulting way that the supposed sign would indicate. In fact no such sign existed. At the time it was supposed to be displayed I lived in the neighborhood of the little garden for four or five years and in pleasant weather I walked through it several times daily on my way to and from my office. There were a lot of regulations. One of them provided that dogs could not be brought into the park. Another was to the effect that Chinese were excluded, except personal servants accompanied by their foreign employers. This was to provide for the amahs who brought the foreign babies to the parks. The youngsters slept or tumbled about on the lawn while the amahs told all the scandals of the households in which they worked. A stranger who strolled into the place on a fine afternoon might have thought it was an amahs’ country club. The two rules were not joined together in the insulting way the old story indicated.

  The park existed for many years before it occurred to any Chinese that they should be admitted. The issue was raised in 1881 by some one who wrote a letter of complaint to the council pointing out that as the garden was supported by municipal taxes which were levied on Chinese and foreigners alike it was unfair to refuse admission to Chinese. The reply was to the effect that owing to the small size of the garden it was obviously impossible to throw it open to the general public, but an attempt was made to meet Chinese desires by a police order to the effect that the garden would be open to any “well-dressed natives.” But the individual Chinese did not know whether or not the gatekeeper would consider him to be a “well-dressed native.” The chance of being humiliated by a refusal was so great that few asked for admission.

  The question was not one in which many Chinese were interested and it died a natural death, or appeared to have done so. But four or five years later it was brought up again. Japanese were coming to reside in Shanghai and the Chinese were mortified at exclusion from places to which Japanese were freely admitted. As the Japanese were foreigners of a nation which had made treaties with China they enjoyed the same rights as other foreigners and missed no opportunity to exploit them. The council now adopted a new plan and issued passes to “bearer and party.” This proved as much of a failure as the previous scheme. In the first six months this new arrangement was in effect there were only forty-six visits. But these visits represented a remarkably large number of people. Each pass-holder interpreted the word “party” to mean all his relatives, both near and far, his friends, children, retainers and servants. Since they were more interested in the foreigners than in the garden itself the visits were timed to coincide with the hour when there would be the greatest possible number present, and so unintentionally caused the greatest possible amount of annoyance and inconvenience. The issue of passes was discontinued.

  It would be unfair to compare the Shanghai park regulations with the “Jim Crow” laws which bar Negroes from some public places in the South. While it might appear to be an assumption of superiority on the part of the foreigner its roots went deeper than that. The building of gardens and the establishment of clubs to which Chinese were not admitted were parts of the attempts made by the white man to create for himself something of the atmosphere of the homeland. It was only here that he could escape the great mass of Orientals who surrounded him. A single native in a park like this provided a jarring note - a crowd of them destroyed the illusion completely. And of course the Chinese could not understand why a couple of tattered foreign beachcombers on the benches in the garden were unnoticed by the taipans and their ladies while the presence of a family of well-dressed Chinese should meet such hostile glances.

  In 1899 another effort was made to meet Chinese criticism by the creation of a new garden which would be open to foreigners and Chinese alike but would cater to Chinese tastes in garden architecture and presumably be patronized more or less exclusively by them. A wealthy English resident donated the land - a tract facing Soochow Creek - and the council appropriated $10,000 for its improvement, which was the amount of the original appropriation for the construction of The Bund Garden. Chinese tastes were followed in the new enterprise which abounded in the rock arrangements which Chinese find so charming and foreigners consider so amusingly grotesque. The opening of the garden was made quite an event. It was dedicated by the highest local Chinese official, the taotai, who in his speech said that the mutual confidence existing between Chinese and foreigners was unbroken and that their friendship was solid and sincere.

  The foreigners thought that this had settled the matter and no more attention was paid to Chinese complaints about exclusion from The Bund Garden. But no Chinese except those of the coolie class ever visited the garden that had been built especially for them. According to all Chinese standards of garden architecture this should have been a more attractive place than the other.

  As other parks were built the same rules were adopted. The foreigner who lived in China engaged in a constant struggle for isolation. The Great Wall of China, which the Chinese had built several thousand years previously to keep out the Northern barbarians was no more impregnable than the wall of social seclusion with which the foreigners built. Foreigners and Chinese lived separate lives and neither made any attempt to break down the mutual seclusion. The social customs of the Chinese themselves provided as much of a wall as that put up by the foreigners. To the respectable Chinese, it was unthinkable that men and women should meet outside their own family circle and there was actually no way for foreign and Chinese women to meet socially. Nor was there any common language. Shanghai foreigners did not speak Chinese. Until a few years ago the number of Chinese who could speak English was extremely limited.

  While the “dogs and Chinese” sign never existed it did rather accurately depict the attitude of some foreigners. Their number has grown fewer every year, but in the early part of the century there was a very large class who looked with consi
derable disdain and disgust on all Chinese people and all Chinese institutions. Both the people and the institutions were so contrary to what they believed to be the proper order of things that any approval of them involved what appeared to be an heretical abandonment of principles. They believed that this was the road to ruin, the first step toward “going native.” All of us knew men on whom this fate had fallen. The white man who “went native” whether in China, Japan, India or any other place in the Far East was lower than the natives themselves because he followed their worst instead of their best traits. It was their slovenliness rather than their austerity that attracted him. There were many derelicts who smoked opium and lived with Chinese women. Representatives of this class are to be found in every port east of the Suez, white men who have adopted the ways of life of the native. They are tragic figures. So long as the Englishman or the American loudly proclaimed his disapproval of everything connected with China and the Chinese he felt a certain sense of self-protection. Most Anglo-Saxons who live in the Orient have a genuine though ill-defined dread of what the environment may do to them and encase themselves in an armor of disapproval and hostility.

  A young Englishman in Rangoon expressed the point of view very clearly to me when he said: “The Burmese may be right in their ideas of what life means, and I may be wrong. But if I admit that they are right, then I must admit that I am wrong, and that mentally, spiritually and morally I am standing on my head. For my own peace of mind and the good of my soul I must continue to believe that I am right and therefore that the Burmese must be wrong. Where we go from there, I confess I don’t know.”

  Until a very few years ago Chinese were not welcomed at foreign hotels. They were not exactly excluded but they came in by a side door, were quartered in an isolated wing and were not served in the main dining room. These color bars were not entirely due to race prejudice. Social customs of the whites and the yellows clashed and made each uncomfortable in the presence of the other. The foreigner trying to eat his first meal with a pair of chopsticks was likely to make a mess of everything in his neighborhood, and the Chinese in his first attempt to cut up a steak was likely to send it into the lap of his neighbor. Chinese were not familiar with foreign dishes and did not know how to order a meal. Tomato catsup was very pleasing to the Chinese taste and I have seen a Shantung police chief empty a whole bottle of it in a soup plate and eat it with relish. It was my catsup for he was my guest. If he had been a paying boarder at a hotel, a diet like that would have made him an unprofitable customer, for imported American catsup was expensive. The Panchhan Lama of Thibet, when exiled at Urga, used to order a dozen cases at a time and drink it daily. That was before tomato juice became an American fad.