by Carl Crow
The Chinese amah occupies about the same place in the lives of the foreigner in China as the old-fashioned Negro mammy of the aristocratic South. There is the same quality of devotion. They wash, feed and dress the children and mildly discipline them. The discipline usually follows one fixed formula. If a baby is naughty the amah may threaten to go away and leave them.
“Aiyah! You too much bad baby! Suppose you too much trouble amah, amah go Ningpo more far! Then who man pay you chow?”
This is a threat with terrifying possibilities for it never occurs to the average China Coast baby that his own mother would be of the least help in any of the serious affairs of life, such as getting one’s clothes on and getting washed and fed. And few of them would. Modern progress in methods of raising babies left mother instinct far behind. When the Japanese attack on Shanghai began and I was on a refugee ship to Manila there were a dozen young mothers on board and not one of them knew how to mix the baby’s food or change diapers.
Since the youngsters are in the company of their amahs more than in that of their mothers their formative years are appropriately influenced and they frequently learn to speak Chinese before they. know how to say more than papa and mama in English. In fact it is often the amah who teaches them these two words and they usually learn to say amah first and always say it more frequently. They also learn to think in terms of Chinese words and phrases so that the Shanghai baby starts life with a mental equipment different from that of others. If they remain in the country and seriously study the language they continue to think in Chinese. I have asked a great many China-born Americans who speak Chinese and English with equal fluency and all of them tell me that they form their thoughts in Chinese phrases. I feel sure that Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth in that way.
The children listen to the amahs gossiping together and learn many of the intimate facts of life which are conventionally presumed to be mysteries to debutantes. A starry-eyed little angel once told me in a matter-of-fact way that Mrs. Smith had chowed plenty of cocktails the night before which was too bad because she ‘was going to have a baby in a few weeks.’ The information appeared to have been authentic for the little cherub had heard Mrs. Smith’s cook tell the amah in the park about it.
After the children learn to speak Chinese they are compelled to learn English for the purpose of communicating with their parents who frequently do not know a word of the language of the country in which they live. The easiest thing to do is to pick up the pidgin English from the servants. It is much easier than learning the clumsy classical idioms of English. But this is only a secondary language and when involved ideas have to be expressed they fall back on the language of the country. When I first went to China and had not yet become proficient in speaking pidgin my attempts to carry on a sustained conversation with Pinkie and Bluey Webb were frequently interrupted when one of the twins would inquire “what thing he talkie, amah?” Amah would then translate my remarks into Chinese and translate the twins’ Chinese phrases into pidgin and so the conversation would continue.
It is not only the Chinese language the children learn from the amah and other servants but a practical matter-of-fact view toward life similar to that of the Chinese youngsters themselves, which reminds me of the story Dr. Anne Walter Fearn told about Johnnie and his little brother, who was brought into the world by Dr. Fearn’s tiny but capable hands.
Johnnie’s mother had been absent in Dr. Fearn’s hospital for some mysterious and exciting reason and when he was finally taken to see her, there was a very small brother nuzzling her breast. Johnnie held back in shyness and resentment at this interloper and viewed the scene with an appraising eye. He did not remember having seen a child nursing and the sight both fascinated and puzzled him. Finally he inquired, in correct pidgin English:
“What thing he chow?”
“Why, he chow milk,” explained the mother, and, seeing that Johnnie looked skeptical, she added, “He chow milk alle same you before time chow when you small baby.”
Johnnie considered the matter carefully. His recollections of his early meals were dim and he remembered nothing of feeding like this, nor did he remember a time when milk was his sole diet. His curiosity compelled him to make a more careful examination and finally the matter appeared clear to him, and he asked his mother to verify it.
“He chow milk that side,” he said. “What thing he chow that other side? That belong porridge?”
XX
Land of the lonely bachelor
“In books there are women who appear as jewels.”
For many years the foreign population of China was composed exclusively of men. While the Son of Heaven allowed the male barbarians to live in their factories in Canton under certain conditions, the females of the species were rigorously barred from setting foot on the soil of China, as they were later from residence in Japan. To the Oriental mind the Western woman, and especially the American and the English woman, was always an unmitigated nuisance. Their prominent eyes, their hilly contours and their comic blond hair made them hideous sights to contemplate, while their brazen manners suggested associations it is just as well not to discuss. It was certain that no good would come of allowing them to live in China and there might be unpleasant consequences. If the British and American sailors fought over the flower-boat girls on the Canton water front what might be expected if the hussies of their own nationalities were allowed to come in?
The Chinese government took no chances and rigidly excluded them. It was in fact impossible for the Chinese to understand why women should want to come to China. It was to them unthinkable that women should travel to strange and distant places. Chinese women always remained at home. An official might be sent to some distant post where he remained for years but his wife never went with him. Not many foreigners were affected by the prohibition against the residence of women. Most of the early traders were bachelors. The few married men left their families in the Portuguese colony of Macao where all the foreigners lived in the between seasons period when the last ships had departed with their cargo of tea. There was in fact no great outcry over this prohibition, which ensured a comfortable bachelor society free from feminine intrusion. One Englishman, after a married experience of a few years, found the restriction against female residence in Canton an opportunity for escape from his nagging spouse. This was George Chinnery, the famous painter, who went to live in Canton solely because his wife could not follow him there. He was one of a dozen or more famous men who were buried in the little foreign cemetery in Macao located near the grotto where Camoens, the exiled Portuguese poet wrote his great “The Lusiad.” Like most of the other old foreign cemeteries in China there are few gravestones bearing the names of women.
The right of foreign women to live in China was one of the privileges accorded by the treaties which opened the ports to the trade of foreigners. The restriction was not lifted at the insistence of the foreign traders but at that of the Protestant missionaries and the first foreign women to live in China were missionaries or the wives of missionaries. The traders lived in the ports where they organized clubs and bachelor messes and enjoyed life as best they could. Most of the missionaries established themselves in the interior and while the Catholic priests were voluntary bachelors the Protestant missionaries appeared to have a peculiar dread of that state for practically all of them married.
Only young unmarried men were employed by the big companies and they did not marry until after several years’ residence in China. Bachelors were always in the majority. Even after a great many women came to China, the predominant influence of the bachelor remained and foreign society in China still retains a robust and boisterous masculine flavor. The clubs were all men’s clubs and most of them contained rules rigorously barring all women except on an annual ladies’ night. Everything was run by the men and for the men. If a man doesn’t have an opportunity to attend a stag dinner at least once a month he thinks there must be something wrong. The first foreign dishes provided by Chinese co
oks were the result of painstaking teaching by bachelors who had no technical equipment beyond the possession of a cookbook and memories of their mothers’ kitchens. They didn’t bother much about salads. Women now make out the menus but they are confined within the scope of the cook’s capabilities with the result that the average China Coast meal caters to male rather than female appetites.
Chinese girls of the better-class families were kept cooped up at home in a harem-like seclusion, and the foreign bachelor rarely caught a glimpse of one. They would not have been very attractive in his eyes, for not until a very recent period did they adopt the styles which make them the charming figures they are today. There were almost insuperable social barriers to prevent the marriage of foreigners and the better-class Chinese, and none of the easily arranged temporary marriages as in Japan. Sailors came into contact with Chinese of a much lower social strata. There were many marriages of this sort bringing into existence the unfortunate Eurasian. He is neither a Westerner nor an Oriental, is not welcomed by either and is generally looked on as a social outcast, a stigma that he must pass on to his children like a stream of tainted blood. Most of the first generation Eurasians had British fathers, but a considerable number of them were of American parentage.
The bachelor mess was a China Coast institution that has not completely disappeared in spite of the growth of hotels, restaurants, and boardinghouses. Here the bachelors planned their own meals and ordered their own lives undisturbed by the feminine routine of house cleaning. Each was a small residential club to which newcomers were admitted only by the unanimous consent of the members. In fact some of the boardinghouse keepers followed a procedure of this kind and did not take new paying guests until the older boarders had been sounded out. Whether in a club or boardinghouse, life on the China Coast was too intimate to take chances on one potential troublemaker. One of the aristocratic establishments would not take boarders who were connected with the retail trade.
Many of the messes were maintained by employees of the same hong. In the early days in Canton all the companies maintained quarters for staff members and some continued this practice after the center of the foreign population moved to Shanghai. One found in them an atmosphere much like that of a Greek-letter fraternity house but without the restraints of campus discipline. They were inclined to be rowdy. I knew one mess where almost every Sunday morning the cocktail shaker was buried as an implement for which the messmates had no further use, but someone always dug it up again.
Some of the most famous messes in Shanghai were those of the volunteer fire companies which for more than half a century provided the only protection against the constant threat of fires. The taxpayers who had already paid the premiums on their insurance policies objected to the expense of a municipal enterprise which would be of more direct benefit to the insurance companies than to anyone else, and year after year refused to appropriate any money for the maintenance of a fire department maintaining that as losses had to be paid by the insurance companies it was the sole responsibility of the companies to prevent losses. Young men employed by firms which held insurance agencies organized fire companies, and the insurance companies contributed a small percentage of their annual premium collections toward the purchase of equipment, For some years after the taxpayers assumed the expense of maintaining a fire department all of the work was done by unpaid volunteers. The fire companies were such jolly organizations and the young men had so much fun fighting fires that many wanted to join and candidates were looked over as carefully as if they were applying for membership in some exclusive club.
The fire company messes were comfortably furnished, though often with a miscellaneous collection of silverware, china and linen in which there were few pieces of the same pattern. The volunteers always brought back souvenirs of every fire they attended but only articles which could be used in the mess. I often ate dinner at one of these messes; and once just as the soup was served a bell rang and I found myself all alone for my hosts were on their way to a fire. As they slid down the pole to the ground floor one of them called out:
“Don’t forget we need two soup spoons.”
The boys frequently ruined their clothing at a fire and no one objected to this collection of souvenirs which would have been destroyed except for their efforts. Occasionally a local resident would retrieve some treasured heirloom, giving in exchange something of greater value.
After fire fighting became professional nearly every bachelor served for a time either in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps or in the special police. The volunteer corps is really a little standing army of about 2000 men which has been referred to as the most complete and efficient small army in the world. Its members do not play at soldiering for during the past decade all of them have been on duty for weeks at a time. I was a member of the special police for three years, was, if I may be allowed to say so, in command of a squad. We patrolled beats, enforced curfew regulations and made searches for arms. In times of trouble we were sometimes on duty, or on call, twenty-four hours a day. Men have been wounded and killed in both branches of the service.
Two of the most famous bachelor establishments in Shanghai were run by veteran employees of the Standard Oil Company who are now retired. No one ever refused a dinner party invitation by Hash or Sam for he was sure to get a meal that he would remember for a long time. There was a good deal of friendly rivalry between them as to who set the best table and had the best-stocked wine cellar, a rivalry which their friends did nothing to discourage for it meant better dinners and more invitations. The rivalry finally reached a point where some one suggested a trial by jury - a jury of stag dinner guests - who would eat meals prepared by the two cooks and render a decision. Sam was to serve one dinner and Hash was to be the host a week later. At the conclusion of Sam’s dinner someone rushed out to the kitchen and dragged in the unwilling cook to receive our congratulations on what had been a genuinely marvelous meal.
“That’s my cook,” shouted Hash.
“What nonsense! He is my cook,” said Sam.
Each was right for the same cook had been on two payrolls for years. As neither would consent to give him up this joint arrangement was continued until the two bachelors retired and went to live in America. As he had successfully served two masters for years he was given retirement pay by each and at the time of the Japanese invasion was spending his old age in comfort. The hospitality of the two bachelors continues for every now and then the old cook prepares a gorgeous meal and sends out invitations to his masters’ old friends. The guests have to make a three hours’ journey to his ancestral village to attend the dinner party but it is well worth it.
With so many unattached bachelors every city on the China Coast became a place of great romantic possibilities for girls who came out as tourists or visitors or in search of a job. I don’t know what the steamship companies did to adjust matters but a great many girls who came to the China Coast with return-trip tickets couldn’t possibly use them until their validity had expired and then only under the new names they had acquired by marriage. Moonlight walks on the deck of a steamer, the intimacy imposed by strange surroundings and the glamour of the Orient doubtless have something to do with it. There is also the unromantic law of supply and demand. There are many marriageable bachelors and few marriageable girls. If brides had a money value it would be very high on the China Coast. Every year a great many American girls come to Shanghai in search of employment as trained nurses or stenographers or beauticians. Whether or not they will get on a pay roll is always problematical but it is a safe bet that if they stay around long enough they will have plenty of opportunities to marry. Of the many girl reporters who have from time to time worked on Shanghai papers over a period of more than twenty-five years I can recall only one who did not find a husband there. A great many of the marriage ceremonies were performed by Judge Purdy of the United States Court who took great pride in the fact that no couple he had married was ever divorced. As all the divorce proceedings would come befo
re his court it was easy for him to maintain this record. In fact a Purdy marriage was looked on as being indissoluble - unless one of the parties could get into another jurisdiction.
The new employees of the big companies were limited to bachelors and in most cases their contracts provided that they could not marry except after attaining a certain age and earning capacity - and then only with the consent of the taipan. The lovesick swain had to gain the consent of the girl, the approval of her parents, and then lay his heart open to the scrutiny of a possibly liverish and unsentimental boss. If the latter had the interests of his company at heart he could not overlook the fact that it cost twice as much to pay home passage for a couple as for a single man, to say nothing of the growing transportation costs for the children which the future might bring. The course of true love rarely faced greater impediments.
Even after all these hurdles had been surmounted there were other impediments to keep the ratio of foreign population in China predominantly male. The girl was usually in America or England and unless the pair was willing to wait until the next home-leave period the girl would have to come to the Far East to be married. This brought up a question of etiquette which I do not believe is covered in Miss Post’s invaluable work. Should the prospective husband pay the carriage charges or should the parents undertake this expense and the groom take delivery of the cargo c.i.f.c. (cost, insurance, freight and customs). If the responsibility fell on the groom-to-be, what sort of accommodations would she demand? Would she be content to travel like ordinary passengers or would she be likely to arrive in a bad humor because two other women had been put in the same cabin with her and she hadn’t been invited to sit at the captain’s table? If he had made more than one Pacific crossing the young man knew that this was not at all improbable for ocean travel does something to women’s tempers.