by Carl Crow
Wealthy Chinese never traveled alone but with a retinue of servants who might be useful in a purely Chinese household but were an unmitigated nuisance around any foreign hotel. They rose early and noisily and the noise continued as long as the Chinese guests remained. Chinese could live comfortably in a boiler factory, and because noises did not disturb them they could not understand why foreigners should be so provoked by servants who shouted at each other in the early hours of the morning. If a hotel keeper started in to cater to Chinese business he would have to be prepared to exist on Chinese business alone for it was a moral certainty that he wouldn’t have any other.
The fact that they couldn’t go into the main dining room of the Astor House and pay a high price for an exceptionally bad meal caused no heart burnings on the part of the Chinese. In fact most Chinese went to foreign hotels because a foreign flag was flying over them and so they were protected from the unwarranted intrusion of Chinese officials. Whatever interest they may have had in foreign food was identical with the foreigners’ interest in Chinese food. Each wanted to see what the vile stuff tasted like. After one became accustomed to it Chinese food tasted very good indeed, but the foreigner generally maintained a detached and academic interest in the matter. Clearly a liking for Chinese food was an indication that one was “going native.” To some a taste for Chinese food appeared to be as dangerous as an inordinate desire for strong drink.
If the foreigner was employed in a big foreign hong he usually ate Chinese delicacies only once a year on the occasion of the annual dinner given by the compradore. Attendance at these affairs was more or less compulsory because it wouldn’t do to let the old compradore lose face. I have been dragged into many of them not because of any connection with the hong but just to make the compradore happy at the sight of so many foreign guests.
In spite of the fact that they were usually very enjoyable, it was customary to look forward to these affairs as ordeals. The only consolation was that there would be plenty to drink, but this was solace only for those who had acquired a taste for the little cups of hot Chinese wine. These were sure to be served and every one pressed to drink, but what else might be offered was problematical. If the compradore decided to “go foreign” there was no telling what might be poured from those napkin-wrapped bottles. One compradore once filled the glasses of his guests with Angostura bitters and was painfully shocked when they couldn’t drink it. As he was anxious to make this dinner a very gorgeous affair he had instructed his servants to buy the most expensive foreign wine obtainable. They found that bitters cost more than champagne. However, when there was a compradore’s dinner afoot some of the younger members of the foreign staff usually managed to hint to some member of the compradore staff that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a few bottles of Scotch and some cold soda on hand.
He had been cox on the rowing crew at Yale and was that delightful combination, a Sino-American gentleman. What a poker player he was! There must have been something hypnotic about him, for you never thought he was in the game, and at the end of it he usually had all the money.
So far as I know, there was only one club in Shanghai with rules actually barring Chinese from membership. All of the clubs, and there are dozens of them, were organized by foreigners, usually of a single nationality, and there was no question of Chinese being allowed or not. They were not excluded but just not elected. As a matter of fact the Shanghai Club which excluded Chinese maintained the traditions of exclusive London clubs and drew the line against some classes of their own nationality as rigidly as against the Chinese. When Thomas Lipton visited Shanghai he was not extended the courtesies of the club. He might be a millionaire but he was still a greengrocer. American publishers who conduct chain stores would also be excluded because they are in the retail trade.
It was not until a few years ago that the question of Chinese membership in the American Club was brought up, and for several years it was a matter the membership argued about without coming to any decision. We were afraid that once we let in Chinese members they might begin a process of absorption and we would in a few years find that it was not an American but a Chinese club. That was what had happened in Japan when the clubs organized by foreigners began to let in Japanese members. It wasn’t very long before the Japanese had the upper hand and were dictating what foreigners should be allowed to join. That had also happened in several golf clubs in China to which Japanese had been elected.
The movement to let Chinese into the American Club was started with the high-principled idea that it was the right and proper thing to do, but I must admit that it never gathered much headway until it became a matter of expediency. Shrinking club revenues made it appear desirable to add new members and so I had the honor of proposing the Grand Old Man of China, Tang Shao Yi, as the first Chinese member. With his election the precedent had been created and the bars were down. But much to our surprise, and a little to our disappointment, there was no rush of Chinese candidates. Several of the leading Chinese joined, just to show their appreciation of the fact that they could, but seldom used the club. We never had more than a half-dozen Chinese who actually enjoyed the club and took part in its affairs.
Foreigners and Japanese went through the same period of isolation and adjustment before they began to meet on a basis of social equality. When the first British residents established a cricket club in Yokohama there was a sign on the clubhouse gate to the effect that Japanese would not be admitted. Japanese were eventually allowed to attend the cricket games but they never became cricketers. According to the stories in Yokohama, the rulers of Japan made a very careful study of cricket and baseball and decided the latter was the game for the youths of Japan to take up because it would give them superior training in the throwing of hand grenades. The period in which foreigners and the natives were isolated did not last very long in Japan because the Japanese were determined to become modern and take on foreign manners if they died in the attempt.
After living together for more than half a century foreigners and Chinese began to associate with each other shortly after the close of the first World War. The change came about so naturally that no one noticed it. It seemed to me that one day foreigners only went to Chinese restaurants as the guests of compradores and Chinese were never seen at the Astor House. The next day there was no restaurant in the place that did not have a thoroughly cosmopolitan clientele. Foreigners were making up parties to eat the delicious food at the Foo Loo Zoo, Sun Ya, and Rainbow restaurants. The Sun Ya carried cleanliness to a point that dish towels and napkins were sterilized and the guests were invited to make a tour of the kitchen which they could do without diminished appetite. The Rainbow had an exact replica of the cocktail bar on the Queen Mary. I have seen no Chinese restaurants in New York that equaled these establishments.
You would always see some of our foreign friends at these places, and at teatime at the Astor House there would always be an atmosphere of dolls, butterflies and orchids which is inevitably associated with the presence of well-dressed Chinese girls. The scenes were as new as radio and electric refrigerators but like these essentials of modern life it was hard for us to realize that we had ever been without them.
Visitors who came to Shanghai during the past ten years searched in vain for any sign in any public park mentioning the word Chinese. With the passage of the years many changes came over the place. The motorcars and the opening of roads into the country made The Bund Garden and other parks of less importance to a large section of the community. Night clubs came to occupy a rather predominant place in the life of another section. The Russian Revolution sent into the settlement thousands of refugees - men of white skin - who were on the same economic level as the Chinese themselves.
Chinese students returning from four, or more years in some American university introduced a new element into the native population. It was actually possible to meet many Chinese who not only spoke an idiomatic English as good as your own but could talk about things the foreigner was int
erested in, such as baseball and cocktails, and what horse was likely to trot away with the championship at the spring races. Chiang Kai-shek’s party came into power and set up a government which commanded the respect of foreigners generally. We discovered all at once that when the Chinese girls prettied themselves after the fashion of their Western sisters they were a delight to the eye and, dear me, what exquisite dancing partners they were. The idea of “going native” began to present intriguing rather than sinister possibilities.
Foreigners generally came to a conclusion that might just as logically have been reached many years earlier, that if a small admission fee was charged at all parks it would keep out all undesirable elements and that the drawing of national lines was silly. A few of the old China Hands growled over their gin and bitters and declared they would never again set foot inside a park. But that was all there was to it. Soon well-dressed and well-behaved Chinese were to be seen in all of the parks and somehow it was hard to remember that they had once been excluded.
XV
Prestige of the White man
“Brainless sons boast of their ancestors.”
There was never any doubt in the mind of the foreigner in China as to where he stood in comparison with the natives. He was never shaken in the conviction that his was a superior breed of cats. The white races ruled the earth, or had, until they insisted on dragging Japan out of her seclusion. If there was one cardinal rule of life which was followed by the foreign devils it was that the prestige of the white man must be maintained. It was assumed that the white man represented a superior race; that the Chinese were conscious of this fact and that nothing must be done to undeceive them. There was a lot of hypocrisy and self-deceit about it, but it did establish a code of conduct variously interpreted by each individual, and in the main had a very wholesome influence.
The Chinese were equally well satisfied with their own superiority and were quite willing to humor the foreigner in his harmless delusion. They treated him like the spoiled child that he was, fed his vanity and cashed in on it. They buttered him with flattery, cajoled him, agreed with him, and got the better of him. Around every office all the Chinese employees were quite willing to admit the superiority of the lowliest and stupidest foreigner and convince him that many of the duties he was supposed to attend to were really quite beneath his dignity. If a foreigner ever forgot the importance of upholding the prestige of the white man, there were always plenty of Chinese to remind him of it.
The servants in a foreign household appeared, as if by instinct, to carry out this program. The phrase the foreigner heard more often than any other was, “Yes, master.” Thus everyone got a superiority complex and many a foreigner thought he was a genius at business merely because he happened to have employed a smart compradore. Housewives were equally complacent about the orderly way their houses were run for them by the No. 1 boy. Prizes at the horticultural show went to foreigners who had good gardeners. The compradore didn’t mind and the houseboy didn’t mind and the gardener didn’t mind. The foreigner got the credit but they got their share of the cash, and not infrequently, a little more.
Under circumstances like these social cleavages flourished but they were all of local growth. With a very few exceptions every foreigner who came to China left behind him all of the prestige he or his family may have enjoyed at home. It was to us a matter of complete indifference whether at home he had lived on the right or the wrong side of the railway tracks. Sometimes it was pointed out that a newcomer was the son of a very famous man but the fact aroused little interest and was soon forgotten. He was soon judged by his own individual social abilities whether it be at bridge, polo, billiards, bowling, golf, or the ability to drink like a gentleman. Many failed to pass the latter test and so lightened the burden of a pay roll and added to the list of homeward-bound passengers.
I can’t imagine any other densely populated and highly civilized spot where world celebrities could find a greater degree of seclusion, for they came and went and but little attention was paid to them. The police never had to call out reserves to guard the privacy of the most famous movie stars for all of them enjoyed a privacy that I privately believe was rather irksome. Of the many Hollywood celebrities who visited us the only one who ever attracted any attention was the late Douglas Fairbanks who made several unsuccessful attempts to win the China golf championship. Quite a crowd followed him around the fairway, but aside from a few silly girls, the others were interested in seeing whether or not this visitor had any chance against our local golfers. As soon as it was seen that he was going to be eliminated in the early rounds the attendance fell off. Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh toured Shanghai in the company of the American consul general and no one paid the slightest attention to him. That wasn’t because of a courteous regard for the colonel’s wishes but just plain indifference. Ours was a small pond but our frogs were the biggest.
Each of these frogs had his place in the pond. There were multitudinous divisions of rank with countless subdivisions. The greatest division was geographical. Soochow Creek which separates the settlement into two parts of fairly equal size provides the dividing line. The portion to the north is what was formerly known as “the American settlement,” and that to the south “the English settlement.” The two settlements were merged politically but an ancient social cleavage was never cemented. From the very beginning of the settlements the fact that a man lived “north of the creek” was sufficient to peg him as belonging to a distinctly lower social class. He could not under any circumstances be one of the top-notch employees of the Chinese customs service, the taipan of an important firm, or a foreign consul. He was very likely to be a minor official of the police department, a retail tradesman or a missionary. If he was a man of any importance at all he would be living in the French concession or south of the creek.
The thousands who lived on the right side of the creek were divided and subdivided not only by different nationalities but by the standing of the firm with which he was employed and his rank in that firm. The British carried these gradations of rank much farther than anyone else but as the British set the precedents on the China Coast we followed them in this as in other matters. For many years there was an unwritten rule in the long bar of the Shanghai Club that the end of the bar facing the Whangpoo was reserved for the taipans of the big hongs. Next to them were the bill and bullion brokers, then the assistant managers of the big firms and so on down to the end of the bar which was waggishly referred to as being reserved for the unemployed. This arrangement continued until young British veterans came back from the first World War with their decorations and service ribbons and a consciousness of the fact that they had been fighting for their country while these pear-shaped old fellows had remained safely in Shanghai.
They ordered drinks at the top of the bar and no one offered any objection. But in the years that followed lines were drawn again. It will soon be three years since I enjoyed a visit to that interesting spot, but I feel sure that if I should drop in there at the tiffin hour tomorrow I would know just where many of my old friends would be standing.
No grooves were quite so well defined as those by which the officials of foreign governments indicated their rank. With but a few exceptions officials of all governments were a rather clannish lot who kept to themselves and gave dinner parties to each other. The exceptions were found among the consular representatives of some of the obscure nations whose duties were so light that their official office hours might have been limited to an afternoon a week, and they suffered from ennui and loneliness. A British friend told me of calling on the consul of a small European nation on some unimportant matter and found he was the first caller the consul had received for weeks. He was so delighted at having some one to talk to that he insisted on having his boy mix up a shaker full of cocktails so that the event could be properly celebrated.
They were not like that in Peking when it was the sole capital of the country and all the legations were housed there. The “diplomatic se
t” numbered several hundred and were sufficient unto themselves in all such things as bridge, dinners and golf. Officers of the army and navy belonged to the set but the mere business man quite distinctly did not. But loneliness will break down the most exclusive social barriers, just as it did with the consul my friend called on. When the capital of the Nationalist government was established at Nanking some of the legations moved there. Now the diplomatic representatives of the foreign powers in China are scattered between Peiping, Shanghai, Nanking and Chungking. Those who have remained at the old capital are so few in numbers that they have had to unbend to the local business men and their wives in order to make up bridge foursomes.
When officials were included on the invitation list at a dinner party the question of who had the seat of honor was a matter of some importance, and the seating arrangement at a public banquet was something that demanded the serious consideration of a committee. There was some doubt in our community about who took precedence, the consul general or the judge of the American court but no one bothered much about it until a newly appointed judge made an issue of it. He became as famous for his cantankerousness over the matter of his seat at the table as he was for the fact that he seldom visited a barber and never a manicurist. Hostesses dodged the issue for years by never inviting them to the same party, but occasionally there were big public functions where both had to appear. If the judge were given the seat of honor all was serene for the consul general didn’t care, but if the judge’s place card was not where he thought it should be, there was hell to pay. The judge always arrived early to see that he had the proper seat and on one occasion slipped around before the other guests arrived and secretly changed the cards.
