The Awakening of China by W.A.P. Martin
page 19 of 330 (05%)
page 19 of 330 (05%)
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for a "swell," and six or eight for a magnate. High officials borne
in these luxurious vehicles are accompanied by lictors on horse or foot. Bridegrooms and brides are allowed to pose for the nonce as grandees; and the bridal chair, whose drapery blends the rainbow and the butterfly, is heralded by a band of music, the blowing of horns, and the clashing of cymbals. The block and jam thus occasioned are such as no people except the patient Chinese would tolerate. They bow to custom and smile at inconvenience. Of horse-cars or carriages there are none except in new streets. Rickshaws and wheelbarrows push their way in the narrowest alleys, and compete with sedans for a share of the passenger traffic. In those blue hills that hang like clouds on the verge of the horizon and bear the poetical name of White Cloud, there are gardens that combine in rich variety the fruits of both the torrid and the temperate zones. Tea and silk are grown in many other [Page 13] parts of China; but here they are produced of a superior quality. Enterprising and intelligent, the people of this province have overflowed into the islands of the Pacific from Singapore to Honolulu. Touching at Java in 1850, I found refreshments at the shop of a Canton man who showed a manifest superiority to the natives of the island. Is it not to be regretted that the Chinese are excluded from the Philippines? Would not the future of that archipelago be brighter if the shiftless native were replaced by the thrifty Chinaman? It was in Canton that American trade suffered most from the boycott of 1905, because there the ill-treatment of Chinese in America was |
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