There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen on the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia. They were penned into a “Chinese quarter”—a thing which they do not particularly object to, as they are fond of herding8 together. Their buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon9 to pass through. Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town. The chief employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing. They always send a bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes. It is mere10 ceremony, for it does not enlighten the customer much.
Their price for washing was $2.50 per dozen—rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash for at that time. A very common sign on the Chinese houses was: “See Yup, Washer and Ironer”; “Hong Wo, Washer”; “Sam Sing & Ah Hop11, Washing.” The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly Chinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed. Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick to learn and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a thing twice, as a general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman were to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle12 a fire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture for fuel forever afterward13.
All Chinamen can read, write and cipher14 with easy facility—pity but all our petted voters could. In California they rent little patches of ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish to a Christian15, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or another. He gathers up all the old oyster16 and sardine17 cans that white people throw away, and procures18 marketable tin and solder19 from them by melting. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure20. In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men have abandoned as exhausted21 and worthless—and then the officers come down on him once a month with an exorbitant22 swindle to which the legislature has given the broad, general name of “foreign” mining tax, but it is usually inflicted23 on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindle has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the course of the same month—but the public treasury24 was no additionally enriched by it, probably.
Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence25—they worship their departed ancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man’s front yard, back yard, or any other part of his premises26, is made his family burying ground, in order that he may visit the graves at any and all times. Therefore that huge empire is one mighty27 cemetery28; it is ridged and wringled from its centre to its circumference29 with graves—and inasmuch as every foot of ground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarming30 population suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield a harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead. Since the departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bear that any indignity31 be offered the places where they sleep. Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China’s bitter opposition32 to railroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends.
A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body lay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, after death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him. Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have his bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to a foreign country on a labor33 contract, there is always a stipulation34 that his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is specified35 in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it has a costly36 temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal state in seclusion37 and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a numerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, with the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese corpses—or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious refinement39 of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat underhanded way of deterring40 Chinese immigration. The bill was offered, whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There was another bill—it became a law—compelling every incoming Chinaman to be vaccinated41 on the wharf42 and pay a duly appointed quack43 (no decent doctor would defile44 himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it. As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese immigration.
What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like—or, indeed, what the Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like—may be gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting for that paper:
CHINATOWN.—Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither carriages nor wagons45, their streets are not wide enough, as a general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o’clock at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little cooped-up, dingy46 cavern47 of a hut, faint with the odor of burning Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly, guttering48 tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium49, motionless and with their lustreless50 eyes turned inward from excess of satisfaction—or rather the recent smoker51 looks thus, immediately after having passed the pipe to his neighbor—for opium-smoking is a comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker’s mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds to smoke—and the stewing52 and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue. John likes it, though; it soothes53 him, he takes about two dozen whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular washing, and feast on succulent rats and birds’-nests in Paradise.
Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang street. He lavished54 his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies, with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs55, and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of porcelain56. He offered us a mess of birds’-nests; also, small, neat sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse38 of a mouse, and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles of merchandise, curious to behold57, impossible to imagine the uses of, and beyond our ability to describe.
His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former were split open and flattened58 out like codfish, and came from China in that shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which kept them fresh and palatable60 through the long voyage.
We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery61 scheme—in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a lottery, and the balance of the tribe “buck” at it. “Tom,” who speaks faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the Territorial62 Enterprise, when the establishment kept bachelor’s hall two years ago, said that “Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap59, ketch um two tree hundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like one man fight um seventy—may-be he whip, may-be he get whip heself, welly good.”
However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are, as a general thing, that “he get whip heself.” We could not see that these lotteries63 differed in any respect from our own, save that the figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed in telling “t’other from which;” the manner of drawing is similar to ours.
Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of white feathers, gorgeously ornamented64; perfumery that smelled like Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted65 like the inner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem66, See Yup presented the party with gaudy67 plumes68 made of gold tinsel and trimmed with peacocks’ feathers.
We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial69 restaurants; our comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our hosts and “dickered” for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressed with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on a machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the different rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered them with incredible rapidity—in fact, he pushed them from place to place as fast as a musical professor’s fingers travel over the keys of a piano.
They are a kindly70 disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it—they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.
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1 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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2 vilest | |
adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 );可耻的;极坏的;非常讨厌的 | |
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3 tractable | |
adj.易驾驭的;温顺的 | |
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4 industrious | |
adj.勤劳的,刻苦的,奋发的 | |
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5 imprisonment | |
n.关押,监禁,坐牢 | |
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6 shameful | |
adj.可耻的,不道德的 | |
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7 interfered | |
v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 );调停;妨碍;干涉 | |
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8 herding | |
中畜群 | |
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9 wagon | |
n.四轮马车,手推车,面包车;无盖运货列车 | |
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10 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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11 hop | |
n.单脚跳,跳跃;vi.单脚跳,跳跃;着手做某事;vt.跳跃,跃过 | |
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12 kindle | |
v.点燃,着火 | |
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13 afterward | |
adv.后来;以后 | |
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14 cipher | |
n.零;无影响力的人;密码 | |
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15 Christian | |
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
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16 oyster | |
n.牡蛎;沉默寡言的人 | |
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17 sardine | |
n.[C]沙丁鱼 | |
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18 procures | |
v.(努力)取得, (设法)获得( procure的第三人称单数 );拉皮条 | |
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19 solder | |
v.焊接,焊在一起;n.焊料,焊锡 | |
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20 manure | |
n.粪,肥,肥粒;vt.施肥 | |
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21 exhausted | |
adj.极其疲惫的,精疲力尽的 | |
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22 exorbitant | |
adj.过分的;过度的 | |
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23 inflicted | |
把…强加给,使承受,遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24 treasury | |
n.宝库;国库,金库;文库 | |
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25 reverence | |
n.敬畏,尊敬,尊严;Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称;v.尊敬,敬畏,崇敬 | |
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26 premises | |
n.建筑物,房屋 | |
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27 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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28 cemetery | |
n.坟墓,墓地,坟场 | |
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29 circumference | |
n.圆周,周长,圆周线 | |
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30 swarming | |
密集( swarm的现在分词 ); 云集; 成群地移动; 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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31 indignity | |
n.侮辱,伤害尊严,轻蔑 | |
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32 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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33 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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34 stipulation | |
n.契约,规定,条文;条款说明 | |
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35 specified | |
adj.特定的 | |
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36 costly | |
adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的 | |
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37 seclusion | |
n.隐遁,隔离 | |
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38 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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39 refinement | |
n.文雅;高尚;精美;精制;精炼 | |
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40 deterring | |
v.阻止,制止( deter的现在分词 ) | |
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41 vaccinated | |
[医]已接种的,种痘的,接种过疫菌的 | |
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42 wharf | |
n.码头,停泊处 | |
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43 quack | |
n.庸医;江湖医生;冒充内行的人;骗子 | |
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44 defile | |
v.弄污,弄脏;n.(山间)小道 | |
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45 wagons | |
n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 );铁路货车;小手推车 | |
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46 dingy | |
adj.昏暗的,肮脏的 | |
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47 cavern | |
n.洞穴,大山洞 | |
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48 guttering | |
n.用于建排水系统的材料;沟状切除术;开沟 | |
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49 opium | |
n.鸦片;adj.鸦片的 | |
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50 lustreless | |
adj.无光泽的,无光彩的,平淡乏味的 | |
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51 smoker | |
n.吸烟者,吸烟车厢,吸烟室 | |
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52 stewing | |
炖 | |
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53 soothes | |
v.安慰( soothe的第三人称单数 );抚慰;使舒服;减轻痛苦 | |
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54 lavished | |
v.过分给予,滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55 jugs | |
(有柄及小口的)水壶( jug的名词复数 ) | |
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56 porcelain | |
n.瓷;adj.瓷的,瓷制的 | |
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57 behold | |
v.看,注视,看到 | |
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58 flattened | |
[医](水)平扁的,弄平的 | |
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59 hap | |
n.运气;v.偶然发生 | |
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60 palatable | |
adj.可口的,美味的;惬意的 | |
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61 lottery | |
n.抽彩;碰运气的事,难于算计的事 | |
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62 territorial | |
adj.领土的,领地的 | |
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63 lotteries | |
n.抽彩给奖法( lottery的名词复数 );碰运气的事;彩票;彩券 | |
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64 ornamented | |
adj.花式字体的v.装饰,点缀,美化( ornament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65 tinted | |
adj. 带色彩的 动词tint的过去式和过去分词 | |
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66 esteem | |
n.尊敬,尊重;vt.尊重,敬重;把…看作 | |
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67 gaudy | |
adj.华而不实的;俗丽的 | |
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68 plumes | |
羽毛( plume的名词复数 ); 羽毛饰; 羽毛状物; 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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69 celestial | |
adj.天体的;天上的 | |
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70 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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