Show written for this paper A WALK THROUGH copyrighted by bv frank G Oar carpenter venter IM 1895 HE CLOSE OF the present war may bring about an era of travel and exploration in china As it is many great cities odthe of the empire have never been visited by foreigners there are certain s provinces containing more people than the whole united states in which it has always been unsafe to travel and there are hun seeds reds ot of curious tribes and clans which e practically unknown to the people of hie e western vestern world take for instance die hakkas haikas how many americans have ave heard of them the ordinary chinese cannot understand them and still vhey rey U live ive here and there all over china abd quid have villages and customs of their town they do not bind the feet they rear ear broad brimmed hats instead of caps and the children wear rings of silver around their necks there are in china who do nothing but beg imd there are other clans who are from generation to generation who nho has ever written up the porcelain M of china and how little inform ion den we have about the provinces borring alering on balmah barmah and thabet numer L AM LAM s descriptions of chinese cities have en n published but these are usually 1 torn cn travelers who have been carried eidly idly through shanghai and canton afra ley ey will tell you that all chinese cities re ire the same whereas the tact is the chinese towns differ as much as our nae rican cities and every great center have bave visited I 1 have found full of A range brange things which I 1 have found no there else A WALK TR HOUGH take rake a walk with me for instance A through trough the great city of bankow it on bains a million people it is as big 94 9 chicago it is surrounded by a wall V S high as a three story house and so mide ride that three railroad trains could run ie by y side upon it without touch louch g inside these walls there is a ass s of narrow streets lined with one ro 0 and three storied houses cutting rough these there are lanes janes and cross beets ets and most of 0 the streets are six it it wide the lanes are often not me e than two feet wide and both its ets and alleys are covered with the vilest of slime and you i pick your way through a mass of indesh indescribable filth as you go through them the widest ol of the streets are the great business thoroughfares walled with stores and shops and which are packed with a mass of chinese humanity from sunrise until dark this mass surges this way and that it is worse than a jat jam at a country fair and laborers carry carrying ingall all kinds of wares push their way through it the narrower streets are little more than alleys walled with houses comprising of factories dwelling and business establishments the entrances to many of these are merely holes in the walls others have wide doors leading to courts and others introduce you into the shops ot of mechanics where you see half naked coolies doing the thousand and one things of a busy chinese city walking through these lanes the foreigner seems to be taking his life in his hands the streets are so narrow that you can stand in the middle and press the opposite wall with your hands two men can hardly pass and you instinct ively squeeze yourself your in your efforts to tighten your skin and keep out of col elisions which appear imminent at every curve here comes a coolie bare backed and barelegged bare legged he is one of the thousand slop carriers of the town A bar six feet long rests on his shoulder and from the ends of this hang two great buckets each holding four gallons of the vilest of slop he comes toward you on a swin swinging gai ng trot and the buckets screw up and n down and the slop splashes boand to and fro as he passes you you put your smelling bottle to your nose draw your kness close together and hug the wall to let him go by behind him come two scowling carrying hides they have a half ton of raw hides gwun swung 9 in the center of a pole which rests upon their shoulders and they grunt and grunt in a harmony of woe as they rush towards you other laborers follow behind with other loads and you note that every couple has its own peculiar grunt or sound some cry 1 0 ah oab O 0 ab ehe E he ehe E he oho O 0 ho oho O 0 ho E he the men on the wharves have their own grunt and even meo men working alone make spasmodic noises ot of the most horrible kinds to help them in their work THE SONG OF THE wheelbarrow but behind these laborers comes another machine which has a screech of its own it is the bankow wheelbarrow with a half a ton of freight strapped to its side it almost scrapes the walls and you would be ground up by it were there not an open doorway in which you could step these wheelbarrows are all made so as to screech out their song of toil and their larynx is a piece of bamboo which is purposely fitted in so that it presses against the wheel of the barrow these barrows are unlike any other cousee you see in in china and they are peculiar to the province of hupee by the e time you have jumped out of the way of one ot of them you find yourself rushing into something else there are dirty chinese hogs black and ugly spattered with mud and there are yellow vellow dogs covered with mange and fleas the hogs try to run your legs the dogs snap at you and while they will let the chinese go by without barking they can recognize a foreigner three blocks away away and they will howl until he is out of sl sight i HOW THE CHINESE DO BUSINESS but let us go into the business parts of the cities and take a look at the stores there are tens of thousands of them and they are packed together like the booth of a fair they rhey are all opened to the streets and the most of then them are filled with customers they are walled with shelves and twelve feet square makes a big store some of them nave flave cement ft moors cors some are boards and others no floors but dirt the signboards sign boards hang up and down the stores instead of across the top as with us these signs are so many that they almost fill the streets they nearly cover the fronts of some of the shops and the drug stores advertise their patent medicines by such signboards sign boards these signs are pushed this way and that by the crowds which continually move through them what a curious crowd it is jump up on this stone and take a look up and down the street A river of chinese humanity is flowing both ways before you mixing in and out in an ever changing stream of blues whites reds an and browns there are coolies b by chere the hundreds Farr carrying ying great burdens there are coolies harnessed in big wheelbarrows which would load down a wagon coolies carrying barrels of oil boxes of tea loads of brick buckets oi ot ducks and in short everything under the chi chinese nese sun there are men rushing along alone with thle the big chairs of mandarins and with the little chairs of women there are dirty boys bythe hundreds who have greasy pigtails pintails pig tails hanging down their dirty backs and who look at you and yell out baby kidnaper or foreign devil as soon as your back is ii turned there are women who seem almost to fall as they hobble along alonson on their mutilated feet there are old in big bi spectacles and young in sg silk k gowns there are dandies and dudes scholars and servants merchants and mechanics each in his own dress pushing and shoving his way through the mass there are queer from the country with great straw hats turned up at the sides who gawk along like a farmer boy during his bis first visit to new hew york and there are dilettante dile tante blase chinese gentlemen who move slowly along and keep up their dignity as best they can in this ever changing river of chinese humanity QUEER CHINESE TRADES keep your place upon the stone and note ote the queer things that are going on all around you the street is narrow but it is made narrower by the peddlers an i squatters it seems to be free for all ail and the shoemaker with a box like that of a blacksmith sits and sews away in the street half soling the shoes of his customers while they wait he uses tacks lacks the heads of which are as big as a n nickle ci ae to hold the sole and instead of leather he puts on soles ot of cloth fur ther on there is a fortune teller with a lot of forms and cards about him his finger nails are a toot loot in length and he can tell you your past and your future by the stars what is that veil of black hanging agai against the opposite wall there is a nan moan in a blue gown standing beside it he has a box of money near him and his customers are many he is selling something it looks like horse hair and those who leave carry away long strands which he be takes off from nails which have been driven into the white wall it may be he is selling fly brushes let us get closer no they are not fly by brushes they are long switches ot of human hair which the chinese buy to braid into their cues there Thereisa is a great trade in hair and cartloads cart loads of it are ought brought from corea every year and the of false hair carry on a regular us siness business I 1 bought a cue myself my sell in bankow it cost me 25 cents and in chinese servant bought two cues at the same time I 1 carried my cue for some weeks and when I 1 changed my servant it disappeared and I 1 have no doubt but that my boy chang is now wearing it IN A CHINESE restaurant As we go on with our walk we find hundreds of curious stores and we see everywhere evidences that the chinese appetite is gargantuan and that the mighty lighty chinese stomach takes much to fisit fill it there are stores which sell nothing but fowl and dried ducks getse geese and chickens hang fram lines stretched across the front of of th the diore estore so that they make a veil shutting it off on from the sidewalk there are butcher shops where pork at aid d mutton are offered lor for sale gale and thre there are little booths in which there are great vats of water tilled filled with biti live fish we stop and watch the fish peddler serve a poor customer A small footed woman dressed in a long blue cotton gown wants a pound 01 0 fish and the peddler pulls a large squirming fish out oui ot of the water and lays it on the counter he takes a long knife which is as sharp as a razor ana cuts a slice out ot of its quivering side the blood hows flows and he the remains of the now half live tish fish into the water hoping that it may live utitia another customer comes along to buy the balance here is a chinese restaurant let lei us go in and buy and get a bite to stay our stomachs winch have been turned over ove and over by the disgusting sights of our trip it consists of a dozen rooms separated by screens of carved chinese ir irei eLwork work on the back of which white paper is is pasted each room is filled with teakwood teak wood tables which look like ebony and which are about four jeet feet square there are chairs beside them and retake our seats while the fronzy servant brings in cups of tea with the saucers turned over their t tops s to keep in the aroma we take off 09 t the e saucers and tilt them so they act as strainers lor for the cups just touching the tea and keeping the leaves back as we drink we are next served with a soup filled with little bits of pork and them then with the stew which is thick with cubes of chicken about the size of a dice we pick these out with clean wooden chopsticks chop sticks and eat the soup with a spoon I 1 take out my pencil and begin to sketch A crowd gathers about me and the chinese waiter whose picture I 1 have taken looks sheepish and mad I 1 ask as to the prices and find that I 1 am paying twenty one cash or about one cea per dish I 1 can get a pipe of tobacco for three cash or one sixth of a cent and a good handful of watermelon seeds for fourteen cash I 1 am surprised to see how many people eat such seeds they are the peanuts of china and they are served at every theater between the acts all classes eat them and nearly every evera chinaman has them somewhere about his clothes there are tea saloons in in every chinese street ard and you can get gel your cup of tea and your watermelon seeds anywhere there are restaurants of all classes from those which sell dogs and cats flesh and which you find in the slums to others where you can pay 5 and upwards upward fur for a good dinner the chinese are good cooks and I 1 had bad a number of fairly good meals in the common restaurants the chiel chief viands were boiled chicken and rice roast pork and roast duck and if any tender dogs cats or rats were palmed off upon me I 1 did not know it BOILED BREAD THE LAND OP OF THE DOUGHNUT I 1 looked in vain fur for any signs of baking and the chinese have no such thing as baked bread they boil their dough and you can get boiled biscuits almost anywhere ahey are gibat on frying dough in grease and north china may be called the land ot of the doughnut it ii is 1 I the general opinion that the chinese live almost entirely upon rice this is a great mib mistake take rice is expensive everywhere and the people of the north are too poor to eat it I 1 hey use millet seed and sorghum seed which are ground up like we grind wheat rice is the bread ct south china and pot boik k is the chief meat all over the empire the average chinese hog is the dirtiest animal in in the world it gets its living livius on oft af pf of the foul refuse ol of the cites streets si and the biggest ot of the chinese cities permit the pigs to run wild within them th re are cliffe dif ferem reut grades of pork in china as there are in in america and the finest kind ot of pork comes from an island souto of hung koug kong the pigs pig here shere are fed upon chestnuts T ey are shipped to all parts of china and they bring high prices the better class ul of chinese will n t touch rats and dogs are usually elten eaten by the well to do chinese only ds a medicine sucking pigs form a part of each big least but they are brought on the table tabie cut up int into little cubes so that they can be eaten with chopsticks chop sticks WORMS AND SNAKES FOR FOOD the t t uinise are fund ul of some bome kinds of wurms worms and there is 11 a greenish brown worm whick comes from the rice field which brings high prices in id the markets they eat eai worm grubs and in sume some parts of the empire the poorer people eat snakes in amboy and snakes are sold for food and they are used to make soup they are quite ez ex pen pensive i and a good size snake of the right variety will bring seventy five cents I 1 found the chinese restaurants well patronized and there are peddling cooks everywhere the average laborer buys his lunch where he works if he belongs to the cities and wherever there is a band ot of workmen you find from one to a dozen lunch peddlers it is the same as to smoking on nearly every corner you find a table with a lot of pipes upon it and a man standing be side it ready to rent reni them out for a frac tion of a cent a smoke the pipes are made of copper and they are a sort of a water pipe with which you draw the smoke through the water before it comes into your mouth I 1 ahe he bowls holds about a thimbleful of tobacco and the pipe has to be lighted about every two minutes ot of late years the chinese of the seaports have taken to smoking ci cigarettes arestes ar ettes and you find great quantities 7 of american cigarettes consumed in shanghai and canton KINE AND FILTH in my walks through the chinese cities the things that thai impressed me most were the things that I 1 did nut see I 1 looked in vain lor for street lamps there was no sign of sewerage and the public buildings were more like stables than anything else the only fire preventives were wells which had been dug here and there and which were kept lull full in order to use in case of conflagrations and great clay jars which were used on the roofs of some of the houses I 1 was told that the houses were numbered and at the |