Canton is a city of walls and temples; narrow streets and lanes of water; flower boats and other river craft; jostling humanity and high-pitched voices; sedan chairs and perspiring coolies; native merchants and prodigal sons; foreign merchants and diplomats — an old, old city, whose lower classes think cockroaches in honey and snakes in broth a rare combination well suited to the most fastidious tastes.
Those travelers who bide a while in Hongkong before embarking on the water journey to Canton will be rewarded with a colorful glimpse of Chinese life; but the island has been under British rule for so long a time that it is more European than oriental. In Canton the reverse is true. As Hongkong is British, so Canton is Chinese—deliberately, stubbornly, patiently Chinese.
The noses in Canton have never been counted, for the Government has found it impossible to carry out a census with any degree of accuracy. The Chinese population has been estimated at 1,250,000; but the guess is much too conservative in the opinion of the stranger just arrived in Canton, for there seem to be more yellow men within the ancient city than in all the rest of the round world.
Chinese here, Chinese there, Chinese yonder — so many Chinese that the impressionable traveler in Canton dreams o' night of shuffling, felt-clad feet, oblique eyes, saffron faces, singsong voices, cotton trousers, and voluminous shirts; not to mention the clash of Chinese cymbals and the wailing of mourners in the frequent funeral processions and other common sights in this river port of South China, in the Province of Kwangtung.
Canton is so old that even the native custodians of local tradition have lost count of the years since it was founded. Some of the ancient coolies crouching near the wharves and sunning their wrinkled skins look as if they might be able to tell the age of their city; but a whimsical question elicits only a request for alms, mumbled with a mouth which has lost its teeth, so that the owner meets with difficulty in chewing even the small portions of food needed to keep the spark of life aglow in his shaky body.
Canton is one of the most important trade centers of China, being the funnel through which the exports of Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces are poured in the holds of waiting ships and carried to the foreign markets.
Scores of thousands of coolies are engaged in the task of handling the great volume of trade which comes through Canton. They toil the long day through for the gain of a few cents; and apparently never dream of making further wage demands on their foreign and high-caste employers.
Or if the coolies dream such dreams of sudden wealth, they keep them to themselves, for they have labored under the same conditions all their lives, and their fathers and grandfathers did the same before them. So they believe — do the coolies — that they are fortunate in earning enough to keep the wolf from the door; they toil by day and by night, with hardly a word of serious complaint. They are a fatalistic people, many of them willing, curiously enough, to work all their lives for the purchase money of a coffin in which their bodies can rest after death.
Occasionally a coolie acquires wealth, either by a stroke of luck in his own locality or by emigrating to another country, where he succeeds in making enough to live in comfort for the remainder of his life. If such is the case, he usually returns to Canton, is soon drawn into the whirlpool of native life, and lives an envied life of leisure as an independent Cantonese.
The most important exports of Canton are tea, silk, paper, and preserves, and firecrackers — most of them going to the United States, where they are used, for the most part, in helping the small boy make himself heard on the Fourth of July.
In former years a majority of the imports and exports of Canton were carried in British bottoms, but with the amazing growth of the American merchant marine it is expected our country will take over a great deal of the trade which has hitherto been monopolized by the British — although the occupation of Hongkong in 1842 by our ally in the World War puts us at a disadvantage, which, however, should be largely overcome by American initiative.
Canton communicates by steam with Hongkong, Shanghai, and Macao. Present conditions necessitate the passage through the former of nearly all commodities sent to Canton from the United States and Europe. A plan to establish a free port near Macao has been considered for several years, and the carrying into effect of such a plan would doubtless lessen the present importance of Hongkong.
Canton is about 100 miles by rail from Hongkong, and the trip can be made in five hours' time; but many strangers prefer to travel by way of the Chukiang River, since the view is incomparably better and less tiresome. So in the following pages we shall travel up the Chukiang River to Canton, experiencing some of the thrills which come from the presence of river pirates, who pursue with diligence the ancient profession of their forefathers of more barbaric days and against whom ships must ever be on guard.
After the interesting river trip we arrive in the harbor of Canton. Making our way among the innumerable and strangely-fashioned boats, we struggle through the throngs of chattering men and boys who swarm along the water front, and proceed to make the best of our visit in this Chinese port.