CHINATOWN is the most interesting corner of the “Melican man’s” metropolis—the little world composed of every variety of Christians, heathen, Irishmen, and other savages. The cosmopolitan tendency of New York is rapidly developing little foreign cities, and even nations and empires within our water-walls. Every one knows the French, German, and Irish districts. The Italian province has already been described in this magazine. There is also Little Spain in the Spanish quarters. Little Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Africa, and Malaysia, each have their own national civilizations brought here with them. But most interesting of all to Americans is Little Hong Kong, partly because it is only a recent institution, and largely because the Chinese are the exact antipodes of this continent, in customs and ideas as well as geographically. The Chinaman wears white for mourning, writes perpendicularly, places his family name first, does all things as his great-grandfathers did, and in the eyes of a Yankee reverses everything generally, even to the extent of being peaceable, long-suffering, and polite.
The Chinese did not begin to show themselves to any extent in New York until the year 1872. Prior to that China was represented only by a few sailors and cigar peddlers living on Cherry Street and about Franklin Square. There was no Chinese laundry, grocery, nor even a fan-tan shop. They began to come rapidly from the time of the opening of the great Chinese laundry at Belleville, N. J., where its American proprietors placed one hundred and fifty Mongolians in charge of the tubs and flat-irons. These did well financially, notwithstanding the constant bombardment of the institution by over-generous Christians who knew nothing about the washing business, and yet wanted the job. Many of the Chinamen, not understanding the true character of such labor demonstrations, thought that the American shirt wearers were simply wild with enthusiasm over their skilful work, and were complimenting them by serenades. They wrote loving and glowing letters to their brothers and cousins in far-off Hong Kong that there were “millions in the laundry business” in New York, only waiting for the enterprising Chinamen to come and take them.
Their cousins and other relatives came so rapidly that in a few years nearly every street and avenue in New York became filled with Chinese laundries, and the flaming red signs of Wah Sing, One Lung, and Goon Hi Fa Toy dangled gloriously in great numbers.
Whatever may be the general opinion concerning the injustice of the anti-Chinese bill, which has cut short this tide of immigration, there is no doubt that the ten thousand Chinamen here are strongly in favor of it, for it has given them a close monopoly of the industry which they created. Once it was something of an aristocratic luxury for an Occidental dude to wear polished shirt-bosoms or glossy collars, because there were no convenient wash-houses, or because his Irish laundry lady was on a “spree.” But since the appearance of “John” even the cheapest tramps (anarchists excepted) can afford the indulgence. There are probably a little over two thousand such laundries in the city of New York alone, some eight hundred or nine hundred in Brooklyn, and about one hundred and fifty in Jersey City (mosquito land, as Chinamen call it). Each laundry has from one to five men working in it, and they all make money.
The question has frequently been asked by Americans, “Do these Chinamen wash clothes in China? How is it that nearly all who come here enter the laundry business? Do they love it?”
No, they do not love it any more than any other kind of labor. They did not even know what the “Melican man’s” shirt looked like, much less how to dress one, before they came to America. Laundry work in China is invariably done by women, and when a man steps into a woman’s occupation he loses his social standing.
They become laundrymen here simply because there is no other occupation by which they can make money as surely and quickly. The prejudice against the race has much to do with it. They are fine cooks, neat and faithful servants, and above all, very skilful mechanics at any trade they have a mind to try. In the Western States, where their value is better understood, they are used in as many different positions as any other foreigners, and the laundry business is occupied only by those who fail to find other employment.
But here in New York as yet there is no other alternative. Many an able-minded man as well as skilful mechanic who came to America to better his condition may be found wielding the polishing-irons in a New York Chinese laundry. It takes from seventy-five dollars to two hundred dollars to start one of these Chinese wash-houses, and the way most of these laundries are started would give valuable tips even to an American Wall Street deacon.
The main expenditure in a Chinese laundry is a stove and a trough for washing, and partitions for dry-room and sleeping apartment, and a sign.
As a rule it requires one hundred dollars to open a laundry in New York. But this amount is a fortune to a newly arrived Chinaman, and unless he starts immediately into the laundry business he would become a burden to some of his friends. The Chinese immigrant, unlike his European compatriots, never comes here unless he is safely surrounded by friends or relatives upon his arrival. These immediately initiate him into the mysteries of the laundry business. In some friendly laundry the newcomer is placed under a six months’ apprenticeship, beginning at the wash-tub, until he reaches the ironing-table, and lastly the polishing-board. These apprentices begin with three dollars per week and board, and a gradual addition of a dollar extra per week after the first months, until they are able to take charge of a laundry themselves.
Then if he has money he hires a place and hangs out his sign. If not, he goes to one or two friends, and they will call a “whey,” or syndicate for his benefit in the following manner:
Suppose I have an established laundry, and want to borrow two hundred dollars at a certain per centum premium, but I can not find any one Chinaman who is able to loan me the amount. I put up a notice in Mott Street that upon such and such a day I wish to make a “whey” of twenty men, who all are supposed to be situated like myself, each wanting to borrow two hundred dollars. When we twenty borrowers all come together, we each put down ten dollars. Then each one secretly writes upon a slip of paper the amount of interest he is willing to give to get the two hundred dollars. These slips are carefully sealed and thrown into a bowl. At a given time they are opened, and to the highest bidder goes the two hundred dollars, less the interest, which is invariably deducted immediately from the principal.
Frequently as high as four dollars is offered for the use of ten dollars for a single month. In such cases each of the nineteen other borrowers gives to the lucky one only six dollars apiece for the ten dollars apiece which they make him pay next month. Then the next highest bidder gets the two hundred dollars, less the interest he offered, and so on, until the entire twenty, at twenty different times, have obtained the use of this two hundred dollars; but the one that comes the last, having offered the least interest of them all, reaps the harvest of the “whey.” This method is adopted by most Chinese laundrymen, in New York and other large cities, to open new laundries. It partakes of the gambling favor which is captivating to every true Celestial.
No Chinaman can transfer his place of business into the hands of another without at least thirty days’ notice in “Chinatown,” on Mott Street, and the buyer is not required to pay him more than half of the purchase money until the legal thirty days are past. This is the laundrymen’s law, made four years ago in this city, to prevent a laundryman from absconding from his creditors. Upon the completion of the thirty days creditors and debtors must meet at the transferred laundry, and when all of the old debts are liquidated, a clear title of the laundry is given to the new owner.
Nearly all the Chinese in New York are “high livers” in diet. The poorest laundryman will have chicken or ducks at least once a week, and these are bought alive, as Mongolians are extremely afraid of stale meats. Contrary to the general impression rats, cats, and puppies are no more commonly eaten by Chinese than by Americans. Poultry and pork are the favorite meats. Vegetables of all sorts are abundantly used; and pastries are made in an enormous variety, but always of easily digestible ingredients. They are very clean in their cooking; even the rice that they buy from Christian groceries is washed with at least seven separate waters, to make sure that no trace of un-Chinese handling remains to make it religiously pernicious.
But they all possess an unaccountable love for old hats. An ordinary Chinese laundryman will wear the same hat for ninety-nine years—if it can be kept together so long—and he would even then go into three years’ mourning for it.
So long as a Chinaman continues a heathen he is generally honest; but look out for him when he once becomes “converted.” He is said then to have the “devils” of two hemispheres, the shrewdness of both races, while his virtues are so confused that he finds it difficult to make use of them.
There is nothing of the clan habit among Chinamen. Indeed, had they any such civilized peculiarities, their own country would not now be ruled by a foreign race, nor would they be the targets of lawless hoodlums. One Chinaman will stand and see another mobbed without using the least effort to save him. A Chinaman will go two blocks to deal with a foreigner who charges him ten per cent. more than his next-door kinsman, unless that countryman is a friend. In that case he is a faithful customer.
When a Chinaman has been aided in some substantial disinterested way, he never loses his attachment for his benefactor. For this reason a Chinaman makes a most faithful friend, and will readily lay down his life for his comrade. The Chinese have a superstition which is expressed in this proverb: “Heaven will not prosper those who are ungrateful.” Ingratitude, to a certain degree, is a criminal offense in China. They have a saying: “Gold is but a dead treasure; but a friend, a living one.” And again: “Wife is but a garment compared with one’s friend. The former once dead can be replaced, but who can refill the place of a friend?”
There are now over thirty Chinese grocery stores in the city, and most of these are in Mott Street, or in that vicinity of Mott Street called “Chinatown.” Many of the capacious tenement houses occupied by these Chinese stores are owned by Chinamen; and from present indications they will eventually own all the houses now used by them. These stores import all their goods from China direct, and they depend entirely upon the laundrymen for support. Every Chinaman has his regular headquarters or store to deal with, for the following reasons:
The majority of the Chinese laundrymen came from the single province of Kwong Tung, in which there are seventy-two counties or “Hiens.” Some forty or more “Hiens” are represented by the ten thousand or more Chinamen of New York and vicinity. Each “Hien” has its own colloquial dialect, which is not exactly appreciated, although understood by the men of a different “Hien.” A sort of mutual strangeness and jealousy always existed between people of the different Hiens, and this is carried with them even into America.
A “Sing Ning Hien” man as soon as he arrives in New York easily finds out by their speech men of his own country or Hien. From them he finds the Sing Ning country headquarters or stores. Here he puts up for a day or two, or until he can find work. If he was in any way known in China by any of the Sing Ning men at this headquarters, he is given capital by the storekeeper for whatever business he wishes to start, to the limit of two hundred dollars.
The “Heon Shan” countrymen go to the Heon Shan store. In the same way the Sing Way and Hoc San people have their respective stores. Most of these storekeepers are old laundrymen who accumulated enough money from the washing business to start these more profitable groceries, and most of them have thousands of dollars laid out on laundries, farmed out to poor but hard-working laundrymen, who pay for their laundries upon the instalment plan. There is no interest charged by these friendly storekeepers for such assistance; they simply ask the beneficiary to trade with them in their food supplies and to pay up the principal when he is ready to return to China.
It takes several thousand dollars to start one of these stores or headquarters, but to the casual observer the necessity for large capital is not apparent, for it looks like a dingy den of poverty. The store is a long wooden counter, behind which are little shelves made up of squares and pigeon-holes, which are filled with small packages of ancient-looking wrapping papers. Each package has a flaming red paper tag with fire-cracker letters to denote the contents. All along the walls up to the ceiling are roughly constructed shelves of various sizes, all stored with Chinese goods for laundrymen’s use. Even the floors are crowded with barrels, boxes, and jars of all sizes and ages, filled with samples of Chinese imported food.
The spaces not otherwise occupied are usually taken by visiting Chinamen, who frequent the place at almost all hours of the day and night. These are not only their country stores, clubs, and general newspaper stations, but their only post-offices.
In one corner of the store sits the proprietor within his office keeping accounts in tea-chest characters, which he paints on his ledger with the macerated end of a rattan. At the entrance you always find a large pot of tea and cups provided free for all visitors, according to the injunction of Confucius, uttered centuries before the same teaching was spoken by the Nazarene: “Whoever gives a cup of tea to a stranger, shall be in favor with the gods.”
The store of Yuet Sing, at 10 Chatham Square, shown in the illustration, is a fair sample. This firm does an annual business of over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars among the eight hundred Sing Ning laundries. A brief outline of materials these firms keep furnishes some idea of the gastronomic habits of the Chinese:
Ob Jun. Boned ducks’ feet dried and wrapped up with chickens’ livers.
Ham Ob. Highly spiced duck pressed in cakes.
Ob Bay. Ducks’ legs in oil.
How Shi Lob Chong. White sausages made from deviled oysters and pork, dried.
Lob Chong. The same made from spiced pork.
How Shi. Dried oysters.
Yow Gwei. Dried cuttle-fish.
Ham yu. Dried salt fish of many kinds.
Chow Poh yu. Salted shad in oil.
Ha Mai. Shrimps.
Si Funn. Extracts from beans, some resembling the Italian vermicelli.
Wing Gnee. Wood fungi.
Whey Sum. Beach de Mars.
Yeu Woh. Birds’ nests.
Choo Shuen. Bamboo shoots preserved in cans.
Whey Dyl. Corean seaweeds.
Cha Qua. Small black cucumber, the size of a child’s finger, very salty (the finest pickles in the world).
Also wines and spirits made chiefly from rice, oranges, and nuts, and all kinds of Chinese vegetables and grains either dried or in large earthen air-tight barrels, so that they could be used in America the same as in China, but ten times costlier here.
There is, perhaps, no other nation in the world that can produce as many grades and varieties of sweetmeats as the Chinese (not even the Persians, who are noted for such dainties). The Chinese upon their bill of fare have over ninety varieties of sugar-cured fruits, but only about one-third of them can be had in Chinese stores of New York. The most valuable of these are their preserved gingers and apricots, for which and for teas their stores are frequently patronized by well-to-do Americans.
There are eight thriving Chinese restaurants which can prepare a Chinese dinner in New York almost with the same skill as at the famous “Dan quay Cha Yuen” (Delmonico’s) of Shanghai or Canton. These places are most thronged on Sunday, when the Chinese laundrymen of New York and neighboring cities come in for a general good time.
Unlike Americans, the Chinese do not generally pay by the dishes ordered, but by the tables or spreads, called by the Chinese “Gzuh.” A first-class spread includes about forty courses, and it takes two days to finish the feast. It costs fifty dollars. A second-class spread, with twenty-eight courses, costs forty dollars. A third-class spread with eighteen courses, costs twenty-five dollars. The cheapest spread contains eight courses for eight dollars. This is the lowest price for which a man can order a formal dinner in a first-class Chinese restaurant. But then the spread is made for any number of people within twelve.
If a man simply wants to eat a short meal, for himself and a friend or two, he can get ready-made dishes of fish, chicken, duck, pigs’ feet, rice, tea, etc., cheaper than in any other restaurant, besides many dishes peculiar to Chinatown. The prices run from five to twenty-five cents. The foods are all chopped in small pieces, rendering knives and forks unnecessary. The Chinese table implements are chopsticks, of ebony or ivory, a tiny little tea-cup, and a porcelain spoon.
A staple dish for the Chinese gourmand is chow chop sy, a mixture of chickens’ livers and gizzards, fungi, bamboo buds, pig’s tripe, and bean sprouts stewed with spices. The gravy of this is poured into the bowl of rice with some —— (the prototype of Worcestershire sauce), making a delicious seasoning to the favorite grain. The tea is made by pouring hot water over the fresh Oolong in a cup, and covering it with a small saucer to draw. Then pushing back the saucer a little, you pour off the fluid into a smaller cup, and add more hot water to the grounds again. This may be repeated five or six times, and the last cup will be nearly as strong as the first. The Chinaman always takes spirits with his meals, pouring the rice whisky into a tiny cup from a pewter pot. But he always drinks moderately, and never apart from his meals. For this reason drunken Chinamen are very rarely seen. When a party of Chinamen sit around a table, one dish of each kind of food is served, and all pick from the same dish with the chopsticks. When there are several courses, the earlier dishes are never removed, and by the time a good dinner has been served the table is literally buried with dishes.
Most Chinese restaurants are situated upon the second or third floors. The picture given here of Hong Ping Lo’s establishment, at 16 Mott Street, shows the interior of a Chinese dining-room, with the kitchen in the rear. The walls are hung with long scrolls of Chinese writings, maxims from philosophers for the entertainment of those who eat. The Chinese are well-educated people, and even the coolies who compose the laundry class are used to tournaments of poetry, debates, and other exploits in letters which in China take the place of Christian prize fights, ball matches, and horse-racing. These scrolls contain such sentences as the following:
“It is only the superior man who knows what he eats and what he drinks.”
“It is here that heroes meet and sages drank; why should we abstain?”
“What thy heart desireth may thy hands be able to grasp.”
“May you meet one at the end of the earth and find him a brother.”
Upon the ceilings dangle fantastically painted great Chinese lanterns and flower baskets that resemble bird-cages.
The rear room, which opens to plain view from the dining-room, is the kitchen, which, although overstocked with boxes, barrels, tables, and cooking utensils, is scrupulously clean. Upon the walls and ceiling of the kitchen are suspended fresh-killed ducks, chickens, and pigs. At the tables are cooks busily engaged at their work, some of them earning large salaries.
The stoves, if they can be called such, are curiosities in themselves. They are long ranges built of low, broad bricks. In the top are great pits into which are firmly built iron gridirons imported from China for frying, boiling, or steaming purposes. Two of the brick ranges have oven pits, and there are places where the whole hogs are occasionally hung upon iron bars and roasted. They provide very quick and sure facilities for turning out a large roast of any kind in beautifully brown and crisp style. Coal is never used in these Chinese kitchens; only hay and hickory wood. At least five hundred Americans take their meals regularly in Chinese restaurants in orthodox Chinese fashion, with chopsticks. This may be partly because Chinese diet is skilfully prepared, so that certain dishes work certain medicinal results. The hygienic functions of cooking elevate the kitchen director in China to high social status. Many of these Americans have acquired Chinese gastronomical tastes, and order dishes like Chinese mandarins; but as a rule the keepers do not cater to any other trade than Chinese, because the Chinaman frequently orders two-dollar and three-dollar dishes, while the American seldom pays more than fifty or seventy-five cents for his Chinese dinner.
There are forty fantan and pack ob peoh shops in New York. These are Chinese gambling places. Chinamen seem to have all been born Wall Street men. It is as difficult for the police to stop Chinamen from playing their fascinating fantan as for the mandarins to stop the great yellow waters of the Whong Who (Hoang Ho) from overflowing. The Chinaman will gamble with his last cent, even if occasionally made to pay over the entire receipts of a week’s ironing as a fine to the American officials. He will feel for his companions in a dark cell in the Tombs, and bet with his toes if all other conveniences are taken away. He carries on his games of chance with religious ceremonies, as if Joss had a holy hand in it, and he feels that he can not enter the heaven of the Josses unless he plays the fantan sincerely at least once a week.
The Fantan, or “Spread and Turn Over,” the most popular gambling game of the Chinese, is played by using a pile of Chinese copper coins (about four hundred of them) the size of the American two-cent piece but thinner, and with a square hole in the center. A long table about four feet high by five wide is built stationary in the center of the room, around which the betters congregate.
In the center of the table is a square tin about a foot in diameter, upon which are the slips of red paper and dominoes for chips and pointers used by the well-known gamblers who do not wish to bet with ready cash.
The numerals, both in Chinese and English, 1, 2, 3, 4, as seen in the preceding diagram, represent the correct position of the betting places upon the fantan tables.
The dealer sits upon a high stool at the head of the table, with the piles of copper coins before him. The cashier sits at the side of the table. The balance of the space around the table is reserved for players, who, on account of the height of the table, stand around it. Those in the rear stand on stools to put their money down upon the number which they expect will win. The betting begins by the dealer grasping a handful of the copper coins before him and placing them in front of the pile, under a little tin cover that resembles a teapot cover.
The players are required to guess the number of coins left after the handful is counted by fours. Should there be nothing left, it is of course a four. Thus, if I bet on number 3, when the cover is raised the dealer begins to count the pile, four at a time, with the point of a little rod. If three coins are left over, I win.
When you put one dollar on the number that wins, you get three times the amount, less seven per cent. commission to the table, besides your capital, or two dollars and seventy-nine cents clear profit. If the dollar is placed between two numbers, say one and two, from the success of either you win one dollar, or ninety-three cents net profit. But when you bet the dollar on number two toward number one, that is, on number two with a slight chance for number one, if two coppers remain you get twice the amount of your stake, less the usual commission, and if one remains you simply receive your dollar back.
Of all the national gambling games of China, the fantan is by far the most fascinating and fairest. It is, in fact, the real “Board of Trade” of China. Merchants, mechanics, and capitalists indulge freely in the games, and they are everywhere carried on with propriety and under religious sanction. No fantan dealer in New York or elsewhere would think of beginning his games without first prostrating himself before Joss to chant a fervent prayer or burn a bundle of incense papers and Joss sticks, and no fantan shop is without a small Joss-house of its own to protect it from losses. Chinese gamblers are, as a rule, more honest than merchants. A professional Chinese gambler may enter a fantan shop without a dollar in cash, and play with chips frequently into thousands of dollars. If he wins, he simply tells the cashier to send the amount to his house. If he loses, he asks the cashier for a bill of his losses, and then coolly walks out of the den. In the latter case, the money is sent around the next day before opening the games. This is very frequently done in New York, but not in very heavy amounts. A Mott Street merchant would rather trust a gambler than a man of any other calling. The gambler is ruled by a superstition that if he cheats Joss will cheat him.
The “Pack ob Peoh” or a “Hundred Letters” game is played by rolling up eighty letters into a bowl, and drawing out twenty of these eighty letters, which are to be guessed by the players. If you happen to guess five out of these eighty letters, you get back a little trifle over your capital. For six letters you get twenty dollars for one dollar, less ten per cent. For seven letters you get two hundred dollars, less usual commission, and so on. If you should guess the entire twenty letters drawn, you can close up the firm by taking all its capital of ten thousand dollars, which is locked up in the safe for such an emergency.
Chinese barbers are the most peculiar tonsorial artists in the world. There are half a dozen Oriental barber shops on Mott Street, the aristocratic one being Ah John’s, at 22. They are all small, dingy places, with only one or two stools and a stand upon which are placed the shaving implements, of which the Chinese barber can boast almost as many varieties as an American surgeon or dentist. There is much more ground to be shaved on a Chinaman’s head than on any other mortal, because he has to have the entire crown shaved, besides the eyelids and eyebrows, the ears and nose.
When a customer comes in he is first offered tea and tobacco; then he sits on a stool while the professor unbraids his long hair, which is carefully combed and tied up into a knot at the top of the head. A basin of hot water upon an easel is placed before him, with which the short hair around the knot is thoroughly washed. A towel is then wound around his neck. A small tin pan is now handed to the customer to be held under his chin to receive the refuse from his own head. He is made to sit upright upon the stool during the shaving process. This is begun with a moon-shaped razor from the right side of the head above the ear, moving frontwise. No soap is used in any part of the shaving.
After the shave the barber takes a high stool, and climbing on it, he lays the newly-shaved head upon his left lap, and grasps a handful of miniature surgical tools. The first of these is a little hair-brush on the pattern of a tiny chimney sweep’s broom. This is gently pushed into the customer’s ear with a few turns in and out, as if dusting it. A sharp, narrow ear razor follows, and by a few ingenious twirlings of this instrument all the growing weeds within the ear are removed. Then the chimney brush is once more inserted. A loop of bamboo twine enters to pick up what is left. If this fails to take out the remaining hair, a fine pair of pincers is used. The final instrument is a fine steel wire. One end of this is introduced near the drum of the ear, while the other is held against the prong of the pincers. One of the prongs of the latter is now gently tapped with the finger-nails, making the wire dance a jig to the tune of “Home, Sweet Home,” in the ear of the delighted customer. This last process, the “crowning touch” of tonsorial art in the Orient, is vulgarly called “tickling of the ear.”
The eyelids are also shaved as well as the eyebrows. They are called the “trimmings of the eyes.”
The smallest razor also cuts away all growth within the nostrils.
In conclusion, the fortunate customer has his fingers and toes pulled until they shoot off noises like the fire-crackers, and has his back and shoulders thoroughly pounded to scatter any possible rheumatism. For all these the Chinese barber charges seventy-five cents in New York, and five cents in China.
There are only four Chinese ladies in this city, wives of Chinese merchants. Two of these ladies have children, who can be seen occasionally in the stores, but their mothers are never seen, as the Chinese custom prevents women from going out, except upon special occasions, or visiting friends of their own sex, and then in closed carriages. These families live in small apartments, either in rooms above their own store, or upon some of the by streets near Chinatown. The children are petted by the Chinese bachelors much the same way as miners in the far West treat a baby when in a camp where families are scarce. The little ones receive many quarters and half-dollars from their devotees. But many Chinamen marry Irish, German, or Italian wives, and of half-breed children, or children born of white mothers and Mongolian fathers, there are over a hundred now in New York. Most of these women are poor working girls, who through necessity married well-to-do Chinamen. The Chinamen often make them better husbands than men of their own nation, as quite a number of them who ran away from their former husbands to marry Chinamen have openly declared. The Chinaman never beats his wife, gives her plenty to eat and wear, and generally adopts her mode of life. Their children speak the English language, adopt the American ways and dress.
There are now two tailor shops, five cigar stores, three hundred sailors, four thieves, twenty-five highbinders, eight doctors, sixteen fortune-tellers, one professional spiritualist, and one solitary drunkard among the ten thousand Chinese of New York!
The two principal gods which the Chinese of New York worship, besides the “Melican man’s almighty dollars,” are opium and Joss. The latter has two small temples. A larger one is about to be built at 16 Mott Street. The one now most frequented is at 10 Chatham Square, in a large room upon the third floor, constantly guarded and cared for by an old gray-haired Chinaman. This Joss occupies a small raised throne made out of beautifully carved wood, and above him is a fantastically made canopy of like material, while before him is a high table for an altar, upon which are the utensils for sacrifices, bronze urns and pots for incense, and Joss sticks made from perfumed punk. The middle figure under this canopy is “Joss” proper; the young and smooth-faced companion at his left is his grand secretary, who records all the doings of men. The black-faced figure upon Joss’ right is Ju Chong, his body guard and grand executive. The other two persons in the accompanying group of the five great gods are lieutenants.
The true name of Joss is “Kwan Goon.” Kwan Goon is a great general who, four thousand years ago, conquered the various tribes then inhabiting the country, and welded them into one great Chinese empire, called The Middle Flowery Kingdom. His wisdom as well as his humanity in general toward those he had conquered so endeared him to the hearts of his subjects that they finally deified him into a righteous god. The name “Joss” was given him by the Christians of California.
Joss receives his tributes in wines, roasted pigs, chickens, and other delicacies upon the odd days of the months. Offerings are withheld from him upon other days as excess of food may give him colic.
Opium used to be a secret luxury to the Chinese, smoked only on the sly and behind closed doors; but now the moment a China man enters into the house of another, he is offered an opium pipe and a cup of tea. Chinese opium is very expensive, selling at about two dollars per ounce at wholesale. It is a refined dark paste. A small particle of this is held upon the end of a “yen hoc” (a piece of steel wire looking like a darning-needle), in the bright flame of a little sweet-oil lamp. When this particle is cooked into a hard pill, the size of a common green pea, it is put upon the small hole in the center of the earthen bowl that rests near the extremity of a long bamboo tube. The hole in the bowl where the pill is placed is so small that it can only admit the end of the “yen hoc,” which makes a similar hole through the opium pill to connect with the hole upon the bowl. The pipe is about the size and shape of a flute, and the smoker’s lips are placed against, not over, the ivory end for the mouth. Now the smoker, who always reclines upon a low couch, places this pill near the flame and commences to inhale its fumes. If he is an experienced smoker, he may consume the entire pill in one long breath.
The “opium fiends” (men incorrigibly addicted to the habit) generally become victims by abandoning themselves to the drug because of business reverses, as whisky is used by the Christians to drown their troubles. But it is much more difficult and rare to get into the opium habit than the “whisky habit,” because a much longer time and much more money must be spent upon opium to fasten the craving for it. Most of the New York Chinamen have been smoking opium for the past ten or fifteen years, but use it only for an occasional mild sedative. On the other hand, there are several who have only been smoking for the past year or two who have already acquired the habit. It all depends upon the amount and frequency of the use. Nothing less than half a dozen pipes every day for the space of a year would give most men the habit. One hundred pipes smoked in a single day would make him frightfully sick, and probably would cure him of any desire for it again. A regular “opium fiend” needs to consume every day about three dollars’ worth of the poppy juice to keep himself straight, but twice that amount would not hurt him. If he can not get the opium to smoke he is a physical wreck, and suffers untold miseries.
The opium habit can only be afforded, because of the time and means required, by the indolent and rich. It is said by reliable Mott Street authorities that there are at present over five hundred American smokers in this city, and over one hundred of these are “opium fiends.” These all have their own “lay-outs,” or smoking apparatuses, at their own homes. It is an insidious social evil. Opium smokers under the influence of their pipes become cheerful and communicative with those around them. The hottest enemies associate amicably under its pacifying influence, and drunkards are made sober; but the wicked are made more sharp in swindling and the imagination is stimulated to unusual activity. But every moment of nervous exhilaration is dearly paid for by the subsequent sapping of physical strength.
The Chinese are a peculiar race, and their peculiarities are worthy of study and consideration when we remember that they represent nearly one-half of the entire population of the world. Their civilization is very different from that of the “outside barbarians;” therefore, even in New York, they can not be expected to give up these peculiar peculiarities, although some of them are, undoubtedly, neither loved nor admired by their neighbors of other nationalities.
The Chinese tailors make the laundrymen their blouses and short petticoats, to save them from what they would consider the misery of wearing the tight-fitting American trousers that prevent ventilation. The doctors bring their cases of Chi-Mayo, Neu Teah fa, Sin goopeh, and countless other herbs, to prevent the washees from having the gout, dyspepsia, spiz, and other kindred diseases that are co-existent with western civilization, and that were unknown to Chinamen until they began to feed like Christians. Yet, notwithstanding the merits of Chinese drugs, the Chinamen kept getting more funereal in face and qualmish in stomach, and continued to turn yellower in skin, until Mr. Wa Kee, an enterprising Hong Kong Chinese merchant, imported a cargo of all manner of curious canned, dried, and preserved food from the far-off “land of many flowers.” Then the New York Chinamen began to revive, as the plants of an Egyptian desert brighten up after a refreshing shower.
