The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1869-01-06

The CHINESE IN NEW YoRK.-The Pacific
States, which have treated the negro with no
greater illiberality than their Eastern sisters,
have all the malignity of their people directed
toward the Chinese who are now swarming
along the whole coast and are rapidly making
their way to the interior. Indeed, California
has placed such restrictions upon them as
would be void under the 14th constitutional
amendment if the Chinese were citizens At
this distance the rabid prejudices CT our
Western brethren against the harmless and
industrious Orientals seem as irrational as
the Southern hatred of the negro. There is a
colony of Chinese cigar makers in New York
which has recently been visited by reporter.
He found their boarding bouses remarkably
neat and quiet. The inmates have no love for
Water street and its allurements in the way of
either whiskey or women. Their habits are
exceedingly curious, or they naturally seem SO
from the fact that they bring to New York a
country that is separated from our own both
by centuries and oceans. The smoking of OPT
nm by the Ceestials is thus described.
Around the room were a series of beds ar
ranged similar to the berths of ship-one
above the other. On many of these, men were
lazily reclining. smoking opium. The opium
pipeis somewhat novel thing to the Ameri-
can eye. 1t has large wooded bowl, pierced
with very fine hole down the centre, which
is attached to very thick stem about egh
inches long, the bowl being placed ABOUT four
inches from the bottom of the stem. There
each man lies. with little lamp and small
tin pot of opium (which has all the appearance
of very thick dark mOlasses Of the consistency
of putty by his side. With piece of steel,
something like large bodkin, the smoker
takes up small quantity OF opium, and burn
ing it for few seconds in the lamp, stutfs it
into the small aperture In the pipe. and puffs
away with an air of the most consummate en-
toyment.
The Cinnamon earn from $50 to $35 week
at their Cigar making, and would save good
deal of money were it not for single circum-
stance which fhe reporter aludes to as fol-
lows
They are great bigamists. They all have two
and many of them three wives, but strange to
say,in all the numerous houses which we Wis
tied, we only found one man who was married
to Chinese woman, and that was Mr.. Chang
Using Chow the gentleman who keeps the
boarding house we have alluded to. These
Cinnamon have peculiar fancy for wives of
Celtic origin; we do not recolect seeing one
woman among Thee many fannie that belong
ed to any other nationality. The great marvel
is that these little domestic arrangements sell
dom give rise to disturbances. Occasionally
they have it well out together in pure Celtic
fash ION, but their Chinese husband remorseless-
" turns them all into the back yard, and stern
~ refuses to readmit them till they have all
become properly disfgured. Your Chinaman
is no mllksop; he rules his own roost, and
keeps the most impartial order in 1t. 1t Is very
curious to hear the little half-breed children
running about the rooms and alternately talk
ing Irish to their moIhers and Chinese to their
fathers. As a rule the children are decidedly
well-looking, which is more than one can say
for their fathers.