Connecticut western news., 1883-09-19
Chinese Quarter. of San Francisco.
One afternoon the following telegram

J
 been talking of going to Chinatown be fore one of our number should return tc Southern California and as soon as we could make arrangements with certain policeman to be our guide We wanted this particular policeman, MT H. because this portion of the city had been bis beat for many years and because his well known rap would be the open se- same to any place, good or bad. More over, from him we could gain trustwor- thy information concerning this strange people
 Our party, consisting of four ladies and Mir H., set out about s o'clock ln the evening and wandered about that portion of the city occupied by the Ce, lest;als, fully three hours. Thirty five thousand Chinese men and 140O Chinese women arc crowded into eight blocks. We visited barber shops, drug stores, temples, opium dens, gambling holes, markets, pawnbrokers' shops, stores, houses (public and private), and were nowhere treated rudely, if not always politely. The houses, from the sub-cel- lars to the roofs, literally swarmed with men. The rooms, though small, contain a good many occupants, most of whom were lying upon their beds smoking. MT H. said he had found 22 men in a room 12x13 and in some rooms 7x9 we saw at least a dozen lodgers. Their beds are platforms built one over anoth- CT and against the wall like. the berths of ship, though considerably wider. l These platforms are sometimes covered with @ piece of mating or old carpet. Back and against the wall is something of wood, sfor all the world, as MT H.. said, sslike my grandmothers footstool, ; and this without any covering is the pillow. The Chinese sleep with their heads toward the wall and as the bed is by no means as wide as it's occupant is long he is obliged to bend his knees and curve his body to get himself wholly on | the bed There can be no such expres- sion in the Chinese language as'sgetting into bed," for Chinaman does not un- dress and he has no covering to put over him. Going to bed and getting up again is very simple process with a Celestial, especially as he has his pig-tail braided but once Q week and then by 8 barber. Most of those already on their beds were smoking with their long pipes either opium or tobacco. Opium is 8 great curse to the Chinese. Besides being ruinous to soul, mind and body, it is costly indulgence, the expense of one smoke being 25 cents.
 Most of the rooms have no windows and at night all doors are shut, so these crowds sleep, as it were, in air-tight compartments. We entered passage ways, perhaps 200 feet long and so nar- TOW that you could not pass another ex- cepting by squeezing by him, which were bordered on both sides with little rooms filed to the ceiling with human beings and there was no other way of ingress or egress except the one door at the end of the passage way. While the air in such places was ifeless,it was not so offensive as might have been expect ed. MT H. thought their constant smoking acted like so much Immigration and besides they are comparatively neat about their rooms, their clothing and their persons.
 The Chinese are 8 religions people. it has the altar for worship, where they burn to their gods s'punks'' or pieces of sandal wood and where they make vari- ous offerings. Even the gambling rooms have their altars and the fires burn as bright there as elsewhere They are also an economical people. Their kitchens are the smallest places possible and their kitchen furniture almost nothing It consists of a bowl or two and some chopsticks, also something like small iron kettle, which is their stove, on whose top is tin arrangement for holding the dish in which they cook their rice A few pieces of kindling wood is sufficient fuel for cooking whole meal. You will admit that they are economists when I tell you that their food costs them about seven cents per day and their lodging 25 cents per month
 We visited barber shop; not because we expected 8 Chinaman would look, when being shaved, any more hideous than his white brother, but because our guide wished us to see how Chinese barber completed his work by shaving the ears ''way into the head' with 8 long and very narrow razor designed for that purpose and also to see that the barber used almost boiling water and no soap. The Chinaman's religion compels him to be shaved once week and costs ten cents.
 In the apothecary shops, among other rare and eficacious medicines, were cases of dried locusts, lizards and such tempting things, all abundantly useful in the healing of diseases. Nearly every thing in their markets is imported from China, even vegetables and eggs. The latter are cooked and then covered with a kind of clay. They are rather strong when broken but they suit the taste of the Celestial quite as we'll. Live fowls are also imported.
 We visited restaurant but did not partalze of refreshments. We went into