Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1888-06-09
STREET SCENES IN CANTON.

STREET SCENES IN CANTON.
An InsOlent People without Attractive
characteristics.
lRuhamah. in the st. Louis Globe-Democrat
The average Cantonese, or the
whole 5000, 900 of ugly faces that one
sees swarming in the streets and on the
boats, do not win much friendly or af-
fectionate feeling. They repel one in
every way, and watch them as would
the gambols of apes or the antics of
some half-civilized missing-link tribe of
heathens. Their boldness, hostility, and
insolence of attitude in time almost over
come ones sympathy for their miser-
able lot, and to be anti Chinese, to hate
the race with deep. double-dyed Denis
Kearney intensity one need only to see
them in their chosen city. If in the
heat of the anti Chinese excitements in
America some shrewd politician had
only come to Canton, watched, studied,
and pried into the life of this crowded
city, he could have gone home with an
illustrated lecture that would have
been the most forcible argument for
the restriction act or an expulsion or an
determination act. The Chinatown of
San Francisco is a rose-garden, an
idyllic Petit Trianon of place, COM
pared to the reality of Chinese city,
and illustrations drawn from what one
sees there fall short of the true thing.
The Temple of Horrors, so called, is
really temple for the worship of the
tutelary diety of walled cities, but it
takes its unpleasant name from the
tableaux of the Buddish hell in alcoves
in the courtyard. 1t is the popular
temple of the lower class, and the
open court besides its instructive warn
ing of a transgressors certain hereafter,
is where the fortune-tellers assemble
to tell their customers OF the immediate
future. It is crowded, dirty place,
and we stepped from our chairs right
into the midst of the throng, I almost
jogging the elbow of an outdoor dentist
who had victim writhing under the
forceps at the moment Among all
the other kinks in the Chinese
brain the queerest is their idea that
toothache is caused by nicked worm
inside of the tooth. When convinced
that he has a worm in his tooth, a
Chinaman goes straightway to have it
pulled, and all who roam the streets
have instructive or entertaining views
of the dentists skill and the patients
nerve. These outdoor dentists are so
common, and suffering men so plenti-
full, that one begins to think that the
tooth pulling has become the pastime
or the latest fashion with the people.
The dentist preserves the teeth that he
extracts, and weaves them on strings
into long fringes that hang like tassels
or trophies before his stand. They re-
mind one of the button strings of child
hood, and one has often to dodge these
molar fringes in going about on foot.
The fortune-tellers are mainly placid,
passive, middle-aged men, who hand
one box of bamboo splints to draw a
stick from. Each stick has number
or character on it, and the oracle then
consults chart or book, mumbles to
himself and writes out on slip of pa
per what the future has in store. The
fortunes that they tell are nearly always
good ones, and for five cents one gets
written out long string of characters
that promise success in business VEN
lures, pleasant journeys, much money
and long life. The beggars in rags were.
trying fate at reduced rates in half-cent
and wise, aldermanic old
Cinnamon in silk coats and gowns we're
hanging as intently over the strokes of
the fortune-teller's brush Our VEN
ture with the sticks drew something
like 200 or 500 stony, staring faces
around that particular fortune-teller's
table, but as they neither cheered nor
groaned when destiny was expounded
it could not be supposed that +he inter-
est was at all personal.