The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-04-14
A WALK THROUGH HANKOW.
Queer Experiences of ar
American in China'S
Greatest City.
No Lamps Along the Narrow
Thoroughfares, No Carts and
No Carriages.

The close OF the present war may bring
about an era of travel and exploration in
China. As it is many great cities of the
Empire have never been visited by for
eigners. There are certain provinces, con-
tanning more people than the whole United
States, in which it has always been unsafe
to travel, and there are hundreds of curl
Gus tribes and clans which are practically
unknown to the people of the Western
World. Take, for instance, the Hakkas.
How many Americans have heard of
them? The ordinary Chinese cannot IN
derstand them and still they live here and
there all over China and have villages and
customs of their own. They do not bind
their feet. They wear broad -brimmed hats
instead of caps and the children wear rings
of silver around their necks. There are
clans in China who do nothing but beg,
and there are other clans who are thieves
from generation to generation. Who has
ever written up the porcelain districts of
China, and how little information we have
about the provinces bordering on Burmah
and ThibetP Numerous descriptions of
Chinese cities have been published, but
these are usually from travellers who have
been carried rapidly through Shanghai and
Canton. They will tell you that all Chi
nese cities are the same, whereas, the fact
is, the Chinese towns differ as much as our
American cities, and every great center 1
have visited | have found full of strange
things, which saw nowhere else.
Take a walk with me, for instance,
through the streets of Hankow. 1t con-
tains million people. 1t is as big as Chi
cago. 1t is surrounded by wall as high
as three-story house, and so wide that
three railroad trains could run side by side
upon it without touching. Inside these
walls there is mass of narrow streets,
lined with one, two and three storied
houses. Cutting through these there are
lanes and cross-streets, and most of the
streets are six feet wide. The lanes are
often not more than two feet wide, and
both streets and alleys are covered with
the vilest of slime, and you pick your way
through mass of Undesirable filth as
you go through them. The widest of the
streets are the great business thorough
fares, walled with stores and shops, and
which are packed with mass of Chinese
humanity from sunrise until dark. The
mass surges this way and that. 1t is worse
than jam at a country fair, and laborers,
carrying all kinds of wares, push their way
through it. The narrower streets are little
more than alleys walled with houses, COM
prising factories, dwellings and business
establishments. The entrances to many
of these are merely holes in the walls.
Others have wide doors leading into courts,
and others introduce you into the shops of
mechanics, where you see half-naked cool
les doing the thousand and one things of a
busy Chinese city.
Walking through these lanes the for
eigner seems to be taking his life in his
hands. The streets are SO narrow that you
can stand in the middle and press the OPP
posite walls with your hands. Two men
can hardly pass, and you instinctively
squeeze yourself to tighten your skin and
keep ont OF the collisions which appear i'm
minent at every curve. Here comes a
coolie, barepacked and barelegged. He is
one OF the thousand slop-carriers of the
town. A bar six feet long rests upon his
shoulder, and from the ends of this hang
two great buckets, each holding four GAL
Ions OF the vilest of slop. lie comes toward
you on swinging trot, and the buckets