The Savannah morning news., 1902-08-31
CHINAT0WN'S NEWSPAPER.
Amusing Extracts From Modern
Sheet Published for the Benefit of
CeIestiaIs
From the New York Post.


From the New York Post.
Weeks after the American CORE
spondents had described the entry of
the allied troops into the Forbidden
City of Pekin, there drifted into the
Chinatown of this city certain gaudily
printed sheets which not only describ-
ed, but illustrated graphically and
with much luridness of detail an over
wnelming victory for the Boxers and
the utter decentralization of the Euro
pean armies. Letters from home con-
frmed the news, so far as Cantonese
peasants could speak authoritatiVely
of an event at Pekin. After that, the
Cinnamon listened with amused toll
GRAFTON to the accounts of the Empress
Dowager's flight and the rescue of the
ENJOYS. That they listened at all, it
should be said, was a sign that an ap-
petite for some sort of news had been
awakened in the usually stolid Orien-
tai. There are perhaps thirty China
men in New York who can read Eng
lish with any t1uency, and they would
translate the days dispatches to knots
of their countrymen. Some there were
who held that, after all, the Mclean"
papers might be right and the colored
Woodcuts wrong, but they were laugh
ed down.
Then there appeared the Emperor's
own proclamations, giving complete
confirmation to the newspaper dis
patches, and showing the ostensibly
official version to be only a canard of
Boxer agents. Thus Chinatown learn
ed the value of good newspaper.
There had been several attempts to
establish Chinese periodicals here but
they were clumsy affairs, all of them
writ ton Nv
stones, and the Mott and Pell street
colony would have none of them. Not
until after the war were the China
men in a receptive attitude
The Chinese Weekly Herald, the
only Chinese newspaper printed from
movable type east of San Francisco.
has issued about eighty numbers, and
1t has gained so much in the past
year, both in influence and in circula-
ton, that there is hardly doubt of
its permanence as one of the institu-
lions of New York's Chinatown.
1t is to be found just as regularly in
Chinese laundries as the comic week.
lies in an American barber shop.
When the laundryman goes out of
business, his successor carries on the
subscription. East of the Mississippi
there is scarcely village with a half
dozen Cinnamon in it's population,
Addresses in Cuba, Colon, and even
England are on the mailing-lists. The
out-of-town circulation, in fact, is
greater than that in New York. Scores
of it's subscribers cannot read it. They
merely buy the sheet and send it home
in lieu of a weekly letter. 1t tells,
they assume, all the American news
they can possibly know, and costs only
5 cents-so will go to the expense of
hiring a professional letter writer?
The Chinese Herald is four-page
paper about half the size of an ordi-
nary news sheet, and always discon-
certs Americans because it opens at
the left side insetad of the right Also
the columns run crosswiSe instead of
up and down. Such things however.
are purely matters of national taste,
and quite as convenient as our oppo-
site ways. The paper must really
stand or fall by the reading matter
it contains.
How the Paper Is Run.
In small room in one of the older
Nassau street office buildings there
can be found for many hours of every
workingday young Chinaman, well
dressed and intelligent looking Be
fore him the days newspapers are pill
ed. Whenever a Pekin, Shanghai or
Canton date line or a head" with
Chlnaman" in 1t strikes his eye he
begins to read. After a few minutes
if the article be of interest to his
countrymen, he takes up a pencil-like
brush, and, sighting along it as though
it was a rifle, begins to write. When
a Caucasian wishes to make charac-
tiers with exceptional neatness. he
takes his pencil as close to the point
as he can. The Chinaman grasps it
as far away from the point as the
length of the writing instrument will
allow. There is bound to be a good
deal of head-scratching and BRAIN
racking before translation or even
an abstract of the English is made
The publishers font of type the only
one in New York. contains II. ZOO of
the Geographic Chinese characters a
dozen times as many as there are in
the Chi Tsu Mon. the great reading
book, but they do not correspond ex-
aetly to those of the American editors
and reporters. Proper names make the
most trouble of all. When England
had change of premiers. for instance.
the best the Herald could do was to
announce that Ba-I-For, a member OF
the lesser Parliament, had taken the
place of Sa-Wos.
II must not be supposed that even
FOR It's foreign news the Chinese week.
~ has 10 rely wholly upon It's Amer
lean contemporaries. IL has CORE
sponoents Of It's own at the principal
CFlnese cities. In San Francisco. Bos-
ton, Philadelphia. and Chicago Can.
ton Is the home OF q great majority
OF the Cinnamon IN and around Nav