The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1903-01-30

also play various games with cards and
in fact their modes of gambling are le-
gion. But it is during the Chinese New
Year that Chinatown is most interesting
to the visitor.
Then Chinatown dons its gala attire.
Every store is gayly decorated. Flags
are flying from every vantage point
Chinese lanterns of variegated hues hang
in luxuriant profusion. BY the grace of
the municipal authorities permission has
been granted to use fireworks. The air
is filled by day with the din of explod-
ing firecrackers and at night is lurid with
the glare of rockets. The Chinese stroll
up and down the streets dressed in their
gayest colors of silks. The sidewalks
are thronged with curious Caucasians,
the eastern visitor most in evidence,
watching the various manifestations
with curious eye, and they do not dis
perse until midnight, when a grand
bursting of bombs and big crackers tells
that the New Year is properly ushered in.
with sufficient noise to scare away all
the devils, big and little, who may de-
sire to intrude upon the merrymaking
The festivities, continue several days
Punk and incense is kept burning in the
streets during all of this time, thereby
adding to the usual odors of the quarter
For, two days at least all business is
suspended for season of loud and mer-
ny manifestation. White families in the
aristocratic portion of the city may do
their own cooking, or fare at hotels and
restaurants, if they have a queue in
their kitchen. Merchants of the higher
class do no business for four days to
, come and during not less than three
days rich and poor receive and pay calls
of ceremony upon their friends, sitting
over the convivial tea bowl and partak-
ing of choice fruits and candied danties
The white visitor as well is received
with the utmost of hospitality and your
Chinese host is previously offended if
you decline to partake of the proffered
viands. For three days white people
with sensitive ears will do we'll to give
a wide berth to the district in which all
of these festivities are going on, for they
will be accompanied with such an UNI
earthly din and pyrotechnical explosion
as only the Chinese know how to make
So much as slight description of
our Chinese quarter. Much more might
be written. Of the many phases of Chi
nese life, of the various tongs or secret
societies and their wars, of the great
Six Companies, which is so powerful in
controlling our twenty-five or thirty
thousand citizens. They are not bad
citizens. Perhaps I use the word citizen
enormously, as the Cinnamon cannot be
naturalized. But the native-born Mon
golian has the right of franchise and is
an American citizen. The Chinese are
good laborers. Crime is no more preva-
lent among them than among our own
people. And while there is danger if we
allow them to come to our shores freely,
yet the eastern people must not take as
gospel truth all the dread tales of Chi
nese invasion that are circulated regard
ing the Pacific coast.
Besides the Chinese quarter there are
other quaint sections of San Francisco,
not so disagreeable. The Latin quarter,
skirting the southern and western slopes
of Telegraph hill, is replete with sugges-
ton of the Levant and the Riviera-the
mingling of Greek, Neapolitan, Syrian,
Turk, Slavonian and exiles from Bulga-
ria and Montenegro is a swart and taw-
ny background to the calaret type of
Frenchman and the Mexican character
resident in the quarter
San Francisco is a picturesque city;
it is healthful city. Living is cheap,
whether you live in the hotels and
boarding houses or provide for your own
home. 1t is city that in times of pros
perity is more prosperous than any 9TH
er in the United States, and in seasons
of depression sustains the strain of adj
verse fortune with more equanimity and
personal comfort than other communi-
ties. 1t is city with a splendid future.
1t is the metropolis of a rich empire, as
yet but sparsely populated. Every pos
sibility awaits the proper application of
energy, industry and intelligence; op-
portunity sits by the Golden Gate, and
they are wise who seeek it there. L
stood by the Golden Gate on the 28th
day of last December. The children,
barefoot and happy, were playing on
the sands and in the sun warmed ocean
surf. The broad Pacific was dotted
with the sails of commerce swiftly bear
ing a golden harvest to CALIFORNIA;
shores from the Orient, from Australia
and from the islands of the sea. Close
at hand was the station of the great ca
BILE that has annihilated the distance
between California and Tar oil HaWan,
the dusky queen of the Pacific, and
which, before another national birthday,
promises to stretch out across the
"great gray plains of ooze where shell
blurred cables Creep to our newborn
peoples in far Luzon. Up and down the
path walked the vendors of fruits and
flowers. Back in the city were rising
the great office buildings. Truly this is
land of beauty and one of promise.