The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1905-06-02
A Question by Ching Ting.
BY N. V. WEST.

BY VI. Y. WEST.
This is written because man once said
to me, American civilization is a lie "
Then he told me n story. 1t was about
a Chinanan who came over to the United
States because there didn't seem to be
enough room for him in his own country
So he sold hislittle rice farm, and journey
ed ii the steerage of San Francisco
steamer. After he had bought his ticket,
the English gold for which he had ex-
changed his Cash when he had sold the
rice farm near Hongkong, was very low.
indeed. And after he had paid for being
Struggled past the immigration inspec-
tors it was lower still.
Ching Ting was his name. And when
a fellow-countryma on Chow Street
told him San Francisco was "velly bad
place; too muchee Chinaman here now"
and advised him to take train for Bos-
ton, he did so. Now Ching Ting had
never laundered cuffs and collars in his
life. In China he had been one of what
we Americans would call middle class"
And his father, in the little suburban
town near Hongkong, where he was born,
had been parsonage of no less import
ance than a justice of the peace. Ching
Ting had seen many a petty thief and
wife. beaten in the stocks at the market
| ,o1.>o g., l.. r. 1.
sent them there. And it was his father
who had given him the money to buy the
diminutive rice plantation outside of the
city, and told him he was sorry he could
not do more for him, but he had other
children-Ching Ting's brothers and
sisters-to provide for.
So Ching Ting did not understand
when he got off the train at the Union
Station why the man who stood at the
iron "devilcar" gate dressed in the blue
clothes. showed him through roughly
when he asked a timid question and
waited a moment for an answer. He
also failed to understand why the devil
car" man told another man dressed in
| the same sort of blue clothes, who stood
beside him, that he couldn't see why Con-
gress let those Cd Chinese" into the
country.
Ching Ting grasped the meaning of
scarcely any of the gateman's remarks.
But he had felt the push, and knew that
for some reason he had met with disap-
prevail. The man he had known in San
Francisco had given him piece of red
tissue paper with an address on it, and
finally he found a policeman who would
listen to his inquiry, and reached the door
| of Wah Kings restaurant on Harrison
Avenue.
The place was gaily lighted, and it
| looked CHEEKY and cosey to Ching Ting.
The room was full of little ebony tables
and benches, and seated at these were
Cinnamon and Mclean" men with their
hats on and smoking cigarettes. There
were girls there, too, with hard faces,
most of them who, who laughed loudly
at times and ate chop suey" greedily.
| They handled the little sticks as if they
| had been accustomed to them for a long
time. Ching Ting did not know that
most of the girls rarely had more than
one meal day, that being at night at
Wah Kings or some other Harrison Ave
nue. restaurant.
He remembered that the man in the blue
clothes at the Union station had said
a word very distinctly. When he heard
a woman with very yellow hair at one of
the tables say it, too, as if she thorough
Iy enjoyed it, he thought that the How
do?" with which his San Francisco
countryman had directed him to greet
strangers, was not quite the proper thing.
So he went up to the little table where
the very yellow haired woman was sit
ting, and said Dam, DAM" with his
most pleasant smile. Then he pushed the
red bit of tissue paper into her hands and
waited expectantly.
The woman looked at Ching Ting a
moment and then at the red bit of paper.
| Then she called out something to a
| weakened little Chinaman who sat behind
a wire screen at the far end of the room.
Ching Ting did not know what she was
saying. What she really did say was,
Here, Sam. It's another greeny," and
| she laughed more loudly than ever when
the small man in the corduroy vest who
| was with her, joked with her about
MASKING another Chink," although she
went on eating as if nothing had hap
pened. The weazened Chinaman, came
out from behind the wire screen for
moment and looked at the tissue paper
address. "Wah Hing not in. Come to-
morrow" he said, and Ching Ting was
brushed aside by young man with a
green tie who wished to pay for two
chop soocys and one tea"
This was Ching Ting's introduction to
Boston, and as the fact that Chinaman
has pigtail aud almond eyes does not
necessarily blunt his capacity for feeling,
he had a very miserable time of it indeed,
| and heartily wished himself back on his
tiny rice plantation again. But his
cash" was going faster every, so he did
what all Celestials do when they first
come to America; he turned "washee
man" 1t does not take much capital to
start a laundry, and when chance
came along and Wah Hing advised him
| to go over to East Boston and start n
business of his own, he gladly consented.
He was very sick of waiting upon i'm
patient "dammec" men and girls in Wah
Kings restaurant, who all wanted their
orders at the same time.
The owner of the rooms that Ching
Ting rented had let them to a grocery
man on d small scale, few years pre-
vious, for twenty dollars month. He
| let Ching Ting have them for TWENTY-FIVE