Los Angeles herald., 1909-09-03
in MODERN CHINA
XIV-Railroad Travel i'm Cathay
BY Frederic j. Haskin

I to the same railroad are fitted up
with the grandeur and display of a
Pullman palace car. Half the car, per-
haps, Is given up to the high backed,
Pullman-fashion seats, facing two and
two, with the inevitable table between.
The other half is divided into COM
partments.
Gaping tourists and bored globe
trotters fill the plebeian outside seats
and march up and down the narrow
side corridor to steal peeps through
glass windows at the grand beings
within the compartments. A Chinese
official of high rank attended by ret
inue of aides occupies one of them,
perhaps. In another two rich mer-
chants talk business over a table
d'hote dinner served foreign style
English fashion-and each pretends
not to notice how awkward the other
is in handling the strange and alien
implements called knife fork and
SPOON with which the white barbar-
ians eat their food. 1t is no longer
fashionable to eat with chop-sticks
when one is rich traveller and goes
first Glass;
The buffet is capable of a six course
meal, breakfast, tiffin, or dinner, at
any houR of the day and few dining
cars in the world can equal it for ex-
cellent cooking and we'll selected
anything in the "refreshment" line
from plain whisky-and-soda and the
abominable gin cocktail of the Far
East up to the best vintage cham
payne.
1t all spells progress, no doubt, but
one is tempted to curse civilization and
take sides with the Boxers when he
sees a fastidiously dressed, beautifully
colored, painfully crippled little Chi
f1lxiTn fnrniou 70 ch-
ion, with sugar and condensed milk in
it, and trying not to make a wry face
at the horrible taste of the connection.
She must do it, for she is riding on
railroad train, and she is riding
first class and she must submit to
the decree of. fashion which declares
that a Chinese rich enough to pay one
and half cents a mile for a first
class railroad ticket must suffer the
horrors of European food and drink
Sometimes there are little things
which go wrong. For instance, one fine
old gray-haired, twinkly-eyed gentle
man was on the first calss coach only
two hours. 1t was early in the morn
ing and he was prepared to submit
himself to the siX-course breakfast,
which differs from tiffin and dinner
only in that the first course is porridge
any other Chinese see that he wasn't
used to- eating foreign meals in the for
eign fashion. He had dined out, and
he knew how. Therefore did he have
white wine with his "paritch," red
wine with his omelet and rich "bubbly
water" champagne with his curry. But
he is an exception to the rule, for most
Chinese first class" passengers do not
attempt to do anything until they
know how to do it correctly. But two
inch finger nails do get awfully mixed
up with knives and forks somehow or
other.
or course everybody smokes all the
time. The older men, even in the first
class" stick nobly by their national
pipe, a pipe which holds but one tiny
puff of tobacco. Some of them even
cling to the ancient steel-edged pocket
book with its separate compartment
for the bit of flint, the twist of tinder
and the precious tobacco. The younger
men, however, puff away at cigarettes,
compounded of the "purest Virginia
leaf and sold to them through Amer
lean methods by the British chartered
Oriental branch of our own American
trust"
On this Shanghai thanking railroad
the language of the train is English,
as it Is on all the roads operated by the
CnlneSe. from f1dnhOW 10 1ehlllB Oh
the Franco Belgian line the train talk
is French, and UP in Shantung prov
ince it is German. A coolie who had
gathered unto himself an outfit of
pidgin English, pidgin French and
pidgin German became angry over
some alleged insult put upon him by
the train conductor, and made an ap-
peal to the tourists assembled at the
Nankou station in such wonderful
terms that the souls of the builders Of
Babel must have been racked with
envy.
1t is interesting to study the Chinese
travellers in China. They are legion,
and the railroads have difficulty in
providing for them. They are seeing
each other, and the passion for travel
is having much to do with the re-birth
of national spirit in China, spirit
killed by the provincialism induced by
centuries of staying at home.