Arizona republican., 1920-04-20
NEW CH|NATOW PHONE EXCHANGE
 PLACE IF BEAUTY

San Francisco's great fire of 1906 drove over Chinatown, too. and from its ruins there rose a pillar of smoke that was huger than all the fumes of all the incense that had ever burned before it's josses- It was immediately rebuilt however, and so individual are the Chinese that, although the five barred flag of New China has dis placed the Yellow Dragon. the new Chinatown needs but the lacquer of time to resemble the old.
 Although the Chinaman is welded to customs that date back to Confu- cius, he does not scruple to patronize modern conventions. Among these is the telephone. So numerous were the Chinese subscribers and so peculiar
 he demand of their service, that a special exchange in their quarter be- came necessary. With a rare sense of artistic fitness, the Pacific Tele phone and Telegraph company decided to construct it in harmony with it's sur. oundings and in conformity with Ihe immemoriai raies of Chinese ar chitecture. The result is one of San Francisco's show places and perhaps the only consistent example of Chinese architecture outside of it's native land
 In this exchange, with its pagodA tower and prowlike balconies, each feature of construction is dictated by precedent. The several roofs were no, added by ostentation or conscientious carpenters, but because the Chinese consider that the dignity and social position of the inmates of a house IS 1T, direct proportion to the number oI roofs sheltering them. The retrousse balconies are designed to shoot rain water free from the building in winter and shield it from the direct rays of the sun in summer. The supporting columns have no capitals or bases ano are as round and as red as giant fire. crackers. Even the concrete founda- tions correspond to the stone plat forms upon which the Chinese con struct their buildings to protect them from dampness.
 You cross the threshold into so,l and subdued light that would befit a temple. You almost expect to see the hlue-fobed bonze or hear the boom Of Q deep-toned gong. For the window glass, instead of being clear plate or stained, is of a delicate rose-gray, in imitation of those oyster shell Things that serve the Chinese in lieu of glass The interior woodwork is in polished ebony, inset with panels of vermilion and gold. Upon these panels arc de- picted rampant dragons with claws. forked tongues and curving tails.
 At the end of the single large room Is plate glass partition From be- hind it comes an intermittent sound such as you hear when the stockboy is counting out No. 51a knobs into barrel. And then we remember that this building, which might be the Mount Vernon of some Manchurian Father of His Country, is built to con- tain the intricate and sensitive mech anism of a telephone exchange, and that the xylophone-like sounds that we hear are but the Chinese equiv alents for Number, please" and Line IS busy Passing behind the cur aimed glass partition, we find the nerve-center or ganglion of the ex- change: an eight-posittop switchboard. finished in polished ebony and orna- mented with characteristic scroIlwork like the booths and desks of the outer office. The operators are all Chinese girls, dressed in their rich and colorful costumes, and looking a though they had just stepped out of the scenery of some Chinese porcelain plate. There are thirteen operators in all for the various day and night shifts; during the small hours of the morning the board is handled by a boy. Exigencies of language demand that each oper- ator be familiar with several native dialects as well as with English, be- cause unwieldy China is a swarming babel of tongues, often uninteiligible to natives of d distant province. Exf-
 
 operator memoriZe names. numbers and addresses, because the bulk of the calls are by name and not by number. To be an operator in this exchange, then, requires an unusual degree of in tellfgence and skill. It is not surpris ing to learn that each operator is graduate of San Francisco public school, with a record standing therein
 Loo Rum Shoo is the manager; graduate of the University of Califor- 1 nia and a man of exceeding tact and courtesy. He is ably assisted by Mir l Sing.
 Thirteen hundred and fifty-six lines serve the 10000 Chinese population about the exchange. These 1856 lines are about equally divided between business and residence sub- sribers. The board handles an average of S,700 calls per day. nearly all of which is inter Chinatown service There are, however, about 900 incom- ing outside calls per day and about 6u0 An yuuSIIal r,roporfiou of