Profiles from China Part 7

The Lady of Easy Virtue: An American

_Lotus_, So they called your name.

Yet the green swelling pod, the fruit-like seeds and heavy flower, are nothing like to you.

Rather, like a pitcher plant you are, for hope and all young wings are drowned in you.

Your slim body, here in the cafe, moves brightly in and out. Green satin, and a dance, white wine and gleaming laughter, with two nodding earrings--these are Lotus.

And in the painted eyes cold steel, and on the lips a vulgar jest; Hands that fly ever to the coat lapels, familiar to the wrists and to the hair of men. These too are Lotus.

And what more--G.o.d knows!

You too perhaps were stranded here, like these poor homesick boys, in this great catch-all where the white race ends, this grim Shanghai that like a sieve hangs over filth and loneliness.

You were caught here like these, and who could live, young and so slender--in Shanghai?

Green satin, and a gleaming throat, and painted eyes of steel, Hunter or hunted, Peace be with you, _Lotus_!

Shanghai

In the Mixed Court: Shanghai

Two men sit in judgment on their fellows.

Side by side they sit, raised on the pedestal of the law, at grips with squalor and ignorance.

They are civilization--and they are very grave.

One of them is of my own people, a small man, definite, hard-featured, an accurate weapon of small calibre.

Of the other I cannot judge.

He is heavily built, and when he is still the dignity of the Orient is about him like his robe. His head is large and beautifully domed, his hands tapering and aristocratic.

When he speaks it is of subtleties.

But when he speaks his dignity drops from him. His eyes s.h.i.+ft quickly from one end of their little slit to the other, his mouth, his full brown mouth, moves over-fast, his hands flicker back and forth.

The courtroom is crowded with ominous yellow poverty.

The cases are of many sorts.

A woman, she of the little tortured feet and sullen face, has kidnapped a small boy to sell. A man was caught smuggling opium. A tea-merchant, in dark green silk, complains that he was decoyed and held prisoner in a lodging-house for ransom.

A gambling den has been raided and the ivory dominoes are shown in court.

The prisoners are stoically sullen. The odor of them fills the room.

Above them sit the two men, raised on the pedestal of the law, judging their fellows.

I turn to the man beside me, waiting his case.

"Tell me" I ask "of these men, which is the better judge?"

He answers carefully.

"The Chinaman is cleverer by half. He sees where the other is blind. But Chinese magistrates are bought, and this one sells himself too cheap."

"And the other?" I ask again.

"A good man, and quite honest. You see he doesn't care."

The judges put their heads together. They are civilization and they are very grave.

What, I wonder, is civilization?

Shanghai