China and the West

Letter from John & Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children
May first Shanghai [1919]
Dear children,
We have slept one night in China, but we havent any first impressions of China, because China hsnt revealed itself to our eyes as yet. Mamma compares it to Detroit Mich, and except that there is less coal smoke, the descritpion hits it off, also like the suburban districts of London in the villa districts, where there is lots of land about every house. Certainly some foreigners have succeeded in making money out of China. This is said to be literally an international city, but I havent learned yet just what the technique is; every country seems to have its own postoffice tho, and its own front door yeard, and when we were given a little auto ride yesterday, we found that the car couldnt go into Chinatown because it had no license, for that district. We are haunted by a suspicion that t[h]e young men who have us in charge have more enthusiasm than wordly wisdom or official pull—in other words they belong to the younger generation who are trying to reform the established order, and are as popular as such people generally are. Howver we have little to go on so far. Altho the Univ of Peking cabled Butler three weeks ago, they havent had a reply yet, so we dont as yet know any more about our future than we doid in Japan I lecture here twice, saturday and sunday; monday we go to Hangchow which is said to be scencially one of the most beautiful places in Chin, and was I believe the capital during some one of the numerous dynasties that hve ruled over China…
May 2
Now we have seen something of China, so far as Shanghai is China at all, and to day we are to see more, going to Chinatown. Our reception committee here consists of Suh Hu [Hu Shi], who took a thirty six hour trip from Peking to meet us, a man from Nanking Teahcers College, and a local Shanghai teacher, named Chinang who took his Ph D at T C a year or so ago. The "returned student" is a definite category here, and if and when China gets on its feet, the American university will have a fair share of the glory to its credit, and T C its due share in the pie. They came with a frinds auto and took us to a Chinese newspaper office where we inspected the building and type-setting as per usual, ctea and cake as per ditto, photo the same, then were taken to the biggest printing house in the east, prints most of the textbooks and verything else, including money for the Republic, then to the house of Mr Nieh, the man who lent the care aforesaid, a big house with a big garden, full of people, his mother and sisters being brought and introduced, the mother evidently a character who cant speak English, but who is the daughter of the greatest statesmen, so we are told, of the last dynasty, and who has ten children or more, on being at Columbia now, and forty grandchildren. She has recently offered a prize for the best essay on the method of abolishing concubinage, in reply to which eight hundred were sent in. More tea and a funny Chinese dish, called meat pie, then we go to sea the cotton spinning and ewaving factory owned by theis family—who are Christians. There is not even the pretence at labor laws here there is in Japan, some children six years old, not many thot, and wages of the operatives mainly women in the spinning dept 3o cents a day at the highest, 32 cwnts Mex, while in the ewaving dept they have piece wrok and get up to 4o cents.
This is Papas and I cant take it out so I will tell you something of what we had to eat in one small afternoon. First lunch of all courses here at the hotel. Then we went to the Newspaper where we had tea and cake about four. From there to the h[o]use of the daughter of the leading statesman of the Manchus, she being the lady of the small feet and of the ten children who has offered a prize for the best essay on the ways to stop concubinage, which they call the whole system of plural marriage. They say it is quite unchanged among the rich There we were given a tea or rare sort, unknown in our experience. Two kinds of meat pies which are made in the form of little cakes and quite peculiar in taste, delicious, also cake. Then after the factory we went to the restaurant where we were to have dinner. First we got into the wrong hotel and there while we were waiting they gave us tea. We were struck by the fact that they asked for nothing when we elft and thanked us for coming to the wrong place Then we went to the right hotel across the street from the first. They called it the corner of Broadway and 42nd st and it is that. There is a big roof garden besides the hotels and they are both run by the Department stores wich have their places underneath. The Chinese are as crazy about dept stores as Jap. It may be a sad commentary on the human character that one can eat more than he can remember, but that is what we did last night. First of all when we went into the room which was all Chinese furniture, very small round table in the middle and the rows of stools along one side for the singing birls who do not dance here. These stools we did not use as all thse young Chinese are ashamed of that institution and want to get rid of it. On a side table were almonds shelled, nice little ones different from ours and very sweet. and beside them dried watermelon seeds which I could not crack so I did not taste. All the Chinese nibbled them with relish. Two ladies came, both of them had been in N.Y. to study. All these people speak and understand English in earnest. On the table were little pieces of sliced ham, the famous preserved eggs which taste like hard boiled eggs and look like dark colored jelly, and little dises of sweets shrimps etc. To these we helped ourselves with the chp sticks tho they insisted on Giving Pa and me little plates on which they spooned out some of each. Then followed such a feast as we had never experienced the boys taking off one dish after another and replacing them with others in the center of the table to which we helped ourselves. There was no special attempt at display of fine dishes such as you might have expected with such cooking and such expense and such as would have happened in Japan. We had chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs in soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground, very delicious and delicate, and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrims cooked and sharks fin and birds nest and this has no taste at all by itself but is cooked in Chicken broth to give it some and is a sort of very delicate soup but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being, It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking We had many more things than these and the boy in a rather dirty white coat and an old cap om his head passing round the hot perfumed wet towels every few courses and for desert we had little cakes made of bean paste filled up with almond paste and other sweets, all very elaborated made and works of are to look at but with too little taste to appeal much to us, then we had fruits bananas and apples and pears cut up in pieces each with a tooth pick in it so it can be eaten easily. Then we had a soup made of fishes stomach, or air sac. Then we had a pudding of the most delicious sort imaginable made of a mould of rice filled in with eight different symbolic thinge that I dont know any thing about, but they dont cut much part in the taste. In serving this dish we were first given a little bowl half full of a sauce thickened and looking like a milk sauce. It was really made of powdered almonds. Into ths you put the pudding and it is so good that I regretted all that had gone before and I am going to learn how to make it. They say all the ladies in China learn how to cook and it is their business to look after the cooking and to know how to do it themselve and to do parts of it. They still have many children. We saw two little ones yesterday beisdes several bigger ones scampering out of sight. One little daughter of Mrs Chang of two and a half with a costume of crimson brocade made just like the suit of the small boy of four. We thought she was a boy as her hair was cut tight to her head. Also a baby of five months with the most wonderful costume of cap and shoes, slippers and socks, and some little trousers made with wide split in the middle, of a dark red plaid cotton. The baby was fat and cunning as could be and was already jumping on her feet. Well the little things that make up the interest here are endless. A Daughter
Friday May 3rd. [2nd]
This is pap again, and as I dont know about the daughter, I will return briefly to the factory. Mamma remarked that the manager was the only person in a fact[o]ry who had ever told the truth in answering questions, and Hu [Shi] replied that lying showed that a moral consciousness had begun to dawn, while here thatre was not even a consciousness of anything wrong yet. He and his firneds have given up politics I judge as a bad job, and are devoting themselves to what they call a litterary revolution, which isnt as purely literary as it sounds, since it means using the spoken current language for writing, and without this modern questions cannot really be discussed… We are going to see more of the dangerous daring side of life here I predict We are very obviously in the hands of young China. What it will do with us makes us laugh to anticipate— Evedently they are having the time of theri lives and evidently they do not see what it is exactly best to do. But nothing woies us. We are not getting rich, but we are to have our expenses and we ought to have a very good time. Here in Shanghai we are in the hands of some educatiional association of this whole region or districs or whatever they call it. There is a normal school in Hangchow but chiefly sightseeing they say. We saw big men with queus, they said they are from the north and every one scrambling and fighting for a job like N.Y. Quite unlike any thing in Japan. And a sp[?]al streets also smae. Our men are coming. [John Dewey]