China and the West

Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey children
[June 16, 1920]
Dear Children. This is the evening of the 16th and Ev and I are alone in this hotel. Lucy got sick of this job and went to Nankin and Papa is in a town named Tsuchow way off somewhere that he ahs to come back from. SEv is still short of sleep and we are going to bed early and really waiting here in Shanghai partly for time to pass. We pay dearly for it, but still we must stay some where tho we are both about at the point that Lu had reached. In Nankin she and we all feel at home in a lovely garden and settle into it for a while. But we are none the less looking now towards Peking. I am getting this off for tomorrow the mail gets ready for the Equador. We went out with miss B Blascourt today, she is one I knew in New York and now deals in corios here. We made the acquaintance of the big dealer with whom Mr Simkhovitch deals. He the one from whom S bought his first pictures. His shop is a lovely one and besides his we saw one other. Ev bought a piece of blue and white and I bit at a pretty cracked thing which ought to be expensive but under the circumstances sold for three dollars and I think I can get it as far as Peking at least. It is a big jar like a ginger jar of old five color pictures and I shall be proud to see it on the Peking sideboard and fish a cracker out of it from time to time. I wanted to look at some pictures, but time was too short. Their place is filled with splendid blue and white of all the periods but all too dear for me. and China is selling out all the old stuff pretty fast. Some of the very most horrible photos we have had arrived today from a girls school where we visited and spoke when here before. The passion of this nation for poor photos is quite miraculous. I have been looking at the proof of EA. and think it is hard to make nay thing out of it for a stranger, being a proof only and my not knowing her. I hope I may sometime tho. and shall look for a copy of the photo soon, a small one I mean.
The book of letters has not arrived here and will not but Pa has declined o tkae the trip up the Yngste and we shall be at home soon after July first. Maybe some of us before that time. If I take the lectures in Nankin I think Ill go and come back. Winnifred Miller has decided not to ait for Ev so she will go alone with the help of crowds of fellow passengers. Probably on "ug 21st too, for the chance of getting anything but blackmail out of the S. S. Co seems very slight. Our conductors this time were different both from the past and from each other, One was dear little Chen of Nankin, he weigs 35 pounds and we love the whole of him. he is sweet and gentle and intelligent and he cant get any thing done except he is very good to talk to and to learn from and he tells you when he doesn't understand what you say so you can say it over again. he is delcate in health and very popular with the chair bearers so we never get into a chair till he tells us which one he is not gong to take and then the bearer resigns himself. What do you think, I have just been called to the phone, wrong number of course, but then what an experience, to speak thru a phone again. our other conductor is a real sport, a lout in plain languagem and how he ever got in on the job we cant guess, but he had his picture taken with Pa alne in the rock garden of the park yesterday and we are going to wait and see what kind of chewing gum prints it. He gave os three heavy pieces of very bad porcelin and we think maybe it is to be a trade mark for that. Since we shall probably bring home the bad porcelain I may as well tell you it is an attmpt to revive the most ancient and valuable ware called celadon (or, Japanese, seijji) pale green you know and sometimes very beautiful, These three pieces make up in design for their lack of workmanship, one is a water buffalo, with smooth knees and skin of striped green, another is the Goddess of the three eyes, a foot tall and much heavier than Chen tho we were her bearers, and the third is a dog of short body and long legs smiling jaws and a spread tail and I forgot to find out who worships him, but you will see him later on. All their greens are curiously spread and tinged with a gloomy white on all the high spots where the glaze ran thin in the firing. The whole effect is some like Mr Li himself in that you cannot identify it with any thing in your past. Mr Li spent much time in the hotel when we wasnt running out to get the bad eggs and things and so far as I could see he was equally at home with the coolies down stairs and with the young mna Yang who was the third on our list and who writes a complete history of all we do and say in a book which he keeps with him, at least he does this excepting when nature gets the better of him and he cuts a lecture like a normal boy which he is. He had a good chance Sunday [13 June 1920] when he came to mine and sat on the back seat to visit it thru and so escaped going to Papa's.
Yang is from Nankin and he said goodby at the station so we are alone till we meet someone else who is interested in us, or else gets paid for seeming so. Yang is quite bright and has had several prizes for essays ad things and he belongs with littl Chen among the bright group at Nankin. They are putting Coeducation in there this summer, with great scandal of course, and Mr Tao has asked me to give a few lectures on the hist of etc in U.S. and I think maybe I'll do it. I find it is quite fun to talk to young men, and they will be more numerous than the girls. Besides I like Nankin and noe of the foreign missionaries there will give them any think but hindrance, they are all Mt Holyoke graduates except two from Mich, but some goirls from their college are leaders in the coed movement and one is going to be dean of women this summer. In hangchow the Govt told them at the Normal if they put in Coed the Asssembly woul cut off teir appropriation so Mr Chnag the President is going to open all the classes to visitors. and by this you will see there are a few daring ones in China where it does tke nerve and no mistake to do anything for women, or to change much anywhere. Meantime war has broken out in the province of Honan and we may see more interesting things yet. I hear the American ministry (Mr Crane) has protested to the Govt at the arrest of an editor of a liberal paper, the same paper I told you about last summer Mr [Dwight Woodbridge] Edwards is interested in it and it is in some way under the portection of our legation. I hope that protest will make trouble for the Govt. As for Shanghai, you never saw so much silk in your life as you can paw over in the big shops here and it is the most lovely and never wears out. Tonight Col[u]mbia men are giving a dinner to Pa, Mr Tong Shao Yi will preside. Did I tell you how his son followed me from one speech to the other when I was here last week, and the second was at a club for women only. he is a charming boy, speak English as we do and is in a Chnese University here. Think of an American boy of 18 following a grand mother lle me to a womans club, I spose he wanted to report it to the students or something. he did it nicely anyway. Evelyn wants me to get some clothes here but as we have no success in getting a maker. Such lovely stuff and no good foreign dressmakers, isnt it a pity. I look like meal bag in all their tings…
We met a young agriculturist in Nantung who is sure Cornell is the best place. He is engaged in running the station for the famous Chang Bros who own and run the town. It is as it were a Standrd Oil town every thing done well or else Mr Chang knows the reason why and acts promptly and efficiently. Mr Chang is old and his son is young and hs taught in New York City College, dept of Commerce. He is 23 and has a wife and three children like all good old fashioned Chinese of that adnvanced age. We saw them when we dined there, a little girl of three with Chinese trousrs a Japanese made American dress with an embroidered ruffle at the edge and a beautiful large jewel hung at her neck made a strange makeup for a preety and bright littlr gilr who read us some hundred or more characters. She learns four new ones each day, that appears to be the allotment in high class families like that. The house is large with several apartments and many servants, fine old corios and and other coice things and the ugliest foreign furniture In fact the foreign furniture of China is something so hopeless in taste that descriptions would mystify even if I had time to give them. Nothing fits anything else anyway and you gradually learn to pick out the beautiful and costly things from an aggregation that seems at first glance to be a gathering together of a scond hand shop. They have a very durable varnish from Ningpo which is most useful and covers all the wood work in China and it gives a red color to it all something like our imitation mahogany. As a background it is ruinous in effect, and yet we saw it even in the fine curio shop where we were today, and to me it swore at us all through. In these big shops they keep the most valuable jades and jewels in the family living rooms so we always get glimpses of the laides and children and ammahs. The ladies always go on combing their hair before the mirrors with their maids helping them. Combing and dressing that hair is a long process too and the powder and jewels take time, to say nothing of the finger nails. Paint is used commonly for the face and jewels in the hair and all the rest of the dress surprisingly plain. In summer the thin black gauze skirts hung loosely over the white trousers give a funny appearance to us. The manners at the hotel in Hangchow were enlightening too. Young married couple next to us. She disappears and then reappears in full white pajamas all reay for bed with hair and jewels and fingernails perfect. Then she with hubby in the same coustme except the hair and jewels sits beside her at the edge of the porch upstairs, looking at the lake and cooling themselves with fans till after we go to bed. Our window was on this piazza and no curtain. Getting any privacy in China is a study. I got a lttle seclusion for my bath in the wash bowl by putting the screen in front of the window, but the room boy would not be interrupted by that if I forgot to lock the door. Water is obtained from said boy by 1st ringing the bell, then pointing to the dirty water in the bowl. He picks up the bowl and goes out after a while coming back with the bowl full of clean water He brings you hot water (or tea if you wish) in a tea pot and leaves it on the table and he brings you a glass of cold water in the same fashion of bringing in the bowl, and he is always on the jump to unlock your door or to go down stairs a long way off and put you in your ricsha, or to bring up food or to dispense any other more original sort of service you may devise for him and he never seems to sleep but always to smile. If you give him a fortune like a silver dollar he smiles till his ear drums crackle.
This house is foreign in stye and very comfortable in the N.Y, sense of that Sometimes I have a picture of the adirondacs suddenly flash into my mind and smell the clean woods and the pine house and the sweet air and wonder how it has ever happened that mother earth has contrived to keep herself so clean and so green on one side when all the bloom is rubbed off her on the other. After all it is these devilish Japanese that worry one. We now hear that the condition attached to the last loan was a concession from the Pekin Govt of the importation of rice to Japan. If this is so and the Chinese PEOPLE find it out there may be sad trouble ahead for the govt and as for that, we hope for the trouble.
I think Ev and I will go up to Soochow tomorrow and from there to Wusih by ourselves and then just go home without waiting to come back to Soochow with Pa, picking up Lucy in Nankin as we go, perhaps stopping there for a little rest. The heat has come tho nights are still cool here, but anyway we must get started if we are to go to Kalgan and get back to start off Ev for the boat at Kobe on the 21st of August. Until we write to the contrary you may consider this our program and we shall commence writing more often now that we can get a chance to sit down and get up of our own volition…
Sunday [20 June 1920] is the day of the Dragon Boat Festival and we shall be in Soochow to see it on the canals there said to be one of the best places in China and a grand old carouse it is with the flower boats and the singsong girls. As yet I have not seen a flower boat, but they are very ancient homes of vice and pleasure Meantime think of the things you want from China and tell them to us. No shirts have come to us but they may be in Pekin) If we can bring you the things we will so it will do no harm to speak of them Evelyn can of course prompt you when she gets back tho she has not seen Canton.
Now I must stop for I have to finish an article on Coed for the Stud magazine of Nankin.
Love and love from mama