China and the West

Letter from Alice Chipman Dewey to Dewey family
On the train to Shanghai. | [July 19, 1920]
You see uch funny sights the crooked willows making a fringy background for the dark gren lotus fronds and the snow whie blosss[o]ms and all eflected back in the water and then a lovely ornamented moon bridge over the dragon like pon that wander round thru the rice fields after the rains and what really makes you laugh, the huge water buffalo walking on the earth at the bottom of these muddy rainpools with his back and his noe and his horns which look like the dead branches of trees sticking up and his old grey sides shine like silver when he comes out of the water unwillingly driven by the naked water colored boy on his back all the Yangste color except the lovely green which covers this part of China more than any other. and junks on the canals and it seems funny to see telephon poles set in these rice fields hen off in teh distance bald looking pagodas with all their curls dropped off from age mark the tops of little hills. The men and women are going ut the rows of rice plants with long bamboo handles on the hoes, handles longer than fishpoles and the ends shake as if the wind blew them in the hands of the hoers. The hoes are broader than any you eve saw and they work with them all day standing with thir leges in the deep water of the rice fields, half way up to their knees. There are no passengers except a few Chinese young men and they do what they always do in the heat slouch about in their underclothes with the clean linen or silk coats folded up on the seats and they sleep or eat. Mostly their underclothes are dirty in spite of th beautiful coats, It is second class so we have clean rattan instead of dirty hot plush of the first, and the mercury is somewhere between 90 and 100. All the land is used, every inch, the beans are beginning to yellow at the bottom of the stalks and the cotton is getting up high and taro is very decorative, so arre the slender strawstacks tall and straight ad every now and then the unfertile mounds of the graves put the dead in place of life, There are soe cows here mostly led by little girls between the rows of crops to browse. Pigs in China le in the corner of the vegetable gardens and eat the weeds on the oter edge, never showing wheteher they like human food or not. There are many trees even the hills being sometimes covered with small ones. I am trying to fill up with green since I am going to Peking.—if I can.
Shanghia. July 20th [1920]
Room 29 of the missionary home is up under the roof but the breeze blows thru from the long hall and I have had a good sleep. The house is full of missionaries starting home on furlough so there are swarms of children. It is interesting to get up against a bunch of people whose experiences are quite different from our own altho the same. I sat at the table with some Episcopalians, I know from the tone of voice such rolling and such charitable abuse of Wilsons admin was worth coming for. I am very anxious about getting off but I am sitting here instead of in the boat office because Mr Lee of the Y.M.CA. just called me up and insisted that Mr Sweetman had written him last night and he would do the errand for me. I feeel it is probably a mistake to allow of any intervention since no one wants me to get to Peking quite so badly as I do myself adn since Mr sweetman in particular has ideas that he ought to do all this for me 'as if I were his mother' but since I shall not have to wait very long for him I said thank you. If he upsets the whole pie because of what he thinks an old lady ought to do I shall simply have to start over again later. I can go the Consuls office and if I cant get off today there is another boat on another line on Thursday. One difficulty in Nanking was that Sweetman has not been about China as much as I have but he felt it was his duty to give very positive advice. The kindness of epople is very sincere here but it is sometimes emphatic and almost interfereing. I have been reading yesterdays paper and find the fighting is severe near Peking but the whole look of things is hopeful since the worst influences are on the lose and tho the winners are bad they will have to come a little nearer to the people.
I wish you could see the head of this place, picture of the pious spinster tall, and angular with high neck dress and a prim way of talking, one real authority. It is a pleasure to be here in no way for it is real old fashioned housekeeping calen and bare and enough simple good food, so if I have to wait a few days I shall ask to be kept here. Plenty of baths and all at a price which I understand is much less than the regular hotels. The table and the managemnet is like the old fashioned American Boardinghouse.
[Alice Chipman Dewey]