Having spent a year there, I regard it with a sort
of affection as one of my Oriental homes.
Shanghai presents a spectacle rare amongst the seaports of the
world. Its broad streets, well kept and soon to be provided with
electric trolleys, extend for miles along the banks of two rivers,
lined with opulent business houses and luxurious mansions, most of
the latter being surrounded by gardens and embowered in groves
of flowering trees. Nor do these magazines and dwelling-houses
stand merely for taste and opulence. Within the bounds of the
Concessions is the reign of law--not, as elsewhere in China, the
arbitrary will of a magistrate, but the offspring of freedom and
justice. Foreigners live everywhere under the protection of their
own national flags: and within the Concessions. Chinese accused of
crimes are tried by a mixed court which serves as an object-lesson
in justice and humanity. Had one time to peep into a native
_yamen_, one might see bundles of bamboos, large and small,
prepared for the bastinado; one might see, also, thumb-screws,
wooden boots, wooden collars, and other instruments of torture,
some of them intended to make mince-meat of the human body. The
use of these has now been forbidden.[*]
[Footnote *: In another city a farmer having extorted a sum of money
from a tailor living within the Concession, the latter appealed
to the British consul for Justice. The consul, an inexperienced
young man, observing that the case concerned only the Chinese,
referred it to the city magistrate, who instantly ordered the tailor
to receive a hundred blows for having applied to a foreign court.
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