Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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If Jack has been to China, he will recognise the truth of the fact that parts of San Francisco are Chinese as Hong Kong itself. There are Joss-houses, with a big, stolid-looking idol sitting in state, the temple gay with tinsel and china, metal-work and paint, smelling faintly of incense, and strongly of burnt paper. There are Chinese restaurants by the dozen, from the high-class dining-rooms, with balconies, flowers, small banners and inscriptions, down to the itinerant restaurateur with his charcoal-stove and soup-pot. Then there are Chinese theatres, smelling strongly of opium and tobacco, where the orchestra sits at the back of the stage, which is curtainless and devoid of scenery. The dresses of the performers are gorgeous in the extreme. When any new arrangement of properties, &c., is required on the stage, the changes are made before your eyes; as, for example, placing a table to represent a raised balcony, or piling up some boxes to form a castle, and so forth. Their dramas are often almost interminable, for they take the reign of an emperor, for example, and play it through, night after night, from his birth to his death. In details they are very literal, and hold “the mirror up to nature” fully. If the said emperor had special vices, they are displayed on the stage. The music is, to European ears, fearful and wonderful—a mixture of discordant sounds, resembling those of ungreased cart-wheels and railway-whistles, mingled with the rolling of drums and striking of gongs. Some of the streets are lined with Chinese shops, ranging from those of the merchants in tea, silks, porcelain, and lacquered ware—a dignified and polite class of men, who are often highly educated, and speak English extremely well—to those of the cigar-makers, barbers, shoemakers, and laundry-men. Half the laundry-work in San Francisco is performed by John Chinaman. There is one Chinese hotel or caravanserai, which looks as though it might at a stretch accommodate two hundred people, in which 1,200 men are packed.