A BARE EXISTENCE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 62, 6 December 1937, Page 8

A BARE EXISTENCE

Standards oi Living In China IABOUR CONDITIONS •There are no Sundays or holidays in jGJhina, except one day — I don't recall ihe exact oceasion — and the five days at China's New Year," remarked Mr R. Crowe, who spent the week-end in. Napier while on. furlough from his position on the shore staff of Jardine and Matheson, Ltd., in an interview with a xeporter -on Saturday aftemoon. Mr Crowe, who has spent sixteen years in China, had some enlightening commehts to make on the subjeet o£ labour. cottditions and the low living standard o£ the working classes. Coolies working as wharf labourers toil long hours, in f act all the daylight hours, and sometimes a bit more besides, for the equivalent ox 8d a day. Asked how they conld make any profit on their work, Mr Crowe smilingly xeplied that they did not. "It takes them all their time to earn their chow'," he said. The skipper of his tug makes £2 4/- a month. The total wage bill of the vessel, which was about tbe size of a fimn.ll New Zealand coaster, was under £10 a month, a figure which wonld not satisfy a New Zealand skipper for a week's work. "Of course," Mr Crowe added, "those men are employed by a Britisa company and are relatively well-paid. The Chinese employed "by, Chinese would not get that .amount. Everyone in China kept a servant, or serrants. Often servants themselves employed servants. "Take my 'number 1 boy,' for instance. He has a wife and seven children and gets paid the equivalent of about 30/- a month. Out of that he pays a servant to look after the children." The Chinese Diet. JjBSS than a shilling a day and keeping a servant! How was it managed. Apparently the unit of exchange is' very amnll. Workers are paid in dollars, and a Chinese dollar is worth approximateiy 1/3. One hundred cents go to the dollar and food can be bonght in cents' worth. Practically no meat is eaten, the Chinese diet consisting mainly of rice, which taKes the place of cur bread and meat as the staple food, and vegetables. The vegetables and rice are boiled — the Chinese eat no raw vegetables. In the coastal districts they eat a lot or fish — " Mostly dried and stinking, but they seem to like it," jKunmented Mr Crowe. When meat does take its place on the iienu, the Oriential housewife will purchase a piece — usually of tough Chinese mutton — about the size of two fingers of a man's hand, and. chop it up finely like we would do for a stew. This is boiled, and eaeh person receives a small portion, The gravy is poured over the rice and vegetables and xegarded as a great delicaey. Tea drinking takes an important place in Chihese life. Wherever one goes a pot and cup are placed before one, and one is expected to drink. This, in the case of foreigners, is not so much of a duty m. the part of a visitor as itused to be, but i tis always a* well to accept, In earlier times, it was a flagrant slight to one's Rost and hostess to decline. On the whawes there are always huge pots of tea for the workers. These receptacles, neafly as big as a beer-barrel, aTe replenished with a fresh brew every couple of hours, and the coolies drink it, either cold nor hot, without either sugar or jnilk. Imported Foodstuffs. With the exceptio of tropical fruits, all the foreigners' foodstuffs are imported. In the northern districts of the interior, coarsewoolletj. native sheep are kept in large flocks, but they are too tough to make mutton for the spoiled palate of alien, and are very sparingly nsed for that purpose even by the natives themselves. It is not safe to eat native-grown vegetables, because these often carry cholera germs, brought to them by the coolie workers and, although periodical noculation acts as a protection to the f oreigner, it caunot re-dcr hrm altogether immune from infection. "If you swallow a good-sized cholera germ, the ehan'ces are you'iihe dead within a few hours," Mr Crowe said. "The amazing poverty of the Chinese working ciasses is very hard for a New Zealanders to grasp," he went on, "but when one considers the density of the population, it is easier to understand. Take for instance the triangular area of which Hongkong, Canton and Shanghai are the three points. There you have a piece of land no greater in area than the North Island of New Zealand, •with. a population of 8,000,000 people. It is very difficult to grow anything in the soil, but the collies manage i'; by cutting their properties, which lie below the highwater levels of the rivers, into plots divided by ditches, which remain full of water and keep the subsoil soaked all the time. These factors, coupled with the low rates of pay, cause the phenomenally low standard of living of the majority of the Chinese."