VANISHING CHINATOWN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5350, 12 November 1928, Page 3

VANISHING CHINATOWN.

ORIENTA LS IN LON DON.

FEWER MIXED MARRIAGES.

Why do white women marry Chinese? This wap the questipn to which a London journalist sought .an answer in London’s Chinatown in Limehouse recently.

Miss Dolores dqi Rio, the film star, who had just visited the Quarter, was horrified to sob the <»en association of English girls with Chinese. Those With experience of the evils of mixed marriages in Limehouse; put their horror, of them in string terms, but all agree ajjout one thing—the numbs? of white women, associating with Chinese is rapidly decreasing. Indeed, Chinatown itself in London is statqd tb be fast disappearing. Licensed Chinese lojdginghouses still jostle Chinese restaurants in Pegfields; cards for puk-a-pu, the Chinese lottery game, can still be bought at, many a newsagent’s shop ; but penury and deportation orders have almost denuded Limeihbuse Chinese. Those who remain are mostly established citizens with businesses. The average number of marriages between Chinese and white women has fallen tcj six a year. Such marriages can onjy take place in a registry office. * A GIRLS POINT OF VIEW. White gjrls who apply for licensee to marry Chinese are always warned of the consequuences, and it was from one of these who had just given notice of her intenting marriage; that I get perhaps the mcjst convincing anwser to my question. “In a Chinese home,” she said, “the wife is the ‘boss.’ The ‘Chink’ trieats you wejl, And if I want to put my hands in the till there is nothing said. Why marry a dock labourer, who grudges you money for 1 his food! mid bashes you when he comes hope drunk

From Mrs Lury, the wife of the vicar of St. Peter’s, Limehouse, the writer heard many interesting All Chinatown lies in her husband's parish. She agyeed that far fewer white, women consort with Chinese than in years gone by, but the one grept problem repiains—the children of mixed marriages. What to do| with them no one knows. The port of London Authority will not employ the boys at the docks; and while the girls are almost always clever with a needle, most of them drift about the streets ostracised by all but their fellow half-castes. “GOOD TO THEIR WIVES.”

“The Chinese,” said Mrs Lury, “a re certainly good tto ,their wives. They generally insist on thqir children b«{ing baptised ipi the Christian faith. Many a ttae Chinese have come to the vicarage in the middle of the night to ask my husband to giveChristian comfort at the bedside o/ a dying white wife. “These; white womejn—and this is perlftps the most curious thing of all that was learned in Limehouse —were mostly once well-educated, refined women.