CANTON

Shannon News, 20 January 1928, Page 4

CANTON

AN AMAZING CFgY. TORRENTS OF HUMANITY. In many respects Canton is thu most amazing city in China. Crime, arson, and poverty are still rampant there, and the game qjf tactics- goes on among the so-called leaders of the people. The boiling cauldron of the' humanity of Southern China is never still. No Chinese spectacle is more startling than Canton. Torrents of humanity stream endlessly along the narrow, sticky streets, creating a human ocean, where man dominates everything. The tortuous alleyways, narrow as-corridors, stifled with mats as a shade against the burning sun, arc stale with humanity. There is no rest. One is jostled against the nude, shining shoulders of coolies, ana sickvned with the warm, musky odour. Ou all sides rises the stench and, fdth, piled next to the sumptuous silks and porcelain, rising from the strange foods of the race, heaped up everywhere. There is no escape from the dizzy sensation of life. The river, too, resembles the streets. It is- another city, a.s. densely thronged, sweeping a ong among its crowded junks and sampans.

Neither can the temples afford rest and quint. Pigs are wandering at will in the precincts where man eat and sleep. In the sultry twilight innumerable gilded idols with smooth, moonlike faces grin fantastically. Their arms gleam. They are immobile and yet astir. They are bizarre and yet commonplace—all alike, with no variety. Innumerable, big-bellied! Buddhas, their faces wreathed in stupor, bare their obesity in the go.’den twilight. Monks and mins glide past like ghosts. Hurry out of the town into the fields. Men arc swarming there also.

In Canton vicu has been surrounded with everything which can make it attractive. The flower-girls dwell in a secret world of their own in their flower boats—temples of perfumed splendour, temples given over to the rites of sensual joys. Canton has made vice -refined. The Chinese are strangers to drunken brawls, but in the opium dens they can be foitnd in large numbers. TEe pipes are of chased silver, and the surroundings are sumptuous.

Many more amazing sights can be seen in Canton, but none so strange as the “City of the Dead." Stalls: are arranged a’uong an arcade -of flowery avenues, bright with poreclain jars, banners and altars and objects of tiuscl and gold, representing flowers and weird animals. In each stall there is a coffin, and in .each, coffin a corpse awaiting burial. In the city also in one of the temples a gilt image of Marco Polo cam still be seen. Stagnation has existed in Canton for-centuries, but now in many places broad roads have taken the place of the old alleyway's and huge modern , buildings are appearing in many quarters of the city.