Standing at the turning of Nanking Road into Szechuen Road an absentee might well be impressed {with the fact that not another street corner in the world offers so much of interest.
Here ko sees what can be seen anywhere in civilization, motor-cars purring softly by with their immaculately clad occupants, street-cars and destiny seeking pedestrians pushing, scowling and muttering, but, unlike the Western World, this is not all. Besides the usual ricsha, push-cart and wheelbarrow there are the smock-waisted country yokels carrying their baskets of vegetables. balanced on spring bamboo slit like a large assayer's scale, the red-coated Municipal refuse gatherer, the Chinese spectacled and foreign-booted office clerk, the loitering chit coolie, the hawk-eyed lottery ticket seller, the bicycle-towed arm-chair, the sharp-witted vendor of novelties whose mysterious disappearance when noticed by a policeman eclipses, almost the wonder of too name to mention, all India's tree-growing act, and others
speaking forcibly and with welcome familiarity to any home-coming absentee.
His wanderings through the streets disclose to him many new sights. Brass name plates at the \doors of large buildings, all new, \bear names of firms he has never heard of before, and, with a sinking of the heart, he too frequently comes across the old wooden board jon which appears, very indistinctly, the name of some one time Princely Hong, now decadent. The broken shutters, the creaking floor-boards, the lethargic environment all speak their tale. Those good old pioneers with their one time vigorous sensibility have become replete, and in time, no doubt, if they have the endurance of. these ancients, czr new firms will themselves become emblems of a glorious past.
Six Srorzys anp More.
As have gone the old Opium Hulks which lay for so many years close to the Bund, so have the large square houses of pioneer times gone, but these to be super-soded by the modern _six-storey building: There are no Opium Hulks now and there is nothing in their place.
Huge Chinese department stores have appeared on Narking Road. and that. they have not curtailed the activities of their older foreign competitors nearer town speaks volumes for the growing propensity of the Chinese towards Western usages. Amusement places, teashops and eating houses have all taken on foreign styles and the buzz of chatter from a popular resort can no longer be heard as an absentee meanders by, The rows of roasted ducks, each in exact replica of the other, are seldom seen nowadays, and the cooked while you wait "Eu-zar-kwai" can only be observed on the side streets. The old temple on Nanking Road - still exists as the fragrant odour of incense informs when the wind is favourable, and the candle store at its entrance still does a thriving trade.
There is an old house on Nanking Road near Honan Road, painted purple-grey, which gives the vicinity its name,—'Porjiur-Sarng."" It is still there thanks be to those responsible, and may the noble game of "skittles" flourish there till the end of time, Pasr aNp Present ALL Ons.
A very pleasant sight to the bewildered absentee is the venerable second-hand store on Peking Road. Here he may prowl and unearth remembrances of the. past, battered tricycles, the plaything perhaps of some present taipan, old books whose front pages bear names of the long. since, and honoured, departed, old tea' services which did duty in the salons of Shanghai's past Delilahs, And so it is. the Past is the Past and the Present is the Present which is-a fact perhaps net unknown. The absentee finds, most probably, that he can still live in both and his resentment of modern intrusion must be, in consequence, somewhat—softened. He must feel that Shanghai the City is a glorious place, the embodiment of modern progress, and for the sake of posterity he will very likely hope that the best of the ancient and dilapidated will be preserved to remind those who sometime or other will themselves belong to this category, that their own Past may be pleasantly remembered. There comes a time, alas, when Past is the ever present joy of existence, and the future, the spectre.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.