You have, too, the Japanese Concession, with houses, Japanese shops, and pink-complexioned Japanese women slipsloping along in wooden sandals: attired in their quaint, bright, silken' costumes of old Japan, You have suave Italians, the hordes of them, vary: ing in type from bearded libertines of Georgia to golden-haired Tartar ind black-eyed coquettes, Caucasus. You have th Chinese, their dainty little womenfolk in'dark, rich silks, their me immaculate in white.... You have... but I am writing of the night life of Shanghai, It is now three in the morning. You dined at the great Hotel Majes-tio, where hundreds of merrymakers,—foreign and Chinese alike—have been dancing the foxtrot and th tango throughout the evening to th western jazz music of a British regi mental band.
Perhaps you have ben the guest! (og I have been) of Mr, (or Mrs, and Miss) Wing On, of the millionaire draper family, the head of which, with his vast departmental stores, is the Selfridge of Shanghai be, better still, it has been one of the gala nights, the occasion of American or a Russian ball, when this palatial Majestic ballroom, with its spraying fountains, multi-coloured lights, and res volving chandeliers, has become a maze of shimmering oridescence, Champagne corks are popping, wine is flowing in rivers. You have spent one glorious hour; you have no wish to retire.
You go along then to No—Bubbling Well, Road, not far away drive up to the door of what appears to be a bank, ring, and wait) and see! If you are lucky the door is opened, and you are let in cautiously' by a smiling Chinese youth.
"Are you a member " he whispers warily. You are! So the word—and you—are passed on. You are led to a lift, carried up three storeys aloft, and' then guided through divers labyrinthine passages until you have reached the "club." Here curtains are nervously drawn aside tantil your identity is beyond question, and then at last. you are admitted.
Take a glimpse at the scene be-'Green-covered tables are Round them foreigners are crowded, mostly American women, the wives lof American naval officers who are off on coastal or patrol duty on the Yangtse. On the occasion. which I have in mind there are twenty or, more of them at two tables.
They have come in a party at the invitation of the management, who has "given" them a supper, The meal being over, they are now paying for it; for, over and over again [the money is placed, the great wheel the centre is spun, the strained silence follows, and the voice of the Chinese croupier rings out, "Double zero!" Every one has. lost!
An old man is lying back in a Jeorner drunk on the whisky which, fas a bankrupt player, he has had for the asking. A respectable womart who has lost everything is seated. nervously in another, accumulating the courage to-face her husband when she goes home to him in a motor-ear which will be placed at. her disposal "on the how Chinese boys in chocolate-coloured, aprons are rushing hither and thither with free drinks, free sand-wishes, and even free meals if you demand them. Everything, you 306, {in this mysterious temple of philanthropy is free, You go home with everything but your mone} It ig one of Shanghai's dens of iniquity, at least one of which one jean talk—and write; for here many 'a mart and woman has been dragged to the precipice of destruction round, roulette tables controlled by a bank that. is never broken, The fact that you run out of sady cash need not deter you. 'The house will supply you with more money; for here, og is: the ease: Jeverywhere else' in' China, the: nefarious chit system—provailsy under which, no matter really how [complete a stranger you may be, you Jean, with the greatest lack of for ality, contract an account running into thousands. Many the wife, then, fof an American naval offlor—thess women are obsessed with a peculiar yeraze for the game in China—has signed away the salary of Jrusband long before he has carr jit im the vain hope that the Fates ill smile upon her before he has returned from his journeyings abroad.
T have written only of one place of amusement, but in th Paris of the Bast there are scores.
city of cafes and dancing:
all-night clubs. Go. alo Carlton Hotel, to the Pal Danse adjoining it, if you are search of another form of enter tainment. Here "you will find. hundreds of pretty. Russian girls, clustered round tables, only" too toager to become your dancing parte {net for the remuneration of less than: we shillings a dance, Russian Exiles worth ten times what you pay to hear the stories of their ex periences since they undertook the hazardous pilgrimage from Moscow, to thig freedom which they have at long last gained. 'They are not all by any means ladies of easy ways, for many, though they have long abandoned their' titles, come from the highest strata. of the former Rustian aristocracy, while mo than one is known' to-day.to supporting from her meagre earn ings a down-ateheel old man some where in the background, a Russian nobleman, who is, in' fact, her Finally, you may as a visitor be stirred with the desire to see some thing of the inside of the Orient. Tu this case there are people who will take you to the Chinese City or Chapel. Tt is a short drive in motor-ear from the International' Settlement.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.