To the Editor of the "Norta-Curna Datty News."
Sir,—After reading the eulogies that have from time to time oozed out of the pens of Cook's Tourists and Municipal Councillors with respect to the glories of Shanghai, I feel that the grievance I have always had against Shanghai still remains unchallenged, the gricvance, namely, that Shanghai, with all its up-to-dateness, luxurious libraries, sanitary installations, and perfect tramway service, still lacks that hazy, intangible something called Community Life.
The lack of home life in Shanghai is appalling. I pity those kids who have never known what it is to steal up to the kitchen window and do away with the pie that mother had put out there to cool; I pity those young men who have never known what it is to go "calling" on your "bestest," to sit out on the porch and drink homemade lemonade; I pity the young people who have never known what it is to have a real party, the games and music and dancing, and ice-cream bricks and paper-napkins. What chance has a young man to see a girl unless he takes her out, and then how much_ of her real self does he see? What chance do people have of getting to know one another in a dance-hall? I pity the men and women who, like myself, are thirsting for a little interchange of home life, where a home is more than a place to eat and drink and hang your hat. and where the atmosphere of a home is more in evidence than that of a bar or gambling den, where the air is more filled with the soft expression of human relations than the smell of booze the clatter of mah-jong bones. This is what is missing in Shanghai; homes that are homes and not merely houses. Homes that you can visit and stick around of an evening, and feel as'if it were the most natural thing to do. Homes where the atmosphere is one of warm welcome, where they don't think you are an escaped lunatic if you go calling, where you are not made to feel that if you don't gamble and gossip and go running alound town, you don't belong. I do all of these things the same as everybody else, yet I miss the jame.
After all, it is the softness of community life.that makes life worth living. Shanghai is a business centre, a metropolis, a hopping-off spot for tourists, anything you like, but not a community. Perhaps that is the only thing that is lacking, which, if it existed would make every other imperfection passable or at least tolerable. Perhaps that is the only thing that people instinctively feel they have not got here, something they call by a dozen different names, but which, when reduced to fundamentals, is only a lack of community life—a lack of real intimate friendliness between friends. People have hundreds of acquaintances here, but how many friends? Some have one friend, two friends.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.