A CITY OF TERROR
Allen, George Hoty
A City of Terror By GEORGE HOYT ALLEN (Copyrighted, 1910, The Robert M. La Follette Co.) GANTON is not beautiful. It is a terrible, grim, and ugly city of some four million Chinese, crowded into...
...She had lost her husband and children...
...Three men were electrocuted (a triple execution) in one of our New York State prisons shortly after I returned home from the trip on which I witnessed the Chinese mode...
...The city is built on the edge of Pearl River and is intersected with narrow canals, both river and canals crowded with sampans in which live a population of probably 400,000 Chinese...
...Two bridges cross the canal...
...He gave the order that all the prisoners in the jails in Canton be liberated...
...The mandarins of the city in which she lived tried to dissuade her from carrying out the last act of her entertainment, but she was obdurate and carried out the full bill as advertised, and her friends put her in her coffin and buried her beside her husband and children...
...As I have stood on the execution ground of Canton and watched one Canton executioner, in one and one-half minutes, cut off the heads of fourteen Chinese, I can easily understand how Li Hung Chang carried out his plan to protect the foreigners...
...Dr...
...A Gruesome Tea Party THE things I've seen and smelled in Canton and the things I've been told about Canton have caused the "jars" I mentioned above...
...I didn't have an invitation...
...I didn't go to this party...
...While he did not dare to disobey the royal edict, he had a trick up his wide and flowing sleeves to circumvent the amiable designs of the old Dowager and he had the power to play the trick...
...Outwitting the Dowager IHAVE been jarred and shaken more in Canton, in contemplating the colossal task the Almighty has on his hands of seeing His human family through this vale of tears, than in any other spot on earth I've ever chanced to visit...
...ACHINESE NEWSPAPER, the leading one in Canton, with a circulation of 2,000 and the only one that commented on the execution, had about 21/2 inches, single column, comment on it, only mentioning the bare facts, the men's names, the names of the magistrates who sentenced them, and their crimes—they were river pirates...
...She owned a little home, which she sold...
...She sent Li a message commanding him to liberate all the prisoners in the Canton jails, hoping thereby to extend the movement by letting loose that rough element...
...I leave Canton tonight (I am always willing to leave Canton...
...Swan, a most estimable, reliable and Christian gentleman, gave it to me...
...There were about 250 country missionaries in the Chinese part of the city, and others in Shaumun...
...I didn't go to that execution I mentioned, from cheice—or rather not from a willing choice—but out of courtesy to a gentleman whose guest I was in Canton the day it took place, and who very much wanted me to go...
...Hong Kong has a beauty all of its own, but Canton has an ugliness all its own and holds to it most tenaciously...
...Just how much it cost the State cf New York to put those three murderers out of commission, I don't know...
...I was interested in reading the account in one of the English papers published in Hong Kong, of a novel entertainment, given by a Chinese lady...
...death had claimed them...
...Then she sent out invitations to her friends to join her in a social tea, stating on the invitations that for a climax to the entertainment she would hang herself...
...Each bridge has a Chinese guard at its gates who opens them at the approach of a foreigner, or of a Chinese if the Chinese has a pass entitling him to go in Shaumun...
...The Shaumun, a portion of the city set otf for foreigners, lying along the rivers, has one poor foreign hotel and numerous hongs and banks, a foreign club and foreign consulates...
...and in all probability looks, smells, and appears just as it did eleven hundred years ago...
...This portion of Canton is composed of fine, massive buildings and gives one the feeling that he is in 20th century surroundings...
...The Shaumun is separated from the city by a canal...
...Swan said, "The streets around those jails ran blocd that day...
...but he stationed executioners at the exits of all the jails and as those prisoners were pushed out the head of every one was promptly cut off...
...Those walls and gates never struck me as being any protection against four million Chinese if said Four Million should really get in earnest about doing up 250 "foreign devils" residing in their midst...
...In telling me the story, Dr...
...Slimpsy iron gates are thrown across those bridges...
...With the proceeds she bought herself a nice new dress and a good coffin...
...Swan, head of the Medical Presbyterian Mission, located here, told me a story of mild interest (to people 12,000 miles away...
...I wouldn't go to another out of courtesy...
...I did not see this take place and it may sound like a fish story to you, but I give it to you as Dr...
...From the time the corps of executioners got started until the men were pronounced dead "only seventeen minutes were consumed...
...I shouldn't have gone if I had had one, I should certainly have sent my regrets...
...During the Boxer trouble the foreigners in Canton were worried...
...The Chinese are a very peculiar people...
...On one of my visits to Canton, Dr...
...A New York paper used up a good part of a page in telling about that execution and dwelt at length upon the appalling rapidity with which three men were launched into eternity...
...I couldn't help but contrast that with the 21/2 inches, single-column, one Chinaman with a sword, and fourteen men instead of three...
...It is a terrible, grim, and ugly city of some four million Chinese, crowded into a limited space with narrow, dirty, crooked streets, seething with Chinese life...
...During the Boxer troubles the old Empress Dowager at Pekin was desirous of having the Boxer movement extend to the southern province, of which Canton is the capital and of which Li Hung Chang was Viceroy...
...The missionaries live within a compound in the city with a wall about ten feet high built around them...
...Eleven Cents a Head...
...This lady had become discouraged on account of the manner in which Fate had been pitching things her way...
...They were dead all right —beyond all possible chance of resuscitation...
...The artist in his line, whom I saw execute fourteen, got 11 cents a head and there was no occasion to pay a doctor to feel their pulses to see if they were dead...
...Swan told me that the foreigners in Canton esteemed Li Hung Chang very highly...
...Li was a staunch friend of the foreigners...
...The male portion of these foreigners didn't get so far away from a gun that they couldn't put their hands on it at any minute...
...Life held no more attractions for her...
...But the rest of the city, built of two story buildings, looks, smells, and appears just as it did the first time I came to Canton eleven years ago...
Vol. 2 • October 1910 • No. 43
