![[Coolies and rickshaw drivers, Shanghai; 1927. Photograph by L. Ron Hubbard.]](img/pg24_1.jpg)
On the outside of the British concession I saw a British Tommy take a Chinaman by the coat and knock him across the street. The unpoliced part of the native city is forbidden ground. On the Bubbling Well Road is the girl market, but this place is now used to quarter British soldiers.
On this road is a beautiful hotel once the home of a Chinese gentleman. The grounds are laid out with pergolas and fountains, and the hotel has tapestries and mosaic tile floors.
The French concession is untidy and the buildings are all behind high walls.
We joined the Madison crowd for the tiffin at the Palace Hotel and afterwards visited some of the shops. We saw flawless jade and wonderful tapestries and rugs. Only the junk was cheap and that was not worth carrying home.
Hong Kong came next. It is a city very British on the surface and very native underneath. Just off Queen Street the district is all native and very dirty. Beggars sleep on the sidewalk at night and all day cry for “cumshaw.”
Hong Kong has an extremely low humidity and is very depressingly hot. We returned to the Hong Kong Hotel for refreshments as usual. A jolly lime squeeze suited our thirst. By that time I had purchased an elephant hat and was tempted to wear shorts and be as comfortable as Tommy.
Hong Kong is built on an island and the Dollar docks are on the mainland. The money is all Mex (worth one-half U.S. gold). The ferry trip from Kowloon across to Hong Kong cost a nickel.
On the Kowloon side the walk to the Madison led through the inevitable mass of working coolies, very dirty and not caring where they spit. The heat was insufferable by afternoon and aided by our first tropical rain we were not sorry to leave.
Two days later we arrived in Manila with very little ado. Manila Bay is a big body of water, very dirty. The tide was so bad we could scarcely dock. We had a struggle trying to unload our luggage.
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