An Open-air Restaurant, Peking

Categories

Special Collections > Keystone Slides

Type

tiff scanned file from original glass slide

Description

Here is a crowd of yellow people. They are coolies, Chines of the lowest class. You can tell by their faces that they are not a thinking lot. The lower class of Chinese are not very intelligent. The better class look very different from these people. China is very thickly peopled. It contains more than 400,000,000 persons, and these are mostly in the river valleys. If a flood comes, or drought, many Chinese leave their homes and go to parts of the country where the crops are good. Sometimes thousands of them die of starvation. They live mostly upon rice and vegetables. These people are all smiling, for they are being well fed. In each dish are two kinds of food. Chinese use no knives or forks, but use chopsticks to pick up their food. The better people use them very daintily. Both Chinese and Japanese make their dishes with graceful shapes and decorations. They never use the highly colored dishes we so often see; those are made to be sold only to foreigners. China is in a state of transition, struggling to advance from its backward condition into modern life. In 1912 the government was changed from a monarchy to a republic, but conditions have been and are still very unsettled. Japan is gaining great influence in China. Years ago these laborers from China flocked to the United States in great numbers. They can live more cheaply than other men because their standard of living is lower; that is, their homes, food and clothing are poorer and they do not demand education. United States workmen will not live that way and could not compete with the Chinese cheap labor. Laws were passed forbidding the Chinese to come to America. Keystone ID: 14557 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.

Rights

Copyright by the Keystone View Company. The original slides are housed in McConnell Library's Special Collections.