W.E.B. DuBois: The Chinese City

[johncloki]

"The Chinese City again and again leaps to attention. Like the Chinese, it is unique. It is a series of satisfactions; not merely for the few, for the rich, for the well-to-do, but for everybody. It has color--flamboyant color of banners, streamers, flags, lanterns. It has sound--not only a babel of human voices, but cries of selling, song, and now shreiking radio. It has a companionship for everybody, no one lonesome, no one, or at least not everyone, exclusive. There is food and drink, inconceivably cheap, perhaps dirty, but hot and abundant, and cooked exactly to the customer's liking. There is fortune-telling, sober silent rows of seers and paraphenalia, not mocking and cynical, but earnest. There is gambling, but usually games of chance of skill, not rigged cheating. Skills are for the sale carving, fashioning, making; there are services of barbar, and hairdresser. There is systematic begging and sale of all imaginable. There is shelter and the promse of cure for ill and healing. The Chinese city fascinates and holds millions. It is cheap life for a poor people, whom it satisfies."

Pittsburgh Courier
6 March 1937