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It was curious to note how long association with the Chinese had resulted in her catching the infection of that pidgin-English which is a sort of esperanto in all Asiatic quarters. "Eh!" cried my friend, pushing open a door on the right of the passage and stumbling down three worn steps into a very evil-smelling room. "Where is he?" "Go play fan-tan. Not come back."
Certain it is that the steamers from Hong-Kong supply a large contingent that comes hither daily, since both fan-tan and lotteries are prohibited in Hong-Kong. All the parlors are under Chinese management and are extensively patronized.
While the officials were thus employed, private parties of searchers went over the entire peninsula looking among the rocks and copses of the Estrada and even the Parsee Tower of Silence was examined, but all in vain. The fan-tan house proprietor told of two unknown women with a Chinese servant who had visited his house, but when they had left he did not know.
The gambling-den was dimly lighted, and on the floor in a large circle were seated men and women, either playing the game of fan-tan or anxiously awaiting their turn. I did not understand the game, but the haggard expressions and restless attitudes around me told a tale of dissipation and ruin.
Dirt and confusion and odors permeated everywhere, and we declined to ascend to the upper story, where the Chinese game of fan-tan was in progress. Certain homelike English buildings clung near the water front, and we walked through the usual crowded Chinese streets. The town was laid out in one long thoroughfare, overlooking the water and sloping backward to the lesser mountains.
An unsavoury den was Malay Jack's, where flotsam of the river might be found. Yellow men there were, and black men and brown men. But all the women present were white. Fan-tan was in progress at one of the tables, the four players being apparently the only strictly sober people in the room.
Flanking him, two young women of the world, with that insouciance which appertains in Limehouse to sweet sixteen, were chanting shrilly to his accompaniment: both more than comfortably drunk. In the middle of the room assorted lawbreakers gathered round a table were playing fan-tan at the top of their lungs.
The "flower boats," moored a mile or two below the business part of Canton's foreshore, are the antithesis of the sampans, for they cater to a pleasure-loving class, to men and women possessing wobbly morals, who love good dinners and suppers and a game of fan-tan without too much publicity, with singing and dancing as adjuncts.
No, sir; I'm not here in a professional way at all, and I don't want to be molested. I've connected myself with an oil company, and I'm down here to look over the ground. It beats poker and fan-tan hollow, though there ain't as many chances in favor of the dealer, and in oil it's the farmer that gets the rake-off.
The ostensible drug-addict looked up dreamily, then opened his eyes wide, with surprising docility rolled out and, uttering no word, lurched to the fan-tan table. The tall man took his place, lay down, and drew together the unclean curtains of sleazy stuff provided to afford privacy to shrinking souls.
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