The hotel was about half a li from the Imperial Maritime Customs, and according to the current administrative divisions, it belonged to the International Settlement.
Lin Yuchan wished she could bring a camera—this was truly the authentic “Ten-Li Foreign Settlement”! Even old photographs couldn’t restore this atmosphere.
When she was in Guangzhou, her status was that of a bought servant girl, running around daily on her master’s orders, with no leisure time for sightseeing.
But this time her mindset was completely different. She was now a “respectable woman”—to put it nicely, a free person—who could walk as far as she wanted without worrying about being dragged back.
Buildings lined both sides of the streets densely: simple Western-style buildings, two or three-story Chinese houses, and many wooden row houses similar to the later shikumen—these were cheap rental housing built and developed by foreigners for Chinese residents. Tattered clothes hung outside the small windows, indicating the dense population here.
Guangzhou had an exclusionary local culture. Foreigners were required to live in the small Shamian concession, and foreign trading houses like Dent & Co. were all located next to the concession. Even twenty years after the Treaty of Nanjing was signed, foreigners still didn’t dare venture alone into the old city’s alleys, fearing they might have bad luck and get hit with bricks.
Shanghai was completely different. Years of warfare between the Taiping Army and the Qing court had created massive numbers of refugees in the Jiangnan region, who flooded into the concessions in waves seeking shelter. The government couldn’t stop them, foreigners had no solution, so they could only accept it.
This created the peculiar situation of “Chinese and foreigners living together.” Behind a bright and beautiful Western-style building, there might be hidden hovels with sewage flowing everywhere. Sunny courtyards hosted barbecue lunch parties, while just beyond the thick hedges came the wailing of little beggars.
Chinese constables wore Western-style uniforms, strutting arrogantly through the streets and alleys.
Chinese coolies were chained together, breaking stones and building roads with worried faces, widening narrow Chinese streets into “roads” that foreign carriages could traverse.
Pedestrians had blurred faces, wearing seemingly copy-pasted expressions of indifference, hunched over, hurrying from unknown origins to unknown destinations.
In the Qing Dynasty, simply staying alive was a high-risk endeavor. Unless one was precisely born into a family of wealth and status, the vast majority of people on this land lived each day with an element of life-or-death randomness.
Even sitting at home, concentrating on just getting by day to day, when plague struck, bandits invaded, or famine swept through, no one could escape.
So it was no wonder most people carried that muddled, dazed quality. After all, not knowing how long one might live, why think long-term?
But looking carefully, one could still see that these people’s eyes held rich lives, small pleasures that could be savored within the confines of a snail shell. Their parents, wives, children, in-laws, sisters, tomorrow’s breakfast, next month’s funeral, the new outfit they hoped for during New Year…
Yet whenever they encountered strangers, that tiny, insignificant glimmer quickly dimmed, and ordinary people retreated into their cocoons, becoming part of countless indifferent spectators of the times.
Cook Mrs. Sun frowned, quickly walking around a group of coolies, saying to Lin Yuchan: “Shanghai has complete foreign goods. I want to buy some Western spices. Will you come with me?”
Lin Yuchan shook her head: “I want to walk around by myself. See you at dinner.”
Mrs. Sun: “But…”
The concession had a mixed population, with very few women walking alone.
But thinking again, the young widow was bold and didn’t care about appearances. She worked for the Maritime Customs, backed by all the foreign powers—nothing serious should happen.
Mrs. Sun left with concern. Lin Yuchan turned and ran off happily.
She looked up to read the signs of various shops, searching for the two characters “Yixing.”
While searching, she inexplicably thought: “What am I looking for him for? Shopping and needing a man to help carry things?”
Probably still worried about his safety. Young Master Su had boarded the wrong ship while seeking refuge, thinking it would just be a “Pearl River night cruise,” only to find himself smuggled halfway across China. He was surely completely in the dark, and even if there was an organization here, who knew if they would recognize Jin Lanhe—better he not be bullied by local thugs.
But after walking several streets and tripping five or six times from not watching the road, she saw no shop names related to “Yixing.” As for the symbol of two stacked copper coins, it was nowhere to be found.
She could only guess that perhaps the Heaven and Earth Society didn’t establish itself in the concessions?
She didn’t dare search too far, so she simply returned to the Bund, repeating the route of 21st-century tourists, amusing herself by guessing the location of the “three kitchen pieces.”
The foreign goods all over the street weren’t surprising to her. Before long, her attention was suddenly drawn to a brick-and-wood Western building.
A brass plate was nailed to the building’s entrance: “North China Herald.”
“There are already newspapers now?” Lin Yuchan thought like a country bumpkin.
The North China Herald was published weekly, and its readers were naturally the foreigners residing in Shanghai. Lin Yuchan curiously inquired—it only accepted annual subscriptions, priced at fifteen taels of silver.
Ordinary people couldn’t afford it.
The newspaper office’s lobby kept some old papers for people to browse. The doorkeeper, seeing she could read English, assumed she was some foreigner’s maid and didn’t chase her away, even gesturing toward a stool in the corner.
Lin Yuchan thanked him and picked up several recent newspapers to read slowly.
The content was varied: shipping schedules, rental advertisements, Chinese and foreign business news, and current affairs commentaries.
“Republican Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States… American Civil War breaks out in full… Britain declares neutrality…”
“Russian Tsar Alexander II implements social reforms, abolishes serfdom, issues decrees, vigorously promoting industrial development…”
“Johann Philipp Reis demonstrates his invention of a rapid communication device (tentatively named telephone) in Frankfurt, causing sensation…”
“Steam age coming to an end? New internal combustion engine patented, to be displayed at Third London World Exhibition…”
Of course, there were also many current affairs reports about China. Most were notifications of local official appointments and dismissals, or travel warnings: “Rebels have roamed into such-and-such province and place, expatriates should avoid travel.”
Heaven and earth overturned, stars shifted, some people marked time in place while others rushed forward by any means necessary.
Suddenly, Lin Yuchan spotted an inconspicuous notice in the corner.
“Qing minister Hung-Chang Lee arriving in Shanghai shortly to handle rebellion suppression and naval organization matters…”
Lin Yuchan read that pinyin several times—
“Li Hongzhang?”
Compared to the large, bold “Lincoln” nearby, this name appeared utterly ordinary, looking at first glance like a small advertisement squeezed into the margins.
Lin Yuchan concentrated, about to read the details, when she heard growing commotion outside, with someone crying out desperately.
“Good gentlemen, please take pity and shelter this child who’s about to starve to death… we can work like oxen or horses… my little girl is very obedient, just ten catties of rice, ten catties of rice for one little girl, she can do any work… even as a child bride…”
A group of refugees who had just fled into the concession, wearing no complete clothing, so hungry their ribs protruded and bellies were swollen, knelt at the newspaper office entrance.