By the Golden Gate; Or, San Francisco, the Queen City of the Pacific Coast: With Scenes and Incidents Characteristic of its LifeCarey, Joseph
History
By the Golden Gate; Or, San Francisco, the Queen City of the Pacific Coast: With Scenes and Incidents Characteristic of its Life
Carey, Joseph
San Francisco (Calif.)
The reader will now accompany us to a musician's shop in our
wanderings through Chinatown. This is located in a basement and is a
room about fifteen feet wide and some twenty feet deep. This son of
Jubal from the Flowery Kingdom was about fifty-five years old and a
very good-natured man. He received us with a smile, and when he was
requested by the guide to play for us he sat down before an instrument
somewhat like the American piano, called _Yong Chum_. The music was of
a plaintive character, and was lacking in the melody of a Broadwood
or a Steinway. Then he played on another instrument which resembled
a bandore or banjo and was named _Sem Yim_. Afterwards he took up a
Chinese flute and played a tune, which was out of the ordinary and
was withal of a cheerful nature. He then showed us something that was
striking and peculiar--a Chinese fiddle with two strings. The bow
strings were moved beneath the fiddle strings. The music was by no
means such as to charm one, and you could not for a moment imagine
that you were listening to a maestro playing on a Cremona. The
Chinese, while they have a reputation for philosophy after the example
of their great men, like Confucius and Mencius, and while there are
poets of merit among them like Su and Lin, yet can not be said to
excel in musical composition and rendering. The tune with which our
Chinese friend sought to entertain us on his fiddle was, "A Hot Time
in the Old Town To-night." He thought this would be agreeable to our
American ears. Meanwhile I glanced around this music-room and among
other things I saw, and which interested me, were several effigies of
men, characters in Chinese history. Some were no doubt true to life
while others were caricatures of the persons whom they represented. It
might be styled an Eden Musée.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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