June 13, 1933

Dear Mother and Dad,

The typewriter has been on the fritz for a couple of days, but now that Stu has fixed it I take it in hand once more to let you know that we are all well and happy and hope you are the same. The exchange has been raising some kind of a bad word with us, but Stu is out arguing today and maybe things will be alright. As it is now one gold dollar will buy less than three Hong Kong dollars. When Stu first got here one gold dollar would buy five Hong Kong dollars. So you can see for yourself that the situation is bad. It takes a great many Hong Kong dollars to live in this place. You have to have servants or your food bills would be exorbitant. It is cheaper to pay the servants salaries and let them gyp you than it would be to try to buy the things yourself. A white face here automatically causes the price to rise about one third the actual value. Well one thing is sure we have enough money in the bank to meet with any situation, within reason.

Dad was right when he said that if you want to keep a friend never let them know how much you have or they come a borrowin'. Stu and I are as closed mouthed as two clams, and it certainly pays. The Terrills are in bad shape seeing as how they owe us [f]or [a] food bill of last month and haven't one cent in the bank. Neither of them has ever learned the value of money and they go blithely along buying fifty dollar fans and twenty dollar electric irons that the Amah doesn't know how to use anyway. Well that's their business, but as Stu says when the time comes to go home the Bairds will quietly fold their tents and disappear. That may seem hard hearted, but if you go through life paying the bills of those who don't know how to save you would never get anywhere. Stu and I work hard to get ahead and it is [a] mighty slow process, so we don't intend to be set back. I know that there aren't any people lying around loose who would help us if we were in a fix. In this country especially the soft hearted guy is the sucker.

Enough of the financial situation. The Chinese are much the same and looking Chineser every day. I don't think there's much chance of them turning white overnight. The little kids run around with great big coolie hats and not a stitch on. It has been raining here the past two days and as a result is very cool. Last night was pleasant and we slept like logs. Tomorrow will be hot hot again, but as I have said before, our house is always cool and always has a breeze.

We went to the movies again night before last and saw "Men of Chance". At home we would have thought it a waste of time and effort, but here it seemed like a masterpiece. It was cool in the theatre on account of the rain, and we had the place to ourselves which made it very enjoyable.

The flowers on the porch are looking fresh and pretty after the moisture in fact we are all looking fresher. The only devastating result was that the water flooded the privies causing some considerable scent. Well you can't have everything.

It is a kick to see the boy bring home the food for the day- they tie everything on a string and dangle it. The strings are made of some kind of reed. Every morning after Stu has left I write down my order for the day. The boy then goes to the market and in about an hour comes home dangling the ice and the string beans and fish all together on the end of the string.

Just at the present there are about five Chinese trouping through the house. The are the plumber come to make the toilet work if possible. They stand and talk and scratch their heads as if they were about to take out an appendix, and when they get through [with] the toilet it will be of less use than it is now if possible. They go from the bathroom to the roof all talking at once and in an hour or so they will tie a piece of string around it and let it go at that. The most satisfactory way to fix it would be to nail the seat down, and nail the cover onto the seat. Then we could use the cuspidor as do the rest of our almond eyed cousins. Ah well Chiner is Chiner.

Did I tell you about the Lobster Newburg we had the other night. It was certainly good. The boy did it up in real Musso and Frank style.

June 16th-

Well praise be to goodness gracious. The Chinese have given us a raise in view of the present situation. I never believed it would happen. There isn't a firm anywhere that would change the terms of the contract, but for some reason they did. You see, as I explained we are paid in gold. The money used here is Hong Kong money which is English money. When we get our check we have to exchange it into Hong Kong to use for spending here. When the exchange went down one gold dollar would buy less than three Hong Kong dollars and we have had a cable from Washington saying it was going down some more. The Chinese at the boys request are putting them on a Hong Kong basis which means no matter how much the exchange goes hooey we will get as many Hong Kong dollars as we would at the original ratio of exchange. Now if the gold dollar still goes down we can buy more gold dollars with Hong Kong money than we could have before and keep it in the bank until such time as the Eagle comes into its own. The Americans out here are sweating ink and so were Stu and I but now Stu and I can relax a bit and thank goodness that we have a job that will enable us to save a little money and still live comfortably.

Yesterday Gwen and I went to a bridge party on Shameen. I won the prize which was a little hand embroidered piece. By golly they always play for small stakes, and I have lost seventy cents twice, and yesterday when I won nobody offered to pay. There ain't no justice.

Tonight we are going to the Barcus' for dinner. We will have a swell feed. Mrs. Malley who is English always has perfectly beautiful food- lovely in arrangement and preparation, but it doesn't taste like much. Mrs. Barcus is a good old fashioned Kansas housewife, and you really get something good to eat. Yesterday she had four lovely homemade cakes and great piles of sandwiches, ice cream with hot fudge over it.

We had the last of our Cholera shots yesterday, and now we are supposed to be immune for three months at the end of which we take another to carry us over the season. This is supposed to be a good year as far as disease is concerned. The old timers say it runs in cycles and this is the good part of the cycle.

So far the weather has been very pleasant. Someone told us that we [have] had as hot weather as we would. Well it hasn't been able to hold a candle to Riverside as yet, but the trouble is that you get wet and stay wet. That's what's irritating. But as far as the actual heat is concerned is hasn't been very bad.

We go to dinner parties every once in a while and on great occasions to the movies, the rest of the time we visit people or sit on our lovely porch and feel the breeze. Perhaps next week we will go to Hong Kong and have ourselves a swim and a dance. Hong Kong is actually about as Pasadena to Balboa perhaps a bit further, but because of the poor transportation and expense of the train and hotel etc. it is about as far as San Francisco. This is certainly the country God forgot, or that forgot God. Anyhow the result is the same. There are only seven hundred telephones in this city which is the largest in South China.

June 18th-

This morning I had to laugh. The boy told me that the woman who pumps the water would have to carry it today, because someone stole the pump away. What a place.

The heat is descending again after the rain, but it is still cool in the house. Last night at Mrs. Barcus' dinner Stu and I had the laugh on all the Shameen people, because it is so abominably hot on the island. The buildings are so close together that not a breath of air stirs. We just sat and bragged on our breeze. The Terrills have gone to Hong Kong this week end to have their belated view of it. Poor Gwen I will never forget her face when she found out that they couldn't be married till the next day, and when Crip insisted on bundling her off on the night boat for Canton before she got a look at Hong Kong. Well I guess they are making up for lost time on this trip.

Stu and I went to a show the other night, and it was a vaudeville called 'Hollywood Highlights'. Well you can just about imaging what it was like. It was funny though to see the comedians trying to tell jokes to an audience that couldn't understand a word they said. The Chinese were very polite as listeners even thought they didn't know what was going on. But when a joke was told absolute silence was held.

When Stu and I go to a party on Shameen we come home late, and the streets are filled with coolies sleeping. You have to step over them to get off the bridge. There they are sleeping on the sidewalks in the gutters and any place that's cool and where policemen are. The police maintain an all night shift. There are as many at night as there are in the daytime. The rickshaw coolies sleep in their rickshaws and the taxi men in their taxies. It is the only home they have.

Out here on account of the heat you have to buy tins of everything. Cookies come in tins. Candy comes in tins. I tried to show our boy how to make fudge. The sugar here is so coarse that the fudge is sugary, but it tastes good nevertheless.

The Malleys have built a great big matshed on their roof, and we are going over tonight to warm it up. They are going to use it in place of the small porch they have.

There is an old temple about two blocks from us and every once in a while they have some kind of ceremony there. I can hear the drums beating now. They have been going all night. They sound like the drums you hear in the south sea island movies. They had a dragon festival here a few weeks ago, and the drums beat all day night for a week. It about drove us daffy.

If someone took the bamboo out of China, the country would be sunk. They use it for everything. They build their homes of it, they build furniture of it, they use it for curtain rods, clothes hangars and wash lines.

June 19-

Well last night we warmed up the Malley's MATSHED and is it a honey. They have made their roof into a roof garden, and it is lovely and cool.

A boy came around selling flowers and I just bought two new ferns and a Jerusalem Cherry. My daisies have just about all bloomed out.

Next Thursday night the Bairds are having a dinner party. It is Crip's birthday and so we will celebrate. We will have canapes, gimlets before dinner. Then we will have Lobster Newburg, french fried potatoes, pickled beets, tomato soup and grapefruit cocktail and a birthday cake. Sound pretty good? After dinner we will have coffee on the porch. There will be seven, so that means I will have to borrow the Terrill's china and chairs. There will be the Terrills, Harvey Biggs, Ed Deeds, and a Mr. Bayliss who is with the Curtiss-Wright people. It will be nice I hope. Most people here are afraid of the water so they drink beer. Stu and I seldom drink it because it is expensive, but we will have to have it for the party. On Gwen's birthday the boy made a cake that looked like Chinese New Year, it was decorated in red, yellow, green, and orange, and it was something. This time I cornered the boy, and we are going to decorate it together, perhaps I will be able to control the color scheme a little more.

You probably think that I forgot about Mother's birthday, but we haven't. However we have to wait until we go to Hong Kong before we can mail the packages, otherwise it would never get there. We will go in about two weeks, and I will let you know so that you can be looking for it.

I haven't had any letters in about three weeks and I am wondering how you all are. Is the depression as bad as ever? Don't answer I know that it is worse. It is certainly lucky that we have a job out here. I don't know what we would do at home. How are Wallace and Florence? Tell them to break down and write. We get lonesome for letters here. Florence probably has to stay off her feet a lot, so she can improve each shining moment by writing to us.

The Americans are in something of a stew here. The exchange is absolutely flooey, and many are being recalled perhaps to be let out. The Berringers are among those called back. It is tough. As I have said though, Stu and I are sitting pretty and and sitting tight. We figure that we better save while the savings good.

I got a new roll of film today, and so will take some pictures. I will send them along with the package when we go to Hong Kong.

Last night we got locked out again. They lock up the place like a drum when we leave, and when we came home we couldn't raise the Amah who was supposed to let us in. Doors and windows barred, and the Amah asleep. We pounded and yelled and tried in vain to pick the lock. Finally we woke up the landlord who lives downstairs. He doesn't speak a word of English, but with gestures and whatnot we made him understand. He started to yell and holler in Chinese and finally all three of us were yelling, and after three quarters of an hour the Amah finally came to. What a sleeper.

Gwen is a kick. She is afraid of anything with four legs, and yesterday walking over here she came across a her of water buffalo that were grazing on the ninth hole. Panic stricken she didn't know just what to do, so finally she yelled and waved to a policeman who was standing nearby and had his escort across the green.

We have at last gotten a square mosquito net and a medicine cabinet. The square net will be worth its weight in gold because it leaves you a great deal of room in bed, and the medicine cabinet will enable us to take our things out of pail that they have been in. We also got a linen closet for the sheets towels etc., which makes it nice. In fact we are slowly but surely getting very comfortable. Incidentally our toilet is working- it actually flushes which is a great luxury out here. Someday we are going to get an oven, and then we will be able to have pies and cakes homemade. We can get very nice cakes and cookies at the Dairy Farm, but they are rather expensive.

Tomorrow night we are going to a German doctor's home for dinner. He is supposed to have a very wonderful collection of art etc., I am anxious to see it. The next night we are going to a roof dance on[e of] the girls in the Consular service is giving. This is a busy week. We don't often do as many things as this because if you stay up later than eleven o' clock in this climate you suffer for it the next day. Something about the climate takes the soup right out of you, even when it isn't very hot. At first we thought the Chinese [were] incredibly lazy. They wouldn't do anything at all it seemed to us, but now we see that they are just smart. They know their China. You simply cannot exert yourself here, and you have to give your servants time for naps. They really need it.

I am getting the house down to where it is not so expensive to run. At first you get stuck mightily because they know you're green, but after a while things seem to settle down for which I am grateful.

When I first came here everything seemed so awfully backward. Coolies were used instead of our modern machinery. For instance, the Cantonese government bought eight new Curtiss Hawk planes. Instead of delivering them on trucks direct from the station the way we would at home, several hundred coolies were employed to put the enormous crates on wheels and push them from the dock to the field which is a good ten miles. However when you come to think about it, the planes got there just the same and several hundred men were given work. Out here everyone has a job. No matter how old or how ignorant, they all have work. That's where they have the laugh on us. Coolies here are dredges. When you have something sent from the store the coolies carry it to your house. They are used the way we use machines and the good part about them is that they take care of themselves. You don't have to oil and water a coolie. Someday soon China is going to open up and try to digest the whole of modern civilization in one mouthful. I hate to think what the result will be. Men will make millions here, and thousands upon thousands of coolies will perish. What'll you take- a civilization such as ours where a few can make the grade and live in comfort, or an uncivilized place where everyone has a job and seems happy. I'll take vanilla.

The mosquito's seem to be resting- or maybe its the new citronella I have been using. Anyhow we have been having some peace from them. The bathroom is the place they really descend on you. After you get in the tub and wash the citronella off they start practicing dive bombing attacking. Some of the mosquito's are as big as flies.

Next month we think we will be able to get a blackwood chest. There is one that is perfectly lovely. Stu and I are trying to get one nice thing a month. We want about three small pieces of blackwood and some of the silver and some linens. This is surely the place to get linens if only you had the money. However the sheets and pillow cases are so fancy that you would hardly want to use them. I am specializing in tablecloths etc. I think we would have more use for them. So far we haven't bought very much it had been rather expensive getting the house furnished, but from now on we will be able to save toward getting nice things. We already have one nice table cloth and three nice luncheon sets, but we had to use the luncheon sets before our things came, and the gotten slightly stained. The Amah doesn't have a very modern wash apparatus- in fact she sits on the floor of her room and scrubs them in a bucket- it is hard for her to get things like stains out. But when we get home I think the laundry will be able to help. How in the world the Amah does Stu's suits is more than I can see, but she does them beautifully.

I have already told you how the boy makes everything from potato chips to what not. He also makes the jello. There are no ready to eat things here, but he makes most things better than you could buy at home. His potato chips are a work of art. They are the funniest ones. When you order jello the produce it in something you never saw before. I couldn't imagine where all the molds etc. were coming from. He'd bring out something that was as much as a surprise to me as to my guests. One day I ordered baked apples. Later it occurred to me that we didn't have an oven, but at tiffin time we had baked apples. Well they borrow everything from other house boys- mold and ovens etc. There is a story out here that one day a lady came home to find all her chairs gone. She questioned the boy and told him never to let them go again. He had lent them to the Missie next door for a bridge party. After being scolded he went right over and took the chairs from out the other Missies guests and walked out with the, leaving the guests standing. The next day the second Missie wouldn't talk to speak to the first Missie, and the first Missie was at a loss to understand. The boy took her literally and she hadn't realized that he would correct his mistake so soon.

Everyone out here is a Missie, and the men are Master. They pronounce it Meesee and Maaster.

Well please write often and tell me all about everything. We think about you all the time and are very eager for news of any kind. How is Annabelle.

Lots of Love,

Jeannette.