Thursday, October 14, 1947

Dear Family,

It is good to get back to the type-writer, though I reckon I will be worse than usual. We got here Tuesday afternoon - a company furnished apartment, but we had to boil water and cool it down before we even had anything to drink, and if it hadn't been for our nice boy waiting all day on the door step for us, I don't know what we should have done because Shanghai is one wild mess and it's difficult to buy any food. The boy is still working for another man about four miles away, but he insisted on cleaning up the place a bit, and was here at six the next morning (in the pouring rain) with enough food for breakfast. It is marvellous to have him be so nice. I felt rather desperate in this dirty place, not knowing how long we were to be before getting into our house. Nobody seemed to know anything about us, hardly that we were coming at all, and we weren't even met at the airdrome for an hour. Not only is the city in a turmoil, but the office is as well, really, with the No. 1 being fêted and leaving for the past six weeks, and the new No 1 just back with everything on his hands, and new plans for people and everyone moving houses. Our house can't be emptied of the five girls living in it until another house is emptied for them, and I don't know what is happening to the people in that house. There is plenty of accommodation, one lovely new eight flat apartment house, but it just isn't quite sorted out yet.

Sunday

I am very pleased to be going in to our house so soon, as I had been led to expect any number of weeks, and of course, sharing a boy with a house four miles away is pretty sad for the boy, I should think. He rides on a bicycle. We are to be in the senior compound now. There are five houses - and the No 1 and 2 are in different houses bought from the Union Insurance, and much grander than the Shell have had before. Our house will be a much snootier affair than our last, with a big hall and long verandahs, three bedrooms and a dressing room upstairs, and several bedrooms and a bath. in the attic. I don't think the attic rooms are furnished unless you have a big family. There are nice gardens too - and the drawback is that they are naturally more expensive to run, necessitating three servants and a gardener. But they are much newer and with good woodwork and all, and oil heated - so expensive to use that no one does it the whole time, but for parties. A great advantage will be a car which is shared around the five houses in the morning, and Phil has a car for his private use at night.

I walked Hugo to school this morning - about three miles there and back, I reckon. Never, ever have I seen such a sad dilapidated city, such filthy rags on people, pulling rickshaws and pedicabs that are broken and bent and rusty and you wonder why they stay together at all. Phil says it is no worse than it was six months ago, but I say everything is six months more worn out anyway. Things seem to be coming to a crisis and people are worried and wonder what is going to happen, but I must say that the atmosphere on the streets seemed the same to me, and the poor ole bedraggled coolies smiled gaily and not threateningly. There is a queue I can see outside my window (I am on the seventh floor of a main street apartment building) which outshines anything I've seen in the land of queues - England. It's outside a material shop. I don't know whether this is because they say material is to be rationed - in fact I believe it already is and you can get only two-and-a-half yards a month, a Chinese dress length - but they are buying up everything there is. For the past two weeks apparently people have been in the shops like so many locusts. I noticed the windows are absurdly bare, and many of the shops boarded up. It is all because no one has any faith in the money, and whereas they used to buy gold bars, you can be shot for having any in your possession at all. Food is very short because nobody that has anything wants to sell it - nobody wants money. So what eventually happens is anybody's guess. As soon as we get into the house, we will comb the town for some non-perishables in case there are riots or anything unpleasant. The problem of getting around is very acute. No gas much, and almost no taxis. The buses still run though you wonder why they don't burst at the seams.

I was going to write at great length about the trip - but looking back on it now it seems a long way back, and hardly worth talking about. The two weeks in the Gloucester Building in Hong Kong were rather spoilt by Hugo's being in bed for six days, with high fever and taking sulphur - a result of getting over-tired on the trip I reckon - the cold, I mean. I had thought Hugo and I could go every afternoon by bus to the Repulse Bay Hotel and swim. There were strangely few people that I wanted to look up. A Virginia girl that I came out with on the freighter surprised me quite a lot. She's real country - Scottsville - and sort of "ain't went out much" but she is driving her car herself, which lots of people never do, and she studies Cantonese, and really has got down to things. Singer rent for them a new bungalow built on the site where the twelve people in Stanley were killed by American bombs. It's the first time I've ever been on Stanley. Strange to think of all the things that went on there such a short while ago. This girl hasn't any time for Martha Ann Pearson. She puts on so much dog. She said Martha Ann saw her getting on a tram one day, and looked at her as though she were entering an opium den or something. The Pearsons aren't there now.

We had a drive around the Island, went on the Peak several times for lunch and dinner, and swam at Deep Water Bay and Shekko Beach. Boy is it nice and warm after Jersey. As always in Hong Kong, it's fun the way you keep running into people you know. Phil of course now runs into POW's all down the block. Sheila and Dr Anderson both look very well - he very much better than when I saw him two years ago. George Stewart is very pleased to be there. Everyone's children seem so grown-up. But so much talk of war in Europe and not wanting to leave the children in England, and plans for sending them to Africa, New Zealand and Australia. My feeling is that whatever happens will happen before there's been time to make all sorts of changes. One woman who wants to move her boy to Africa isn't even booked to go to England to get him until February! And I should think England is a better bet than China anyway. The older men here have weathered so many local storms they don't seem concerned about this one. My boy came in with forty eggs as if they were diamonds. Apparently they are unobtainable, and I was awfully glad to have something I could cook myself, with the minimum of cooking ware. Goodness knows what the cost of living will go up to. You have to ferret out things at black market prices. Bang go any dreams of buying pretty things for the house - but everything may be entirely different in a month's time. China is like that, they all say.

Mr Bates, the new manager, took us in for dinner the first night we were here, and he, poor thing had only moved into that house the day before, and didn't know how to turn on lights or anything, and expected to have all his water cut off the next day. His wife hasn't arrived yet. It's the most super house with a garden full of huge trees and you feel like you are in the country. It's approached by a road full of holes and unpaved, muddy side walks, in fact the road on which the British School is. I've never seen them mending a road here. This is a very modern apartment building with windows all across the side of the sitting room, but I am looking onto a sorry sight. I suppose it is like any flat city, but nothing green peeps out between the buildings, and this being so tall, you just look onto roofs of laundry. Way down toward the bund there are some fine looking sky-scrapers, but the most eye-jarring note is three loud and hideous bill boards, each the full height of a four-storied building. The worst is the large face of a coloured man grinning at you with huge white teeth. This is the first day I've spent in here.

Yesterday I took Hugo around to put him in school, spent some time with Janie Wilson, took Hugo to lunch with someone; and then had tea with Pat Frost and Frances Cooper. I thought we had better not try to get any food here, but now that I know we will be in this flat until Sunday, I don't want to have to park myself around till then. It's mighty dirty and I hate to touch anything, but one thing the Company never supplies is any cleaning equipment. I'll have to have something done because the Trevor Orr's are coming here to stay, and I'd hate them to think I'd left it like this (if she is sober enough to notice). For those of you who care, I'll tell you about some of the people. Dick Frost has already gone to Tientsin - on two day's notice - he wired her yesterday to bring all the food she could as there was nothing to be had there. You always wonder what that means, as there can't be real famine - but she got cases of milk, lard, powdered eggs, what tinned meat she could find, and so forth. Also I was interested to see that she is taking everything they possess except a very large altar table - all their silver, cut glass, everything. I had wondered and wondered whether to take mine if I went. Of course Dick is always an optimist. Janie Wilson brought her oldest daughter out. She is ready to go into high school, and they couldn't afford boarding school in America, and Mr Buchanan is very ill and they couldn't have her in the house all the time. Janie says the child is as tall as she is. Isn't it surprising how some grow - she's only just fourteen - thin, awkward, and completely worn out the whole time. I reckon she grew too fast. They all went to Peking for three weeks' holiday. Marvellous, isn't it. All they had to pay was their food, as the company had an empty, staffed, house.

I haven't had one piece of mail since we left England. I thought it queer, what with two weeks stopover in Hong Kong. I phoned Phil this morning, and there is a letter from Claudia and one from Lee. Correspondence department didn't know we were here, evidently. I don't know what to make of people. Kathleen Skinner was on the phone just now, and said she told people that I had written Nora MacIntyre I was arriving on the twelfth, and they had just said, Oh no, I couldn't be. Half the company heard I wasn't coming back until after Christmas - all I suppose, on the strength of the suggestion, wired from Shanghai, that I stay in England until the end of October. It was the question of where to put me, as I thought.

The MacIntyres left five days before we got here, I'm sorry to say. She left me her "figga", standing with all my crates, and I'm hoping to make something of it, but you can't shave down her waist because she's only a half inch thick. Ilene Spence who had all my blackwood left the day after we arrived to go to New Zealand to be in her brother's wedding. I just caught her on the phone to find out where my stuff is, and it's all in a flat where her husband's moved, and he's gone to Hong Kong for three weeks! I suppose it was easier to have it along with everything else, but I wish she had put it where I could get it. I haven't got in touch with my machine yet. That girl's moved too, but my records at least have stayed put.

The flight out I wouldn't recommend except as a means of getting about quickly. It's quite the most exhausting thing I know of, though they say the straight flights, where you don't come down for the night, are more so, but you do get it over sooner. (Janie's daughter flew out. Two and a half days from New York) You don't get a night worth calling a night, nor do you see anything worth seeing. We did in Bangkok. I loved it there. We had two hours before dark, and drove around the city. I had never heard it was such a modern place, with wide streets with some classically beautiful western buildings, and the most absolutely astonishing temples. They were built at the same time too, about seventy five years ago, but they are certainly worlds apart in every other way .

You all know vaguely what Siamese temples look like, but they seem even more so! There are all sorts of shapes, usually ending in those tall spires, but some are much prettier than others. They are down at heel in the same way Peking is. Surprisingly, the colours of many of the roofs are the green and orange of the Peking temples, only it isn't china and it hasn't the gloss or the brilliance of colour. Now that I think hard, these aren't the Siamese spired temples anyway, and probably were copied right from China. A lot of Chinese art is mixed up with their own, and the funniest thing I saw were large men in top hats and western type of clothes - great fat things, five or six times life size, guarding lots of the gateways at one temple. The guide told us they were Dutchmen - but you would never have guessed it. In this place too there were scattered about lots of Chinese gardens - rock gardens, I mean - that awful kind which is nothing but rock, and hideous, being usually artificial rock at that. These were the worst kind, more cement than rock, but they were enhanced by papaya trees and clumps of bamboo, and transeveria, &c, with all manner of weird stone animals peering out - not to mention a few gods and goddesses.

You never saw such ornate temples, anywhere. Some entirely of bits of glass of different colours, or mirrors (bits of) like a night club or something - and some outside doors and windows of most beautiful mother of pearl work - some of gold leaf. There was a reclining buddha said to be one of the biggest. The soles of his feet, which were the first thing I saw, were gorgeous inlaid mother of pearl. He was surrounded by scaffolding, being re-gilded, and we walked up and looked at his huge eye, but it was very hard and you couldn't see much, and I was sure the bamboo poles we were on would give. The re-gold-leafing has been going on for two years and only about his curls have been done because money gave out. A little gold leaf about three inches square costs - I forget, of course, thruppence or a shilling.

The worst thing about Bangkok were the dogs which screamed all night as though they were being skinned alive. Right outside my window too, and I kept looking out to see if I could find out what on earth was being done to them, but I couldn't. A nice comfortable hotel, with a bathroom, bedroom and big porch, all screened - and Chinese servants which I was so pleased to see again.

The Indians were awful, I thought. Such salaaming and salaaming, coming in the room again and again with the most paltry excuse, hoping for more tips. We could hardly get dressed in the morning because the boy came back three times to see if the tea was all right. We are not supposed to have to tip at all, for the B.O.A.C. takes care of everything. It is certainly the way to get around and see the expensive hotels. This one in Calcutta must have been grand in its day - but its days have passed. Vast and enormous main rooms, with ceilings miles up - and we had two bed rooms, two bath rooms, a sitting room, and narrow little porch from which you could view the city, if it hadn't been dark - with no doors between, only curtains. Of course you don't have time to enjoy your grandeur. In Calcutta, the half hour drive into the city was in total darkness. You could make out many cows, and groups of people, under the few street lights, but row upon row of houses wouldn't even have a candle burning. Day was breaking as we drove back again, and the side walks were crowded with sleeping forms, clustered under roofs, because it had rained in the night. Every rickshaw had a man sleeping under it. I didn't realize the cows slept right alongside the men. The city has doubled in population since the riots started last year. Poor pathetic things.

Our first stop was Aix-en-Provence - at a really super duper hotel, where Mr Churchill stayed for his holiday this summer, but I think he had left a few days before we got there. This place again was a thirty minute ride from where we landed - Marseilles, the itinerary says, but that's further away still - a surprising uninteresting bit of country for France, I should say - so barren - but they say Aix-en-Provence itself is lovely, but there again it was dark. While it was still light we passed one very attractive village which looked as if it had been carved out of the cliff. It went straight up, and every building was the same colour as the earth. Coming into Bahrein I am always struck with how every single building is exactly the same colour - nothing stands out at all, and there isn't a blade of green.

To finish with France - we had a very good French dinner, Vin Rose which is a new one on me, but is the only red wine which is iced. You can't get ordinary red wine (Phil says I am mistaken). Wonder what the French do. We were called at three-thirty - the favourite calling hour of the B.O.A.C. - and at that you aren't usually airborne until five-thirty or six. So many of the sleeping places are a half hour away from the plane. I am wrong. We were waked at 2:30 in France! and some very strange bus noisier than any airplane - you simply could not make yourself heard on it. There was a strike in France, so we didn't have a customs examination, but all the luggage was taken to the examination shed, and we sat around before they decided there was nothing they could do about it. All civil servants were striking.

That customs business is one of the really fool things. In Cairo all our papers were looked at, the doctor saw us and took our pulse, all luggage was opened. We were taken to a house boat for the night, not allowed to go ashore - yet the next morning customs, doctor, passports all over again! The reason given for not allowing us ashore was that the feeling against the Jews was high, and if the Egyptians saw any strange foreign faces around they might shoot. Imagine their being familiar with all the other white faces in Cairo. Must be thousands of them. Cairo was our second night, and we were to be called at 4:30, but I woke to hear the captain in the next cabin talking on the phone something about fog and not getting off until eight, so I went on back to sleep, but some poor mutts got up and had to wait until 7:15 for breakfast. It's a big house boat, and every room has a bath. We had a private bath in every place, and I had to laugh considering what we had had the past five months.

We got a good view of the pyramids coming into Cairo. Couldn't find the Sphinx it's so little, though I spotted it going to England. All the huts around the city, and even some of the big houses, seemed to be covered with earth - the roofs look like you had been digging up there. I reckon it's to make it cooler.

Augusta, where we stopped for our lunch the day before, is indeed a pretty place. I was surprised at there being hibiscus and frangipani in the Mediterranean. The water there is the clearest I ever saw. Seaweed growing away on the bottom, and little fishes darting in and out. The only nice thing about Bahrein is the fishes - great big ones that jump up out of the sea if you throw them bread. And schools of baby fish that suddenly all jump up as one, and all you see is a flash of silver. It was as hot as Hades, and flies bit you all the time. Luckily we only stopped for an hour. You see, every one has to disembark while the plane is being re-fueled. Not that you aren't glad to stretch your legs. Wherever you go, the first thing that happens is a cup of tea thrust in your hand. Usually tinned milk. Bahrein has lots of sign posts. London, so many thousand miles, Hong Kong so many thousand - Sydney so many. It looks so funny. We weren't half way, but were by that night when we landed in Karachi.

Strikes on the coast & no magazines or anything but air. What a state everything is in. Hope all is well at home. Send prescription for Phil's pills, please. Lots of love, Marijane