Who Are the Heathen? by James White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 22, 1877

Who Are the Heathen?

By James White

The California Advocate says of the Chinese girls in the Mission House at San Francisco: “Strange as it may seem, there is a school of some twenty girls in this city who can not venture on the streets together without receiving abuse and having vile epithets applied to them, and if they escape a shower of stones they consider themselves extremely fortunate. They are quite well-behaved girls while in the streets, and look neat and tidy.”

The San Francisco Chronicle of Feb. 13, 1877, speaking of “Heathen Hilarity” connected with their celebration of New Year’s, says:—

“The first Chinese inebriate captured by the police in a year or more appeared in the dock at the Police Court yesterday. He pleaded guilty with an expression of abject despair, and accompanied the gang of old experienced drunks down into the cellar for twenty-four hours.”

It seems surprising that in a population of over 30,000 in one city, mostly males, but one person has been arrested in a year for drunkenness. The like cannot be found in any other nationality. We have before thought that opposition to the Chinese from a certain quarter would be less violent if they spent their money for bad whisky at the corner saloons. We do not say that morality is by any means high among the Chinese, but in some respects they set an example worthy to be imitated by their professed Christian neighbors. J. H. W.