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At 11 o’clock everyone who has the entrée begins to drift toward the Shanghai Club. By noon the bar is packed. At 2 o’clock the rush is over, and only those that have fallen by the way remain, cast away on sofas. In race week or holidays, sofas are as few and far between as snowballs in Hades. At five o’clock the rush begins again, and lasts until the early hours of the morning.

Everybody in Shanghai drinks, mostly to excess. It is the only place I know of where young men with incomes of from $50 to $100 a month are able to spend twice that sum in a week on their establishment, yet this is unquestionably the case. I knew of one young man making perhaps $20 a week, who in a year failed for $10,000. At no time, as far as I could ever learn, did he ever have any assets worth mentioning. This remarkable means of living is fostered by the so-called “chit” system. The “chits” are small bits of paper on which one writes an I O U for any commodity or service conceivable. Any man who has a position can sign a chit at almost any bar, store or dive in Shanghai. The young men of the clerk class proceed to do this with great effect, and ready cash is used for speculative purposes, while their immediate wants are met by the simple process of signing a “chit.” If they are successful in their speculation, they pay the “chits,” and all goes well. If they fail, and are unable to beg, borrow or steal means to meet their obligations, they either commit suicide or go to Chefoo or Tientsin until the trouble blows over, which it soon does, as there are so many other men in the same boat. After a few months of this precarious life about the China coast, back they come, and if they are unable to get employment, they fall back into a semi-loafing class and ultimately a vagrant class, which helps to swell the already large population of this sort. The wealthy men of the place are mostly young fellows of the kind described, who have prospered in their investments. They go in more heavily for all sorts of deals and speculations. Chinese concessions, promotion schemes and similar enterprises are created, to be sold at home with great advantage. Every week fortunes are made and lost, and everybody, nearly, is happy and irresponsible.