--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - H. F. Gordon collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 24 number: 8 published: 1921-06 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'H. F. Gordon, "A Chinese Beggar at Canton," *Improvement Era* 24, no. 8 (June 1921): 729–729.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2408unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2408unse start_page: 729 end_page: 729 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1921-06) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2408unse publication_year: 1921 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1921, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Chinese Beggar at Canton A Chinese Beggar at Canton Canton By H. F. Gordon Canton the pulse of the Orient, ever drab, ever changing, yet ever the same since history has kept authentic records. — Sleepy, languid, hot deathly hot, unkept, unclean, ununiform,wending its own peculiar way down the annals of time, sinister and quiet, to the casual observer to be shunned as a pestilence. Canton, the second largest non-Christian city in the world, where five thousand diseased and maimed beggars daily plead for existence from the healthy and strong; the city with five hundred thousand floating population dwelling on the river, from birth until death, with no joy of living, no ambition, no hope for the future, just resignation to the monotonous sameness of their lives; Canton, the city that never sleeps, yet is always sleeping; the center of plots and intrigues; the city with the deadly sucking undertow of vice, and crime, and disease, which, if it ever gathers you to its bosom, you are lost. Yet why that peculiar hypnotic attraction experienced by adventurers and cosmopolites? that desire to blend with the Celestials' calm indifference to fate, and drift with the tide in this most peculiar of all places?