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By Gareth Jones,
Saigon,
French Indo-China
Late May 1935
I have named the land through which I have travelled the Land of the
Four Curses. Curious curses they are that haunt this country where
tigers in primeval forest where natives suddenly stumble over
magnificent ruins hidden mysteriously in distant jungles and where
monkeys dash frightened away from coming travellers.
Curious curses, which bring unhappiness upon the lands with equally
curious names, the Kingdom of Cambodia and Cochin China, which although
they sound like musical comedy, are parts of France's Empire in Asia.
What are these four curses of French Indo-China?
The first is a flower of great beauty of which the poets throughout the
world have sung and which painters have put to canvas in lines and
colours of exquisite delicacy. It is the lotus flower. A curse these
white petals tinged with pink, those wide spreading leaves, those ponds
that bring to squalid villages a glimpse of beauty? Yes, the lotus
flower is a curse, for it spreads from pond to pond, from river to
river; it grows luxuriantly until it hinders the boats of the fishermen
and of’ the travellers. It crowds almost into the rice fields and into
the acres of maize. It sucks up the water which in dry periods is badly
needed and although the Cambodians love to let their water buffaloes
wallow in the lotus ponds and to splash sprays of mud over the white
petals, they curse the speed with which the lotus has encroached on the
waterways and regret the day that the flower was brought in as a
decoration from China.
The second curse is an insect, which although minute does more damage
than the tigers many thousands of times its size. As I rushed in a bus
through Cambodia I noticed large red earthen mounds, some of which were
six to ten feet high, and were shaped like castles. They were the homes
of the ants, which bring unhappiness upon the people. These ants have
other homes, however, and, tiny as they are, they can destroy great
buildings. The white ants live inside timber and bite from within,
while no one can tell that within the beams there is swarm of ravenous
insects. Suddenly, with a crash the whole building tumbles,
sometimes burying men and women beneath it. The white ant has done its
work and has broken up a home with as much affect as a dashing Don Juan
in a family heading for Reno. Little did I think before going to French
Indo-China that ants could be so strong as to rival Samson in
destructive powers.
The third curse, learnt from a Roman Catholic Priest, was the Buddhist
monks. Perhaps it was the rivalry of religions that led him to attack
the Buddhist, but, when I had on passing a group of monks in their
bright yellow robes referred to their contemplative outlook, he angrily
said: “Calm and contemplative indeed! They are nothing, but a curse to
the country. They are ignorant and do nothing but repeat prayers and
ceremonies, knowing nothing of the deep and noble philosophy of
Buddhism, they live on offerings brought them from poor people who
cannot afford to give. They stop all progress and initiative, because
they teach that desire is evil and that to strive is a sin.”
From another foreigner I heard the same attack on the Buddhist priests.
They teach that woman has no soul and for that reason the women. In the
Buddhist countries do most of the hard work and the carrying? The women
pray that they will be men in their next reincarnation.
The Buddhist priests are a curse - so this foreigner told me because
they do not help beggars as they should and they pass the infirm and the
old on the other side of the street. They believe that disease and
unhappiness are punishment for misdeeds in a former existence and thus
they sit idly not remedying any evils and letting the hungry starve and
the diseased perish.
The greatest of the four curses is, however, opium. Nowhere in the
world is the opium traffic so scandalously open as in French
Indo-china. When arrived in Pnompenh where the King of Cambodia lives
with his fifty dancing girls concubine. In palaces of blue and
gold I went to explore streets in the very centre of the City an open
invitation to all to enter, there were areas where almost every house
was an opium den. Within half an hour I had entered and examined
fourteen, where on long polished wooden tables youngsters sat sucking in
opium fumes with a gurgling noise or rolling the black stick opium into
the balls which are lit with a flame. In one opium shop, in the
middle of ragged rascals who stared with vast open eyes as if in a
dream, there was a little girl of six with silver bracelets on her brown
arms innocence and vice side by side. At the entrance of one den a
whole family mother and four children were lying asleep on a mat, while
new smokers entered and almost stumbled over them. An a1ter to the
Gods, before which joss sticks were burning, decorated one of the places
and the Cathedral like scent of the incense mingled curiously with the
sickly sweet smell of the opium.
Nowhere in the world has opium a greater grip over white people than in
French Indo-China and its most debased victims are women. Chic Parisian
women of fashion succumb to the drug far more rapidly in Asia than in
Americans or English women among whom one rarely hears of opium smokers.
With a Frenchman I explored Saigon, great port of French Indo-China.
“Most of our French women here smoke!” he declared as we eat in one of
Saigon’s chic restaurants. A well-dressed woman in blue passed. “She
smokes only ten to fifteen pipes a day” he explained when she had gone,
“and she now going to the opium room above the restaurant. Opium
smoking is the great curse in relations between husband and wife here,
for it calms the desires of men but heightens the senses of women. When
both husband and wife smoke opium the habit usually ruins the union.
As we talked, a young man greeted us and went up the stairs. My guide
and friend jerked his hand towards him when he had gone. “That man is
doomed,” he whispered: “He smokes fifty to sixty pipes a day. He is a
pilot in the harbour here but he will not keep that post for long,
because he is killing himself. Opium affects the French here terribly
wrecking the character and makes them willing to steal or murder for the
sake of opium.”
“Why do they smoke?” I asked. The Frenchman paused: “Do not think I am
enemy of the fair sex” he said, “but I blame mainly the French women.
They have nothing to do all day. They are far away from home and few of
them have children. They must do something and to occupy themselves
they toy with opium. First is a joke and it is regarded as
fashionable. Soon, however it becomes necessary and they must have the
drug at certain fixed hours. Preferring to have company in their vice
and because opium smoking forms a link of fellowship they invite and
cajole men to smoke. The proportion of men who smoke is much lower,
however, than that of women. And so the trouble continues."
It was with strange thoughts and memories that I left the land of
the four curses.
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