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served as deposits. Other members of the Band, that were waiting disciplined, were in charge of
the unloadand the stowage, and to take the whores and fugitives. The absence of Japanese
control surprised us, to whom we didn’t see in Nanking nor nowhere. –Is that the Japanese

were already smeared –said us the guide in his striking pidgin, a jargon mix of Portuguese and
English that is spoken in the maritime coasts of China: obviously, to call anoint to the bribery
is an irony own of Portugal and Spain. –Don’t explained Mr. Thien-ma it to oyu? I responded
him affirmatively in the same language, but the power that the paste of the Green Band
applied upon the smeared persons impressed us. He smiled and communicated us that we
would leave to Shanghai immediately.

At leaving from the port zone, taking the streets that the guide seemed to know very
well, we arrived to a market-square of huge dimensions, where existed a natural agglomeration
of hundreds of jinricksha, those Japanese vehicles drawn by a man, that have the form of
individual calash and that the English denominated rickshaw. It seemed us wonderful the
organization and discipline at verifying that six were aparted waiting for us, undoubtedly
warned by the Greens who had left before from the port. I looked askance at von Grossen, but
he noticed it.

–These people know how to do things –he growled–. We should come to learn from
them.

I didn’t attend to this exaggeration because we were already rolling at high speed and
the sight of the great city absorved me completely: with 5.000.000 inhabitants in 1938,
Shanghai for the English, Changai for the French, and Xangae for the Portuguese and
Spaniards, was a huge city for any pair of occidental eyes. Now we were going to «model
Colony», or bund, the isle that the occidental knew to raise in middle of an insalubrious swamp,
which was the only place conceded by the Chinese in the treaty of Nanking 1842, rubricated
with pure cannonshots by the English which in that year occupied Shanghai in despite of the
250 cannons of the batteries over the Vu-Sang: the pirates disembarked the infantry, that
neutralized the cannons and marched over the city, while the ships ingressed through the
Northern door and the Chinese fleed from the Southern door.

Over these swampy terrains a magnificent Europen citadel was raised, walled, with
cobbled canalization of the water, and paved and illuminated streets. Enormous edifies were
constructed belonging to the three occupant potencies: England, United States and France; and
soon emerged three characteristic neighbourhoods of these nationalities, apart from the

inevitable Chinatown, called Nantao by the Chienese. The three colonialist potencies obtained
extense zones of private port to make that their Companies of the External Trade install
commercial factories. When the Germans pretended to enter in this business, the port was
already distributed and they were obeyed to pay franchises to their competitors. Anyhow, it

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