Free The Silver Lotus by Thomas Steinbeck

several schools of Asian cuisine, readily agreed, and soon even the crew came to be of the opinion that the rations aboard ship were much improved under the guidance of Lady Yee’s chef. But once in San Francisco, and discovering that Ah Chu could not follow her to a hotel and wait upon her there, Lady Yee refused to leave the ship for the pleasures that the best lodgings in the city might provide. To her way of thinking, bad food, rude service, bedbugs, used linen, and open chamber pots were not statements of civilized luxury. She pointed out that she lived far better aboard her ship, with her own maid and her own cook, than anyone in a city hotel.
    It was also perhaps Lady Yee’s pointed distaste for mass alcoholism, and the subsequent street violence of the city, that made her feel ill at ease there. When her husband once escorted her to a fashionable milliner’s emporium in the city, Lady Yee counted fifty-seven busy taverns in a three-mile carriage ride, and on the way back to the ship, after spending an evening with a few of her husband’s friends, she witnessed three drunken brawls, a stabbing, and a number of public altercations that involved the loud use of provocative language totally composed of profanity. And if that weren’t enough to disturb Lady Yee’s sense of civility, then certainly the treatment of her fellow Chinese, now residing in “the land under the Gold Mountain,” obliterated all desire for Lady Yee to make herself feel at home in San Francisco. She was certainly aware that in the Americas she would always be looked down upon because of her race and her gender, but that didn’t preclude her fervent desire to make a life for herself that disdained those conventions. Aboard The Silver Lotus she had status, responsibility, respect, and honest affection. As part owner of Hammond & Yee, and quite wealthy in her own right, she also had the power to influence many aspects of her own life that were, in effect, quite above and beyond the privileges and prerogatives allowed most women who lived ashore, no matter what their race, station, or lineage.

    It should be noted that despite her youth, Lady Yee maintained very liberal and open-minded sensibilities. She avoided making broad judgments based upon information or experience drawn from limited samples. It was usually her habit to take on humanity one person at a time, and make her evaluations accordingly, regardless of superficialities, fortunes, or titles. So of course she knew that the legendary California so often described to her by her husband must be somewhere else, because San Francisco Bay as a harbor was just the same tidewater snake pit as any other big harbor around the world, including Canton or Shanghai, and it attracted and nurtured exactly the same species of vice, violence, and crime. With this in mind, Lady Yee could see no reason to try and feel comfortable ashore. Besides, the money she saved on frivolous entertainments and expensive hotels went into making constant improvements to the daily comforts both captain and crew enjoyed at sea or at anchor. This made a berth on The Silver Lotus very desirable by any measure.
    On one of their voyages to California, Captain Hammond journeyed north from San Diego to Monterey Bay. They sailed close enough to shore for Captain Hammond and Lady Yee to discover some stunning stretches of coastline. In many places the mountains ended their progress in rockbound cliffs, as the crashing ocean waves had cut away all footing. Captain Hammond had never taken a cargo out of Monterey before since it was a fishing port, and he didn’t carry perishables. But on this occasion he had been commissioned by his father-in-law to purchase a large cargo of dried squid for shipment to Canton. The squid were caught, dried, placed in salt, and packed in reused tea chests by Chinese fishermen who worked the bay. These courageous boatmen and their families lived in ramshackle villages