Remembering Eunice Tietjens #4 – The Sikh Policeman

Posted: January 2nd, 2018 | No Comments »

Written during Tietjens’ (who was an American) visit to Shanghai sometime before 1917…the Shanghai Municipal Police’s Sikh Branch was established in 1884. Sikh policemen wore red turbans.

The Sikh Policeman: A British Subject

Of what, I wonder, are you thinking?

It is something beyond my world I know, something I cannot guess.

Yet I wonder.

Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate them with an automatic hatred – the hatred of the wel-fed for the starved, of the warlike for the weak.

When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with the drawing back of your silken beard, from your white teeth.

With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short gutturals.

You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be of them you are thinking.

Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master whom you serve.

No more do you know of us the “Masters” than you know of them the “dogs”.

We are above you, they below.

And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect and splendid, lithe and male.

Your scarlet turban frames your neat black head,

And you are thinking.

Or are you?

Perhaps we are only stung with thought.

I wonder.

Shanghai

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