Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1922 · page 53 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #31 — page 53: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* (a 1920s satirical magazine) contains a travelogue article—not a cartoon—by Rev. "Golightly" Morrill describing his visit to Canton, China. The piece employs **racist stereotypes and exoticization** common to early-20th-century American travel writing. It depicts Chinese people as bizarre and backwards through anecdotes like a woman performing folk magic with dirt after domestic violence, and describes the environment with disgust ("stinking canal"). The casual inclusion of a guide named "Ah Cum"—a stereotypical "Oriental" name—and the coffin-sedan-chair detail further emphasize the author's intent to portray China as grotesque and foreign. For modern readers, this reflects how American popular media used "exotic" travel tales to reinforce prejudice and cultural superiority during an era of significant anti-Chinese sentiment in America.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 51 Chinese Nightmare Cities BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL Pastor People's Church, Minneapolis, Minn. ALL aboard for China, the country of Con- fucius and chop suey! At Canton a won- derful spectacle took place at the wharf. A sampan man had beaten his wife and thrown her on the dock where she sat and chanted in a monotonous voice while a hundred coolies gath- ered round and watched the interesting cere- mony. She referred to her husband and his an- cestors, then scraped up a little pile of dirt, spat on it, molded it into the image of a man, addressed it with a few words, suddenly knelt and foully insulted it, and so eased her con- science, balanced the books of honor and “saved her face.” From the Hotel Victoria in the Shameen, or Foreign Quarter, two cadaverous coolies car- ried me in a coffin-shaped sedan chair across a stinking canal into native Canton. My guide, Ah Cum, led the way. The streets were so narrow and the show windows so near that I could have been a shoplifter with both hands. If hungry, there was a free lunch counter ex-