(p92)
Annamite Gamblers, Thieves, and Sodomites.
In short, the basket and the boy are gamblers, thieves,and sodomites. Are they sodomites simply that they may earn money to satisfy their other vices? That is the theory of certain Annamitophiles, who pretend that this vice was introduced by the European conquest.
It was nothing of the kind. The Annamite is a sodomite because he is lascivious. He belongs to an old civilized race that is now rotten. Vice was innate, and the Europeans found it flourishing, and some (very few, let us hope) have taken advantage of it.
The Frenchman who goes to the Antilles, Guiana, or Senegal, has not introduced sodomy and pederasty into those countries, because the natives of those countries abhor those vices. The same Frenchman,arrived in Cochin-China, has become a sodomite or a pederast, because he has found, without the trouble of seeking, women and children who have afforded him the opportunity. It is necessary to point out a mistake latter replied: " Yes sah / very true, me do little market robbery, but me no let anybody else rob master." When the gentleman related this to a lady friend of his, long a resident in India, she at once exclaimed :" Never get rid of that boy, if you can help it, he is a je-u-el.* that has been thoughtlessly repeated by many travellers, that the soldiers of the Expeditionary Corps had acquired,
in the Chinese campaign, certain depraved habits, which they afterwards carried into Cochin-China, where they have taken root. These travellers forget that the Chinese came to Cochin-China several centuries before we did, and have had plenty of time to vitiate the manners of the natives.
We must not even accuse the Chinaman, for the Annamite is naturally quite as depraved as he is, if not more so, — which is saying a good deal. Nays and boys are a kind of living merchandise which offers itself.
The nay is like the little girl not yet arrived at puberty, who offers you flowers on the boulevards of Paris, and whose parents speculate on the debauchery of roues, broken-down in health, and of perverted morals. Instead of a little girl, it is a little boy. He has no flowers, and gains his living by means of a basket. For a tai-an (a penny), he will put your purchases into his basket, and docilely follow you home.
When once he gets to your house, if he should suspect that you have depraved tastes, he will soon offer you his services : " Captain " (everybody was a captain in 186 — ) " me much know chewchew banana," and if the client appeared to hesitate, " me know ablic." That is sahir (patois). Chewchew means to eat. The banana is the well-known fruit of the tropics, which resembles in shape a penis afflicted with phimosis; ablic is the corrupt form of an Annamite word signifying the act of sodomy, and the word is as cynically coarse and expressive as the vulgar French verb, which corresponds to it. It existed before our arrival, whilst the equivalent for the word " modesty " does not exist in the Annamite language. That is a double philological proof.
