Rudyard Kipling

“ Fung-Tching used to be very particular about his people, and never got in any one who'd give trouble by dying messy and such. But the nephew isn't half so careful. He tells everywhere that he keeps a "first-chop" house. [17] Never tries to get men in quietly, and make them comfortable like Fung-Tching did. That's why the Gate is getting a little bit more known than it used to be. Among the niggers of course. The nephew daren't get a white, or, for matter of that, a mixed skin into the place. He has to keep us three of course—me and the Memsahib and the other Eurasian. ”

“ And I've seen so many die here on the mats that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. I've seen some things that people would call strange enough; but nothing is strange when you're on the Black Smoke, except the Black Smoke. ”

“ Besides the mats, there was no other furniture in the room—only the coffin, and the old Joss all green and blue and purple with age and polish.
Fung-Tching never told us why he called the place "The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows." [10] (He was the only Chinaman I know who used bad-sounding fancy names. Most of them are flowery. As you'll see in Calcutta.) We used to find that out for ourselves. Nothing grows on you so much, if you're white, as the Black Smoke. A yellow man is made different. Opium doesn't tell on him scarcely at all; but white and black suffer a good deal. ”

“ This 19th century world view justified colonialism by making it the duty of superior races to save the lesser breeds from themselves.↑ Here, Kipling means ‘opium alley’ and introduces the refrain of the story—black smoke.↑ The animal would have panniers or bags hanging at its sides and so would be wider than usual.↑ A cheap alcoholic drink distilled from fermented sugar-cane. A more modern spelling of bazar is bazaar: Kipling would have pronounced it with a long vowel and stress on the second syllable. ”

“ Besides, the room is never cleaned, and all the mats are torn and cut at the edges. The coffin has gone—gone to China again—with the old man and two ounces of smoke inside it, in case he should want 'em on the way.
The Joss doesn't get so many sticks burnt under his nose as he used to; that's a sign of ill-luck, as sure as Death. He's all brown, too, and no one ever attends to him. That's the Memsahib's work, I know; because, when Tsin-ling tried to burn gilt paper before him, she said it was a waste of money, and, if he kept a stick burning very slowly, the Joss wouldn't know the difference. ”

“ The true narrator is a half-caste whose name is a mixture of Urdu (Gabral = Arabic Jibreel = English Gabriel) and possibly Portuguese. Misquitta may mean miscegenated, which reinforces the sense of a half-breed or mongrel. ”

“ A person of mixed parentage—often a European father and an Indian mother—also called a ‘chi-chi.’ Again, this is a racially derogatory term.↑ Tsin-ling, the new owner, renamed The Gate after his uncle died. The Three Possessions may be the remaining captive audience—Gabral, the Eurasian, and the Memsahib. ”