Was Nellie Bly Jewish? I hadn’t thought so. But she spent Christmas in Canton and ate Chinese food. Just askin’. . .
She then moved on to Hong Kong, waiting for the Oceanic to take her to Japan and then San Francisco. She busied herself sight-seeing and shopping, buying a pin specially made for her with the Chinese characters for “Success to your novel enterprise.”
On December 28 she boarded the Oceanic and learned that the monkey had been transferred from the Oriental. As Nellie put it,
“Meeting the stewardess I asked how the monkey was, to which she replied dryly:
‘We have met.’
She had her arm bandaged from the wrist to the shoulder!
‘What did you do?’ I asked in consternation.
‘I did nothing but scream; the monkey did the rest!’ she replied.”
She spent New Year’s Eve aboard the Oceanic, heading toward Yokohama, singing Auld Lang Syne with glass in hand, toasting the death of 1889 and the birth of 1890.