waterfalls, rapids like the Wenchow, and the wonderful Buddhist
monasteries like the noted Tien Dong and the Shih To. The trips to the
Ta Lang and Snowy Valleys are exceedingly beautiful. Outside the city
the temple to the sailor’s patron goddess, Ma Tsu Pu, at the east gate,
is particularly fine in lines, proportion, dignity and rich detail. It
was erected in 1680 by sailors of Fukien, the neighboring province.
These precious old temples are the last precious gems of a great age
in art. The new times in learning, religion, politics and commerce
are bringing in an ugly architecture. Ningpo is strongly influenced
in Buddhism by the nearness of Phu Tho Island of the Chusan group.
There is a quaint pontoon bridge over one of the streams. It has shops
upon it, and is the center of a fair. The women of Ningpo are known
for their fine needlework, and the old schools were celebrated for
their men of letters among the literati officials. The old Tien Fung
pentagonal pagoda is perhaps the oldest in China, dating back 1,200
years. Its gold and white tiles have fallen, and the brick and mortar
work of the seven stories is exposed.
Politically, Ningpo is progressive. It went over to the “Han Republic”
rebels on November 5, 1911. In the early days of the Portuguese at this
port, the Ningpo men rose up, destroyed thirty-five Portuguese ships,
and slaughtered eight hundred of the crews, because they claimed the
foreigners had gone inland and captured Chinese women on the Sabine
plan. The city was captured by the Taiping rebels in 1862. Off Ningpo
a fierce engagement between the Chinese and English fleets took place
in October, 1841. Nimrod Bay, near Ningpo, is to be the central base
for the new Chinese navy. In the turmoil of 1898, when the nations
of Europe were striving to partition China, despite the protests of
America and Britain, the French, on July 16th, landed marines at Ningpo
and tried to take a temple graveyard for a settlement, incidentally
adding twenty Chinese to the number to be buried in the graveyard!
Ningpo is soon to have a railway connection with the west and south.
Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang province, is famous as the city of
the Roaring Tidal Bore. The walls are twelve miles around. The bore
is best seen at Haining pagoda, east of the city. The tourist should
go at moonlight to see the unforgettable white specter riding in on
the wheels of the night. The legend is that the Wu prince, Tse Hsu,
committed suicide, and the Chinese go to the bore to see him sweeping
by in his fury. The stone-faced river wall has stone cradles built for
junks to outride the terrific main bore. The city has railway and canal
connection, and launch tows are now much used instead of sail. The
Golden King Hill is in the center of the city by the lake side. It is
crowned with a Buddhist temple. The lake has a causeway, lake temples
and pagodas. The city is famous for its beautiful waterscapes, like the
view of Western Lake (Si Hu), and the view from Thundering Peak Tower
(Lui Fung Tah). This tower is without the usual ornate galleries, and
shows the Arab influence which crept up the coast in the old days, and
established itself at Hangchow in mosques, etc. Three separate attempts
were made to capture China for Mohammedanism; they were made in Kansu,
Yunnan and Chekiang provinces. The Red Imperial Palace at the lake side
was once the center of the cultured Sung dynasty, thirteenth century.
Marco Polo visited and praised the beautiful ancient city as follows:
“Beyond dispute, it is the finest and noblest city in the world.” It is
now a center of the silk, wine, fan, lantern, tea, tinfoil, camphor,
hardware, book, vegetable oil, etc., trade. The city was captured
by the republicans on November 5, 1911, the Tartar city strongly
resisting. With Soochow, it is called the most fashionable city, and
the home of the best dressed women of China. Doctor Main’s model leper
hospital is here. The American Presbyterians have erected on a lovely
hillside over the water a number of buildings of the important new
Hangchow University. The Tartar walled city is on the northwest. There
are a governor’s yamen, many pailoo honorary arches, the massive Great
Peace Bridge, canals, famous temples, shops and fine residences, for
the Chinese of this section seem to have a civic pride. The rolling
suburbs of Hangchow are the most beautiful in China, reminding one
perhaps of England’s lake country. The modern parliament buildings
of the province of Chekiang are erected at Hangchow. There is also a
native university and normal school.
Nanking, the largest walled city of the Ming emperors and Taiping
rebels, and the first republican capital and assembly headquarters, is
very dear to the hearts of the Chinese race. It is the center of the
classic Mandarin pronunciation used by the north and the cultivated
of all China. The name translated means southern capital. The great
Yangtze River sweeps beneath the walls, and the city has canal and
railway connection of the finest. The city, as was discovered when
General Chang defended it, is commanded by the peaks of Purple Mountain
on the north. There are fortified hills within the city, and great
avenues down which run modern electric cars. Ruins of the last pure
Chinese dynasty remain: the Ming palace, the picturesque tombs, and
an avenue lined with wonderful gigantic camels, lions, elephants,
etc., similar to the Ming Avenue at Nankow on the Great Wall above
Peking. Emperor Hung Wu’s monument is a stone monolith, erected on
a gigantic turtle’s back. The tomb itself is square. In the same
manner that the Japanese and Russians unavoidably pounded the Manchu
tombs at Mukden with shot, the imperialists and republicans pounded
these revered Ming tombs in 1911. Bloody General Chang’s slaughter
of the republicans and non-combatants at Nanking in November, 1911,
will be hissed at in history forever. Viceroy Chang Jen held the
first Chinese exhibition at Nanking in 1910. He established water,
electric and gas works, and broad roads, and was in many ways a most
enlightened leader. The foreign settlement is in part on Siakwan
Island. Across the river on the north at Pukow, a British railway goes
to Tientsin and Kiaochou, and south to Shanghai runs the splendid
Shanghai-Nanking British railway, the best built road in China. As
usual, the city is divided into Tartar and Chinese sections. There are
military and naval colleges, a native provincial university and an
arsenal. Nanking Union University of the Methodists and Presbyterians
is famous, and is discussed in another chapter. The students have
adopted athletics and propose to send a team to Olympic games. The
city has famous pagodas and temples, like the Pi-Che-Ko, the Buddhist
Temple of Ten Thousand Gilded Gods, the White Star Temple, etc. The
Taipings burned the famous yellow and white porcelain pagoda which
once stood here, and which was the most ornate pagoda in China. Some
of the tiles are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. American firms
have established themselves, and consulates, churches, clubs and all
that goes with foreign life will now come up to the favorite city of
republican China, whose ancient culture hangs like a golden cloud
over its memories. There are newspapers, paper mills, silk and satin
filatures, fan and cotton factories, shoemakers, tailors, porcelain
kilns, etc. The city gave its name to the shiny cotton, “Nankeen”,
used throughout China and Europe. Ink, flower, bath, vase, tile, book
and jewel makers abound. Its artists are skilled. In the days of the
old-style examinations, thousands of candidates used to gather in the
great park of brick stalls. Nanking became a viceregal city when it
ceased to be the southern capital. Its guilds and boards of trade are
famous and progressive; each has its fine hall. Industry, learning,
politics, foreign trade and medicine will henceforward take a mighty
hold at Nanking, where the first provisional president of China, the
world-wanderer, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, bowed to a modern representative
assembly on January 1, 1912.
Shanghai is the queen of middle China, the ruler of the Yangtze River,
at whose gates she sits. It is often called the “Paris of the Far
East”, which remark refers to its social life, for it is not nearly so
picturesque as its rival, Hongkong, or that queen of beauty, Fuchau.
The fine black sand, once yellow loess, and saturated clay bed under
Shanghai is four hundred and fifty feet thick. For the large modern
buildings, it is necessary to sink a heavy girder-reinforced concrete
raft, and build the structures on that. Even these buildings sink five
inches as compared with the foot that ordinary pile and brick buildings
sink. Life is in a whirl at Shanghai. The river bund is crowded,
and so is the long, winding Bubbling Well Road. The concessions are
splendidly managed from a foreign point of view, and vie with each
other in public spirit. The Chinese, however, feel greater warmth for
Hongkong, which gives them representation on the council. In Shanghai
there are mixed courts, consular courts, an American Superior Court,
and Chinese courts. The Chinese are planning for the day when they
will try all Chinese offenders. There is an imposing cathedral, and
a modern Venetian style railway station. Good libraries, magnificent
clubs, theaters, hotels of all nations, taxicabs, electric trams and
rickshaws are among the conveniences. The separate post-offices of
all nations are somewhat confusing. All the sports,--racing, golf,
tennis, shooting, house-boating, swimming, etc.,--may be enjoyed, and
the military enthusiast has almost the same opportunity that he has at
proud brave Hongkong. The Shanghai settlements protect themselves with
the Municipal Volunteer Guard, in which a special corps of Europeanized
Chinese can be enrolled. Secret societies, both foreign and native,
have their temples. Shanghai has been the chief center of the native
reform newspapers which agitated from the time of the coup d’état of
1898 to the rebellion of October 10, 1911, and at Shanghai the peace
conferences between the south and the north were held in January,
1912. Outside of iron and coal, one can see here almost all of China’s
efforts to equal the Occidental in industrial activity in modern
mills. The Japanese are in strong evidence at Shanghai in ownership
of Chinese cotton manufacturing. In speculating, no city can approach
Shanghai. The awful rubber collapse of 1910 mowed down Chinese as well
as foreigners. A military band plays in the public gardens and in the
hotels. The musical and literary life of the colony is well developed.
On North Honan Road is the immense plant of the Commercial Press which
translated a million dollars’ worth of text-books last year for China’s
schools. Its president is Chang Yuan Chi. The English newspapers of
the port are known world wide for their scholarliness, and the Chinese
press is making a mark for its patriotism and progress. The Bubbling
Well Road cemetery and the Pahsien (Catholic) cemetery contain many
melancholy monuments of famous foreign pioneers. In meteorological
science, the Sicawei Observatory, under the control of the Jesuits, is
_facile princeps_; indeed in this field this order has led in China
and in the Philippines since the eighteenth century. Shanghai shares
with Hankau the title of head of the railway system; that is to say
one is the New York and the other the Chicago of the land. There is no
computing what the future trade will be at Shanghai. The climate is not
much improved on the damp sea-level misery which one experiences at
Hongkong, Canton, and Amoy, but there are brave hearts in Shanghai, and
the noblest of women who will endure any physical torture so long as
they know that they are doing their duty in not deserting the advanced
firing line of civilization and philanthropy.
The leading educational institution is St. John’s University, managed
by the American Episcopalians. Nothing but praise can be accorded
to it, and its future will be great. Already great men in China,
such as Alfred S. K. Sze, once named as minister to Washington, and
Doctor W. W. Yen, once secretary of the Foreign Board, are saying:
“I am a St. John’s alumnus.” The university is five miles from the
bund landing. Other missionary and native educational and medical
institutions, like the Nan Yang University, are of a high order.
The intellectual life is advanced, for at Shanghai live most of the
Occidentalized Chinese and retired officials.
A great arsenal is located here. There is some abandon in the French
quarter, which tolerates perhaps the lowest opium joints in the world,
and the Foochow Road exhibits its brothel life the most brazenly of any
street in the world. The dives of native Shanghai have been notorious
the world over for disappearance of victims.
There are wonderful silk shops on Nanking and Foochow Roads; luxurious
tea gardens, fine temples like the Pan Tuck Ih and the Kwang Sang Kee;
splendid furniture shops; guild halls like that of the Shansi Bankers;
the Yu Yuen gardens, etc. The Hong Ku market should be visited early in
the morning, and the wonderful products of a rich district, intensively
farmed, will surprise a stranger. The place is famous for its houseboat
trips. The boat people are called Tankas, the tribe coming from Kiangsu
province. They are related to the old Hongkong Hakka tribe. Wonderful
farms can be studied on Tsun Ming Island. Interesting pagodas, like
the Ta Kong, are to be seen. It is the theatric custom of the Germans
to erect over the earth monuments to their dead who have fallen when
in conflict with other races; this explains the “Iltis” monument.
Shanghai, soon to be the center of a vast railway development, was
the first apostle of railways for China, the noted old Jardine firm
building a railway to Woosung, twelve miles away, as far back as
the 60’s. The Manchus, who have always been reactionaries at heart,
promptly tore it up and stacked it to rust out in distant Formosa
Island. The native city is not large, nor are the moated walls
substantial, brick instead of stone being used. There are six double
gates of iron. Manila was the first city of the Far East to tear down
part of its walls and Shanghai will probably be the second. The Taiping
rebels of the 60’s captured the city, and the population went over to
the revolution in November, 1911, thus depriving the effective Admiral
Sah of the Manchu navy of his ammunition, which Shanghai arsenal had
furnished up to that time. As Shanghai grows she will probably extend
toward her port, Woosung, twelve miles away, and a Conservancy Board
must arrange for vast expenditures to prepare for a large steamship
tonnage now that the Pacific ocean is narrowing because of faster
steamers being put on the route. Imported goods for China are mainly
stacked in Shanghai’s godowns, not even subsidiary stocks being held at
ports as far away as Newchwang. This practise must change somewhat and
Shanghai take particular care of the Yangtze valley, which is a kingdom
of 150,000,000 people in itself.
The quaint Kiangsu junks are disappearing, and vast fleets of launches
and mere cargo junks have come into use. To see the picturesque old
life on the waters, one must now go farther inland. Shanghai is famous
for its peony, chrysanthemum and lily gardens. It is a florist’s
paradise, because it lies in the valley of the sun. Its dress show on
the bund and Bubbling Well Road, Hong Kew Park, Public Gardens and
Jockey Club grounds, almost rivals in silk the floral creations of
nature. Some of the costumes are amusing. A tall Sikh, “bearded like
the pard”, and wearing an immense red turban, comes along the road
with never a look to right nor left and never a smile on his eager
face. His gown looks like a loose white nightshirt, over which he has
forced a small tight vest of bright colors and flashy buttons. The
nightshirt is gathered in about his legs, which are bare below the
knee. On his feet he wears Punjab slippers, which curve up at the
points like a gondola. So he fareth forth into the perpetual comedy of
the Shanghai streets and maloos! The London “bobby” looks at him but
does not arrest him, because on official occasions this same Sikh is
the bobby’s partner on police duty, when, however, he buttons himself
within a decent blue tunic and dons long trousers, though the turban is
maintained to him for tradition’s sake.
All the foreign banks, the Hongkong bank, and the Chinese National and
Shansi banks, have branches here, and it is proposed to have branches
of large Chinese-American banks and steamship companies. Fault must be
found with the modern native as well as the European architecture of
Shanghai, that they are not perpetuating and adapting the extremely
beautiful Chinese style in roof, screen, portals, columns, terminal
ornaments, panels, pavilions and approaches. We of the Occident
are barbarians to intrude in any land and debauch its beautiful
architecture in the way we are universally doing. All praise to some
of the missionary societies, that as usual they are the first to do
right in a beautiful way by building in the Chinese manner in China. A
Grecian building like Boone University, at Wuchang; a top-heavy German
building like those at Kiaochou; a New York cave building like some
at Tientsin; a British barn like some on the praya at Hongkong, even
an Italian Renaissance like some on the Shanghai bund, are a trespass
unto architectural sacrilege in artistic China. Let us keep to the
galleries, the curved lines, the rich roof, the colored panels, the
enameled tiles of pagoda and temple as we raise stone on stone in
glorious old China, for she is the mother of the arts, and has sat
longest at the fountain of beauty, if not at the anvil of arms.
The extension of the American post-office to Shanghai, whereby a
letter can be sent from Shanghai to New York for two cents gold is
a remarkable achievement, and speaks much for the generosity of the
Chinese Revenue Board in permitting this heavy competition. Many of
the other nations have post-offices, but the rates are higher. The
great international Opium Commission, its chairman the American,
Bishop Brent, which did the impossible by disenthralling a hundred
million habitués from the pythonic toils of opium in two years, sat in
Shanghai in February, 1909, in its most memorable conference. The chief
credit is due to America for leadership in the altruistic sentiment,
and to China, Britain, India and Hongkong for the immense altruistic
sacrifice of revenue. Now that the pipe and the poppy fields have been
wiped nearly out, it remains for the nations to stamp out morphia, the
hypodermic syringe and the drugged cigarette. And poor China is not the
maker of these infernal tools. Shanghai has a modern water, an electric
and street making plants, which are being copied through China as fast
as funds can be collected by the municipalities.
For a long time it was impossible to escape quickly from the deadly
summer climate, but railways and steamships have placed the inland
mountain resorts of Kuling, at Kowkiang, 3,000 feet high, and at Mokan
Mountain within easy reach. Phutho, the famous Buddhist mountain
island, is also near enough for quick steamship service. Every
debilitated Shanghai dweller used to go to far Japan at great cost to
recuperate, but this expense will be less necessary, as these nearer
resorts are opened up by a fast developing transportation service.
Kuling Mountain is a missionary resort. Before it was discovered
broken-down workers had to be sent to Japan or home on a furlough if
they were able to stand the long voyage and the boards were able to
stand the expense. The work of missionaries is the hardest under
dangerous pioneer conditions, and Kuling Mountain is enabling the
missionary quickly to restore herself or himself to efficiency without
leaving China. The waters around Shanghai, including Seven Mile Lake,
afford excellent facilities for house-boating. The municipality uses
tall, red-turbanned Sikh police from India, as well as native Chinese
lukongs, all under foreign officers. The docks, ways and engine shops
of Shanghai, both foreign and native owned, are equipping the waters
of Central China with small steamboats, though there is a strong
competition from Hongkong, Japan and Britain, and some competition from
Manila. Shanghai can not set out thousands of lanterns on a dozen hills
1,800 feet up in the night skies, as gorgeous Hongkong can, yet her
more intimate garden and house illuminations are famous in China. The
poet may justly rave and sigh:
“Oh! give me an eve in that fairy Cathay,
When a thousand near moons change the night into day.”
Even the shop signs are lanterns. China is the home of that
nonsputtering, cold vegetable tallow that makes the only perfect
lantern candles. The silver shops rival those of Hongkong, Nanking and
Soochow, but beware of the German and Japanese machine-made imitation.
The artist only can put his soul and a luck message for you into what
he makes slowly by hand; anything else is not an _objet d’art_. There
are very fine bronze statues in Shanghai, and the pottery stores are
a delight. The market stalls are a mine of yellow, red and pink in
all shades, for these sub-tropics are a hothouse of fruit: pumeloes,
persimmons, mangostines, lichees, oranges, bananas and nuts. The grape
and pear country is much farther north, even to Shangtung province.
There have been famous consuls at Shanghai, like Sir Harry Parkes,
whose statue is erected on the bund. He became British minister, and
did much for British diplomacy and world trade in Chinese wars. The
first government of the rebellion of October, 1911, opened in Shanghai,
with Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister. Shanghai, like Tientsin and
other river ports, has its great conservancy question in the matter
of keeping the channel free from loess and sand silt. Dredging is
infinitely too expensive, and the wit of man has to be matched against
the will of tide and stream. At Shanghai the course seems to be to keep
an immense tidal basin above the port, as at Seven Mile Reach, ready to
assist the ebb tide with a flushing flow. A Department of Rivers and
Harbors will yet be the busiest and have the largest budget in China.
At present, Conservancy Boards, assisted by loans and government help,
take care of the expensive and difficult work as best they are able.
The foreign engineers employed are exceedingly able men.