China, lies on the Grand Canal, northwest of Shanghai. It is the
center of a population of several millions. The city is intersected
with canals, and has, among its gates, six unique water gates. Hills
surround the wide plain, which is picturesquely marked also with
canals and camel’s-back bridges. The city has long been famous for its
culture, the beauty of its women, the rich designs of its imperial
silk looms, its artists, its luxurious gardens and its boat life.
Foreign settlements are both within the walls and in the suburbs.
The shops on Kwei Tsze, Dragon, Peach and other streets, manufacture
paper, wall-paper, lacquer, horn, glass, porcelain, furniture, ivory,
cotton, linen, iron, copper, etc. The city has launch connection
with the Yangtze ports and railway connection west to Nanking, north
to Tientsin, and south to Shanghai and Hangchow. In addition to the
wonderful sunken gardens in Shu Park, there are also public gardens,
libraries, modern schools, a governor’s palace, a famous monster
octagonal pagoda overlooking a picturesque, sinuous, bridged canal, a
massive customs bridge, the South Horse bridge, twin Burmese pagodas,
and in contrast with their richness, near by, a square Ink pagoda, a
provincial university, a Confucian temple, the very artistic South
Gate pagoda, statues in Tsang Lang pavilion, Mohammedan and Buddhist
cemeteries. Modern architecture is represented by the American
Methodist University, which has what the new Chinese particularly
appreciate, a fine clock tower. It is a sign of the times in China,
for the old Chinese ignored exact time. The American Presbyterians
have a most important publishing and translating department in Suchow,
which had much to do with germinating the wonderful New China, which
in Suchow particularly was ready for the seed. Modern medicine is
represented by Blake Hospital. The city was sacked by the Taipings and
captured by General Gordon, whose victorious legions thundered through
the east gate. So great an authority as the Japanese Marquis Ito
declared that the West never should have supported the Manchu against
the Taiping revolution; that the reforms of 1911 could have been
effected in 1863. I humbly differ with this opinion, as Hung and Yang
were very different leaders from Sun Yat Sen and General Li Yuan Heng
of the immortal revolution of October 10, 1911.
At Hankau, the first battlefield of the October, 1911, revolution, the
finest-developed foreign concession, running along the Yangtze River,
is owned by Britain, but many of the lessees of the palatial homes are
Russian tea merchants. All nationalities are admitted to the municipal
council of these model British settlements. Next to the British comes
a Russian settlement, with French, German and Japanese settlements
following. The Americans, as usual, club with the British settlement,
which is generally called “The Settlement”. These concessions were
granted by the treaty of Peking and following treaties. Hankau has
railway connection with Peking, and it will be linked up with the other
great centers west and south. The river connects it with the east,
and a riverine railroad will eventually be run from Nanking, which is
already railed up with Shanghai. The burned native city of Hankau is to
be reconstructed as the model city of China. Wide parallel avenues are
to run north and south and wide boulevards east and west. All blocks
and squares are to be geometrical. This is an astonishing departure
from the pig-path streets of the other native cities. The three cities
at the junction of the Han and Yangtze Rivers, Hankau, Hanyang and
Wuchang, are one metropolitan district, as are Brooklyn, New York and
Jersey City. At Wuchang, in the barracks of the Eighth Division, the
revolution actually broke out in force, as far as the regular army was
concerned, on October 10, 1911, before it extended to Hankau. Wuchang
was the headquarters of the famous Viceroy Chang Chih Tung, the first
of the conservative progressives, and one of the three viceroy props
of the Dowager Tse Hsi’s throne for thirty-five years. He was the most
honorable old-style mandarin that ever ruled the provinces of China.
The city is walled and is divided by Serpent Hill, which will be
tunneled. It has long been an educational center, the provincial native
university and modern schools being located here. Bishop Roots, of the
Ohio Episcopalians, founded the noted Boone University at Wuchang, and
the New York Episcopalians have St. Hilda’s Girls’ School. Stokes and
Thomas Hall, of Boone University, have Ionic Greek porticoes, which
look out of place in ornate warm China. The university draws its pay
pupils from the rich merchants and officials of Hankau. There is also
the Griffith John College of the London Mission, a normal school of
the American Baptists, a Swedish college; and Lord Cecil and Oxford
and Cambridge Universities propose to start their great university
here. It is a garrison and arsenal city, and is famous for its bronzes
and pagodas. On Flower Hill stands the famous three-story pagoda. The
German firm of Carlowitz has established an antimony smelter, and there
are extensive cotton mills, some of them now owned by Japanese bankers.
This red earth province is famous for its minerals, silk, tea, cotton,
paper, wax and particularly for the political independence of its
inhabitants, as the Eighth Division has immortally recorded in history.
Hanyang, a mile across the river, has the famous steel plant
established by Chang Chih Tung. It is becoming one of the most
important steel plants in the world, and Japan and Western America will
not call upon it in vain, as they are indeed now doing. Dock yards
will doubtless be established also. The American Baptists have a large
hospital at Hanyang. Hanyang has an arms manufactory, a cannon foundry
and a powder mill.
Much of Hankau was burned by those firebrands, the Imperial Third
Division, under General Feng, in November, 1911, a deed which the
south will never forget, if they ever forgive, as it was entirely
unnecessary. Many millions of property were destroyed in a land which
economically can not well afford the loss of one cent. The great city,
which numbered over a million inhabitants, will be rebuilt on the high
banks sixty feet above winter level of the two rivers. The river rises
over forty feet in summer. The Anglicans have established the church of
St. John the Evangelist, and the American Episcopalians have St. Paul’s
and St. Peter’s churches. There are fine clubs, a race and a golf
course, a foreign volunteer organization which has seen much active
service. There is also an English newspaper, the _Central China Post_,
and many native papers. The Russians are prominent because of their
tea trade. The steamship service is steadily growing, Hankau being at
the head of steamship navigation. Lighter boats are taken for Ichang.
The railway connects with Peking, and soon railways will run south,
east and west, and a bridge will cross the Yangtze River on the road to
Canton and Singapore. The Deutsche-Asiatische Bank, the Russo-Asiatique
Bank, other foreign banks, consulates and foreign traders, are housed
palatially. The great walled city is the most famous in China for its
trade and provincial guilds. As in old London, the trades have gathered
on one street, or in one district. Hankau is and will be the trade and
industrial hub, the Chicago of China, and here foreign firms should
locate without delay. The pioneer names connected with Hankau are
Bishop Ingle, whose splendid tomb can be seen in the foreign cemetery,
and Archibald Little, the explorer, author, tea trader, and the first
foreigner to run a steamer from Hankau to Chungking through the
terrific rapids of the glorious gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien.
Ichang is the advance post on the Yangtze for the commercial attack
on the Chingtu, Chungking and far western trade. It is at the head
of navigation, and is sending out its railway to conquer the gorges
and rapids. There is a walled riverine city up seventy feet of
stairs; a foreign settlement; golf course, to be sure; Episcopal trade
schools; clubs; consulates; Established Church of Scotland Mission;
interesting temples and pagodas. Ichang has for immemorial years been
the headquarters of perhaps the bravest boatmen in the world, the Hupeh
trackers and sailors of the gorges. Read a hundred books of travel and
you have their story. Here also is the headquarters of China’s red
life-boat service, an effective and daring company of men. Hupeh can
point with pride to such material in brawn and courage, on which to
build a provincial parliament or assembly. There are notable guilds in
Ichang.
Chifu, on the gulf of Pechili, is a noted bathing resort for foreigners
from all over the Far East. There is a splendid foreign quarter, with
a well-appointed club, churches and hotels. The view of the many
cone-shaped purple hills, the bluest of seas and yellowest of sands,
will not quickly be forgotten. There are islands which invite boating,
such as Temple and Lighthouse Islands. The finest fruit in China,
such as grapes, pears and apples, is grown at Chifu. The stock was
brought from America by Doctor Nevius and other missionaries in the
80’s. There is also a tree-cranberry, the Red Fruit (Hung Kwo). Worms,
fed on oak leaves, produce the famous tough Chifu silk, which is as
popular in China as abroad. Chifu was known for its blockade runners in
the Russian-Japan War of 1904–5. In the famous engagement of August,
1904, several Russian warships from Port Arthur broke through Admiral
Togo’s iron-bound investiture, and reached Chifu, but the Japanese
broke in, and despite international law, abducted the Russian torpedo
boat destroyer _Reshitelni_. The other Russian vessels they torpedoed
in the Chinese harbor. Chifu has a naval college of modern equipment.
The district produces straw braid in great quantities for the hats of
the fashionable women of the world, and her other products of beans,
peanuts and vegetable oils are well known. Gold and coal are found
near by, and many vessels call for coaling. Missionary societies are
active, and have a wide opportunity, for this is the home province of
Confucius and Mencius, and the inhabitants have a literary, political
and inquiring turn of mind. The Chinese of Chifu are noted for their
height, as compared with the busy little men of the southern provinces,
whom we know in America and Britain. Many of them emigrated to South
Africa in 1904 for a six years’ indenture, when they were all returned.
Chifu is to have railway connection with the German and Chinese roads
to the south and west. The city went over to the revolutionists
on November 10, 1911, and a republican column, reinforced by the
republican navy, operated from here against the imperialists at the
capital, Tsinan. Not far from Chifu, at Wei Hai Wei, the British keep a
strong garrison on China’s soil.
Tsingtau, in Shangtung province, is a German port, and a colonial
experiment which has attracted much attention because of the experiment
of Henry George’s “single-tax-on-land” plan, in its effort to attract
improvers of land, and spread out, instead of congest cities. In 1898
the Germans forced a lease of it at the same time that Russia occupied
Manchuria. The Japanese drove the Russians out of Manchuria, which
they have largely occupied themselves, treaties notwithstanding,
but no one has driven the Germans out of Shangtung, the most sacred
of the provinces of China. It was largely this German seizure that
precipitated the “Boxer” massacres in 1900 under the secret instigation
of the Empress Tse Hsi. The port and main colony is two hundred square
miles in area, but the most remarkable (the only one of its kind
except that of the Japanese in southern Manchuria) concession is that
of sixty miles wide and two hundred and fifty miles long from the
port back inland to Tsinan, the illustrious capital of the province,
which dates back to 1100 B. C. Through this land the Germans have
built a strategic railway, by which they could cut off communication
between the northern and southern provinces. The Chinese have never
forgiven and will never forgive this affront. It is therefore one of
China’s many unsettled questions. The bay is fifteen miles long by
fifteen miles wide, surrounded by hills from 1,500 to 3,000 feet high,
on which the Germans have planted forests in fine style. The ocean
boulevard is one of the five most scenic roads in the East, the others
being Hongkong’s Jubilee Road, Macao’s Cacilhas Bay Boulevard and the
Manila Luneta and Baguio Roads in the Philippines. The entrance to
the commercial harbor at Ta Pu Tao is two miles wide. Fortifications,
docks, godowns, railways with patented iron sleepers, hotels, banks,
hospitals, statues, magnificent homes, educational institutions for
both Germans and Chinese, have all been set out in characteristic
German methods. It was by this railway that the imperial troops were
provisioned in November, 1911, when the revolutionists had cut off
their ammunition at Shanghai, Hanyang and Nanking arsenals, and the
Chinese have not forgotten this, claiming that with all their criticism
of the “Yellow Peril” the German foreign office, at the beginning of
the revolution, was at heart pro-Manchu. The port was made a free port
on the pattern of Hongkong, and while a larger trade has developed,
Tientsin (with her port, Taku) holds her place in the competition.
Without the railway to Tsinan, Tsingtau could not hold her own as a
shipping center.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Spirited photograph of the turning tide, Pearl River, Canton.
Speedy slipper boats, sanpans, junks; modern steam launch. These
launches are rapidly transforming China’s transportation in the
south.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Wider maloos, or roads, are being broken through the cities by tearing
down the shops on one side of the way.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
A vigorous game of Association football at Boone (American) University,
Wuchang, Central China. Note the interested crowds.]
The sympathy between the natives and the foreigner which exists
at Newchwang, Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong, is lacking at stern,
military, exotic Tsingtau. Yet the Germans have set a splendid object
lesson in the precision and strength of the Tsingtau municipal
establishment. The fine German navy is always in evidence, and the
finer German army is everywhere. Many German industries have been
established, and are run with as grim a determination, being backed by
the “syndicates”, when they are losing money as when they are making
it. German merchants seem to thrive better, and prefer to keep their
stocks at the many international settlements, where trade has followed
natural channels. The coal wealth at Poshan and elsewhere, which the
German railway has developed, is enormous, but the Chinese are bitter
that the profits, on the principle of “all the traffic will bear”, all
go to Germany and not to China. It is noticeable, in contrast with the
British occupation of Hongkong and other colonies, that the Germans
have not kept the Chinese names for the hills and bays. Tsingtau has
splendid rail and ship connection north and south. Among the exports
to Europe are the famous silk and straw braid of the province, egg
products, black pigs, coal, wheat, millet, sorghum, maize, beans in
particular, peas, hemp, copper, iron, antimony, asbestos, silver,
sulphur, gold, rugs, the famous liu-li vitreous crockery of wonderful
colors, castor oil, peanuts, fruit of excellent quality, etc. Years ago
the German gunboat _Iltis_ was lost in a typhoon while trying to make
this port, where the Germans were later to establish themselves in a
rivalry with Russia’s aggression in Manchuria.
Tientsin, the great port of Peking, is another concession city, where
the various nations keep their civilizations and military and naval
forces bright for the inspection of the Chinese, who live contiguous
in a walled city, where Li Hung Chang and his protégé, Yuan Shi
Kai, made their names famous as viceroys and intermediaries between
Orient and Occident. The city is at the head of the historic Grand
Canal. Its river, the Pei Ho, runs up toward Peking. It has splendid
railway connection west, south and north. The national railways of
North China are managed here under the direction of Jeme Tien, Doctor
Wang and Chang Kee, with foreign advisers like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope
available. Rich coal mines, especially the famous old Kaiping, are
near, and there is a vast export of this product, as well as of carpet
wool, camel’s hair, camel’s-hair rugs, jujube preserves, etc., for the
world. As it is a most important banking center, a great amount of gold
is handled. Concessionaires have flocked here, eager for privileges,
and the game has opened anew. Foreign troops have grounded their arms
here more than at any international port in China.
On account of its flat surroundings, Tientsin is the least picturesque
city of China. There is a recreation ground, Victoria Gardens, native
gardens, a race course around a graveyard, a jockey club, much
society, naval and military life, theatricals, and facilities for the
many athletic, swimming, boating and skating clubs. Except in summer
the climate is charmingly dry; the wind and sand storms are greatly
feared, however. The loess dust is as penetrating as the alkali dust
of Arizona. A British military cemetery has many melancholy monuments
of the foreigner’s occupation of an alien land, where disease and
the casualties of many famous bombardments have mowed down their
costly toll. There are electric cars, electric light, gas and water
plants, fine clubs, churches, consulates, missions, a Y. M. C. A.,
the magnificent Gordon Hall, science and military colleges of the
best, hospitals, native and foreign schools of all grades, excellent
roads like the bund and Tai Ku, fine fur, silk and pottery shops. The
English newspapers like the _Times_ and _China Critic_ are important,
and many Chinese papers like the _Ching Wei Po_ are very influential
in the coming New China. There is much foreign military music, and the
natives are learning the delightful art, the viceroy’s band already
being clever. Many Chinese have made their names here under foreign
tutorship, Yuan Shih Kai and Tang Shao Yi, for instance; and Li Hung
Chang held forth here in his yamen on the river bank in his most
influential days. The Pei Yang University is the best native modern
university in China. The medical school trains with foreign help,
what China needs most at the moment, native physicians and nurses.
The port, more than any other, has for many years had a restraining
influence on the Manchus. Without it, no one knows what the reactionary
dynasty would have promulgated in the way of edicts. Tientsin is
interesting for its wonderful colored clay images, its excellent rugs,
its salt heaps, its fish-pies and hot potato pedlers, who shout their
goods along “Eternal Prosperity” and other native streets. There is
interesting French life on the Tai Ku Road in the French settlement.
The native walled city is a model in Chinese municipal government, as
far as activity and order, but not so far as beauty is concerned. Among
the many steamship lines, the native China Merchants (a government
line) has a branch here. A Conservancy Board has much work cut out for
it by the Pei Ho bar which hampers the growing shipping. The National
Chinese Posts and Telegraphs have branches. There are native temples,
and mosques for the Mohammedan Chinese, who have absorbed the old
Honan Jewish Chinese. Tientsin is very hot, and the summer resort for
bathing is up the coast of Pechili Gulf at Pei-Tai-Ho, where the Great
Wall meets the sea. This is the water resort also for the Pekingese
foreigner and foreignized native.
There is much industrial activity, and Tientsin, with its million of
inhabitants, will be a great center for the import of machinery for
the rich provinces of Pechili and Shansi and the vast territory of
Mongolia, as it will also be the port for the mining and agricultural
wealth of those rich provinces, including chilled meats, millet,
sugar, flour, wheat, beans, fruit, nuts, skins, furs, vegetable oils,
ores, etc. In some respects the possible new ports of Chin Wang Tao,
Chung How So, and Jinkow, on the Gulf of Pechili, could compete with
Tientsin. The Peking (British) Syndicate, of Shansi, and the Chinese
Engineering and Mining Company, of Pechili, with their immense
capitalization of $6,000,000 and $5,000,000, respectively, operate and
make loans from Tientsin, and, as in all the ports, there are many
land, coal, iron and milling companies, in which Chinese have shares.
The tendency is to grant fewer franchises to foreigners, and let the
Chinese exploit their own wealth in mines, transportation and public
service, buying only from the foreigner the necessary machinery, and
paying only to the foreigner a proper interest for loans, instead of
the immense bonuses and concessions that have often been obtained.
The tendency to water the stock of public service corporations and
monopolies so as to hide the immense earnings from an overcharged
public is creeping into China, and will be attacked by a courageous and
indefatigable government. Tientsin is one of the two places (Peking
being the other) from which it is most convenient for tourists to set
out to see the Great Wall of China, the world’s grandest monument. The
railway takes the tourist about one hundred and twenty miles along
the Pechili coast to Shan Hai Kwan, where the wall meets the sea,
and turning back climbs the vast mountain ranges, to the speechless
wonder of the sightseer. One of the Chinese proverbs on this subject
is: “Those who have seen least, stare most!” There are more Jews (not
the lost colonies of Chinese Jews absorbed by the Chinese Mohammedans
of Honan, Kwangtung and Kansu provinces) in business at Tientsin than
at any port in China, not excepting Hongkong. In the warehouse of the
American Trading Company, at Tientsin, six hundred men of the Fifteenth
United States Infantry were quartered in the stormy days of the first
months of 1912.
Peking stands at the end of the great seacoast plain as you go
up from Tientsin by railway or by boat. Beyond rise the Hsi Shan
(Western Mountains) and the Mongolian plateau and mountains. It is
the most expansive city in the republic, because it is more built
up than spacious Nanking; a court, a legation, a trading, an art,
an educational, a health center in autumn, a military, but not a
manufacturing center as yet, though it will be. It is more Mongolian
and Manchu, perhaps, than pure Han Chinese. It is splendidly laid out,
and with drainage and paved roads will attract fine equipages and even
greater wealth than now resorts there. It has a water system, electric
light, telephone, telegraph and railway service, wireless connection
with the coast, a modern railway station at the famous Chien Men gate.
Its fine Gothic Pe-Tang Cathedral, strangely within the purple imperial
city, with its spires, looks as though it had been transported from
France. Its porcelain temples are centers of wealth, if not of zeal
and history. Its monuments, especially the city wall and gates, are
the noblest. Its pavilions, like those in the late emperor’s garden,
are the most artistic in the land. It is comparatively modern among
the cities and capitals of China, going back only to 1150 A. D. as
a provincial and national center. Coleridge has sung of the city.
Kublai Khan, Marco Polo’s protector, was its first great emperor. The
creator of Ming monuments, the artistic Yung Lo, is its next greatest
emperor, and it was he who gave the present stamp to Peking. Its most
illustrious Manchu emperor was Kang Hi, the potter, to whom Louis XIV.
of France, signed himself as “your most dear and good friend, Louis.”
The city is laid out on the plan of an immense Mongol camp of the
plains, defense line within defense line three times, and not unlike
Cæsar’s plans when on the march. The trading section of the city is
filled with an immense gathering of camel, mule and pony trains, and
the new railways bring coal from east and south. A master hand could
turn the great camp into a hive of modern industry. Some day, perhaps
soon, that will occur. The Peking market is well supplied by the
Mongols of the plateau and the farmers of the Pechili plain, not to
speak of what railways, canals and roads bring in from all points. More
races and varied costumes are seen at Peking than at any other city,
and the teak-barred shops are treasure houses. The Tartar city faces
the north and in its center is the Forbidden, or Purple City, of the
old Manchu court. Between the wall of the latter and the south wall of
the Tartar city are the Wai Wu (Foreign Office), legations, hotels,
railway station, banks, churches, missions, universities, hospitals,
clubs, newspaper offices, shops, etc., all saying, according to the
conservative Hanlin Chinese, in the words of our _Belle of New York_,
“Of course you can never be like me, but be as like me as you’re able
to be”. The union of Protestant medical missions at Peking, so as to
form a hospital, medical college and nurses’ school of wide scope, has
attracted nation-wide and world-wide attention. The beginning of the
unifying of Protestants thus takes place effectively in the capital of
oldest China, instead of at Geneva, Berlin, London or New York.