THE FOREIGNERS—HANKOW AND BRITISH TRADE
Hankow or Hanmouth, Wu-Chang Fu, the capital of HUPEH, and Han Yang
would be one city were they not bisected by the broad, rolling Yangtze,
nearly a mile wide, and its great tributary the Han. Hankow and Han Yang
are on the north bank, and Wu-Chang on the south. The “congeries of
cities,” as the three have been aptly termed, is about 600 miles from
Shanghai. Till 1863 Hankow was an open city, but the dread of an attack
by northern banditti that year led the Government to enclose it with a
stone wall, four miles in circuit and thirteen feet in height, raised by
a brick parapet to eighteen feet.
Hankow considers that it has the finest bund in China, and I have no
wish to dispute its assertion. In truth its length of 800 yards, its
breadth of 80, its lofty and noble river wall and fine flights of stone
stairs, ascending 40 feet from low water, its broad promenade and
carriage-way and avenue of fine trees, with the “palatial” houses, very
similar to those of Shanghai and Singapore, on the other side in large
gardens and shaded by exotic trees, make it scarcely credible that the
first authentic visit of Europeans to the city was that made by Lord
Elgin in H.M.S. _Furious_ in 1858, and that the site for this stately
British settlement was only chosen in 1861, the year in which the port
was opened to foreign trade.
Among the principal buildings are the British and French Consulates, the
residence of the Commissioner of Customs, and the Municipal Buildings.
There is a Municipal Council charged with the same functions as that at
Shanghai, and Sikh policemen make a goodly show. Dead levels are not
attractive unless they are bounded by the living ocean, and the bund is
dull and gives one the impression that the British settlement has “seen
better days.”
The foreign community consists of the consuls and their staffs, the
_employés_ of the Chinese Maritime Customs, a very few professional men,
a large number of British and American missionaries, and the members of
British and other European mercantile firms, Russians taking a very
prominent position. The residents have carried their amusements with
them, and amuse themselves on a small scale after the fashion of those
at Shanghai. There is a popular club which welcomes passing visitors,
and combines social attractions with a library, reading-room, and
billiard-room, keeping in touch with the world by frequent telegrams.
There is a creditable newspaper—the _Hankow Times_, which has papers on
Chinese, social, and other subjects—an episcopal service, a hotel, a
livery stable, and other necessaries of the British exile’s life.
Kindness and cordial hospitality to strangers are not less
characteristic of Hankow than of the less frequented ports.
The climate is not an agreeable one. The summers, lasting from May till
the middle of September, are hot and damp, and severe cases of malarial
and typhoid fever are not unusual. The atmosphere is thick and stagnant,
and there are swarms of mosquitoes. Some of the men residents pass the
hottest summer nights on the bund to get the little air stirring on the
river, and the Chinese sleep on their roofs and in the streets. The
autumn months are very pleasant, the mercury falls to the freezing point
in January, and after light frosts there is a damp, raw period till warm
weather sets in again.
Neither Hankow nor its neighbours have any special features of interest
except their gigantic trade. The populations are not openly unfriendly;
but Consul Carles, his wife, and I, although attended, had mud thrown at
us at Han Yang.
The glory of Hankow, as well as its terror, is the magnificent Yangtze,
nearly a mile wide even in winter, rolling majestically past the bund,
lashed into a dangerous fury by storms, or careering buoyantly before
breezes; in summer, an inland sea fifty feet deep. In July and early
August Hankow is at its worst, and the rise of the river is watched with
much anxiety. The bund is occasionally submerged, boats ply between
houses and offices, the foundations of buildings are softened, exercise
is suspended, gardens are destroyed, much business stands still, frail
native houses are swept away—as many of those perched on piles were,
with much loss of life, in the summer rise of 1898—and thousands are
deprived of shelter and livelihood, and when the water falls widespread
distress and a malarious film of mud are left behind. The appearance of
the SZE CHUAN water, the red product of the “Red Basin” of Richthofen,
indicates to the Chinese intelligence the approaching subsidence of the
water, and points to a fact of some scientific interest. During the
ordinary summer rise the whole region, viewed from Pagoda Hill, has the
dismal aspect of a turbid, swirling inland sea, above which many
villages with trees appear, built on mounds, probably of ancient
construction.
Hankow is the most westerly port in which the Mexican dollar is actually
current, and even in its back country copper _cash_ are preferred to
either coined or uncoined silver. For western travel, over and above any
amount of cash which the traveller can burden himself with, “sycee”
silver is necessary, which can be obtained from the agency of the Hong
Kong and Shanghai Bank, as well as “good paper”—Chinese drafts on
Chinese merchants of repute in the far west. Silver “shoes,” as the
uncouth lumps of silver obtained from the banks are called, are worth
about fifty taels, but the tael itself is not of fixed value, the
Haikwan tael, in which the Customs and some other accounts are kept,
varying from the Shanghai tael, and that again from the Hankow tael, and
so on.
Nor is this all. The silver itself is unfortunately of variable quality.
Hankow sycee is of 2½ per cent. higher “standard” than Shanghai sycee,
and SZE CHUAN silver is of higher standard than that of Hankow, so that
the traveller is subject to frequent losses on his bullion, besides
suffering a good deal from delays and annoyances consequent on weighings
and occasional testings, though the trained eye alone can usually detect
the inferior “touch” of his silver. “Confusion worse confounded”
describes the currency system, if “currency” is an applicable word, when
once the simplicity of the Mexican dollar is left behind, and I ceased
to be surprised at the employment of Chinese “shroffs” by foreign firms,
for what but an Oriental intellect could unravel the mysteries of
“touch,” the differences in the value of taels, the soundness and
genuineness of _cash_, and the daily variations and entanglements of the
exchanges?
In a treaty port which has been open for thirty-nine years, and which in
1898 had a net import trade of £3,422,669, and a net export trade of
£4,643,048, and of which, so far as the import of foreign goods is
concerned, the British share is one half, the stranger naturally expects
to find British merchants piling up big fortunes, and the size and
stateliness of the houses on the bund gives colour to this expectation.
But, in fact, while the British firms in Hankow are merely branches of
houses in Shanghai, their Chinese rivals, who have driven them out of
the import trade, are Hankow merchants with branches in Shanghai. There
are about eleven of these big native firms which supply the Hankow
market with British cotton goods, and which have risen on the ruins of
British competitors. These wealthy firms, dealing wholesale, supply the
up-country merchants and local shopkeepers, buying goods through their
branches in Shanghai, which employ Chinese brokers speaking “pidgun”
English to buy the particular goods they want from the foreign
importers. They keep well up to date regarding Shanghai auction sales,
of which they get catalogues in Chinese, and are quick to seize on every
small advantage. The British merchant was shortsighted enough totally to
neglect to open up direct business relations with the up-country
merchants, and was content to deal entirely with the Hankow native
importer, to whom he left all the advantages of local connection and
knowledge.[18]
This unfortunate state of things does not seem likely to improve either
in Hankow or elsewhere. Our methods of doing business are frank and
open, and the Chinese merchants have become as well acquainted with
foreign trade methods as are Europeans themselves, while of their
customs in trade and their arrangements among themselves for conducting
business we know scarcely anything, and have no organisations equivalent
to those centred in the guilds. Whether it is too late to stem the tide
which is gradually sweeping business out of foreign into native hands I
know not, but though actual British trade may not suffer, the openings
for young men in mercantile houses in China are diminishing yearly,
unless capital, push, a preference for business over athletics, a
working knowledge of the Chinese language and business methods, and a
determination to succeed, should develop the trade and traffic of the
Tungting lake, and turn to account the great possibilities for
Lancashire trade in HUNAN, even though the ground lost in other
directions can never be recovered.
As to the trade of Hankow, naturally an interesting subject, I shall
make very few remarks, the first being that in the year 1898, 550,000
tons of British shipping entered the port, against 60,624 of all other
nationalities, exclusive of the Chinese, Japan taking the lead among
them with 32,099. Hankow has lost much of her once enormous tea trade,
owing to deterioration in quality and the change of fashion in
England.[19] Russian merchants now have the tea trade in their hands;
they have factories for the production of “brick tea” at both Hankow and
Kiu-kiang, while in 1898 five of the big steamers of the Russian
Volunteer Fleet loaded tea direct for Odessa, and one steamer for St.
Petersburg.
German and Austrian firms have started several albumen factories in
Hankow, the best of the product being used in photography; the Japanese
are now running two steamers a week between it and Shanghai, and will
not improbably “cut in” ahead of others for the trade and traffic of the
lake and inland rivers. Numbers of these alert traders have come up the
Yangtze, and in their practical way are spreading themselves through the
country, finding out the requirements and tastes of the people, and
quietly pushing their trade in small articles, while Japan is also going
ahead with her larger exports, the quantity of her cotton yarn imported
into Hankow having risen from 150 cwt. in 1895 to 260,332 in 1898,
displacing Indian yarn to a considerable extent. Japanese merchants,
like the German, do not despise _littles_ in trade, and are content with
small profits, and most of what is known as the “muck and truck” trade
is in their hands, in extending which they will prove formidable
competitors of each other. Nor ought the competition of Japan in the
larger branches of trade to be ignored by us, for to extend her markets
is an absolute necessity of her existence, and the markets of China are
a fair field for her commercial ambition.
I cannot omit all mention of kerosene oil, the import of which increases
“by leaps and bounds,” American taking the lead, and which is greatly
diminishing the production of the native illuminating oils. This
kerosene oil, imported from Russia, America, and Sumatra, to the
quantity, in 1898, of 16,055,000 gallons, goes from Hankow through six
provinces. It is one among the agents which are producing changes in the
social life of China. I have seen the metamorphosis effected by it in
the village life of the Highlands of Scotland and Korea, where the
saucer of fish oil, with its smoky wick, and the dim, dull _andon_ have
been replaced by the bright, cheerful “paraffin lamp,” a gathering point
for the family, rendering industry and occupation possible. Chinese
rooms are inconceivably dark, and smoking, sleeping, and gambling were
the only possible modes of getting rid of the long winter evenings among
the poorer classes till kerosene oil came upon the scene.
Hankow has eight regular guilds, which are banks and cash shops, rice
and grain dealers, clothiers and mercers, grocers and oilmen,
ironmasters, wholesale dealers in copper and metals, dealers in KIANGSI
china, and wholesale druggists, Hankow having one of the largest and
best drug markets in China. It would be well if we realised the extreme
importance of these and similar trade organisations. We may talk of
spheres of interest and influence, and make commercial treaties giving
us the advantages of the “most favoured nation” clause; but till we
understand the power of the guilds, and can cope with them on terms of
equality, and are “up to Chinese methods of business,” we shall continue
to see what we are now seeing at Hankow and elsewhere, which I have
already alluded to. There is much that is admirable in these guilds, and
their trades-unionism, combinations, and systems of terrorism are as
perfect as any machinery of the same kind in England. In any matters
affecting the joint interests of a trade, the members or their delegates
meet and consult. The rules of guilds are both light and severe, and no
infringement of them is permitted without a corresponding penalty; these
penalties vary from a feast and a theatrical entertainment being
inflicted on the guilty person to expulsion from the guild in a flagrant
case, which means the commercial ruin of the offender.