Chapter C: W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first (4)

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.

Suchow, a walled city of ten miles in circumference, the Venice of 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.

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.
]

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.]

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.

How much of the modern and the old, the Oriental and the Occidental, are mixed up in this wonderful city? There are modern steam rollers; donkey and camel trains, blue-turbaned couriers on Mongol ponies; springless, hooded Peking carts, the mule wearing a velvet cloth; bouncing mule litters; camel trains swaying up and down like the billows of the Yellow Sea; modern water tanks borne by steel towers; a modern zoo with a dragon-carved gate; automobiles; victorias drawn by swift Mongol or black Szechuen ponies; Russian droshkes drawn by three ponies going different paces; men tugging single-axle carts by long ropes and harness; coolies with baskets and boxes balanced from the bamboos on their sweating shoulders; wheelbarrow men transporting huge bags of millet or salt; men throwing water on the streets with big wooden spoons; rickshaws, and passenger chairs with ventilators and windows. There is a great military camp outside the walls. In the Portuguese cemetery outside of the west gate lie the famous Jesuits who nearly made the Manchu dynasty Catholic in Kang Hi’s day. In the revered British cemetery lie the bodies of the famous pioneers of our race, who, during the centuries, have fought forward the most advanced line of our civilization. Many of the graves and memorials, the trees and walls were desecrated in the “Boxer” outrages of 1900. There is a cemetery for that notorious tribe of palace eunuchs in the northwest of the Tartar city, and sons had to be bought, or “forged” for them so as to pay the necessary grave worship of Confucianism. There is the new Peking Club, the second in cost in the Far East; the Tsung Hua College, which trains students who are to go to America and England; and where the old examination stalls and the Hanlin College stood under the ancient “literati” system, are the modern parliament buildings (Tzu Cheng Yuan); also National University, and the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office) halls, where Yuan Shih Kai had his headquarters in the exciting days of 1911–12. Towering over the Tartar city are the Gothic towers of the French Pe Tang Cathedral, which was successfully defended by Bishop Favier during the 1900 siege. The white marble pailoo arch to the German ambassador, who was assassinated in 1900, is notable, as are also numerous other marble, porcelain and painted arches, and marble bridges, balustrades and statues of lions. The statue to the German was erected under foreign compulsion and is hated. The wonderful street bazaars of Chien Men gate, Lung Fu Temple Street, wide Kaiser Street; the important Methodist and Union Hospitals of Hatamen Street; Legation, Tsung Pu, Tung Tan, Liu Li, Koulan, Butcher, Fan Tan, Lantern, Jadestone, Bamboo, Meridian and other leading streets should be visited. There is a Peking Tiffany; the firm name is Hsing Lung Tien. The city’s kilns and weavers are famous for their porcelain, cloisonné and tapestries. Pedlers, however, bring almost everything, from the cheapest to the costliest, to one’s door. There are many native papers like the influential _Chun Kuo Pao_.

Some of the legations have been rebuilt since the 1900 siege, the Americans in particular occupying near the Chien Men gate a series of costly, but not architecturally proper buildings for artistic China. The British legation near the Wu Men gate is notable for two reasons: because it occupies Duke Liang’s Chinese palace, and because its compound was the center of the foreigners’ quarters in the Peking siege of 1900. The French legation rented Duke Tsin’s palace. In the sacred urns in the Temple Park in the south of the Chinese city, the bodies of the Sikh soldiers, who died or were killed in the 1900 siege, were cremated. The Art Gallery in the imperial city is of particular interest. The Lama (Tibet Buddhist) Temple, with its ornate pailoo arch, should be seen. The priests wear orthodox yellow robes and hats, and a red cloak with squares, which represent the rags of poverty as realistically as art cares to go. There is an immense statue of Buddha, and some small obscene statues which have been draped by the request of the legations, to the great and joyful surprise of the priests, who have discovered that they are now able to make more money in fees than when the statues were undraped, so perverse is tourist curiosity! A walk on the walls should not be neglected, especially where, between the Chien Men and Hata Men gates the American, British and other foreigners made their long stand in 1900. The ponderous fort-temples on the walls, with their interesting exhibit of columns and galleries, are characteristic. Red is the color of the Chinese, yellow and green the color of the Manchus, and the tiling of the roofs indicates where each predominates.

Peking has its many military memories. In 1900 the Ninth and Fourteenth Infantry, the Sixth Cavalry and the Marines of the cruiser _Newark_ of the Americans fought their way here from the coast in General Gaselee’s union column of relief. The Wei-Hai-Wei Regiment of British Chinese in blue and white, came, too, with quotas from the forces of France, Germany, Russia and Japan. The Sun Wui Club brings leading Chinese and Occidentals together; that is, those Occidentals who have a maximum of good sense and national ambition and a minimum of out-of-date, insular “snobbery”. We once had a similar international club in Canton, which did good work in destroying difference and welding approximation. The Russian Mission in the Pei Kwan section of Peking is almost the only effort of the vast Greek Church to missionize China. Good music is now available, for both the National Customs and native armies, and all the foreign legations have trained bands, and there are some orchestras. The Union Medical College and Hospital on Hatamen Street is most notable, not only because of its effectiveness, but because the various evangelical denominations have first united in far away China. Some writers, like Lord Salisbury’s son, Lord Cecil, think this is the forerunner of union elsewhere. The example has been copied generally in China, as at Nanking, Tsinan, Canton, etc., and before long all medical, hospital and teaching work will be on the union plan in all the large centers. The Chinese are eager to assist, and join in with a whole heart. Reform started in Peking in 1898, when Kang Yu Wei and other Cantonese, trained at Hongkong, got the ear of the Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu, and induced him to issue the famous reform edicts.

The peony gardens are notable, and the courts and gardens of the many temples, inside and outside of the walls, exhibit many horticultural treasures, but Northern China in general is more notable for wild flowers than hothouse products. There are Manchu tombs, and the Manchu palaces and gardens of Yuan Ming, Wan Shou and Ih Ho to the northwest to visit, and temples in the western hills, where the foreigners resort during the blazing summer of the plains, if they do not care to take the railway down to the bathing resort of Pei Tai Ho, or Chifu. The scenic railway running north takes one to the glorious Nankou pass in the Great Wall and to the Ming tombs. The station is at Liu Tsin outside the walls. To the northwest are the villages where the Manchu pensioners or bannermen were kept in idleness, which was one cause of the 1911 rebellion. As in many of the Chinese cities, there is a clepsydra water clock to be seen. Mints, banks, engraving plants, printing presses, electricity, modern water-works; primary, intermediate, trade and high schools, have all come to the reforming capital. There have been large hoards of bullion in the imperial city. The empress dowager, Tse Hsi, left many millions of silver, which were used to run the government for weeks during the rebellion in 1911–12. This money was collected by the eunuchs, compelling every official to pay for his daylight audience and honors, and crimes were “planted” on officials so as to have the excuse of fining them and thus adding to the Manchus’ imperial reserve. Great granaries exist where the tribute rice from the southern provinces was stored for a million or more subsidized Manchu soldiers and hangers-on. This rice formerly came to Tientsin and Peking by the Grand Canal and Pei Ho River. It was later brought north, through Li Hung Chang’s intervention, by the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, in which the government held the majority of the shares. The history of spying, intriguing, concession-hunting and diplomatic contests swells its largest at Peking, and old Legation Street and the Wai Wu Pu have heard perhaps more secret stories than any other diplomatic quarter of the world. Men of all nations, Manchus and Chinese, eunuchs, women, human parrots, dictographs secretly placed, waste-paper baskets, keys to private codes, the kitchen cabinet, keyhole sentinels, tapped telephone wires, field-glasses masked behind curtains, letter sweaters and those adders in the bosom, society detectives, have all had their part in the old Peking game of intrigue. Foreign trusts have come over the water to battle with local distrusts! Understanding has not always honestly wooed misunderstanding. Evasion has alternately successfully and unsuccessfully battled with invasion. “When is a promise not a promise” has been answered by, “At Peking, on both sides of the ethnological pale”.