Chapter V: Shanghai to Hankow (hankau)

From Hangchow I made a very interesting journey by canal and river to the important and historical city of Shao Hsing, with its beautiful environs, and from thence by inland waterways to Ningpo and its lovely lakes, passing through a region of great fertility, beauty, and prosperity. I must put on record that I made that journey without either a companion or servant, trusting entirely to the fidelity and goodwill of Chinese boatmen, and was not disappointed. At Ningpo the Commissioner of Customs kindly lent me the Customs tender, a fast-sailing lorcha, for a week, and engaging a servant, I visited the Chusan Archipelago in glorious weather, spending three days on the remarkable island of Putu, the Island of Priests, sacred to Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and two at Tinghai, on the island of Chusan, where the graves of the four hundred British soldiers who died there during our occupation present a melancholy spectacle of neglect and disrepair. The region beyond Shao Hsing technically belongs to another drainage area than that of the Yangtze, and is therefore passed over without further remark. I returned from Ningpo to Shanghai by sea.

The difficulties of getting a reliable interpreter servant who had not previously served Europeans and who was willing to face the possible risks and certain hardships of the journey I proposed were solved by the kindly intervention of friends, and I engaged a tall, very fine-looking, superior man named Be-dien, who abominated “pidgun,” spoke very fairly correct English, and increased his vocabulary daily during the journey. He was proud and had a bad temper, but served me faithfully, was never out of hearing of my whistle except by permission, showed great pluck, never grumbled when circumstances were adverse, and never deserted me in difficulties or even in perils.

My other preparations consisted chiefly in buying an open bamboo armchair to be carried in, plenty of tea and curry powder, and in discarding most of my few possessions.[14] As nobody in Shanghai had travelled in the region which I hoped eventually to visit, there was no information about it to be gained, and I left for my journey of six or seven months remarkably free from encumbrances of every kind.

Several foreign and one Chinese company own the eighteen fine steamers which keep up daily communication between Shanghai and Hankow, and dissipate the romance of travel by their white enamel, mirrors, gilding, and electric light. The _Poyang_, by which I was a passenger, and the only one, as far as Chinkiang, resembles most of the others, being of an American type, about 2000 tons burden, luxurious to a fault, and officered by efficient and courteous gentlemen.

Sailing at night, the lumpy sea which is apt to prevail in the estuary of the Yangtze is got over comfortably, and by the following morning it is possible to believe that the expanse of muddy water is actually a river, for there are hazy outlines of brown shores.

The first day on the river was cold and raw, as, indeed, were the days which followed it; the damp-laden air wrapped one round in its dismal chill. White enamel and mirrors were detestable. The only things which harmonised with the surroundings were the stove and the thick woollen carpet. Yet the mercury was at 45°—not bad for midwinter!

After passing Silver Island, a wooded rock, on which is a fine temple, we reached Chinkiang, the first of the treaty ports on the Yangtze, and well situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with the river. On my two visits I thought it an attractive place. It has a fine bund and prosperous-looking foreign houses, with a British consulate on a hill above; trees abound. The concession[15] roads are broad and well kept. A row of fine hulks connected by bridges with the shore offers great facilities for the landing of goods and passengers. Sikh police are much _en evidence_, the hum of business greets one’s ears, traffic throngs the bund, the Grand Canal is choked with junks, and the rule regarding sub-letting to Chinese being honoured only in the breach, the concession is covered with godowns and Chinese residences, and judging from appearances only, one might think Chinkiang a busier port than Hankow, the great centre of commerce in Central China. The gross value of the trade of this port is, however, only about £4,000,000 sterling annually, but is advancing. One great export is ground-nut oil, which is carried and shipped in baskets lined with paper. Another, which accounts for nearly one-fourteenth of the value of the exports, is the dried perianth of certain lily flowers (_Hemerocallis graminea_ and _Hemerocallis flava_), which is greatly esteemed as a relish with meats, specially with pork.

As tokens of the increasing prosperity of Chinkiang, it is interesting to note that recently two filatures, owned and managed by Chinese, were opened, the machinery in one of them being of Chinese manufacture, while the factory was erected without foreign aid. The hands employed are women, who work twelve hours daily, at 10½_d._ a day, Sunday being a holiday. The success of this, under native management, was considered dubious. A distillery, for distilling spirit from rice, is another sign of progress (or retrogression?), and our German rivals have done a very “neat thing” in starting an albumen factory, in which the albumen, dexterously separated from the yolks of the eggs, is made into slabs, which are sent to Germany for use in photography, the preparation of leather, and the printing of cotton, etc. The eggs are ducks’ eggs solely. The yolks undergo some preservative treatment, and after being packed in barrels are exported for use in confectionery and bar-rooms. My informant, Consul Carles, is silent on the use to which they are then applied, but doubtless it is well known to frequenters of such establishments.

The workmen in out-of-doors trades, such as masons and carpenters, seem to comport themselves much like our own, at all seasons of the year drinking tea, resting, and smoking whenever it pleases them, taking a long siesta in summer, and in winter not beginning work till nine. The building trade is a guild,[16] and there are five large guilds in Chinkiang, with guild funds for the relief of widows and orphans of former members. There are various missions in Chinkiang, and some general stir, which may be expected in a city of 140,000 souls.

The next day, which was raw and grim, and made the stove-side a magnet, we reached Wuhu, the ugliest, if I may be allowed to say so, of all the Yangtze ports, but its trade is not unprosperous, having more than doubled in the last ten years, its gross value as to the principal articles of export and import being now nearly £2,000,000 sterling a year.[17]

There again the Germans have started an albumen factory, which employs fifty women and ten men. It takes 7000 eggs to produce 100 pounds of albumen. Feathers to the amount of £23,000 for the last year of returns were also exported to Germany for the making of feather beds.

The most interesting export of Wuhu to the general reader is, however, “China ink,” which is largely produced in the province of NGANHUI. The small, black sticks, decorated with Chinese characters in gold, are known and appreciated by us all. From Wuhu it goes to all parts of China and of the world. In 1895 _two tons_ of it were exported from Shanghai to foreign countries. Nearly the whole of the writing done in the vast Chinese empire, as well as in Japan, Korea, Tonquin, and Annam, is done with this beautiful ink, which is rubbed down on a stone ink-slab, and applied with a sable brush. This is altogether apart from its value to the water-colour art of all nations. It is made from the oil expressed from the large seeds of the _Elœococca verrucosa_, sesamum oil, or colza oil, varnish, and pork fat, burned, the resulting lampblack being of various degrees of fineness according to the process adopted; gold leaf and musk are added. There are a dozen different grades, and the price varies from 2_s._ to 140_s._ per pound, a pound containing about thirty sticks.

Various industries, including a steam flour mill, have been started by the Chinese in Wuhu, and it is a city of 80,000 people, but to a mere passer-by it is most uninteresting, and its busy streets had neither novelty nor picturesqueness enough to repay me for a struggle through the slush.

That night, while we were dining, there was a tremendous bump, a crash, and a stoppage. The junk we cut into went down like a stone with all hands. Not a shout or cry was heard. Boats were lowered, and we hung about for an hour; it was not very dark. A Frenchman brutally remarked, “Good! there’ll be some yellow skins fewer.” That was all.

The next day we reached Kiu-kiang, another treaty port, with a pretty, shady bund, and pleasant foreign houses in shady gardens, but it has a sleepy air for a city of 55,000 souls and a trade worth two millions and a quarter a year.

Totally destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion in 1858–59, it has been rebuilt, is surrounded by a defensive wall six miles in circumference, and has regained more than its former prosperity, its imports having increased steadily for the last five years.

I have mentioned only the treaty ports, but from Chinkiang westwards the great cities on or near the bank divide attention with the engineering works and the singular vagaries of build and rig in the countless craft on the river. Among the cities on or near the river are Yang Chow Fu, Nanking, the southern capital, with its ruined splendours and picturesqueness, Taiping Fu, the great and prosperous city of Nganking Fu, and many others, besides countless villages, which are apt to lead an amphibious existence. After leaving Kiu-kiang, the most prominent objects of interest are the Great and Little Orphans, picturesque rocks about 300 feet in height, rising direct from the bed of the river, and appropriated, as all picturesque sites are, by the Buddhists for religious purposes. The Great Orphan is near Hu-kow, a bluff on the river crowned by an inaccessible-looking building, half temple, half fortress, close to the junction of the important Poyang lake with the Yangtze, which is effected by a short, broad stream.

A city on a dead level can scarcely be imposing, and Hankow is not impressive from the water. Some chimneys of Russian brick tea factories rise above the greenery of the bund, and on the right bank of the broad Yangtze, above a squalid suburb of Wu-Chang, appear some tall chimneys belonging to a Chinese cotton factory under native management, but differing from those at Shanghai in that no women or girls are employed, the Viceroy considering that such occupation for women is opposed to good morals and Confucian principles! On an elevation there is also a camp with crenelated walls, an abundance of fluttering silk banners, and various antiquated engines of war.

The day was damp and grim, but the kindly welcomes, cordial hospitality, and big blazing fires at the British Consulate, where I was received, made amends for the external chill, and my visit to Hankow is among my many pleasant memories of China. Later in the day Dr. Griffith John called on me, the veteran missionary of the L.M.S., great as an evangelist, a Chinese writer and translator, and as an enthusiast. The L.M.S. has its mission buildings, which include a church, dispensaries, and hospitals, and the houses of its missionaries, in some of the pleasant shady streets which intersect the settlement. They have various agencies at work, and are full of hope as to the result. I understand that Dr. Griffith John, who has devoted his life to China and means to die there, partly from his devotion and partly from his literary gifts, is much respected by many of the official and upper classes, and has much influence.