# A wandering student in the Far East/Shanghai to Ichang

PART II.
ACROSS THE HEART OF CHINA
"The principal advantage of travel must be the opportunity which it affords us of becoming acquainted with human nature; knowledge, of course, chiefly gained where human beings most congregate—great cities and the courts of princes: still, one of its great benefits is that it enlarges a man's experience, not only of his fellow-creatures in particular, but of nature in general. Many men pass through life without seeing a sunrise; a traveller cannot."
—Lord Beaconsfield.
"Through the midst of this great city [Ch'êngtu] runs a large river. It is a good half-mile wide, and very deep withal, and so long that it reaches all the way to the Ocean Sea—a very long way, equal to 80 or 100 days' journey. And the name of the river is Kian-suy. The multitude of vessels that navigate this river is so vast, that no one who should read or hear the tale would believe it. The quantities of merchandise also which merchants carry up and down this river are past all belief. In fact, it is so big that it seems to be a sea rather than a river!"—The Book of Ser Marco Polo.
CHAPTER II.
SHANGHAI TO ICHANG.
Shanghai is an example of one of the curious anomalies which have been generated by the collision of Western progress with Eastern stagnancy. It presents, indeed, an astonishing phenomenon, a European city—not unfit to be the capital of many a European country—dumped down on a Chinese mud-flat. The mud-flat is still the property of China, who receives ground-rent from the foreigner who has spread his palatial mansions over it; but beyond receiving this consideration she has little say in the management of the settlement, which entrusts a municipal council with the conduct of its affairs. Shanghai is, in fact, an independent republic with a government of its ​own, which treats all other authorities with whom it is brought into contact—Chinese provincial officials, foreign consuls, the legations at Peking—as so many external bodies to be met and dealt with upon terms of equality.
A street in Shanghai.
​river-front which were sold at fifty or sixty dollars a mow in the early days when the first committee of roads and jetties was formed (1844), are worth as many thousands to-day. It is estimated that Great Britain alone has here vested interests of the huge value of £250,000,000.
The astute business man of China soon realised the advantage of living under equitable government, and, contrary to the intentions of its founders, flocked into the settlement. To-day the Chinese lady, decked in her most splendid satins and silks, may be seen driving in her smart victoria along Bubbling Well Road, while the Chinese gentleman bowls gaily along in his latest pattern motor-car from Europe. With this influx of Chinese into the republic, the question of courts of law for so mixed a community, accustomed to codes of law so widely divergent as those of China and Europe, presented itself for solution, and gave rise to the establishment in 1863 of a "Mixed Court" for the trial of Chinese in cases in which foreigners were involved, the Chinese magistrates being assisted in their functions by ​a foreign assessor. Out of a dispute between the municipality and the Chinese magistrates of the "Mixed Court" as to the custody of certain prisoners, there arose in December 1905 a riot known to history as the "Mixed Court" riot. Perhaps increasing sensitiveness on the part of the Chinese at the glaring success of the foreigner at his gates was to some degree responsible for this upheaval, which necessitated the landing of blue-jackets and marines. If that be so, the most interesting outcome of the trouble is to be found in yet one more anomaly, in strict keeping with the anomaly provided by the existence of Shanghai itself—namely, the creation of a Chinese volunteer corps upon European pattern, which has, at its own request, sought to be embodied in the foreign corps. Thus does China and non-China combine and interact under foreign governance upon Chinese soil.
The importance of Shanghai as a commercial port is sufficiently demonstrated by a glance at its trade returns. In 1906 its shipping (inward and outward) aggregated 17¼ million tons, while the gross value of its trade was ​421,956,496 Hk. Tls., equivalent to £69,500,000. It is, indeed, a vast commercial emporium at which the products of European and American factories are first collected before being distributed to the consumers of China, and for this very reason it is not here that the would-be investigator will find material for forming a just estimate of the future of China, commercial, industrial, or political: Shanghai, in other words, is not China, it is an exotic which flourishes because it is not subjected to Chinese conditions. To form any adequate idea of China, the inquirer must leave the foreign settlements which dot the coast-line and travel into the interior of this vast empire. There he may observe for himself the manner of life of the real Chinese,—the teeming millions who live the immemorial life of China, as distinct from the men of the coast, who rub shoulders daily with peoples thinking other thoughts and observing a different mode of life from themselves. He will live among the Chinese people and learn for himself the nature of their requirements, and their ability or otherwise to satisfy them. He will come into contact, to ​put the case into the phraseology of the economists, with the outstanding features of Chinese demand and supply, and he will be enabled to form some idea of the probable and possible demand of the Chinese for commodities which they cannot themselves supply, and of the extent of their purchasing capacity.
Nowadays, too, he will come into contact with a new belief,—new, that is to say, as far as China is concerned,—the belief of a people in a national destiny. In the treaty ports much may be heard of a new China, but much that is met with in the treaty ports is mere froth and bubble; and to be real, the spirit of regeneration must be found moving among the people, in the villages and in the country towns hidden away from the eye of Europe in the dim recesses of the inland provinces, severed from the outer world by hundreds and even thousands of miles of medieval communications—unimaginable cart roads and tortuous coolie tracks. If new forces are found stirring the quiet and stagnation which for centuries have brooded over these back-waters of the great onward-flowing current of the world's ​progress, then we may begin to view the problems presented by a renovated China in the light of problems at last within the range of the practical, and destined to have immense influence upon our own future. And when we have grasped something of the significance of the movement, and realised—to quote the words of Dr Martin—that "its object is not a changed dynasty nor a revolution in the form of Government, but that, with higher aim and deeper motive, it promises nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest, most populous, and most conservative of Empires," then we may face with all the seriousness which the case demands the gigantic possibilities which are opened out in connection with the future relations of East and West. When we begin to sum up the assets of China,—its 400,000,000 of frugal and industrious people, its incalculable mineral wealth scattered bounteously over a compact territory nearly half as large again as the United States of America, its variety of soil and climate, its immense rivers and vast sea-board,—we need not feel surprised if the mind is staggered at the thought of ​what a regenerated China may mean to posterity. Even the present generation will see ​vast changes in East Asia, and it was with my mind full of such thoughts as are suggested by considerations of this kind that I started on a journey which was to take me into the very heart of China, up the swelling bosom of the mighty Yang-tsze, into the recesses of the wide-stretching and wealthy province of Ssŭch'uan, across the bleak highlands of Yün-nan, and out, finally, on the far side, through the tropical swamps and jungles of British Burma. Let me invite the reader whose interest is sufficiently aroused to accompany me.
One steals away from Shanghai at some indefinite hour in the dead of night, and when one wakes up in the morning the great buildings of the busy bustling commercial metropolis are lost to sight, and on all sides the waters
​of the Yang-tsze roll voluptuously in turbid yellow flood towards the sea, between low and scarcely perceptible banks ten miles apart. You may spend an unprofitable morning in guessing at the number of cubic feet of muddy water which pass by you every second, for little else will suggest itself to any one relying upon his external surroundings to set in motion his train of thought; and when you are tired of guessing, you may look up the answer in Mr Little's encyclopædic dissertation upon the Yang-tsze, and marvel at the divergence between your own estimate and the 1,000,000 cubic feet which you learn is the volume of water brought down per second at Hankow, 600 miles farther up, in the month of June. There is a story to the effect that when a certain English monarch threatened to remove his presence from London as a mark of his royal displeasure, the mayor and corporation made bold to express the hope that, when removing his court and his presence, he would vouchsafe to leave them the Thames. Yet, compared with the Yang-tsze, the Thames is a ​veritable stream, and can boast of a discharge at London of but 1/244 of that of the Yang-tsze 1000 miles from the sea.
The afternoon provides some mild excitement, for the channel narrows down to little more than half a mile, and from the summits of a low range of hills on the right bank a dozen or more heavy guns frown grimly down upon the waters. We are passing the well-known fortified position of Kiang Yin, to which China looks in the day of trouble to guard the great artery leading to the heart of her empire. Beyond Kiang Yin the river widens out once more, and the sun sets in a blaze of glory behind an uninterrupted rim of level land.
Early on the second morning Nanking is reached. Little of the city is to be seen from the river except the inevitable stone wall, which here comes down within a short distance of the river's edge, and a not altogether attractive-looking excrescence between the city wall and the river bank, due to the advent of the foreigner and his trade. Another foreign innovation is on its way—namely, the railway which is being pushed forward from Shanghai by the ​British and Chinese Corporation, and which may be expected to arrive in another year's time. In the meanwhile Nanking can show shipping entered and cleared aggregating close upon 4,000,000 tons.
The river front at Hankow.
​Tientsin for the position of second commercial city of the empire, and is deserving of passing notice.
In more ways than one Hankow is a remarkable town. It is, according to the members of the Blackburn Commercial Mission, "the greatest centre of distribution in the empire." Its position is certainly unique. Situated at the junction of the Han river with the Yang-tsze, 600 miles from the coast, it is nevertheless visited by ocean-going steamers at certain seasons of the year, and is at all times in communication with Shanghai and the sea through the medium of a perfect flotilla of river steamers of considerable speed and size.
It is at the ​present time the terminus, and in the future will be the central point, of a great trans-Chinese railway running from Peking to ​Canton. Railway travelling in China is, generally speaking, still a novelty where it exists, which is the exception, and an as yet scarcely felt desideratum where it does not, which is the rule; yet I have quite recently traversed the 800 miles between Peking and Hankow in little more than thirty-six hours, crossing the huge expanse of the formidable Yellow river by a bridge little short of two miles in length, in a train which might have been the Orient express hurrying from Paris to Constantinople, but for the presence of pig-tailed attendants speaking a dozen words of pidgin English and half as many of unintelligible French. The concession being nominally Belgian, and in reality largely French, some attempt has been made to bring that language into use upon the line. But the Chinese have ideas of their own as to the relative value of foreign tongues, and it is a curious fact, noticeable throughout the empire, that whereas a Chinese will pay to learn English, he will seldom take lessons in other languages free. Finally, Hankow is the largest city ​between Shanghai and Ch'ung-k'ing, and occupies a commanding position upon the greatest of all the avenues of approach to the vast regions of Western China.
It is perhaps superfluous to add that its unique situation was not lost upon the pioneers of British trade, and that for upwards of forty years the lordly houses and residences of British merchants have formed a conspicuous and familiar object in the landscape. With a facility which continental Europe has always shown for following in the wake of British pioneers, Russia, France, Germany, Belgium, and Japan have appeared successively upon the scene, and have each at the present time their own concession. These, with the huddled agglomeration of native buildings on the left banks of the Han and the Yang-tsze rivers, constitute one section of a triple town. On the right bank of the Han lies Han Yang, the playground of a Viceroy's industrial ambition; and across the mile-wide channel of the Yang-tsze stands Wuchang, the
​site of the yamens of the Viceregal court and of a series of modern manufactories imported wholesale from the West. Hankow is further remarkable as the scene of a slowly awakening movement in favour of modern industrial methods, and as the capital of the famous Viceroy Chang Chih Tung.
To Chang Chih Tung is undoubtedly largely due the industrial activity of the place. Arsenal and powder factory, mint, steel works and cotton mills, silk filatures, silk-weaving and grass-cloth establishments, all owe their existence to official inspiration; while private enterprise is represented by the famous brick-tea factories, a glass furnace, flour mills, and cotton-pressing establishments. Of these, the cotton mills and other textile industries have recently been freed from the burden of official management by passing into the hands of a business syndicate at a rent of 100,000 taels a-year,—a change which has proved of conspicuous advantage to the industry. About 40,000 spindles and 500 looms were at work in the cotton mills when I visited them; and though the workers here were all men and boys, the ​employment of women "being thought by the Viceroy to be against good morals and Confucian principles," the greater expense of male labour seems to have been no obstacle to the success of the enterprise, the output for 1905 being 164,930 pieces of shirting and 100,000 cwt. of yarn, and the profits 25 per cent,—a significant indication of the potentialities of Chinese industrial undertakings when run on business lines. I noted as a curious fact that the danger to be apprehended from departing from "good morals and Confucian principles" is not apparently so great in a silk filature as in a cotton mill, since in a silk factory next door the hands employed were almost exclusively women and girls.
The steel works at Han Yang are in a state of transition, and present at one and the same time an example of the impulsive and head-strong character of the Viceroy and of the movement in the direction of industrial reform. Having decided that he would make his own rails, his Excellency lost no time in issuing orders for the establishment of steel works. ​In vain it was pointed out that in order that the contractors might decide upon the process best suited to the raw material, samples of the iron ore to be used should be secured and analysed. The Viceroy is one of those men who, in the words of an educated Chinese, "when he set his heart upon some new idea, expected his whole scheme to drop ready-made from heaven," and curtly informing the contractors that the quality of his iron ore was no business of theirs, demanded the despatch of a complete steel plant without further delay. The contractor guessed, since there was nothing else to be done—and guessed wrong. When the ore came to be treated, it was found to contain large quantities of phosphorus, a type of ore which is not amenable to the Bessemer process. After a large number of faulty rails had been supplied for the Pei-Han (Peking-Hankow) railway, the present manager, Mr Li, was sent to Europe to purchase a new plant, and the changes now in progress are the outcome of his recent visit. At a cost of 2,500,000 taels a new blast furnace, Siemens-Martin furnaces, rolling mills, and beam and ​angle plant are already being set up, and it is estimated that before long the furnaces will be turning out from 400 to 450 tons of pig-iron a-day, while the rolling mills will be capable of dealing daily with from 800 to 1000 tons of steel to allow of future expansion in the furnaces. Rails, ship plates, and steel girders will constitute the output, and a Lloyd's inspector is to be engaged to pass and register the plates. Mr Li has even visions of invading the preserves of Pittsburg, since he is of opinion that his girders, carried in ships on their homeward voyage after discharging American lumber and petroleum in China, can be landed at San Francisco at prices comparing favourably with those of the great steel metropolis of the United States. In the matter of raw material Hankow is abundantly blessed. At the coal mines of Ping Shan, coke equal to the best Durham is made at the pit's mouth; while at Ta Yeh, seventy miles down the river, stands a mountain of iron ore, giving 65 per cent of pure metal, 3 miles long and 400 feet high,—sufficient, according to the estimate of a European ​engineer, "to turn out 700 tons of iron a day for 1000 years."
Quite recently a further instance of the imperious if ill-directed energy of the Viceroy had been given in a stupendous issue of copper coins. Having presumably accidentally stumbled upon Article II. of the Treaty of Commerce signed between Great Britain and China in 1902, by which China agrees "to take the necessary steps to provide for a uniform national coinage," he had with characteristic impetuosity seized time by the forelock and set all available machinery, not only in the cash and silver mints but even in the arsenal, to work upon the stamping of 10-cash pieces, whereby he succeeded in still further complicating the already inconceivably intricate currency of China by flooding the province in the course of a single year with three billion eight hundred and seventy-one million copper coins, the market value of which inevitably fell in proportion to the rapidity with which they were turned out. By the end of the year, when the central government had awaked to the danger of this reckless issue of depreciated ​coin, it was found that there were some 2000 tons of copper still in stock, which had forthwith to be disposed of at a loss.
It remains to add that the Viceroy is an ardent admirer of Japan. In the arsenal a staff of seventeen Japanese foremen have taken the place of the Germans who were formerly employed; a Japanese colonel, with staff of twenty Japanese military instructors, left Hankow while I was there to accompany the Viceroy's troops to the autumn manœuvres in Honan; while a river fleet of six gunboats and four destroyers are under construction in the shipyards of that country. Japanese were to be seen instructing and supervising in the textile factories, and the British consul-general reports that "the position of other nations is adversely affected by the anomalous favour felt for Japan, which renders that country's vigorous competition a very serious obstacle to any attempt to push our business relations with China.... Japanese hawkers have appeared in the streets of Wuchang, and the Japanese ​post office is about to open a branch there. Instead of the heated denunciation that such 'invasions of the interior' would have called forth had the perpetrators been Britons or other foreigners, the native papers record that the police received strict orders to watch over these enterprising persons, and laud the activity of the islanders in business." Seven large Japanese firms are doing business in the city; three large new steamers are about to be put on the Yang-tsze by the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha, the largest shipping company in Japan; of an estimated foreign population of 2500, it is said that 1000 are Japanese; and the Japanese concession, which has lain fallow for ten years, is now being taken vigorously in hand. Hankow, indeed, presents an admirable example of the prosecution of the rapidly growing ambitions and aspirations which are so conspicuous a feature of new Japan.
It would be impossible to leave Hankow ​without making mention of the brick-tea industry, more especially since at two other places only, Fuchow and Kiukiang, can a similar process be seen. At Hankow three Russian steam factories are engaged in pressing tea-leaf and tea-dust into bricks and tablets for the markets of Siberia, Mongolia, and Turkestan, at the rate of 20,000 tons a-year. It has been said that tea-dust also finds its way across the Pacific, where it fulfils the useful purpose of improving the colour—and inferentially the age—of American whisky; but then it has also been said by the ribald that soot is employed to perform a similar office for the tablets of Hankow tea.
Argosies of white-sailed junks.
​suddenly in shallow water. For some time we dodged backwards and forwards trying to find a channel, but our 2700 tons (gross tonnage) and our seven-foot draught proved too much, and when noon came and went and saw us still within half a mile of where we had been at eight o'clock in the morning, it became evident that we had accidentally discovered one of those places described by an ingenuous consul as "suitable only for ships drawing little or no water." That is one of the failings of the great river: its waters fall, and what is river one day may be paddy-fields the next. The river was falling now, and on all sides as the water receded the riparian population advanced, putting up flimsy reed huts and plunging recklessly into agricultural operations.
"Sterilisque diu palus, aptaque remis, Vicinas urbes alit, et grave sentit aratram."
Navigation under these circumstances is subject to rude surprises, and the very ship in which I had travelled to Hankow had most unexpectedly found herself constrained to spend a month ​upon dry land during the previous winter, owing to a sudden fall in the river level. With that consideration and resource characteristic of the followers of the nautical profession, her captain took and despatched to the owners bi-weekly sets of photographs, "in order that they might see for themselves the steady progress made in the recession of the water." Fortunately on this occasion the steam launch which had been sent forward to explore, at last hit upon an eight-foot passage, and by evening we reached the port of Sha-shih, where, owing to further reports of shallow water ahead, we anchored for the night.
Sha-shih was opened to trade by the Japanese in 1896, but as far as foreign trade is concerned has proved a failure, its returns being the lowest but one of all the Yang-tsze ports. Japan holds a fair share of such trade as there is, and before leaving we discharged 1000 cases of Japanese sugar, seaweed, and yarn. But even the tenacity of the Japanese has given way before the stolid indifference of Sha-shih, only one of four firms that were established there two or three years ago still remaining, while ​the Japanese steamship agency has fallen into Chinese hands; and a Government exhibition, founded with a view to advertising Japanese goods, has recently closed and its exhibits been sold off at auction. Even so, "Made in Japan is writ large on most of the cotton goods and fancy articles, lamps, umbrellas, and straw hats. The last-named head-gear is becoming very popular with all classes, and I was amused to discover that the fashionable hat of the season—a narrow-brim straw with highly coloured ribbon, obviously of Japanese make—bore inside the crown a device showing the British royal arms, and the not inappropriate motto, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense.'" Sha-shih, however, manufactures a large amount of cotton cloth, 178,000 cwt. of which find their way yearly to the provinces of the West. It is made in three qualities, is the usual 14 inches in width, and sells at 1½d., 1¾d., and 2½d. a yard.
From daylight on the 29th of October we steamed steadily up-river, the low-lying plains ​giving place by the middle of the day to mountainous country, where pagodas appeared to crown almost every eminence, and clumps of bamboo and other evergreens enlivened the view; and at length at 10 p.m. we reached the head of steam navigation and anchored in mid-stream, flowing here with a six-knot current, between the pyramid-shaped peaks of the foothills of the mountainous country of the west, and facing the busy wharves and buildings of Ichang.
Chinese junks at Ichang.
* ↑ On May 13, 1908, President Roosevelt, in a powerful speech at a conference of the Governors of the States of the Union, denounced the prodigality with which the wealth of natural resources of the United States was being squandered. I extract a single sentence only: "We began with coal-fields more extensive than those of any other nation and with iron ores regarded as inexhaustible, and many experts now declare that the end of both iron and coal is in sight." Contrast with this state of affairs the case of China. Here natural resources, immensely greater in all probability than those of the United States, are being sedulously hoarded up for a future generation. Baron von Richthofen has spoken with authority upon the mineral deposits of China. Again let me give but a single quotation: "I was not a little surprised to find the southern half of the province [Shansi] ... constituting one great coal-field of incredible wealth; ... and besides, the seams accompanied by beds of excellent iron ore in abundance, and a variety of clays fit for many technical purposes.... All the conditions required for enhancing the value of a coal-field are here combined in such a remarkable manner as to make the extraction of a very superior coal easier and cheaper than in any other known instance.... And the quantity of coal available for this cheap extraction is so large, that at the present rate of consumption the world could be supplied from south Shansi alone for several thousand years." (See 'Ocean Highways,' New Series, vol. i. p. 314.) At Ta Yeh, to give but one other example of the enormous mineral wealth of the empire, stands a mountain of iron ore 3 miles long and 400 feet high, capable of supplying 700 tons of iron a-day for a thousand years. Yet we find "worn-out London horse-shoes coming out 12,000 miles by sea and then journeying inland within a stone's throw of the greatest iron ore deposits in the world, there to be sold at high prices because a working plan without restrictions has not yet been found by which to drive a little way into the bowels of mother earth." (See 'The Truce in the Far East and its Aftermath,' by Mr Putnam Weale, p. 405.) Sooner or later the "working plan" now lacking will be found, and when this comes about it is difficult to see what is to prevent China from becoming the greatest industrial country in the world.
* ↑ 'Through the Yang-tsze Gorges,' by Mr A. Little
* ↑ This line is now completed and open to traffic.
* ↑  The following list of steamships plying exclusively upon the Yang-tsze at the present time will give some idea of the vast proportions which river navigation may be expected to assume when China becomes a modern industrial nation:— I. Shanghai—Hankow. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. 5 large steamers. Messrs Butterfield & Swire 4 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ Messrs Jardine, Mathieson, & Co. 4 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ (The above three companies form a shipping combine.) The Osaka Shosen Kwaisha (Japanese) 4 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ The Nippon Yusen Kwaisha (Japanese) 3 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ A French company 3 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ The Nord-Deutcher Lloyd 3 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ The Hamburg Amerika 2 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ Geddes & Co. (Chinese owned but flying the British flag) 2 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ Ramsay & Co. (Japanese) 2 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ A French company 1 {{{1}}}„{{{1}}}„ Total 33 steamers. II. Hankow—Ichang. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. 2 steamers. Messrs Butterfield & Swire 1 {{{1}}}„ Messrs Jardine, Mathieson, & Co. 1 {{{1}}}„ The Osaka Shosen Kwaisha (Japanese) 2 {{{1}}}„ Total 6 steamers. III. Hankow—Changsha. Messrs Butterfield & Swire 1 steamer. Messrs Jardine, Mathieson, & Co. 1 {{{1}}}„ The Hunan Co. (a Japanese company receiving a subsidy of 6 per cent on its capital) 3 {{{1}}}„ Total 5 steamers. From the above table it will be seen that there are at present forty-four steamers plying exclusively upon the waters of the Yang-tsze. In addition to these, the Nippon Yusen Kwaisha and the Osaka Shosen Kwaisha each run two steamers from Yokohama to Hankow, and the number of sailing junks upon the river is incalculable.
* ↑ In the Peking University, where instruction in one foreign language is obligatory, I found upwards of 300 out of the total number of 500 students learning English. In one class I found the students engaged in composing an essay on education in English.
* ↑ Consular Report on the Trade of Hankow, 1905.
* ↑ See Consular Report on the Trade of Hankow for the year 1905.
* ↑ Consular Report on the Trade of Hankow for the year 1905.
* ↑ These are included in the list of river steamers given on page 47.
* ↑ See Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, No. 3701: Trade of Sha-shih for the year 1905.
* ↑ Ibid.