The Winslow mail., 1899-09-21
A DECLINING TEA PORT.
HanISov and It's Waning Trade -
Russian Influences Suppiant-
ing English.

In an article entitled ''The River of
Tea" Miss E. r. Scidmore, an entertain
ting and authoritative writer on China,
Japan and Java, tells good deal about
the trade that hourishes on the banks
Of the Yangtsze-Kiang, and incident
ally of the loss of English influence at
the great tea port Hankow.
''Hankow, so long the chief source of
supply of British tea drinkers, with Is
or 20 tea steamers in port at time load
ing for London, has undergone
change in this decade. AS Chinese teas
deteriorated in quality and tea farmers
became more careless and dishonest,
India and Ceylon teas began to win ia
vor, and with the enormous increase of
production in those two British de-
Tendencies, Chinese tea has lost its
place in the British market, furnishing
only one-ninth of Englands import
in 1896 At that same time began the
general awakening of Russia. At Han
kow the Russian has come, and to stay,
and the shadow of the Muscovite is over
it ALL The Russian is not only estab-
at its very heart, the invasion and alb
sorption being as remarkable in TINS
British settlement at Hankow as any
where in Corea or Manchuria. HankoW
is fast becoming Russian city or out
post, a foothold soon to be strong
hold in the valley of the Yangtsze,
which China has given her word shall
+A
England. Some alarmists may even
view the Siberian merchants at Han
l1ow as emissaries, like those armed
Russian monks who first established
themselves in the Caucasus and Asia
Minor in stronghold monasterles. Al
though the Russians have their own
concession at Hankow, they do not care
to build upon it and live there, amena-
bic then to Russian laws and consular
Jurisdiction, to Russian RESTRICTIONS
and espionage; and the consulate ana
few warehouses were the only build
ings on the Russian concession IN 1880
The Russians prefer the laws and the
order of the British concession, crowd
ing in upon it at every opportunity,
competing for any house that comes
into the market, and building closely
over former lawns and garden space.
They compete with and outbid the few
British tea merchants who remain in
these days of active Russian trade ag-
gression. Only one tea steamer took a
cargo to London in 1896; two more
British firms closed out and left Han
kow that year; and, still more sig
nificant, only one pony showed the col
ors of the one British racing stable
at the autumn races. In the retail
shops prices are quoted and bills made
out as often in rubles as in taels or dol
lars, and the Russians have gradually
assumed an air or ownership, of seign-
ioral rights, as complete as if they held
the lease or diplomatic deeds to the
place for 80 years.
''This great tea market of foreign
Hankow is a city of six weeks only, the
heads of the great hongs or their man
ayers occupying their residences from
the 1st of May to the middle of June
each year. Leaf teas are fired and
shipped until September and even
later, and brick tea is made until jan
uary, but the choice tea is all looked
to in those few weeks. i With
all the machines invented and used on
tea plantations in India and Ceylon, a
drier has only once beeen used in Chi
ma. All attempts toward greater care
and cleanliness in preparation have
been as vain as attempts toward intro
ducing machinery at the tea farms
themselves. Not declining trade or
prices-for the tea trade is not nearly
what it was eight years aegean stim-
ulate the tea growers to any change,
and only when the whole country is
open to foreign trade and residence
will each village or valley have its own
tea factory to cure and pack the tea
for final shipment on the spot. Cen
tury.