The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1900-12-15

WAS THE OLDEST DAILY PAPER
IN THE WORLD.
Has Had an Existence of $50 Years.
Interrupted for Short Intervals by
Changes in Dynasties.

YOKOHAMA, December 5.-The Pc
king Gazette, the oldest daily paper in
the world, which has had an almost
continuous existence for over seven
hundred and fifty years is defunct.
Since the Boxer outbreak of June last
is has been only spasmodically
issued. Very few copies of the Gaz-
cite of those troublous times are now
in existence, as the Boxers took care
to destroy at once all such as contain
ed edicts or memorials printed in it
inimical to their interests, going so far
even as to behead the printers of the
obnoxious articles whenever they could
be found. Hence, for a short time the
Peking Gazette had to be printed in
secret and upon the fight of the Court
this paper became, perforce, defunct,
and although portion of the staff
courageously followed in the wake of
the Courts as far as Taiyuan, their
services We're not utilized.
A Peking dispatch states that some
of the former staff of the Peking Gaz-
cite have now returned and are liV-
ing in the quarter under the jurisdic-
ton of the American military authori-
ties.
The Gazette of the Capital, as the
Chinese characters literally read, was
established by the SUMO dynasty in 1130,
or little earlier. The Emperor Kao
(now the seat of the Governor of Che
kiang province) his capital owing to
his predecessor having been driven
from his capital of Kaifengfu (now
provincial capital of Honan) by the
Mongols of the Yuen dynasty, who at
the time had taken possession of the
whole empire of China as far as the
Northern banks of the Yangtze River.
Upon the extinction of the Sung dynas-
ty in 1918, the MOngols transferred the
Gazette to their capital, namely Pc
king.
The Yuen dynasty only existed about
80 years, when in it's turn it was des-
troyed by Hung WI, the Monk EN-
peror, and founder of the Ming dynasty
in 1868. OF course, the Gazette of the
Capital, after a short period of col
lapse, was transferred to the new Cap
ital of the Empire-Nanking-b was
again transferred to Peking in 1403,
the last-named city having again been
made the Capital of the Empire by the
newly ascended Emperor-the Usurper
Yung Lo-the uncle of the rightful
Emperor Chen Wen. From that year
to 1928, a period of two centuries and
a quarter, the Gazette of the Capital
had an uninterrupted existence, until
the arrival of the Manchus, when the
last Emperor of the Mings, Chung
Chen, committed suicide by hanging
himself in a kiosk inside his Palace
grounds, which was built on what had
been an ancient mine. During the con-
fusion attendant upon a change of
Imperial Masters the Gazette naturally
collapsed, for obvious reasons, for q
few months; but the moment the first
Emperor of the Manchu, or present
dynasty Shun Chih, ascended the
throne in 1914, the publication of the
Gazette of the Capital was resumed
without any interval until the present
year of grace, when it was again stop
ped owing to the Boxer troubles. 1t is
significant that in the history of the
Gazette's $50 years existence, each
stoppage of publication was the pre-
lude to the institution of a new dynas-
ty. Will that prove true in the present
case?-Japan Gazette.