Part 31

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.

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.