At all the great treaty port cities and colonies, such as Hongkong, Shanghai, Canton, Macao, Tientsin, etc., the stranger is accosted by crowds of rickshaw coolies, venders, fortune-tellers, flower sellers, etc., urging his patronage. Efforts are being made to limit this noise, which is at present like the reception that a football hero gets when he wins a game. The Chinese think we like the attention, because so many of us smile, and if one looks cross, a native wit will call out: “Don’t ask Honorable Sad-Face to ride; he has just lost his white mother-in-law, and must demurely walk behind her ghost.”

The first motor-car used in China was brought to Hongkong by an American dentist in 1900. It was a storage electric vehicle, as the authorities prohibited for a while the use of gasoline on account of the fire risk. Gasoline cars and launches are now used throughout the treaty ports, but kerosene engines are preferred in motor-boats. Kerosene can be procured anywhere in China, but gasoline is procurable only within a limited area.

As a foreign steamer enters a port, a fleet of sanpans throw out hooks and grapple with the ship. This picturesque nuisance the authorities are trying to stop, on account of the danger to life which is involved. The hotel runners, gamblers, and venders desire to be over the rail before any passengers leave. The health authorities desire to stop the irrepressible boarders as much as the harbor masters do. The boarders shout out to their countrymen: “You there! Throw over a fastened rope; we want to kotow to you on board, and leave you some of our money in a little game.” Over the rope goes, despite the frantic mate, who is a white man, and like ants, the agile Chinese clamber up the sides of the big trans-Pacific or Suez liner.

Peking, Haukau, Tientsin, Shanghai, Ningpo, Hongkong and other cities of China all have fine race courses, club-houses and stables. In hot Hongkong the racing, gymkana and polo meets occur from September to April. Szechuen and Mongolian ponies, Australian and Indian horses are used, but few American or British, the cost and insurance risk for the latter being too great. Every white man, singly or in clubs, goes in for the “king of sports”, and from a military point of view this interest in racing is very advantageous. The betting is generally on the French method of Paris Mutuels, where those who bet on the winning animal divide the pool, less eight per cent. for club expenses. The Chinese are beginning to understand the horse, and mafoo-jockeys and trainers are being developed. Up and down the China coast the owners ship their champion racers, and the interport rivalries are keen in this, and every other sport. The main ambition is for the owner to ride his horse as a “gentleman-jockey” in the crowning Derby event, and quite a few Hebrew and Parsee owners enter their horses in a widening sporting fraternity, which not long ago was limited to Saxons, and which may yet include Chinese gentry. The stocky Mongolian pony, weighing fifteen hundred pounds, only covers the mile in two minutes and eight seconds, and being hard of mouth and stubborn, he is as likely as not to cover the mile the opposite way to that which has been prescribed by the stewards! Not only has Hongkong two very fine golf courses, but Canton, Macao, Hankau, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, and other treaty ports have excellent courses famous for their novel bunkers of tombstones, etc., and club-houses. During most of the year at Hongkong the game is played on the Wong Nei Chong course shortly after daylight, as after eight o’clock the overhead sun is too hot for that exercise which is essential if one expects to keep “fit” in the Orient.

Many have asked what was the organization of the crown colony of Hongkong Island, where 3,000 white troops, a navy, 2,000 Indian troops, and 500 British, Indian and Chinese police guard and rule 3,000 white men and 500,000 Chinese so successfully that after paying her own expenses, Hongkong continues, what she was the first colony to offer, to pay to the British government a large sum for military and naval expenses. The government is organized under the Home Colonial Office, as follows: a governor, the general of British troops in China, a local colonial secretary, an attorney-general, a colonial treasurer, a director of public works, a registrar-general, a superintendent of police, a clerk of councils, four white civilians, and two Chinese civilians, the six latter serving mainly for the honor. The famous Sanitary Board serves as a separate commission. Almost every one will admit that this is a compact, graftless, powerful and very economical organization, and it has more than answered expectations in a worldwide fame, both for Britain and China. The able newspapers of the ports are the Opposition, and keep the government up to efficiency. There is only one flaw, which may soon be remedied. There should be a director of education, for the purpose of honoring education, and not because education is backward in the progressive colony, which has had so many hero governors and cultured heads of department. Their great deeds would fill volumes as yet unwritten, for the many authors who have lived and served at Hongkong have not written of themselves. In modestia magnus! Hongkong has had some famous regiments in its garrison, musical and sporting life. After the South African War the Royal Welsh, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire regiments came. In 1911 the noted Yorkshire Light Infantry were in garrison. Their fine bands, often massed with the Indian regiments’ bands, are the feature in the musical life of the royal colony. The Yorkshires served in garrisoning the foreign settlement on Shameen Island, Canton, when, following the revolution of 1911, the pirate chief Luk seized the forts around Canton. Over at Kowloon, the mainland section of the colony in 1860, was mobilized the army of Sir Hope Grant’s 13,000 British troops and Baron Gros’ 6,000 French troops for the Taku-Peking campaign, and though the existence of their nation was at stake, the southern Chinese did not make a protest against this mobilization on what was then China’s territory.

The municipal organization at Amoy is seven councilmen, two of whom are a clergyman and a physician. They employ a captain-superintendent, and a judge who sits in a “Mixed Court” with a Chinese mandarin. American naval officers were given warm receptions by the Chinese of Amoy when the battleship fleet went round the world in 1908. The island-dotted and hill-surrounded harbor is one of the finest and most beautiful in China, and there is a great future before the port. At one time it was the largest tea port in China. The foreign settlement is on the hilly Kulangsu Island. The streets to see are Likin, Temple, Bootmaker, etc. The native Chamber of Commerce entertained the visiting members of the American Chambers of Commerce in 1910 in the Nan Pu Tu Temple. There are notable clubs and theaters; the Kwan Tai and other temples. The scenery is famous for the Valley of 10,000 Boulders, a sort of “Garden of the Gods”, in which the Deified Rock is worshiped. Many of the boulders are engraved by nature-worshipers. Note should be taken of the dainty architecture of the White Stag Temple and gates. The London Mission at the boat landing has partially adopted the Chinese style of architecture in the up-curling cornices. Forts which have seen hard service are placed on the hills. The foreign race course and jockey club is under the hill where the noted Lampotah Temple stands. Amoy is particularly famous for the best oysters, coolie oranges, pumeloes (grapefruit), fish, game, sugar, ginger and grasscloth in China. At Amoy stone buildings are seen everywhere, and extend southward through Fukien and Kwangtung provinces. The natives, who have a little Arab blood, and who often wear turbans as well as hats, are tall, turbulent, humorous and curious. There is much infanticide, because the small farms are only able to support sons. Amoy is connected by railway with Changchow on the Lung (Dragon) River, and it is planned to have a coast railway connecting all these cities from Shanghai to Canton. There is almost daily steamship connection with Hongkong. Native Amoy City is on a large island. The walls, which climb straight up the hills, are about eight miles around. The city was taken by the republicans on November 12, 1911, and there were many subsequent engagements with pirates when American marines from the Monterey had to be landed. Centuries ago the people of this province offered the most stubborn resistance to the Manchus when that dynasty conquered China. The dialect is the most isolated in China, showing that the northern ruling Chinese influenced the people very slightly. To instance:

Though the port was formally opened to foreign trade in 1842, the East India Company had hongs here as early as 1661 and up to 1730.

There is much for the antiquarian to trace as he follows the traditions of Arab visits in centuries preceding the Portugese discovery, at Canton. We hear reports that St. Thomas, the disciple, and Mohammed’s uncle journeyed here, taking the route none ever has since, across Persia, India and Burma. The tourist should not fail to visit the noble park of thousands of examination stalls, where the old classical learning held rule from Confucius’ time until recently. There is evidence enough that the state has grasped the new educational conditions recommended by the great Emperor Kwang Hsu, and the Cantonese reformers, in the splendid Kwangtung normal college, which consists of two wings and a tower building in the style of the University of New York. A noble stucco wall, pierced with portholes, surrounds the college. There is also the Canton Christian College, established in the fine Martin Hall. It is supported by Americans. American statesmanship and philanthropy will miss their glorious opportunity if they do not soon erect at Canton the preparatory department of a comprehensive American-Chinese university, the higher classes to be at Peking or Nanking. Trace should also be made of the factory of Milner & Bull, of New York, which sheltered Robert Morrison in 1807, when he was preparing for his immortal translations and dictionary. This was the time when American tradesmen of New York, Philadelphia and Boston showed keen sympathy with statesmanship and learning. Olyphant & Company, of New York and Canton, backed the printing of the priceless Chinese Repository, and brought fifty missionaries free from New York in their famous clipper ships. The Boston merchants who ran regular lines in those days to Canton, and had factories there, were Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing and Coolidge.

The morbid will want to see the execution ground in the Thirteen Factories section. It has no rival as the bloodiest spot on this earth. Governor Yeh, of Kwangtung, during the Taiping rebellion in October, 1856, beheaded 100,000 rebels here, and during the pirates’ attack under Luk, at Canton, in March, 1912, executions were part of each day’s work here. The ground is small and insignificant looking, and when not legally in use is used for spreading pottery in the sun. This Thirteen Factories section is in rather bad odor as an entertainer of opium smugglers and counterfeiters. Confucius’ temple near the Examination Park should not be missed, not for its beauty, but for its significance in the national ethics of so many centuries of one uninterrupted idea. The Parade Ground, under the eastern wall of the old city, should be visited, for here the nucleus of China’s new army, which we will some day hear much of, is training. China must learn to marry martial force and productive mechanics to, what through the long ages she has been preeminent in, literature, agriculture and art. In the western suburbs, the looms of the silk weavers, the native hospital, the Temple of Longevity, and the Temple of Five Hundred Genii are of exceeding interest, and if one can go as far as the White Cloud Hills there is the historic spot to see, where Morrison baptized, in 1804, Tsai Ah Ko, the first Protestant convert in China.

Various other places of interest are Tsiang Lan Kiai (Physic Street), which is protected from the sun with matting; Ma An Street, where the shoe shops are; Book Store and Jade Streets, with their tea saloons; the Hall of Green Tea Merchants radiant in porcelain; the Pok Chai native hospital; and the public gardens which were confiscated from the rich salt merchant, Pun Shih Cheng, because he evaded the law by smuggling, etc. China first prophesied that restitutionary besides prohibitive laws will yet be adopted world-wide to straighten out the economic tangle. Many modern improvements have come to Canton, such as a wide modern bund, electric cars and light, water, sanitary buildings, hospitals, etc. The University of Pennsylvania and the American Presbyterian Women have notable medical establishments at Canton, which city is connected with the early life of Doctor Sun Yat Sen, who has become immortal by formulating the republican Chinese rebellion and nation. Canton is already a railroad center, having rails east to Hongkong, south to medieval Macao, and north toward Hankau, and she proposes to link up west by running a railroad to Nanning and Yunnan. There is a vast steamer and launch traffic to Hongkong and up the West (Si) and North (Pe) Rivers, and along the iron-bound coast. Canton is the largest and most representative city of ethnical, republican and commercial China. Its stores and small factories are decidedly the most notable, efficient and varied in the wide land. The foreign settlement on Shameen Island in the Pearl River has every luxury in the way of modern clubs, hotels and residences, and in the native city there are clubs where the foreigner and native gentleman are trying to approach nearer to each other. Canton has two dialects, the Cantonese and the Hakka, and I know of no better authority on them than my old friend, Dyer Ball, the veteran author and linguist of Hongkong, though Canton has had many famous foreign students among her foreign residents in exile. The curious Hakka tribe composes one-third of the inhabitants of Canton. They can be distinguished by vivacity, by the flat hat with valance, worn by the women, and by their love of jewelry. The sanpan, junk, slipper boat and launch people, the most distinctive feature of Canton’s life, are largely Hakka. For further information regarding this tribe, which is also largely in evidence at Hongkong, Amoy and Swatow, I would recommend Dyer Ball’s authoritative books. Dutch Folly Island commemorates an early settlement of trading Hollanders.

The writer in his book, The Chinese, dealt at length with the oldest foreign settlement in China, the Portugese city of Macao, and its famous author, Camoens, who wrote The Lusiads. Authors who have written on quaint medieval Macao are Doctor Eitel, Norton Kyshe, Montalto de Jesus, Kutschera, Ljungstedt, the famous Sir John Bowring and the immortal Camoens himself. The largest library on the subject is to be found in the National Libraries of Lisbon, Coimbra, and other educational centers of old Portugal. The first American consuls lived at Macao, as did also the noted Jesuit explorer Abbé Huc, in 1840, in the seminary here. The British artist, Chinnery, lived and painted at Macao, as did the lovely Chinese colorist, Nam Cheong. Edmund Roberts, the first American ambassador of the United States “to Siam, Cochin and Muscat” died of bubonic plague here on June 12, 1836. In a study of Macao the old volume of the Chinese Repository should not be left unsearched. In a temple at Wang Hiya, beyond the quaint Porto Cerco gate, the first commercial treaty between America and China was signed respectively by Cushing, Daniel Webster’s son Fletcher, and Ki Ying. The remarkable miniature garden at the governor’s summer palace on the Monte Road should be seen, and rather amusing miniature photo statues are to be seen in the cemeteries. The largest cement factory in China (British owned) is on Green Island, which is connected by a causeway with Macao. The silted up harbor is being dredged in an effort to bring the long lost shipping back to old Macao. There is to be railway connection with Canton, and there is palatial steamer connection with Hongkong and Canton. The modern hotels, such as the Boa Vista and the Hing Kee, are excellent, the former occupying an unusually scenic site. The drives and Praya Grande are delightful. Macao is famous for its medieval carnivals and processions. It has an ambitious Chinese population whose leading spirits are the progressive Ho Sui Tin and Fong families. Its gambling houses are possibly notorious, and its opium farm, now somewhat restricted, was once a great thorn in international and hygienic matters.

Off the three-mile limit at Kowhowyang anchorage, the smuggling steamers occasionally lie. The trouble between Japan and China over the “Tatsu Maru” incident, and the subsequent severe trade boycott, which nearly bankrupted a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship and coastal line, will be recalled. The Chinese and Portuguese are constantly at swords’ points over harbor questions and the inclusion of the large islands of Lapa, Joao and Taipa in the beautiful colony, which would have been rushed long ago by the Chinese but for fear of Britain which supports Portugal “for auld acquaintance’ sake” and the memories of Wellington’s peninsular campaign when Portugal assisted Britain in her need. Chinese and Portuguese gunboats are always watching each other in the rather turbulent waters.

Lovely flowery Macao, of fast and festival, is the favorite health resort of Hongkong, because of its sou-west monsoon in the summer months. The wave of the Portuguese republican revolution took a month to reach Indian Goa and Cathayan Macao. The newspapers were read by the soldiers in the two beautiful barracks which stand high over Cape Sao Francisco and beneath Monte Fort. They were then loaned to the sailors on the gunboat Patria which rose and fell on the yellow tide in the offing. On November 29, 1910, the sailors of the Patria landed, marched to the square where the Senato Leal stands on high ground on Rua Central in the center of the closely built city. There three volleys were fired as a signal to the troops who, a mile away, broke into the armories and armed with ball cartridge ready for liberty’s business! The Legionaires Regiment first proceeded to the Santa Clara Convent, drove the nuns to the steamboats lying in the inner harbor, and forced them to sail for Hongkong, forty miles away, the objection to the long intrenched religious orders being that they successfully compete with business by not paying taxes. Then the revolutionists, dragging cannon, marched to the artistic government “Palais” on the picturesque Praya Grande, where the governor and representatives of the Senato Leal were forced at the bayonet’s point to agree to the expulsion of favored religious orders, the establishment of a republic in Portugal and her colonies, the suppression of the oligarchic and religious organ, Vida Nova, and similar reforms obtained by the republicans in Portugal. Most wonderful to relate, as a new sign on the horizon of the twentieth century, the Chinese viceroy of Kwangtung province brought up his Chinese army to stand by and see that order elsewhere was maintained while European revolutionists, European monarchists and reactionary Catholics fought out questions of representative and popular government in a corner of the sacred soil of old China. Correctly speaking then, it was little historic Portugal, and not ancient China, that first established a republic on Chinese soil, and Portugal’s republican influence, multum in parvo, as well as America’s and France’s, has been influential with Chinese reformers.

Fuchau, the capital of turbulent Fukien province, is situated twenty-five miles from the coast on one of the most romantic rivers of China, the Min. “Fu” means happy, and is the most used word in superstitious China, if we except perhaps a “strange oath” or two, and the family name Chang, which almost half of the Chinese carry. This city lies in a river plain surrounded by a glorious amphitheater of hills. With Hongkong, Fuchau joins as the two most scenic ports of China. The wide walls are thirty feet high, ten miles around, and up a mountain on one side, and there are seven fort gates, the most notable being the North Tower, with its curious spirit shrines. The most noted temples are those to the goddess Kwan Yun, the God of War, and Ching Hwang Temple. The seven-storied White Pagoda is famous. It has Romanesque doors and stunted galleries with railings. It is more ponderous than beautiful, and is remarkable for its great antiquity. The city is a noted educational center, missionary and native, It was a reform center even back into the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi’s day in 1897 and 1898, and produced its martyr, young Lin, who fell a victim of that reactionary Jezebel. Six miles south of the city on Ku-Shan, 1,700 feet high, is the noted Bubbling Well Monastery. The chair ride there affords a wonderful view. Fuchau is a health resort, as it has many hot springs. The Pacific Coast Chamber of Commerce was entertained by the city guilds at the Nan Pu Tu Temple in October, 1910. The valley of boulders is notable, as are also the rich pumelo groves. Fuchau used to be a great tea port. The trade declined from 1898 to 1907, but it is picking up again with the increased demand for China teas. Pagoda Island exhibits a severely plain and ancient pagoda and some remarkable Pai Piku (white stern) junks of the olden time. An ancient bridge nine centuries old, with sixty arches, on which are many overhanging shops, propped from the piers, connects one of the islands.

Fuchau went over to the rebel provisional government in October, 1911, but the Manchu city was not captured until a month later. There is a naval arsenal here, a dock, navy school, mint and a foreign settlement on Nan Tai Island. The climate is extremely trying.

Many unique costumes and turbans are to be seen. Fukien province people have some Arab blood in them, though the Mohammedan religion has been lost. They boast that they have never been conquered, and that many of the notorious pirates are Fuchau men. Their women wear a head-dress that looks like the model of an air-ship. There are excellent Methodist and Congregational schools, an American hospital, and a fine London mission which has done what missions should do in architecture. It has adopted to a degree the characteristic and beautiful Chinese style. All the missions and foreign trade buildings should strive to retain this wonderful art instead of daring to bring square ugliness or Greek coldness of column to artistic China, where it does not fit well in so warm a land. Down at the seaside bamboos are placed in the beds so that the oysters may cling to them. There are factories for glass filigree lamps. Trips should be made to the Yuan Fu Monastery, built on props on Wu Hu (Five Tiger) range, and up to which five hundred steps have been cut; the Paeling tea hills, fifteen miles north; the olive and orange groves; and the hot mineral springs. Fuchau is to have railway connection north and south. With Soochow, Fuchau is the center of the lacquer art, and old specimens are highly prized. In 1885 the French fleet under Admiral Courbet sailed into Fuchau and battered at the forts and the city, virtually compelling the Chinese for the time to cede the great province to Tonquin. This is what the Chinese call the “Sacrilege of Fuchau”. The city is also the center of tinfoil workers, their product being used in great quantities in making the gold and silver models which are burned at the graves. Beautiful heavy wall paper is also made. The noted sinologue, Professor Parker, of Manchester University, the witty author of John Chinaman, etc., was once British consul at Fuchau.

Ningpo (Peaceful Wave) in friendly Buddhist Chekiang province, could be called the Azalea City, and is one of the most delightful and picturesque cities of China. It is the second oldest in its relations with Europe, the Portuguese having founded a trading settlement here in 1522. The city is moated, and the walls are broken with six gates. Old Krupp cannons lie about on the parapet. The best wood carvers, masons, and varnish makers of the kingdom work here, and their services are sought for all over China. Its artists also are famous. Ningpo lies twelve miles from the sea at the head of the Tatsieh River. Three streams branch out into the hills, which lie spread around in a most picturesque panorama, including valleys, canals and lakes. It is a great fishing center, and its sailors are venturesome. The fast river slipper boats of Ningpo are noted far and wide. The inhabitants do not disdain the use of such a modern thing as ice, as the many straw-covered, peaked ice houses show. Much tea and silk are produced. Excellent stone carving is done, as witness that gem of architecture, the Fukien men’s Guild Hall, with its carved dragon-entwined columns, comical stone lions, and splendid, up-curving tiled roofs. The screens and bronze urns at the many temples are also a delight in this center of culture, the new rights of women, engineering and commerce. There are successfully run native cotton mills, and the district produces fine matting, rice, oils, varnish, sepia, bamboo, lumber, tea, game, flowers, rape, barley, tallow trees, etc. There is a curious street covered with pailoo arches to widows who would not remarry, to scholars, children, etc. There is a foreign quarter with its splendid bund, race course, house boats, clubs, churches, hill bungalows, etc.

No Chinese city affords more delightful excursions to the hills, waterfalls, rapids like the Wenchow, and the wonderful Buddhist monasteries like the noted Tien Dong and the Shih To. The trips to the Ta Lang and Snowy Valleys are exceedingly beautiful. Outside the city the temple to the sailor’s patron goddess, Ma Tsu Pu, at the east gate, is particularly fine in lines, proportion, dignity and rich detail. It was erected in 1680 by sailors of Fukien, the neighboring province. These precious old temples are the last precious gems of a great age in art. The new times in learning, religion, politics and commerce are bringing in an ugly architecture. Ningpo is strongly influenced in Buddhism by the nearness of Phu Tho Island of the Chusan group. There is a quaint pontoon bridge over one of the streams. It has shops upon it, and is the center of a fair. The women of Ningpo are known for their fine needlework, and the old schools were celebrated for their men of letters among the literati officials. The old Tien Fung pentagonal pagoda is perhaps the oldest in China, dating back 1,200 years. Its gold and white tiles have fallen, and the brick and mortar work of the seven stories is exposed.

Politically, Ningpo is progressive. It went over to the “Han Republic” rebels on November 5, 1911. In the early days of the Portuguese at this port, the Ningpo men rose up, destroyed thirty-five Portuguese ships, and slaughtered eight hundred of the crews, because they claimed the foreigners had gone inland and captured Chinese women on the Sabine plan. The city was captured by the Taiping rebels in 1862. Off Ningpo a fierce engagement between the Chinese and English fleets took place in October, 1841. Nimrod Bay, near Ningpo, is to be the central base for the new Chinese navy. In the turmoil of 1898, when the nations of Europe were striving to partition China, despite the protests of America and Britain, the French, on July 16th, landed marines at Ningpo and tried to take a temple graveyard for a settlement, incidentally adding twenty Chinese to the number to be buried in the graveyard! Ningpo is soon to have a railway connection with the west and south.

Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang province, is famous as the city of the Roaring Tidal Bore. The walls are twelve miles around. The bore is best seen at Haining pagoda, east of the city. The tourist should go at moonlight to see the unforgettable white specter riding in on the wheels of the night. The legend is that the Wu prince, Tse Hsu, committed suicide, and the Chinese go to the bore to see him sweeping by in his fury. The stone-faced river wall has stone cradles built for junks to outride the terrific main bore. The city has railway and canal connection, and launch tows are now much used instead of sail. The Golden King Hill is in the center of the city by the lake side. It is crowned with a Buddhist temple. The lake has a causeway, lake temples and pagodas. The city is famous for its beautiful waterscapes, like the view of Western Lake (Si Hu), and the view from Thundering Peak Tower (Lui Fung Tah). This tower is without the usual ornate galleries, and shows the Arab influence which crept up the coast in the old days, and established itself at Hangchow in mosques, etc. Three separate attempts were made to capture China for Mohammedanism; they were made in Kansu, Yunnan and Chekiang provinces. The Red Imperial Palace at the lake side was once the center of the cultured Sung dynasty, thirteenth century. Marco Polo visited and praised the beautiful ancient city as follows: “Beyond dispute, it is the finest and noblest city in the world.” It is now a center of the silk, wine, fan, lantern, tea, tinfoil, camphor, hardware, book, vegetable oil, etc., trade. The city was captured by the republicans on November 5, 1911, the Tartar city strongly resisting. With Soochow, it is called the most fashionable city, and the home of the best dressed women of China. Doctor Main’s model leper hospital is here. The American Presbyterians have erected on a lovely hillside over the water a number of buildings of the important new Hangchow University. The Tartar walled city is on the northwest. There are a governor’s yamen, many pailoo honorary arches, the massive Great Peace Bridge, canals, famous temples, shops and fine residences, for the Chinese of this section seem to have a civic pride. The rolling suburbs of Hangchow are the most beautiful in China, reminding one perhaps of England’s lake country. The modern parliament buildings of the province of Chekiang are erected at Hangchow. There is also a native university and normal school.

Nanking, the largest walled city of the Ming emperors and Taiping rebels, and the first republican capital and assembly headquarters, is very dear to the hearts of the Chinese race. It is the center of the classic Mandarin pronunciation used by the north and the cultivated of all China. The name translated means southern capital. The great Yangtze River sweeps beneath the walls, and the city has canal and railway connection of the finest. The city, as was discovered when General Chang defended it, is commanded by the peaks of Purple Mountain on the north. There are fortified hills within the city, and great avenues down which run modern electric cars. Ruins of the last pure Chinese dynasty remain: the Ming palace, the picturesque tombs, and an avenue lined with wonderful gigantic camels, lions, elephants, etc., similar to the Ming Avenue at Nankow on the Great Wall above Peking. Emperor Hung Wu’s monument is a stone monolith, erected on a gigantic turtle’s back. The tomb itself is square. In the same manner that the Japanese and Russians unavoidably pounded the Manchu tombs at Mukden with shot, the imperialists and republicans pounded these revered Ming tombs in 1911. Bloody General Chang’s slaughter of the republicans and non-combatants at Nanking in November, 1911, will be hissed at in history forever. Viceroy Chang Jen held the first Chinese exhibition at Nanking in 1910. He established water, electric and gas works, and broad roads, and was in many ways a most enlightened leader. The foreign settlement is in part on Siakwan Island. Across the river on the north at Pukow, a British railway goes to Tientsin and Kiaochou, and south to Shanghai runs the splendid Shanghai-Nanking British railway, the best built road in China. As usual, the city is divided into Tartar and Chinese sections. There are military and naval colleges, a native provincial university and an arsenal. Nanking Union University of the Methodists and Presbyterians is famous, and is discussed in another chapter. The students have adopted athletics and propose to send a team to Olympic games. The city has famous pagodas and temples, like the Pi-Che-Ko, the Buddhist Temple of Ten Thousand Gilded Gods, the White Star Temple, etc. The Taipings burned the famous yellow and white porcelain pagoda which once stood here, and which was the most ornate pagoda in China. Some of the tiles are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. American firms have established themselves, and consulates, churches, clubs and all that goes with foreign life will now come up to the favorite city of republican China, whose ancient culture hangs like a golden cloud over its memories. There are newspapers, paper mills, silk and satin filatures, fan and cotton factories, shoemakers, tailors, porcelain kilns, etc. The city gave its name to the shiny cotton, “Nankeen”, used throughout China and Europe. Ink, flower, bath, vase, tile, book and jewel makers abound. Its artists are skilled. In the days of the old-style examinations, thousands of candidates used to gather in the great park of brick stalls. Nanking became a viceregal city when it ceased to be the southern capital. Its guilds and boards of trade are famous and progressive; each has its fine hall. Industry, learning, politics, foreign trade and medicine will henceforward take a mighty hold at Nanking, where the first provisional president of China, the world-wanderer, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, bowed to a modern representative assembly on January 1, 1912.

Shanghai is the queen of middle China, the ruler of the Yangtze River, at whose gates she sits. It is often called the “Paris of the Far East”, which remark refers to its social life, for it is not nearly so picturesque as its rival, Hongkong, or that queen of beauty, Fuchau. The fine black sand, once yellow loess, and saturated clay bed under Shanghai is four hundred and fifty feet thick. For the large modern buildings, it is necessary to sink a heavy girder-reinforced concrete raft, and build the structures on that. Even these buildings sink five inches as compared with the foot that ordinary pile and brick buildings sink. Life is in a whirl at Shanghai. The river bund is crowded, and so is the long, winding Bubbling Well Road. The concessions are splendidly managed from a foreign point of view, and vie with each other in public spirit. The Chinese, however, feel greater warmth for Hongkong, which gives them representation on the council. In Shanghai there are mixed courts, consular courts, an American Superior Court, and Chinese courts. The Chinese are planning for the day when they will try all Chinese offenders. There is an imposing cathedral, and a modern Venetian style railway station. Good libraries, magnificent clubs, theaters, hotels of all nations, taxicabs, electric trams and rickshaws are among the conveniences. The separate post-offices of all nations are somewhat confusing. All the sports,—racing, golf, tennis, shooting, house-boating, swimming, etc.,—may be enjoyed, and the military enthusiast has almost the same opportunity that he has at proud brave Hongkong. The Shanghai settlements protect themselves with the Municipal Volunteer Guard, in which a special corps of Europeanized Chinese can be enrolled. Secret societies, both foreign and native, have their temples. Shanghai has been the chief center of the native reform newspapers which agitated from the time of the coup d’état of 1898 to the rebellion of October 10, 1911, and at Shanghai the peace conferences between the south and the north were held in January, 1912. Outside of iron and coal, one can see here almost all of China’s efforts to equal the Occidental in industrial activity in modern mills. The Japanese are in strong evidence at Shanghai in ownership of Chinese cotton manufacturing. In speculating, no city can approach Shanghai. The awful rubber collapse of 1910 mowed down Chinese as well as foreigners. A military band plays in the public gardens and in the hotels. The musical and literary life of the colony is well developed. On North Honan Road is the immense plant of the Commercial Press which translated a million dollars’ worth of text-books last year for China’s schools. Its president is Chang Yuan Chi. The English newspapers of the port are known world wide for their scholarliness, and the Chinese press is making a mark for its patriotism and progress. The Bubbling Well Road cemetery and the Pahsien (Catholic) cemetery contain many melancholy monuments of famous foreign pioneers. In meteorological science, the Sicawei Observatory, under the control of the Jesuits, is facile princeps; indeed in this field this order has led in China and in the Philippines since the eighteenth century. Shanghai shares with Hankau the title of head of the railway system; that is to say one is the New York and the other the Chicago of the land. There is no computing what the future trade will be at Shanghai. The climate is not much improved on the damp sea-level misery which one experiences at Hongkong, Canton, and Amoy, but there are brave hearts in Shanghai, and the noblest of women who will endure any physical torture so long as they know that they are doing their duty in not deserting the advanced firing line of civilization and philanthropy.

The leading educational institution is St. John’s University, managed by the American Episcopalians. Nothing but praise can be accorded to it, and its future will be great. Already great men in China, such as Alfred S. K. Sze, once named as minister to Washington, and Doctor W. W. Yen, once secretary of the Foreign Board, are saying: “I am a St. John’s alumnus.” The university is five miles from the bund landing. Other missionary and native educational and medical institutions, like the Nan Yang University, are of a high order. The intellectual life is advanced, for at Shanghai live most of the Occidentalized Chinese and retired officials.

A great arsenal is located here. There is some abandon in the French quarter, which tolerates perhaps the lowest opium joints in the world, and the Foochow Road exhibits its brothel life the most brazenly of any street in the world. The dives of native Shanghai have been notorious the world over for disappearance of victims.

There are wonderful silk shops on Nanking and Foochow Roads; luxurious tea gardens, fine temples like the Pan Tuck Ih and the Kwang Sang Kee; splendid furniture shops; guild halls like that of the Shansi Bankers; the Yu Yuen gardens, etc. The Hong Ku market should be visited early in the morning, and the wonderful products of a rich district, intensively farmed, will surprise a stranger. The place is famous for its houseboat trips. The boat people are called Tankas, the tribe coming from Kiangsu province. They are related to the old Hongkong Hakka tribe. Wonderful farms can be studied on Tsun Ming Island. Interesting pagodas, like the Ta Kong, are to be seen. It is the theatric custom of the Germans to erect over the earth monuments to their dead who have fallen when in conflict with other races; this explains the “Iltis” monument. Shanghai, soon to be the center of a vast railway development, was the first apostle of railways for China, the noted old Jardine firm building a railway to Woosung, twelve miles away, as far back as the 60’s. The Manchus, who have always been reactionaries at heart, promptly tore it up and stacked it to rust out in distant Formosa Island. The native city is not large, nor are the moated walls substantial, brick instead of stone being used. There are six double gates of iron. Manila was the first city of the Far East to tear down part of its walls and Shanghai will probably be the second. The Taiping rebels of the 60’s captured the city, and the population went over to the revolution in November, 1911, thus depriving the effective Admiral Sah of the Manchu navy of his ammunition, which Shanghai arsenal had furnished up to that time. As Shanghai grows she will probably extend toward her port, Woosung, twelve miles away, and a Conservancy Board must arrange for vast expenditures to prepare for a large steamship tonnage now that the Pacific ocean is narrowing because of faster steamers being put on the route. Imported goods for China are mainly stacked in Shanghai’s godowns, not even subsidiary stocks being held at ports as far away as Newchwang. This practise must change somewhat and Shanghai take particular care of the Yangtze valley, which is a kingdom of 150,000,000 people in itself.

The quaint Kiangsu junks are disappearing, and vast fleets of launches and mere cargo junks have come into use. To see the picturesque old life on the waters, one must now go farther inland. Shanghai is famous for its peony, chrysanthemum and lily gardens. It is a florist’s paradise, because it lies in the valley of the sun. Its dress show on the bund and Bubbling Well Road, Hong Kew Park, Public Gardens and Jockey Club grounds, almost rivals in silk the floral creations of nature. Some of the costumes are amusing. A tall Sikh, “bearded like the pard”, and wearing an immense red turban, comes along the road with never a look to right nor left and never a smile on his eager face. His gown looks like a loose white nightshirt, over which he has forced a small tight vest of bright colors and flashy buttons. The nightshirt is gathered in about his legs, which are bare below the knee. On his feet he wears Punjab slippers, which curve up at the points like a gondola. So he fareth forth into the perpetual comedy of the Shanghai streets and maloos! The London “bobby” looks at him but does not arrest him, because on official occasions this same Sikh is the bobby’s partner on police duty, when, however, he buttons himself within a decent blue tunic and dons long trousers, though the turban is maintained to him for tradition’s sake.

All the foreign banks, the Hongkong bank, and the Chinese National and Shansi banks, have branches here, and it is proposed to have branches of large Chinese-American banks and steamship companies. Fault must be found with the modern native as well as the European architecture of Shanghai, that they are not perpetuating and adapting the extremely beautiful Chinese style in roof, screen, portals, columns, terminal ornaments, panels, pavilions and approaches. We of the Occident are barbarians to intrude in any land and debauch its beautiful architecture in the way we are universally doing. All praise to some of the missionary societies, that as usual they are the first to do right in a beautiful way by building in the Chinese manner in China. A Grecian building like Boone University, at Wuchang; a top-heavy German building like those at Kiaochou; a New York cave building like some at Tientsin; a British barn like some on the praya at Hongkong, even an Italian Renaissance like some on the Shanghai bund, are a trespass unto architectural sacrilege in artistic China. Let us keep to the galleries, the curved lines, the rich roof, the colored panels, the enameled tiles of pagoda and temple as we raise stone on stone in glorious old China, for she is the mother of the arts, and has sat longest at the fountain of beauty, if not at the anvil of arms.

The extension of the American post-office to Shanghai, whereby a letter can be sent from Shanghai to New York for two cents gold is a remarkable achievement, and speaks much for the generosity of the Chinese Revenue Board in permitting this heavy competition. Many of the other nations have post-offices, but the rates are higher. The great international Opium Commission, its chairman the American, Bishop Brent, which did the impossible by disenthralling a hundred million habitués from the pythonic toils of opium in two years, sat in Shanghai in February, 1909, in its most memorable conference. The chief credit is due to America for leadership in the altruistic sentiment, and to China, Britain, India and Hongkong for the immense altruistic sacrifice of revenue. Now that the pipe and the poppy fields have been wiped nearly out, it remains for the nations to stamp out morphia, the hypodermic syringe and the drugged cigarette. And poor China is not the maker of these infernal tools. Shanghai has a modern water, an electric and street making plants, which are being copied through China as fast as funds can be collected by the municipalities.

For a long time it was impossible to escape quickly from the deadly summer climate, but railways and steamships have placed the inland mountain resorts of Kuling, at Kowkiang, 3,000 feet high, and at Mokan Mountain within easy reach. Phutho, the famous Buddhist mountain island, is also near enough for quick steamship service. Every debilitated Shanghai dweller used to go to far Japan at great cost to recuperate, but this expense will be less necessary, as these nearer resorts are opened up by a fast developing transportation service. Kuling Mountain is a missionary resort. Before it was discovered broken-down workers had to be sent to Japan or home on a furlough if they were able to stand the long voyage and the boards were able to stand the expense. The work of missionaries is the hardest under dangerous pioneer conditions, and Kuling Mountain is enabling the missionary quickly to restore herself or himself to efficiency without leaving China. The waters around Shanghai, including Seven Mile Lake, afford excellent facilities for house-boating. The municipality uses tall, red-turbanned Sikh police from India, as well as native Chinese lukongs, all under foreign officers. The docks, ways and engine shops of Shanghai, both foreign and native owned, are equipping the waters of Central China with small steamboats, though there is a strong competition from Hongkong, Japan and Britain, and some competition from Manila. Shanghai can not set out thousands of lanterns on a dozen hills 1,800 feet up in the night skies, as gorgeous Hongkong can, yet her more intimate garden and house illuminations are famous in China. The poet may justly rave and sigh: