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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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