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