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