Across China on Foot | Page 5

other sundry internationals at that moment at Shanghai. They lived
there: we were soon to leave.
The city was suffering from the abnormal congestion common to the
Orient, with a big dash of the West. Trams, motors, rickshaws, the
peculiar Chinese wheelbarrow, horrid public shaky landaus in
miniature, conveyances of all kinds, and the swarming masses of coolie
humanity carrying or hauling merchandise amid incessant jabbering,
yelling, and vociferating, made intense bewilderment before breakfast.
Wonderful Shanghai!

FIRST JOURNEY
FROM SHANGHAI UP THE LOWER YANGTZE TO ICHANG

CHAPTER I.
_To Ichang, an everyday trip_. _Start from Shanghai, and the city's
appearance_. At Hankow. Meaning of the name. Trio of strategic and
military points of the empire. _Han-yang and Wu-ch'ang_. Commercial
and industrial future of Hankow. Getting our passports. Britishers in
the city. The commercial Chinaman. _The native city: some
impressions_. Clothing of the people. Cotton and wool. Indifference to
comfort. Surprise at our daring project. At Ichang. British gunboat and
early morning routine. Our vain quest for aid. Laying in stores and
commissioning our boat. Ceremonies at starting gorges trip. _Raising
anchor, and our departure_.
Let no one who has been so far as Ichang, a thousand miles from the
sea, imagine that he has been into the interior of China.
It is quite an everyday trip. Modern steamers, with every modern
convenience and luxury, probably as comfortable as any river steamers
in the world, ply regularly in their two services between Shanghai and
this port, at the foot of the Gorges.
The Whang-poo looked like the Thames, and the Shanghai Bund like
the Embankment, when I embarked on board a Jap boat en route for
Hankow, and thence to Ichang by a smaller steamer, on a dark, bitterly
cold Saturday night, March 6th, 1909. I was to travel fifteen hundred
miles up that greatest artery of China. The Yangtze surpasses in
importance to the Celestial Empire what the Mississippi is to America,
and yet even in China there are thousands of resident foreigners who
know no more about this great river than the average Smithfield
butcher. Ask ten men in Fleet Street or in Wall Street where Ichang is,
and nine will be unable to tell you. Yet it is a port of great importance,
when one considers that the handling of China's vast river-borne trade
has been opened to foreign trade and residence since the Chefoo
Convention was signed in 1876, that Ichang is a city of forty thousand
souls, and has a gross total of imports of nearly forty millions of taels.
Of Hankow, however, more is known. Here we landed after a four

days' run, and, owing to the low water, had to wait five days before the
shallower-bottomed steamer for the higher journey had come in. The
city is made up of foreign concessions, as in other treaty ports, but
away in the native quarter there is the real China, with her selfish rush,
her squalidness and filth among the teeming thousands. There dwell
together, literally side by side, but yet eternally apart, all the conflicting
elements of the East and West which go to make up a city in the Far
East, and particularly the China coast.
Hankow means literally Han Mouth, being situated at the juncture of
the Han River and the Yangtze. Across the way, as I write, I can see
Han-yang, with its iron works belching out black curls of smoke, where
the arsenal turns out one hundred Mauser rifles daily. (This is but a
fraction of the total work done.) It is, I believe, the only steel-rolling
mill in China. Long before the foreigner set foot so far up the Yangtze,
Hankow was a city of great importance--the Chinese used to call it the
centre of the world. Ten years ago I should have been thirty days' hard
travel from Peking; at the present moment I might pack my bag and be
in Peking within thirty-six hours. Hankow, with Tientsin and Nanking,
makes up the trio of principal strategic points of the Empire, the trio of
centers also of greatest military activity. On the opposite bank of the
river I can see Wu-ch'ang, the provincial capital, the seat of the
Viceroyalty of two of the most turbulent and important provinces of the
whole eighteen.
Hankow, Han-yang, and Wu-ch'ang have a population of something
like two million people, and it is safe to prophesy that no other centre
in the whole world has a greater commercial and industrial future than
Hankow.
Here we registered as British subjects, and secured our Chinese
passports, resembling naval ensigns more than anything else, for the
four provinces of Hu-peh, Kwei-chow, Szech'wan, and Yün-nan. The
Consul-General and his assistants helped us in many ways,
disillusioning us of the many distorted reports which have got into print
regarding the