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Updated: May 25, 2025
Think only of what it all means. Marco Polo travelling where no man set foot again till the twentieth century. The bells of the Christian church ringing sweetly in the ears of the Great Khan in Peking. The long road across central Asia perfectly safe for merchants. The 'many persons at Venice' who have walked in the streets of Hangchow.
Until recently, British subjects were at liberty to carry on business at but eighteen ports in China. To these must be now added Shansi on the Yangtse, between Ichang and Hankow; Hangchow and Souchow, two inland cities near Shanghai; Woochow and Sanshui on the West River and Ssumao and Lungchow, in the south.
K`ang Hsi several times visited Hangchow, returning to Tientsin by the Grand Canal, a distance of six hundred and ninety miles. This canal, it will be remembered, was designed and executed under Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century, and helped to form an almost unbroken line of water communication between Peking and Canton.
If you had not seen Hangchow, you would have said that there was no city in the world, not Venice nor Constantinople nor another worthy to be named in the same breath with Sugui. The Chinese indeed, seeing the riches and beauty of these two cities, doubted whether even the pleasant courts of heaven could show their equal and proudly quoted the proverb: Shang yeu t'ien t'ang, Hia yeu Su Hang.
As regards the rights of financing a railway from Wuchang to connect with the Kiu-kiang-Nanchang railway, a railway from Nanchang to Hangchow and another from Nanchang to Chaochow, the Chinese Government shall not grant the said right to any foreign Power before Japan comes to an understanding with the other Power which is heretofore interested therein.
As regards the rights of financing a railway from Wuchang to connect with the Kiu-kiang-Nanchang railway, a railway from Nanchang to Hangchow and another from Nanchang to Chaochow, the Chinese Government shall not grant the said right to any foreign Power before Japan comes to an understanding with the other Power which is heretofore interested therein.
In the disaster of 1126, when the Juchên captured the Sung capital and destroyed the Sung empire, a brother of the captive emperor escaped. He made himself emperor in Nanking and founded the "Southern Sung" dynasty, whose capital was soon shifted to the present Hangchow.
Thus it was that the great Khan was prevailed upon, very reluctantly, to let them go. One version of Marco's book says that they took with them also the daughter of the king of Mansi, one of those Sung princesses who in happier days had wandered beside the lake in Hangchow, and who had no doubt been brought up at Cambaluc by the care of Kublai Khan's favourite queen, the Lady Jamui.
Trunk lines could be constructed for this purpose without any difficulty. They would pass along the old trade tracks, and would encounter populous cities the whole way. Through eastern Shansi and Honan, for example, to Hangchow on the Yangtse; thence to the Si Kiang and Canton; such lines would be shafts driven through the heart of the Middle Kingdom, connecting the North and the South.
As regards railways within the empire, a Pekin-Hankow line has been arranged for, as we pointed out in the previous chapter, with a so-called Belgian syndicate, and, if properly executed, should be a good line; but, as we have said, it is the opinion of experts that the best railway contemplated in China would be that from Pekin via Tientsin to Hangchow, with an extension later to Canton.
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