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Updated: June 21, 2025
On descending, we find that a servant has placed for us on a superb table in one of the pretty rooms cups of delicious tea, it being the custom in all the hongs to offer the beverage to strangers at all times. A cup of the aromatic Oulong will serve to steady our nerves for the completion of the tea-lecture.
They were the beggars of the city, who had just received their midday meal at the "Wanhsien Ragged Homes." There are three institutions of the kind in the city for the relief of the destitute; they are entirely supported by charity, and are said to have an average annual income of 40,000 taels. Wanhsien is a very rich city, with wealthy merchants and great salt hongs.
The principal business is of course held with the tea merchants themselves, not those who come from the North, but the Cantonese, while the minor business of all the hongs is in a great measure conducted through the "pursers," or foremen, who act between the Chinese and the foreigners, bringing in the accounts to the shipping-houses, and receiving the orders for cargoes.
I painted this picture to the Chinese of 1900: 'Who are those people hanging about with jinrickshas? 'The sons of the European merchants. 'What are those ruins? 'The Hongs of the European merchants, etc., etc. "People have asked me what I thought of the advance of China during the sixteen years I was absent. They looked superficially at the power military of China. I said they are unchanged.
There they were distributed among the foreign hongs, one to each hong. "That afterwards he with three others was sent home, being furnished with poison for distribution, and with special direction to poison all the wells on their way. They were to refer all those on whom the poison took effect to a certain individual at Amoy, who would heal them gratuitously, only requiring of them their names.
A decisive proof of the eligibility of Hong Kong as a place of trade, and of its importance in the eyes of the Chinese themselves, is afforded by the immense sums paid by some of them for ground on which to build Hongs, where they can deposit their goods with safety, beyond the reach of their grasping Mandarins.
Each one is enclosed with a coarse blue mosquito-netting; and mounting to the apartments by a ladder, here the coolies sleep the year round. The teas are not generally brought to the hongs until sold.
The men pull regularly until they get into the surf, and then they work like mad, and the light boat is landed high and dry on the shelving sands. Along the shore of the business section, the broad street is lined with lofty commercial warehouses, custom house, hongs and godowns, and we observed considerable building in progress just at this point.
Before sale they are stored in warehouses, chiefly on Honan Island, opposite the city; but after disposal the large-sized chests are carried into the hongs, where they are sorted and repacked into smaller boxes, according to the wants of the purchaser. You will see different parts of the floor covered with packages large and small, into which the coolies are shaking teas.
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