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Updated: June 2, 2025
Treaty Ports, each of which is a centre of European influence, exist practically all over China, not only on the sea coast. Hankow, a very important Treaty Port, is almost exactly in the centre of China. North and South China are divided by the Yangtze; East and West China are divided by the route from Peking to Canton.
I write a line to tell you that I got over the signature of my tariff, &c., very satisfactorily this morning, and set off in peace with all men, including Chinese Plenipotentiaries, and colleagues European and American, on my way up the Yangtze Kiang. We are penetrating into unknown regions, but I trust shortly to be able to report to you my return, and all the novelties I shall have seen.
In 1125 the Kitan empire was destroyed. It will be remembered that the Sung were at once attacked, although they had recently been allied with the Chin against the Kitan. In 1126 the Sung capital was taken. The Chin invasions were pushed farther south, and in 1130 the Yangtze was crossed. But the Chin did not hold the whole of these conquests. Their empire was not yet consolidated.
The kingdom could only be seriously attacked from two corners through the north-west, where there was a negotiable plateau, between the Ch'in-ling mountains in the north and the Tibetan mountains in the west, a plateau inhabited by fairly highly developed Tibetan tribes; and secondly through the south-east corner, where it would be possible to penetrate up the Yangtze.
We were tied in fast to the darkened sides of the great Ichang Gorge a magnificent sixteen-mile stretch, opening up the famous gorges on the fourth of the great rivers of the world, which had cleaved its course through a chain of hills, whose perpendicular cliffs form wonderful rock-bound banks, dispelling all thought of the monotony of the Lower Yangtze.
Think not that the life will be luxurious houseboat life on the Upper Yangtze is decidedly not luxurious. Were it not for the magnificence of the scenery and ever-changing outdoor surroundings, as a matter of fact, the long river journey would probably become unbearably dull.
It was pointed out that trade had greatly developed in the T'ang period; of the lower Yangtze region people it was said that "they were so much interested in business that they paid no attention to agriculture". Yet merchants were subject to many humiliating conditions. They could not enter the examinations, except by illegal means.
The completion of the railway, together with improved docks, will greatly increase the importance of Canton and diminish that of Hong-Kong. In the Treaty Ports commerce is the principal business; but in the lower Yangtze and in certain mining districts there are beginnings of industrialism.
Kan Wong, the sampan boatman, sat in the bow of his tiny craft, looking with dream-misted eyes upon the oily, yellow flood of the Yangtze River.
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. 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.
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