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Updated: June 2, 2025
The south, particularly the lower Yangtze region and the province of Szechwan, had made economic progress, at least in comparison with the north; consequently it had gained in political importance.
I am anchored off the mouth of the river Han, which separates Hankow and Han-yang on the left bank of the Yangtze. On its right bank is Ouchang Foo. I do not see room for the eight millions of people, at which rumour puts the population of these three towns. The scene is very animated. We are surrounded by hundreds of boats, and the banks are a sea of heads. My gentlemen are gone ashore.
Laying in provisions. Author laid up with malaria. Survey of trade in Shanghai and Hong-Kong. Where and why the Britisher fails. Comparison with Germans. Three western provinces and pack-horse traffic. Advantages of new railway. Yangtze likely to be abandoned. East India Company. French and British interests. Hint to Hong-Kong Chamber of Commerce.
The rising had been the outcome of years of unrest, which had two causes: native risings of the sort we described above, and loss for the gentry due to the transfer of the capital. The province of Kiangsi was a part of the Yangtze region, and the great landowners there had lived on the profit from their supplies to Nanking. When the capital was moved to Peking, their takings fell.
The second section of our journey would be the passage through the western part of Inner Mongolia, through the Little Gobi, through the lands of the Torguts, over the Khara Mountains, across Kansu, where our road must be chosen to the west of the Chinese town of Suchow. From there we should have to enter the Dominion of Kuku Nor and then work on southward to the head waters of the Yangtze River.
After two and one-half days' travel up the Yangtze we turned westward toward Wei-hsi and camped on a beautiful flat plain beside a tree-bordered stream. It was a cold clear night and after dinner and a smoke about the fire we all turned in. Both of us were asleep when suddenly a perfect bedlam of angry exclamations and Chinese curses roused the whole camp.
Upstream we had glided merrily upon a fresh breeze, which bore the warning of a storm. All on board was settling down into Yangtze fashion, and the barbaric human clamor of our trackers, which now mutteringly died away, was suddenly taken up, as above recorded, and all unexpectedly answered by a grander uproar a deep threatening boom of far-off thunder.
It had been found that almost the whole of the gentry in the Yangtze region sat at the examinations; and that at these examinations their representatives made sure, through their mutual relations, that only their members should pass, so that the candidates from the north were virtually excluded.
We hear of many men who started out with one loom and later ended up with over forty looms, employing many weavers. Shanghai began to emerge as a centre of cotton cloth production. A system of middle-men developed who bought raw cotton and raw silk from the producers and sold it to factories. Consumption in the Yangtze cities raised the value of the land around the cities.
Since then we have been waiting for Parkes, who stayed at Tientsin for a letter from Pekin about the opening of the Yangtze river, which I am anxious to take with me to Shanghae. ... Yesterday was a lovely day; a bright sun, and the air frosty enough to stimulate one to walk briskly. This morning there was a strong gale from the north-west, but it subsided after midday.
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