Ningbo

“ Ningpo lies at the distance of only fifty miles from the trading town of Chapoo, which possesses a monopoly of the whole trade with Japan and Corea. Hence there is reason to believe, that our manufactures will soon find their way into these latter countries, (which have hitherto excluded the foreigner, more pertinaciously even than the Chinese,) indirectly by way of Ningpo; and, that, in a few years, many articles expressly adapted for the Japan market, will be ordered to be manufactured in this country, and sent to Chinese merchants at Ningpo. ”

“ The first division comprises the holders of high office in Peking; the second the governors of the eighteen provinces in which China proper is comprehended, and of the three provinces of the district loosely termed Manchuria, which stretches north-eastward of Peking. In the third class we may place the officials resident in those vast regions known as Inner and Outer Mongolia, in the country between Mongolia and Thibet, and lastly In Thibet itself. Every Manchu mandarin of high standing has military as well as civil rank. ”

“ Ningpo, with its bridge of boats and Chinese shipping and pagodas, has a picturesque appearance from the river. It is large, populous, and wealthy; a place to which the merchant may retire to spend his gains, more than a port for active and hard working commerce. That is the reason why we will not land at Ningpo. Where, then, shall we land? If you have no objection, at Shangae, the fifth and most important, although not the largest, of these ports. But sea life is monotonous, and therefore we will take five minutes' diversion ashore, after we have sailed some twenty miles up this canal. ”

“ Even at Ningpo, close to our central point on the eastern coast of China, thin layers of ice are collected from pools and ditches, and successfully stored for use in the following summer.
The inhabitants of the coast provinces are distinguished from the dwellers in the north and in the far interior by a marked alertness of mind and general temperament. The Chinese themselves declare that virtue is associated with mountains, wisdom with water, cynically implying that no one is both virtuous and wise. Between the inhabitants of the various provinces there is little love lost. ”

“ This city is famous for its silks, which are very beautiful of their kind; and the shops are elegant, and well supplied with all kinds of Chinese manufactures. It is a wealthier and much handsomer town than Amoy, and is much superior in commercial importance, to Foo-chow-foo, another of the newly-opened ports. Large junks are even built on the Ningpo river, and the people have always shewn a great disposition to trade with foreigners. Indeed, this is the case in every part of China where the people have not been held back by their mandarins. ”

“ Ningpo is also an old treaty port, situated on a small river, the Yungkiang, in the eastern part of Chekiang province. It has a good approach, deep water reaching right up to the estuary of the river. The harbor can be easily improved by simply training and straightening two bends along its course up to the city. Ningpo commands a very small but rich hinterland. Its people are very enterprising, and are famed for their workmanship and handicrafts second only to those of Canton. Thus Ningpo is bound to become a manufacturing city when China is industrially developed. ”

“ Walter Lowrie, founder of the Presbyterian Mission at Ningpo, was not so fortunate. Attacked by pirates nearly on the same spot, he was thrown into the sea and drowned.
Passing these islands we come to the Ningpo River, with Chinhai, a small city, at its mouth, and Ningpo, Page 19 a great emporium, some twelve miles inland. This curious arrangement, so different from what one would expect, confronts one in China with the regularity of a natural law: Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, and Tientsin, all conform to it. The small city stands at the anchorage for heavy shipping ”

“ On the 7th of May, 1842, the city of Ningpo was given up, it was impossible to spare a garrison for so large a city. Neither was it any longer necessary to retain possession of it, for the occupation of Chinhae at the river's mouth, would command the whole trade of the city. Some of the principal inhabitants, merchants, and others, were assembled by Sir Hugh Gough, and into their hands the custody of the city was given over, in the absence of all the constituted authorities. As might be expected, our evacuation of Ningpo was represented [376] to the Emperor as a great victory gained. ”

“ A carriage takes you, in time, to the squalid village, or series of villages, where are housed the 350,000 inhabitants of modern Nanking. Among them are quartered the khaki-clad soldiers of new China, the new national flag draped at the gate of their barracks. Meantime old China swarms, unregenerate, in the narrow little streets, chaffering, chattering, laughing in its rags as though there had never been a siege, a surrender, and a revolution. Beggars display their stumps and their sores, grovelling on the ground like brutes. ”

“ Military dandies even from far Ningpo are carried up the mountain in sedan-chairs (this last a work of great difficulty) ; whilst old men and very weak women manage to get up in a sort of basket carried on a man's back, their feet holding on round his waist after the fashion that children are carried pick-a-back. And in the winter the Tibetans come, men and women all together, all in furs, and saying, "Om Mani Padmi Hum!" instead of the familiar, "Omito Fo," the habitual greeting on the mountain-side. ”

“ The city was captured by the Taiping rebels in 1862. Off Ningpo a fierce engagement between the Chinese and English fleets took place in October, 1841. Nimrod Bay, near Ningpo, is to be the central base for the new Chinese navy. In the turmoil of 1898, when the nations of Europe were striving to partition China, despite the protests of America and Britain, the French, on July 16th, landed marines at Ningpo and tried to take a temple graveyard for a settlement, incidentally adding twenty Chinese to the number to be buried in the graveyard! ”

“ News travels so slowly in the interior that fifty miles from Ningpo the mass of the people never heard that that place was in the hands of the English for some time in 1841 and 42; and unless brought more closely to their senses than is now apparent, the present generation of people away from the Northern Consular cities may never hear of the "Second War with China."—I am, Dear Sir, your's truly. ”

“ The new times in learning, religion, politics and commerce are bringing in an ugly architecture. Ningpo is strongly influenced in Buddhism by the nearness of Phu Tho Island of the Chusan group. There is a quaint pontoon bridge over one of the streams. It has shops upon it, and is the center of a fair. The women of Ningpo are known for their fine needlework, and the old schools were celebrated for their men of letters among the390 literati officials. The old Tien Fung pentagonal pagoda is perhaps the oldest in China, dating back 1,200 years. ”

“ The rebel forces in Ningpo, who had been on their good behaviour for a short time, became aggressive and insulting, even going the length of offering rewards for foreign heads in the good old mandarin fashion. It is well to remember that even in their unkempt condition, and with everything to gain from the goodwill of foreigners, the Taiping rebels lacked nothing of the most arrogant of Chinese assumptions. The pretensions of the chief far exceeded those of the Emperors of China. ”

“ The native city is a walled enclosure, somewhat larger than that at Shanghai, and with nearly double its population ; but as for the foreign trade of the place, it has never been very important, in spite of the proximity of Hang-chow-fu, the capital of the province, which the great Venetian, when he passed through it, described as an Eastern Paradise.
Among the chief attractions of Ningpo are the Fukien guildhall, the " Tien-how-kung, " as it is called, or '* Temple of the Queen of Heaven"; one of the finest buildings of the kind in China. ”

“ A people that tolerates either or both hardly deserves to be regarded as civilised.
The Chinese call Tibet the "roof of the world," and most of it is as barren as the roof of a house. Still the roof, though producing nothing, collects water to irrigate a garden. Tibet is the mother of great rivers, and she feeds them from her eternal snows. On her highlands is a lake or cluster of lakes which the Chinese describe as Sing Su Hai, the "sea of stars." From this the Yellow River takes its rise and perhaps the Yang-tse Kiang. ”

“ The bulk of these interesting people now live split up into a great number of semi-independent states, some tributary to Burma, some to China, and some to Siam; and yet the man-in-the-street knows little about them. One cannot mistake them, especially the women, with their peculiar Mongolian features and sallow complexions and characteristic head-dress. The men are less distinguishable, probably, generally speaking, but the rough cotton turban instead of the round cap with the knob on the top alone enables one more readily to pick them out from the Chinese. ”

“ In the northeast of China, beyond the Great Wall and bordering on Corea, lies the province of Liautung. Northward from this to the Amur River extends the eastern section of the steppes, known on modern maps as Manchuria. From these broad wilds the Kins had advanced to their conquest of Northern China. To them they fled for safety from the Mongol arms, and here lost their proud name of Kin and resumed their older and humbler one of Niuche. For some five centuries they remained here unnoticed and undisturbed, broken up into numerous small clans, none of much strength and importance. ”

“ There were beds, chairs, tables, washing-stands, cabinets and presses, all peculiarly Chinese in their form, and beautifully inlaid with different kinds of wood and ivory, representing the people and customs of the country, and presenting, in fact, a series of pictures of China and the Chinese. Every one who saw these things admired them, and, what was rather strange, they seem peculiar to Ning-po, and are not met with at any of the other [Pg 90] five ports, not even in Shanghae. As all this beautiful work is expensive, it is, of course, only used in the houses of the wealthy. ”

“ In the meantime, the expected reinforcements would have arrived, both from England and from India, and the next campaign would be opened with vigour, and would suffice, it was hoped, to conclude the war. Ningpo, which is a city of the first class, and therefore called Foo, (Ningpo-Foo,) is the chief city of a department, and the second city in the province of Che-keang, of which the capital is Hang-Chow-Foo. The population of the province, according to Chinese documents, numbers upwards of 26,000,000 souls, or very nearly as much as the whole of Great Britain and Ireland together. ”

“ The comfortable, elegant and tasteful abodes of the middle classes, which adorn the suburbs round our cities at home, are conspic- uous by their absence in the " Flowery Land. " In this town I met the remnant of that " ever-victorious army " which achieved so many triumphs. Now, after much turmoil," these warriors rest from their labours, and form the Ningpo city guard, a small compact body of native troops under two English officers, well drilled, well cared for and well paid. This, I fear, is more than can be said of a large portion of the Chinese forces under arms. ”

“ I sent in a report to Government and stayed on in Yatung for about ten weeks, waiting for a reply, and during that time I saw a good deal of both Chinese and Tibetans. The Chinese are well-known sticklers for etiquette and it was a curious commentary on the position that, as their officials lived just beyond Pema in the Chumbi Valley, within Tibet, I was not allowed to return their ceremonial visits. No person, save Tibetans or Chinese, not even Mr. Taylor, himself a Chinese official, was allowed to pass the gateway in the wall. ”

“ Not only are there bleak mountains and vast morasses, dreary despoblados without a sign of man for days, and the fanatical Mohammedan province of Kansu to cross, but in these settled times there are real dangers from bandits of several nationalities. So the beaten trail of to-day, except for those Tibetan divinities who come by sea, like any tourist, leads down through northern India and across into central China, thence northward through the former Celestial Empire, which still claims, if in vain, jurisdiction over all Outer Mongolia. ”

“ The Fuyu tribes who, by turning their face to the rising, instead of the setting sun, were anomalous in the direction of their migration, were unique also in their political genius. Those emigrants who, descending from the same ancestral seats in Manchuria, and through the peninsula, crossed toward Nippon, or Sunrise, and settled Japan, maintained their feudalism until, through ambitious desire to rival great China, they borrowed the centralized system of court and monarchy from the Tang dynasty, in the seventh century. ”

“ The overthrow of Lissechi prepared the way for the more formidable enterprise against Ninghia, where the Mongols had drawn their remaining power to a head. Ninghia, the old capital of Tangut, is situated in the north of Kansuh, on the western bank of the Hoangho, and the Great Wall passes through it. Strongly fortified and admirably placed, the Mongols, so long as they possessed this town with its gates through the Great Wall, might hope to recover what they had lost, and to make a fresh bid for power in Northern China. ”