The Sea Road to the East, Gibraltar to Wei-hai-wei / Six Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office

by A. J. Sargent

Canton has, to some extent, lost its former importance for us, and its merchants no longer have the monopoly of the whole external trade of China; so we return to Hongkong without further delay, and rejoining our ship steam out through the narrow eastern passage, the Lai-i-mun, and turn northwards on our voyage.

Our next port of call is Shanghai, a most important (1) centre of British trade and influence and in close connexion with British stations in the East, though not one of them itself. Hongkong is the great exchange station for shipping and trade in the Far East; Shanghai is the market and business centre for the great basin of the Yangtse river and for much of North China as well. Its importance may be measured by the fact that over half the total trade of China passes through the hands of its merchants. There are two Shanghais, and the contrast between them 40 is great; on the one hand we have the old native walled city, dirty and decaying and purely Chinese, and on the 41 other the new Foreign Settlement, where all the business is done. This part has grown steadily in size and prosperity. The French still have entire control of their own section, but in the International Settlement, which was at one time purely British, Germans and Americans have now a considerable share. We have here a very curious system: a foreign municipality established on Chinese soil and governing itself, subject only to the control of the foreign Consuls and the Ministers at Peking. It is responsible for a few thousand Europeans and over half a million Chinese. At Hongkong we are supreme in everything; but at Shanghai, though the citizens of foreign nations are subject to their own laws, the city is still legally part of China, so that the natives are under the jurisdiction of Chinese officials. This has been the cause of great trouble in the past, as Chinese and Western ideas of law are widely different. It is a very strange position. Here is a small body of foreign merchants, practically unprotected, in the midst of a vast native population, yet responsible for the well-being of one of the greatest commercial cities in the world.

Trade is the sole foundation of this new Shanghai, and 42 trade depends on the river Hwangpu; for though Shanghai is the outlet for the Yangtse basin, it stands at some distance from the main river and the sea, at the head of the tideway of a small tributary and in close contact with a great network of canals and rivers in the fertile country to the west. The bank of the river is lined with wharves, warehouses and factories, and the Settlement is spreading steadily down towards Wusung. The flat country round has been built up of silt brought down by the main river; centuries ago Shanghai may have been on the coast. The river is still at work: great banks are formed under water, and in a few generations become dry land thickly populated. In the whole breadth of the Yangtse mouth there are only two channels navigable by large vessels. Everywhere the land is gaining on the sea. Into the broad silt-laden estuary the little Hwangpu empties itself below Wusung; it brings down no silt, but the incoming tide sweeps in the muddy water of the main river. The silt is dropped and the stream is too weak to scour it away. At the mouth of the Hwangpu is a great bar, which is still growing; and so much has the channel changed and shallowed that it is no longer safe for the largest vessels to approach Shanghai. We may see the same process going on in England, in the Humber and the rivers flowing into the Wash. The Chinese are at last beginning to move; a new channel has been cut for traffic on the Hwangpu; the bed of the river has been dredged and its course straightened, and an embankment built to keep out the silt from the main river. But the size of the vessels engaged in trade increases every year and the future of Shanghai is in the balance; it remains to be seen whether modern engineering will win the day against the vast forces wielded by the Yangtse. Any decline in the activity of Shanghai would be likely to result in more business for Hongkong.

We leave Shanghai for the last stage of our long voyage 43 from Europe. As we steam northwards, the coast on our left is low, fringed with banks and without harbours or inlets; it is the edge of the great alluvial plain of China. But on the second day we come in sight of high bare cliffs, backed by dark mountains. We are approaching the promontory of Shantung, an isolated block of highland, cut off sharply by the sea on its eastern edge and sinking on the west to the shifting beds of the Hwang-ho and the maze of waterways which covers the great plain. Towards the southwest corner of the peninsula lies Kiaochau, now a possession of Germany; in the middle of the north side is the old Treaty Port of Chifu; and between Chifu and the extreme eastern point of the promontory is the bay and port of Wei-hai-wei. The map shows us that north of Shantung the coast again becomes low and uniform, difficult of access and without good seaports; but a hundred miles away, across the water, another mountainous peninsula, Liaotung, stretches out to meet Shantung, where a string of little islands partly bridges the broad channel. In Liaotung, as in Shantung, are headlands and deep inlets and harbours; here we have Port Arthur and Talienwan. The two great promontories seem framed by Nature to guard the approach to the Gulf and the capital province of China. On the one, two foreign Powers are established by diplomacy; two more have fought for the control of the other.

We steam round the eastern headland, with its white 44 lighthouse nestling below the gloomy hills, and soon a wide bay begins to open out ahead of us. We have reached the end of our voyage. The bay forms a rough semicircle, about six miles across, ringed in by hills to the south and west, but open to the northeast, except where for two miles across the entrance stretches the island of Liukung, hilly in the west but tapering off to a long low reef in the east. The island and the northeastern bend of the mainland enclose an anchorage sheltered from the northerly gales which sweep in from the sea in winter. This is the harbour of Wei-hai-wei. In the midst of the broad southern channel, a mere dot upon the water, is a rocky islet, I-tao, or Sun Island, crowned with the ruins of strong fortifications. There are other such ruins on the high ground to the north and south, commanding the two entrances to the bay. These relics contain the history of Wei-hai-wei.

Wei-hai-wei.

It was here that the Chinese fleet, during the war with Japan in 1895, took refuge after the loss of Port Arthur and the defeat off the Yalu. Japanese troops landed further east and captured the forts on the mainland, while their fleet attacked the booms drawn across the wide entrances. The nearness of the mainland was a source of weakness to the island and the Chinese fleet; and Admiral Ting, assailed both from land and sea, was at length compelled to surrender, so that Japan now held the two defences of the passage-way to Peking, and China’s case was hopeless. Early in 1898, Germany obtained a lease of Kiaochau, as compensation for the murder of some missionaries; a few weeks later Russia seized Port Arthur, and in July of the same year Wei-hai-wei was leased to us. It was not merely by chance that the three events followed one another so closely.

Wei-hai-wei was adopted as a naval base and for the protection of our commerce, since Hongkong is over a thousand miles away. The control of a considerable zone on the neighbouring mainland is necessary for the security of the harbour, so that the leased territory covers in all an area of 285 square miles, or about twice the size of the Isle of Wight. The case is like that of Kaulun. 45 We are fortunate in the time of our visit, as the fleet is at anchor in the bay and the crews are practising mining operations; but at another time we might find the place deserted. There is no permanent garrison, as Wei-hai-wei is only to be used as a flying base and practice ground for the fleet. On the island are the marine 46 barracks, which remind us of England, and the naval hospital, which looks quite Chinese, in spite of its English occupants. The hospital is the more important, since our squadrons in the Eastern seas have great need of a sanatorium, and Wei-hai-wei, with its temperate climate, is the most healthy of all our positions in this part of the world. There is a cricket pitch on the parade ground and English sailors are everywhere to be seen in the little town; but we turn a corner and come upon a building which is 47 peculiarly Chinese, an open-air theatre, to remind us that we are merely visitors among a foreign people with customs very different from our own. Let us climb the hill towards the golf links, and crossing over look down on the northern channel. There is no town here, as the shore is rugged and unsheltered and lashed by heavy seas in the winter storms. The island is a natural breakwater and this is the seaward side.