CHAPTER VI.
LITTLE CHU AND WOO-URH.
O more story Peep-shows of what might be seen in China, no more wondering what the Celestials would be like, for Sybil and Leonard had now landed on Chinese soil, and were themselves at Shanghai, face to face with its inhabitants.
Shanghai seemed, and was, a very busy place, but not a town of very great importance in itself, owing, really, its recent prosperity to having opened its port to foreign commerce. The custom-house, through which the Grahams' boxes had to be passed, struck the children as a very strange and beautiful building, quite different from anything that they had seen before; and there was a great noise of chattering going on outside, which sounded most unintelligible. Coolies were carrying bales of silk and tea to and fro; there were also, ready at hand, some of the sedan-chairs that Sybil had longed to see, and everywhere "pig-tails," or cues, as they were called, seemed to meet Leonard's gaze.
But the ships! Watching them was what he enjoyed better than anything else. The town of Shanghai is situated on the River Woosung, a tributary of the Yangtse-kiang, just at that point where it joins the great river, and about one hundred ships were anchored before this busy, commercial city. Many families resident there have their junks and a little home on the river. There were some very pretty buildings to be seen at Shanghai, and at one of these our little party stayed—on a visit to another missionary from the Church of England—for the three days that they remained there.
At some cities and towns, on the banks of rivers, floating hotels are to be seen; and as people generally have to travel by water, and the Chinese are not allowed to keep open their city-gates after nine o'clock at night, these hotels prove very useful to those arriving too late to enter the city. Lighted with lanterns, they look very pretty floating on the water, and both Sybil and Leonard were very pleased to be taken over a large floating hotel before they left Shanghai. Leonard was very anxious to know how long this town had been open to foreign commerce, and was told since the Opium War, which lasted from 1840 to 1842, when the British, having occupied several Chinese cities, and having captured Chinkiang in Hoopeh, were advancing to Nanking, and the Chinese suing for peace, a treaty was concluded which opened the ports of Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo, in addition to Canton, to the British, who were henceforward to appoint consuls to live in these towns.
The Chinese are very polite to foreigners in Shanghai; and as the kind missionary who bade the Grahams welcome to his home endeavoured, during their short stay, to interest and show them sights, they enjoyed themselves very much. Sybil and Leonard could not help noticing how very many people they met in spectacles, but they were told that the Chinese suffer very much from ophthalmia, and that when they wear spectacles, some of which are very large, they often have sore eyes.
"There is one thing I cannot understand the Chinese doing," Leonard said one day to Sybil: "and that is, everybody that we have seen, as yet, spoiling their tea by not taking any milk or sugar in it; and father says all the Chinese drink tea like that, and call milk white blood, and only use it in medicine."