CHAPTER XI
A GLIMPSE OF CANTON
CANTON is, to foreigners, probably the best‐known and most frequently visited city of China. Its proximity to, and ready accessibility from Hong Kong, whence it is easily reached by a line of large river steamers, renders it a favourite place with travellers to the East to spend a portion of the time the mailboats usually stop in the English harbour. A small colony of Europeans, consuls and merchants of several nationalities, reside in its foreign settlement. Its considerable trade and its occupation by the Allies after the war of 1856‐7 directed much attention to it. Owing to its easy access, no other city in the Chinese Empire has been so frequently described by European writers. Rudyard Kipling, in his fascinating “From Sea to Sea,” paints a marvellous word‐picture of the life in its crowded streets. But it is so bound up with the interests of Hong Kong, its constant menace to our colony, and the suspected designs of French aggression, that still something new may be said about it. Despite its constant trade intercourse with Europeans, Canton remains anti‐foreign. Its inhabitants have not forgotten or forgiven its capture and occupation by the English and French in the past. After the Boxer movement in the North in 1900, many fears were entertained in Hong Kong lest a still more formidable outbreak against foreigners in the South might be inaugurated by the turbulent population of the restless city. The Europeans in Canton sent their families in haste to Hong Kong and Macao; wealthy Chinamen transferred their money to the banks in the former place; gunboats were hurried up; and the garrison of our island colony stood ready. The history of Canton’s intercourse with foreigners dates as far back as the eighth century. Two hundred years later it was visited by Arab traders, who were instrumental in introducing Mohammedanism, which still remains alive in the city. In 1517 Emmanuel, King of Portugal, sent an ambassador with a fleet of eight ships to Pekin; and the Chinese Emperor sanctioned the opening of trade relations with Canton. The English were much later in the field. In 1596, during the reign of Elizabeth, our first attempt to establish intercourse with China ended disastrously, as the two ships despatched were lost on the outward voyage. The first English vessel to reach Canton arrived there in 1634. In the light of the present state of affairs in the East, it is curious to note that an English ship which visited China in 1673 was subsequently refused admittance to Japan. In 1615 the city was captured by the Tartars.
About half a century later the famous East India Company established itself under the walls of Canton, and from there controlled the foreign trade for nearly one hundred and fifty years. After much vexatious interference by the native authorities, the influence of the Company was abolished early in the nineteenth century. The conduct of the Chinese Government as regards our commerce led to our declaring war in 1839. In 1841 a force under Sir Hugh (afterwards Lord) Gough surrounded Canton and prepared to capture it. But negotiations were opened by the Chinese, which ended in their being allowed to ransom the city by the payment of the large sum of six million dollars. The war was transferred farther north and ended with the Nanking Treaty of August, 1842, which threw open to foreign trade the ports of Shanghai, Ning‐po, Foochow, and Amoy. It was further stipulated that foreigners were to be permitted to enter the city of Canton. This provision, however, the Chinese refused to carry out. More vexatious quarrels and an insult to the British flag by the seizure of a Chinaman on the Arrow, a small vessel sailing under our colours, led to a fresh war in 1856. The outbreak of hostilities was followed by the pillaging and destruction of the “factories” of the foreign merchants in Canton by an infuriated mob in the December of that year. In 1857 the city was taken by storm by a force under Sir Charles Straubenzee. For four years afterwards it was occupied by an English and French garrison. The affairs of the city were administered by three allied commissioners—two English and one French officer—under the British General. They held their court in the Tartar General’s Yamen, part of which is still used by the English Consul for official receptions. Since the allied garrison was withdrawn Canton has been freely open to foreigners.
On the conclusion of peace it was necessary to find a settlement for the European merchants whose factories had been destroyed. It was determined to fill in and appropriate an extensive mud‐flat lying near the north bank of the river and south‐west of the city. This site having been leased, was converted into an artificial island by building a massive embankment of granite and constructing a canal, 100 feet wide, between the northern face and the adjacent Chinese suburb. The ground thus reclaimed measures about 950 yards in length and 320 yards broad in its widest part. It is in shape an irregular oval, and is called Shameen, or, more proper, Sha‐mien, i.e. sand‐flats. The island is divided into the English and the French Concessions. On it the consulates and the residences of the foreign merchants are built. The canal is crossed by two bridges, called respectively the English and the French, which can be closed by gates. They are guarded by the Settlement police. The cost of making the island amounted to 325,000 dollars (Mex.); of which the English Government paid four‐fifths and the French one‐fifth. At first foreigners hesitated to occupy it; but after the British Consulate was erected in 1865, our merchants began to build upon it with more confidence.
The journey from Hong Kong to Canton is very comfortably performed on the commodious shallow‐draught steamers that ply between the two cities. I left the island one afternoon with a party of friends. The scenery along the rugged coast and among the hilly islands to the flat delta at the mouth of the estuary with its countless creeks, still haunted by pirates, is charming. As we steamed up the river we could see, moving apparently among the fields, the huge sails of junks which in reality were sailing on the canals that intersect the country. After dinner I sat on deck with a very charming companion and watched the shadowy banks gliding past in the moonlight. Turning in for the night in a comfortable cabin, I slept until eight o’clock next morning, and awoke to find the steamer alongside the river bank at Canton.
The scene from the deck was animated and picturesque. On one side lay the crowded houses and grim old walls of the city. The wharves were thronged with bustling crowds. On the other, beyond the island suburb of Honam, the country stretched away in cultivation to low hills in the distance. The river was thronged with countless covered boats; for the floating population of Canton amounts to about a quarter of a million souls, and the crowded sampans lying in a dense mass on the water form a separate town from the city on the land. It is almost self‐containing and its inhabitants ply every imaginable trade. Peddlers of food, vegetables, fruit, pots, pans, and wares of all kinds paddled their boats along and shouted their stock‐in‐trade. Here and there a sampan was being extricated with difficulty from the closely packed mass, its crew earning voluble curses from their neighbours as they disentangled their craft and shot out into the stream.
I gazed over the steamer’s side at the crowded wharf. Chinese or half‐caste Portuguese Customs officers rapidly scanned the baggage of the pig‐tailed passengers as they landed, now and then stopping one and making him open the bundles he carried. Opium‐smuggling is the chief thing they guard against, for Hong Kong is a free port.
The city of Canton lies on the north bank of the Pearl River, about seventy or eighty miles from the sea. It is surrounded by an irregular masonry wall, twenty‐five feet high, twenty feet thick, and six or seven miles in circumference. This fortification is by no means as strong as the famous Wall of the Tartar city in Pekin and could be easily breached by the fire of heavy guns. Good artillery positions are to be found all round. A few miles north of the city lie hills rising 1,200 feet above the river. As the southern wall is only a few hundred yards from the bank, it could be destroyed and the city bombarded without difficulty by gunboats, some of which—English, French, and German—are nearly always lying off Shameen. The Chinese, however, are reported to be quietly erecting modern, well‐armed forts around the city; but were a powerful flotilla once anchored opposite it, it would be doomed.