The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand tons European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter of quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats, manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery in Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and Hupeh boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of steam, but the Kwangtung province men of the West River—the brainiest men of modern China—have been quick to adopt machinery, possibly because wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and an efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at Hongkong is Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is British.
The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven dollars in Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of this money is wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn from mines and land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast wealth with which China will some day suddenly step into the world arena, China strong, and the others impoverished in all but brain power.
In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed in producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel and pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.
At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas and salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the latter. The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in the opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead of American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.
Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province has the most beautiful, many of them being black. The Mongolian pony of the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper. Japan has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise, when she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as to make an animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to the new mines and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for fertilizer, which stock will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end for fuel and has been burning the field stubble and straw needed for compost. Now coal will save for her this land enricher.
The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms, restaurants, theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the same as if the Ohio men put up a guild house in New York, and the New York men put up a guild house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders erected a guild house in London, and London men reciprocated. It was the reciprocal working of these guilds which showed the Chinese that assemblies and parliaments were feasible, and next to the foreign-trained students, the guild men have been foremost in China’s representative political bodies. Here are some of the practical proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:
“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump the highest mountain.”
“When there’s fire a distant lake is not so good as a near bucketful.”
“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last penny and got his first pound.”
“You don’t need to thrash a fast horse, or yell at a wise man.”