The Tsingtauer Werft, owned by the Germans, has a floating dock at Tsingtau, Kiaochou, Shangtung, China, lifting vessels 460 feet long, and there is the immense floating dock, “Dewey”, of the American navy, at Cavite, Manila, which does not refuse to do a friendly act for maritime commerce, when necessary, if the ships are not over 600 feet long.
The French have small docks at Haiphong and Saigon. It will be seen that as far as taking care of battleships is concerned, only Britain and Japan have more than one string to the bow, Britain being easily in the lead. America has only one dock, and that a floating one. It could not lift a dreadnought, and therefore America has in the meantime wisely moved her first defense line, as I think the writer, Thomas Millard, a Shanghai American, recommended in his books, back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, counting on Cavite, Philippines, as a picket post. Germany at Kiaochou, and Russia at Vladivostok are as yet out of the running, with inferior docking accommodations. The Russians are spending $10,000,000 in Vladivostok on a floating dock, ice-breakers and a wharf. As far as America is concerned, she can count on Britain. Dewey fitted out at Mirs Bay, Hongkong, despite all conventions. As Commander Tatnall said at Taku in China, “Blood is thicker than water,” which was reciprocated by Admiral Seymour at Manila. When Admiral Diedrichs asked what the British would do if the Germans fired on the Americans, Seymour replied: “You had better ask Admiral Dewey, who is informed.” That is the story that goes the rounds in the East, and if it is not wholly true in fact, it is so potentially.
There is a growing number of smaller Chinese docks, machine shops and ways. Inland at the Pinghsiang colliery on the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan provinces, China has machine shops fitted to turn out almost anything, and the Hanyang Steel Works, across from Hankau, have been already described. Railway shops are opening up everywhere, and do creditable work, especially the North China railway at Tongshan; the Shanghai & Nanking Railway shops at Wusung, near Shanghai, and the Hongkong and Whompoa Dock shops. The Vulcan Iron Works at Shanghai construct railway and street-cars.
The immense cement works which are already in operation are the Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong, in Tonquin (French); Tayeh, in Hupeh province (Chinese); Chee Hsin Cement Company, at Tongshan, near Tientsin (Chinese); Green Island Cement Company, at Macao and Hongkong (British and Chinese). Half of the many bridges that are being erected for the immense transportation development throughout China and the Philippines are made of this new concrete.
The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be seen in the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and in Watson’s Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized teakwood, which is becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and strong handwork of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can take care of herself in furniture making if time is not of the “essence of importance.” Loving art, I would not recommend sending her our machinery for furniture, but if government schools and offices are to be supplied quickly, I suppose we shall be compelled to make esthetics surrender to utility here also!
The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control the Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are powerful in the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the Japanese are influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai and Hankau the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the aid of Krupps, their foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank, to establish a central engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung province, with branches possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe that the graduates will order German machinery and material for China’s coming prodigious development.
The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food laws a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This changes the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color to a ball state, colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic flavor slightly. The Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green tea longer to preserve it under the new rule, and moreover old custom dies hard in China as far as agriculture is concerned. The American government has done a world service in improving the quality of the ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who do things by wholesale, will insist in time that Australia and England, the champion tea-drinkers per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the Americans have made “ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of cousin John’s habit of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands than in China, “If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard of the May 1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the same, saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t got used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers never got used to our laws.
China formulated a patent and copyright office at Peking in 1905, but it has not yet reached efficiency for various reasons, one being that the states’ rights feeling is stronger than the centralized government movement up to date. In the meantime the district or municipal taotai will, upon application of the foreign consul, issue a proclamation prohibiting all Chinese within his jurisdiction from manufacturing, selling or consuming property which is pirated; and such theft and infringement are considered unpardonable by the great body of highly moral Chinese guild merchants, as compared with the lack of similar honor in the first days of modernized commercial Japan. Prosecutions have been actually carried on in the mixed courts of foreign consuls and Chinese taotais against Chinese dealers for handling goods made in Europe and imported into China under marks similar to American marks registered with the taotai, and the dealers, whether ignorant or not, have been convicted and severely punished. Until China is able to establish an efficient patent department the method that should be followed is to register the mark or patent at the consul’s and taotai’s office in each province and port where the goods are to be sold. This will answer very satisfactorily until the growth of trade, transportation and machinery of government make the central government more familiar with modern business methods and international law. It is important in China and absolutely essential in Japan for the foreigner to register his patent promptly, for a pirate may precede him and cause irrevocable loss, in Japan at least.
I want to portray a Chinese character as a type of one interesting and powerful set of men with whom the West will now come in contact. Ah Chuk (I shall call that his name for present purposes) was a Cantonese about fifty-five years of age, though he looked much older because of his parchment face. He had few of his teeth, because he lived in the days before the advent of foreign-trained dentists. In his youth he did not fear to strike. His race were the men who had set in motion the greatest rebellion ever known, the Taiping scourge. My patriotic and legal duty was to obey the law in spirit and in letter, and in addition, under no circumstances to lose temper, but to treat Chuk with unfailing manners. Chuk was the only Chinese whom I ever knew who disobeyed his Confucian code of flowery courtesy (Li). He hated me, as he bitterly hated all who firmly withstood him, and he showed his feelings on every occasion. His gods were not Buddha, but money and power. On one occasion he said: “I can get you a Chinese slave girl for four hundred dollars.” I replied: “You insult me, Chuk.” He hissed, “I meant to.” He asked me why I could not obey the letter of the law and not the spirit, and I told him that an Occidental corporation employé, like the soldier, was expected to be absolutely loyal to orders. He said I was a fool because I made a god of conscience, instead of expediency; that I had no tact. I replied by quoting their maxim; “Tact is the discounting of principle in the mart of expediency.”
He feared neither the American, British or Chinese governments, nor the rich corporation. He corrupted foreign consulates in the old days when forged citizenship certificates were not unknown. He bullied the Canton viceroy. He was lord over half a dozen valleys and a hundred hamlets of Kwangtung province, whose inhabitants were his slaves, because they had signed bonds of $1,000 each for every Chinese whom he safely got into that Eldorado, America. He did not press the man in America any more than he would attempt to press a man in Mars. He pressed his father, his relatives in Kwangtung, who were on the bond also, for the payment of the $1,000, and it took the son in America twenty years to pay the money and the heavy interest. With his foot on the sacred bones of his grandfather he held the grandson in America in constant fear.