CHAPTER IX.
CHINA—AS SHE WAS
The contrast between the China of antiquity—hoary with age—and the new China—just awakening into life—is so great as to suggest the treatment of the two periods in different articles. And if the contrast between China of yesterday and the China of to-day is great, what shall we say of the contrast between the Flowery Kingdom and our own country? The same stars shine overhead and the same laws of nature operate on the earth, but in mode of living, appearance, customs and habits of thought, the Chinese people could scarcely be more different from ours.
First, a word as to the land which they occupy; its very vastness impresses one, unless he has recently consulted his geography. While the eighteen provinces which constitute China proper have something less than two million square miles, yet the Chinese empire with its tributary states has an area of about five million three hundred thousand square miles, and extends over thirty degrees north and south and seventy degrees east and west. We hardly realize when we speak of China that her emperor holds sway over a territory nearly twice as large as the United States; that his decrees are law to a population estimated at from two hundred and fifty to four hundred millions; that her climate is like that of Russia in the north, while in the southern provinces her people live under a tropical sun; and that she has so many mountains and such mighty deserts that more than half of her population is crowded together upon a plain which contains but a little more than two hundred thousand square miles. Williams, in his work entitled "The Middle Kingdom," calls this district "the most densely settled of any part of the world of the same size," and estimates that upon this plain—less than three times the size of Nebraska—one hundred and seventy-seven millions of human beings dwell.
The harbors of China are hardly what one might expect on so extended a line of sea coast. While the harbor at Hong Kong is an admirable one—one of the best in the world—the one at Shanghai has no hills to protect it, the one at Chefoo is open to the storms and the one at Taku does not deserve to be called a harbor at all. In leaving Shanghai we went an hour and a half by launch in order to reach a steamer of only six thousand tons; at Chefoo a still smaller ship was delayed a day because the lighters could not unload it in the wind, and at Taku, the seaport of Tientsin and Pekin, we spent a day on the bar waiting for ten feet of water.
The capital of the empire has until recently been so difficult of access that comparatively few tourists have visited it. The large ocean steamers stop at Shanghai and Hong Kong only, making it necessary for one desiring to visit Pekin to take a smaller boat and risk indefinite delays on account of wind and tide.
Since the completion of the railroad from Hankow to Pekin it is possible to accomplish the journey from Shanghai to Pekin in less time, and, in addition, enjoy the advantage of a trip inland. When the projected road is completed from Hankow to Canton, the tourist can land at Shanghai, take a river boat six hundred miles up the Yangste Kiang to Hankow, then go by rail to Pekin, about eight hundred miles north, then back through Hankow to Canton nearly as far south, from which point there are daily boats to Hong Kong. This trip, covering nearly a thousand miles of river travel and about fifteen hundred miles of railroad travel (not including the return trip from Pekin to Hankow) can be made in the time formerly spent in travel along the coast and furnishes an infinitely better opportunity for the study of the country and the people. As a matter of precaution I ought to add that Pekin is so far north that before the opening of the railroad it was extremely difficult to visit it after the first of December, and even now it is desirable that the trip should be made before the middle of November.
China is well watered; the largest river, the Yantse Kiang, which empties into the ocean at Shanghai, is three thousand miles long, drains more than half a million square miles. Seven hundred miles above its mouth carries a volume of water estimated at five hundred thousand cubic feet per second. It is one of the great rivers of the earth and is navigable for large vessels for more than a thousand miles.
The Yellow river, or, in Chinese, the Hwang Ho, drains a basin almost as large and is nearly as long, but does not carry so large a volume of water. This is the river whose overflows have been so disastrous as to earn for it the name of "The Great Sorrow." This river carries down so much deposit that within recent times it has choked its original outlet and formed a new channel, entering the ocean some three hundred miles farther north. At that time thousands of villages were swept away and the loss of life was estimated at several millions. The current of the Yellow river is so shifting, the sandbars so numerous and the volume of water so changeable that the river is practically useless for navigation.