TIENTSIN
621
generally in the district promises to make the trade less dependent upon the waterways. Chinwangtao makes an excellent winter jetty.
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Marked building activity in the Italian and Russian Concessions has to be recorded in 1918. The former is developing with considerable rapidity: new roads have been opened and many handsome buildings erected. Both Concessions are attractive residential centres, with broad streets aud well-laid-out open spaces. The various British areas-known as the British Concession, British Extension, and the Extra- Mural Area-have been amalgamated to form one Municipal Area under a Council elected on a roader franchise. New land regulations have come into force, and it is stipulated therein that the new Council consist of nine members, of whom five shall be British subjects. Candidates will be nominated by two electors and all electors are eligible to serve on the Council. Voting is to be on a sliding scale; the minimum qualification for a foreign voter being the payment of Tls. 20 per annum in respect of land-tax or the occupation of premises of an assessed of value of Tls. 480 per annum, and for Chinese the payment of Tls. 240 per annum in respect of land-tax or the occupation of premises of an assessed rental of Tls. 3,000 per annum-- the discri- mination between foreign and Chinese electors being intended apparently to prevent the possibility of the foreign vote being completely swamped in an area set apart primarily for foreign residence and trade.
The expeditions of the Allies in 1858-61 greatly enhanced the importance of the city, as it then proved to be the military key of the capital and an excellent base. It was here on June 26th, 1858, that Lord Elgin signed the treaty which was to conclude the war, but which unhappily led to its prolongation. The famous temple in which the treaty was signed, about a mile distant from the West gate, was destroyed by British shells in July, 1900.
During the long satrapy of Li Hung-chang the trade and importance of the city developed exceedingly. Li, by the vigour of his rule, soon quelled the rowdyism for which the Tientsinese were notorious throughout the empire, and as he made the city his chief residence and the centre of his many experiments in military and naval education, it came to be regarded as the focus of the new learning and national reform. The foreign affairs of China were practically directed from Tientsin during the two decades 1874-94.
The city will ever be infamous to Europeans from the massacre of the French Sisters of Mercy and other foreigners on June 21st, 1870, in which the most appalling brutality was exhibited. The Roman Catholic Cathedral, which was destroyed on that occasion, was rebuilt, and the new building was consecrated in 1897, only to again fall a victim to Boxer fury in 1909. Tientsin also played a great part in the history of China during the momentous year of the Boxer outbreak in 1900.
The population is reputed to be 1,000,000, but there is no statistical evidence to justify those figures. The city walls were quadrate and extended about 4,000 feet in the direction of each cardinal point; during the year 1901 they were entirely demolished and replaced by fine open boulevards under the orders of the Foreign Military Provisional Government. This body has further bunded the whole of the Hai Ho and effected other numberless urban improvements. The advent of foreigners has caused a great increase in the value of real estate all over Tientsin, and as new industries are introduced every year the tendency is still upward.
Li Hung-chang authorised Mr. Tong Kin-seng to sink a coal shaft at Tong Sha (60 miles N.E. of Tientsin) in the 'seventies; this was done and proved the precur- sor of a railway, which was later extended to Shanhaikwan for military purposes, and from thence round the Gulf of Liau Tung to Kinchow; 1900 saw this line pushed on to Newchwang. In 1897 the line to Peking was opened, and proved such a success that the line had to be doubled in 1898-9. A side station for the Tientsin City was opened in 1904, and in 1905 the station was built of white sandstone bricks made at Huangsue by an Italian who had opened a brick factory on a large scale. From Feng-tai, about 7 miles from the capital, the trans-continental line to Hankow branches off. This line was completed and opened to traffic in November, 1905. In 1900 the violence of the Boxers was chiefly directed against the railways, all of which were more or less destroyed, but under British, French, and Russian military administration they were afterwards all restored to their former efficiency. As usual, the railway has brought all sorts of foreseen and unforeseen contingencies with it. Farmers up near Shanhaikwan are supplying fruit and vegetables to Tientsin. An enormous trade in pea-nuts (with Canton has been created. Coal has come extensively into Chinese household use; the foreign residents are developing a first-rate watering place at Pei-tai-ho on the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, and all the various industries of the city