110
LOWER YANGTSE
HUPEH
Hankow
DWILONA.
LAKE
Anking
Nanchang
KIANGSI
A. D. BLUE
KIANGSU
Chakiang
Nandung,
Muhu
EAST
CHINA SEA
YANGTSE ESTUARY
sung*
Shanghai
Hangchow
HANGCHOW
BAY
Ningpa
CHEKIANG
CHUSAN ARCHIPELAGO
0
120°E
100 MILES 200
trade with foreign countries. In the following year Killick and Martin's famous tea clipper Challenger was towed up to Hankow by Lindsay's steamer Fire Cracker, and loaded the first cargo of tea at Hankow. It was cheaper to send tea to Hankow by water than by porterage over the Meiling Pass to Canton; so the opening of Hankow to foreign trade continued the decline of Canton as a tea port, which had commenced twenty years earlier with the opening of Foochow. Freights were considerably higher from Hankow, but so was insurance, and towing was also expensive. The Challenger was said to have paid £1,000 for being towed. Many famous clippers, such as the Cutty Sark, loaded tea at Hankow in the late 60's and early 70's.
Hankow, with its sister cities of Hanyang and Wuchang on the south side of the river, was at the heart of the Yangtse Valley, and was the main urban concentration in the interior of China. The French priest M. Huc, who travelled extensively through China in the years 1844-6, estimated the combined population of the three
T