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THE MODEL SETTLEMENT.
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(Daily Press, 23rd July.) Times change such an obvious truism is unassailable--but there arise frequent occasions to doubt if we change so very much with them. Mr. C. M. DYCE's de. lightful reminiscences of the Model Settle. ment (just published by Messrs. CHAPMAN and HALL) start the reflection that though times have changed since 1870, and the conditions and circumstances of life in the Far East have grown more like them at Home, the men are much the same. The new suit does not make a new man. Last year's discoveries of papyri revealed the same fact, but it is more interesting to have It brought home to us in scenes where we are so often told that "it was very different in the old days". There is something delightfully "ld-fashioned " about the diction of these simple memoirs, but they appear to us to reveal as faithfully the idiosyncrasies of the taipan and the larn. pidjin of to-day. As a lad of seventeen, in a London office connected with the China trade, Mr. DYCE's income was barely £100 a year; and by the "strictest economy
"he could not "make it do". That "griffin of the late 'sixties exists still in the new century. The same diseuchantment even then followed his dreams of the gorgeous Fast, although Mr. DYCE found Hongkong to be "hot and steamy, but picturesque and romantic". The sampan women in the harbour were not ill-looking (times have changed); but at Woosung "the view was the reverse of exhilarating". Perhaps nowadays there are not so many taipans like the one who went off in a sampan to meet Mr. DYCE, looked after his luggage, and provided him with a personal attendant Whether taipan or assistant is most to blame for the wider gulf that separates them nowa days, we would not like to say; but the change is noticeable at Home as well as in the East. Those were the days of long apprenticeships, the parties were associated for much longer periods, and doubtless that largely accounts for the difference, The picture of the taipans playing Loo, for high stakes, while the griffins looked on, puffing big cigars, and watching sums equivalent to six months' salary changing hands, is a glimpse of mauners not too ancient to be remembered by many readers. The
40
compradorie" style of hong building is fast disappearing, and it is just as well that
we
should have Mr. Dyce's detailed descriptions to preserve their memory. The free and easy hospitality of those days cannot be said to have diminished at all; in this respect the resident of 1906 is the peer of his predecessor of forty years ago. When discussing his fellow-residents the author is very happy, and here gain he might be writing of to-day. Every other
man he met seemed to le a Scotsman.
For some reason or another the Scotch of Bbangbai seemed to be totally different from those I had known at home. It is possible that the ones I had met in London were some. what, shall I say, toned down; or it m‹y be that their comparative scarcity was te cause of no great impressiou being made. But in Shanghai, the great amber, the obtrusive accent or accents, and a certain asertiveness (not offensive), combined to give the sense of a pervading presence of the nationality. It reemed that, though they were domiciled in Chins, their feet, so to speak, were on their native heath. I do not intend by these remarks to say one wo'd in disparagement of my countrymen in Shangbai. I found them, with scarcely an exception, kindly, full of humour, and abrowd; and the bulk of my intimate friends were Sootch. The assertiveness was quite harmless, and chiefly consisted in ram- ming the kingdom of Scotland down our throats
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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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on every possible occasion. They would have us believe that the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom were the most intelligent, enter prising, and capable people in the British Empire. Of course the rest of the world did not count. I will do them the justice to say that they did not put forward their country men as models of sobriety." Nowadays that assertiveness is exhibite in insisting on giving the most popular ball of the season, and in bribing the children to devote special study to Scottish history. He has not much to say of Englishmen, beyond that they were "pleasant and well- mannered, tolerant and easy-going, and with an unsurpassed reputation for fair dealing". Then, as now, they were mad on athletics and sport. The Americans excited his admiration by their pushfulness and enterprise, apparently ao agreeable contrast to the " easy-going of the Englishmen, and as the foreign trade of China was something like the game of Poker Americau hustle was profitable, and found many English imitators. No Englishman | who came out retained the London notions for long, but willingly followed the American lead. Then, as now, the Ameri- cans had more than their fair share of missionaries ". For comments on other nationalities, we must refer readers to the book itself. The work in the Far East is really harder than at Home, but it seems easier because there is less red tape The growth of the Far Eastern communities has considerably altered business, of course; one foreigner now lives on another, where formerly all lived on the Chinese. But the gambling aspect of nearly all business is as apparent still as it was then. A large amount of speculation was and is called for. "No house could do an absolutely safe business". The currency question could appropriately be centioned in this connection, but people must be getting tired of an oft-told and so far ineffectual tale. Fully half the book is taken up with sport, chiefly shooting, but the author's comments need to be read with their context His definition of the China pony as a blend of sleep, camel, pig, mule, and cat shows that the quadruped has changed as little as his biped master.
THE CHINESE REACTIONARY
PARTY.
(Daily Press, 24th July!) The new form in which the old disease of China, which has so many times almost resulted in her annihilation as a nation, final partition amongst the more active and which seems not unlikely to end in her Powers, is exhibited in an acut form in the history of the Kiang-pei Concessions, Limited, for working some coal mines near Chungking in Szechwan. inertness, and like the "sleeping sickness" The disease is in Uganda, brings on first a strange craving which the patient is wholly incapable of to be let alone; this results in a sleep in
being aroused by any external stimulus, and this in the last stage develop into coma and death. The first stage, that of withdrawal from intercourse with her fellows, has at the moment reached an acute phase, and one of its most dangerous symptoms is the cry of “ Chinese", which has lately become the China for the watchword of the younger generation. It is the more dangerous for China that it has assumed the imitated garb of progressive- uess, while deliberately aimed at repressing every aspiration for alvance. No nation external assistance on such easy terms as in the world had ever had offered to it
Ching. As Mr. BLAND truly stated at the recent opening at Soochow of the Shanghai-
[July 29, 1906.
Nanking Railway, England has always been identified with the policy which has for its object the maintenance of the integrity of Chion as & sovereign State; and, the peaceful development of the trade and resources of the empire forms an essential part of that policy; and the advancems....i. of railway construction under con-litions mutually advantageous, and the promotion by this means of trade in the interests of Great Britain and China alike, is really the capstone of the edifice. In the Chibli railways, the restoration of which to China was really due to the self-denying policy of England, China has a means of gauging the sincerity of England's professions, with which we have to contrast the unseemly efforts on the part of China to creep on her side out of the by no means onerous condi. tions attached to the enterprise; and the recent parading of claims to independence of action, intended to be taken iù contra- vention of China's engagements with Great Britain. A very similar course has been takea with Japan with reference to the restoration of occupied territory in Man- churia and Shingking. This is the more marked that it is in striking contrast with the conspicuous readiness displayed to enter into eutangling negotiations with Russia, which the experience of the last ten years, especially, ought to have plainly proved to China had but one end in view, and that is her own destruction. The only possible construction to be placed on this seeming anomaly is that the would-be patriots of China who pose in high quarters as the exponents of the policy of exclusion, are really more beat in advancing their momentarily private schemes than promoting the well-being of the State.
on
To return, however, to the Kiaug.pei Concessions, Limited, with which our r‹- marks commenced. In the small valley of Lung-wang Tung, some twenty miles from Chungking in Szechwan, it had long been known that certain coal seams out- cropped, and these for some generations had been worked in a small way by mea 13 of adits driven horizontally into the sides of the depression. A few years ago Mr. A. J. LITTLE, in conjunction with some of the more enterprising of the owners, bougl.t up the interests of the others, and proceeded in a tentative way to develop the working. The Szechwan coal workers are more pro- gressive than those in the other provinces. and are always wout to hail any improve. ment in their methods. As with all Cuiness their custom was to work from a single - adit, but unlike the others they worked on tinuously one side of the gallery, aud piling a primitive longwall system, cuting cou- the debris behind them. As they en-luavoured to keep the drift as nearly lavela, P <rble, they could not vary much from the original were the workings became holed to an direction, and hence the hollow in which
became unduly long, in one case consider- inconvenient extent; and the holings ably exceeding two miles. Under the circumstances, with the full approval of his native colleagues, Mr. LITTLE sought expert advice, and it was arranged to call in the aid of outside capital to develop the miues. This had the full approval of the right of mining within the sub-prefecture officials, and a regular concession of the
was arranged to the mutual satisfaction of all, both people and officials. The coal is an almost ideal steam-conl, with a large proportion of fixed carbon, and a practical absence of sulphur; and is in considerable request at Hankcw, both for railway and steamboat use. So affairs stood at the end of last year, when Mr. IaTTLE put the concession, in which all the officials from
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