Directory_and_Chronicle_1919 — Page 689

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SHANGHAI

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the Commissioner of Customs and the Harbour Master. After lengthy negotiations during 1911 and 1912, this scheme, with some minor amendments, was approved by the Government in April, 1912. The scheme was put into operation on May 15th, 1912, and Mr. von Heidenstam's project is gradually being carried out. A new parallel jetty on the eastern side of the former Outer Bar, training-works in the Upper River, and the dredging of some 5,000,000 cubic yards, mostly at Pheasant Point and in Astræa Channel, have already been executed. The former Outer and Inner Bars, where only 16 and 14 feet of water were available in 1907, have thus been eliminated, and the shallowest reach in the whole river is now over 24 feet deep over a width of 600 feet in the narrowest places. In 1915 and 1916 the narrow reach at the Chinese City at Nantao was widened by dredging and a new bund, which is later to be lined with pontoons and godowns, created for the Chinese City. Towards the end of 1916 the Board acquired the first installation of its own dredging plant, consisting of one powerful bucket dredger, one pumping plant for pumping dredged material from the barges into reclaimings ashore, and several sets of tugs and barges to form the necessary transport fleet. Many riparian reclamations have been executed by the Board for frontagers. Detailed hydrographic observations of the river are made continuously and an investigation of the Yangtze estuary has been carried out. The income of the Board through the new tax has averaged some 500,000 taels a year, and the work is now proceeding satisfactorily.

Mr. von Heidenstam and two eminent consulting hydraulic engineers at home have, in a Report entitled "The Future Development of the Shanghai Harbour" addressed to the Board, strongly urged an investigation of the possibilities of developing Shanghai as a first class port for deep draught steamers. A tentative scheme of improving the Yangtse Bar and locking the Huang Pu is suggested as a likely solution. Under the control of the Coast-Lighting department of the Maritime Customs, and out of the tonnage dues provided in the original treaties with China, the approaches from the sea to Shanghai are now well lighted and buoyed, and the dangers of the continually shifting banks and shoals well guarded against. Lighthouses have been erected, served by powerful lights, at West Volcano, Shaweishan, North Saddle, Bonham and Steep Islands, Pehyu-shan, Gutzlaff and Woosung, and there are two lightships in the entrance of the River Yangtze. In this respect the interests of the shipping frequenting the port have been well considered, and the entire installation takes a high rank amongst similar undertakings elsewhere. The same department has also inaugurated a system of buoys and lighting on the Yangtze as far as Hankow, six hundred miles above Woosung, suited to present requirements. The northern mouth of the 'South Branch' of the Yangtsze, which serves as the main passage for coasting steamers from Shanghai to the northern ports, has also been carefully surveyed and buoyed and lighted by the same authority.

HISTORY

The origin of the name "Shanghai," which literally means " Upper Sea," has been much debated, but probably like Kaoch'ang, "High Reeds," and Kiangwan, "River Bend," names still existing in the neighbourhood, was merely the vernacular title given to the place when still an island at the mouth of the Yangtze. It does not appear in history till the time of the Mongol Empire. We find at various periods, from after Han downwards, that K'wenshan, Changshu, Kiating, etc., were constituted into separate hsiens, and that in the year 1292 Shanghai was likewise erected into a separate distric and placed under Sungkiang-fu, which itself had only tifteen years previously been divided from Kiahsing-fu, now in the province of Chekiang. Prior to that it had been made a Customs station on account of its favourable position for trade, but its growth had been slow, and for centuries the chief trade of the lower district had been con- centrated at the mouth of the Liu-ho, now an insignificant creek which, passing Tait- sang, joins the Yangtze some twenty-five miles above Woosung,

With the silting up of the Liu-ho and its eventual extinction as a navigable channel, largely brought about apparently by the opening of the Hwangpu before alluded to, Shanghai became the principal shipping port of this region; and such it had been for some centuries when it was visited in 1832 by Mr. H. H. Lindsay, head of the late firm of Lindsay & Co., accompanied by the Rev. Chas. Gutzlaff, in the Lord Amherst, with a view to opening up trade, and from that time begins its modern history. Mr. Lindsay in his report of the visit says that he counted upwards of four hundred junks passing inwards every day for seven days, and found the place possessed commodious wharves and large warehouses. Three years later it was visited by