Directory_and_Chronicle_1921 — Page 689

TIENTSIN

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permanent institution. It is growingly obvious that on that maintenance depends any prospect of providing adequate safeguard against the perils impending over Tientsin.

Before closing these remarks upon the conservancy interests of Tientsin it is fitting to refer to a very important scheme recently brought forward by Mr. Maze, the Commissioner of Customs there, viz., his proposal to establish a deep-water port at the river entrance below the town of Taku. The construction of certain training works by the Hai Ho Conservancy Board in the vicinity for the purpose of preventing further encroachment on the fairway of the North Bank, and of maintaining the new line of direction of the Bar Channel, seemed to him a favourable opportunity for suggesting that reclamation works to the north of the training works should be undertaken in order to secure sufficient ground for the construction of steamer wharves, godowns, coal-yards and railway- sidings on land reclaimed between the North Fort and the inner end of the Deep Hole.

The Engineer-in-Chief of the Hai Ho Conservancy Board advises that from an engineering standpoint the scheme is quite feasible and would not be unduly expensive, and that the position concerned-situated, as it is, at the actual mouth of the river-is for a variety of reasons the inost suitable site avail- able. The first reach of the river is straight, is about 1,000 feet broad, and is deep, thus possessing obvious advantages for the accommodation of shipping.. It is superior in this and every other respect to sites a little further up stream, which are not only much more limited in extent but do not possess such favourable advan- tages as regards breadth of river or depth of water. If facilities for deeper draught steamers are provided on the above lines it is no exaggeration to state that the shipping interests of the port would be revolutionized and that the trade of Tientsin and North China would greatly benefit. A deep-water port below Taku, for example, would form a convenient shipping centre for the coal business; similarly, the oil companies trading there would probably find it advantageous to erect installations at the river entrance and provided sufficient depth of water can be secured in the future-bring occan-going steamers alongside and discharge direct. In the past, the Tientsin steamer traffic has necessarily been restricted to coasting vessels only, which impeded the general expansion of trade. It is impossible, however, that the future needs of the port can be indefinitely met by such means, and if this important trade centre is to maintain and improve its present influential position it is essential that facilities for ocean-going shipping be provided on modern lines.

Turning to the Civil admininstration of the City, it is well known that during the long satrapy of Li 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; as usual the political agitators who instigated the riot got off. The Roman Catholic Cathedral, which was destroyed on that occasion, was rebuilt, and the new building was consecrated in 1897, only again to fall a victim to Boxer fury in 1909. The building occupied a commanding site on the river bank. All the missions and many of the foreign hongs had agencies in the city prior to the debacle of 1900.

The population is reputed to be close upon 2,000,000, but there is no reliable 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 (Pei-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,