Directory_and_Chronicle_1941 — Page 266

A32

TIENTSIN

square miles of the most populous part of the Chihli province between Pao- tingfu and Tientsin were flooded, and it has been calculated that crops to the value of $100,000,000 were utterly lost, and that 80,000 groups of dwellings, ranging from hamlets to large villages, were destroyed.

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Turning to the civil administration of the city, it is well known that during the long satrapy of Li the trade and importance of the city developed ex- ceedingly. 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 1900. 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 was 1,388,747 in 1929. 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 bundled the whole of the Hai Ho (Pei-ho) and effected numberless other urban improvements. The advent of foreigners caused a great increase in the value of real estate all over Tientsin.

Li Hung-chang authorised Mr. Tong King-seng to sink a coal shaft at Tong Shan (60 miles N.E. of Tientsin) in the 'seventies; this was done and proved the precursor of a railway, which was later extended to Shanbaikwan for military purposes, and from thence round the Gulf of Liautung 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 while sandstone bricks made at Huangtsun by an Italian called Marzoli, 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.

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Foreigners formerly lived in three concessions-British, French, and German- which fringed the river below the city and covered an area of less than 500 acres. The Japanese took up a concession in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Shimononseki. They filled in land, laid out new streets and built a large number of houses in foreign style. During 1901 Russia, Belgium, Italy, and Austro-Hungary all appropriated large areas on the left bank of the Hai-ho as future Settlements, while the existing concessions extended their bouudaries considerably. developments for some time threw all landing facilities for direct sea-going traffic into foreign hands. In 1917, upon the entry of China into the Great War, the Chinese recovered control over the German and Austri in concessions, in 1920 over the Russian, and in 1929 over the Belgian. The general deterioration in the main- tenance and in the public services of these areas since their rendition to China (with the exception of the Belgian concession which had never been developed at all) is most noticeable. The administration of all these areas is now entirely in the hands of Chinese officials and no voice therein is allowed to any of the residents, either foreign or Chinese.. The other concessions have excellent and well-lighted roads, and an electric tramway system links them with the Chinese city. The British Municipality has a handsome Town Hall, completed in 1889; adjoining there is a well- kept public garden, opened in the year of Jubilee and styled Victoria Park. Two excellent recreation grounds of 10 acres and over here have been developed, in which tennis courts, etc., have been laid out. The various British areas-known as the