Old Hong Kong-3 — Page 177

NEWSPAPERS (Contd.)

in the interior. Their general tendency is to praise the foreiners and to belittle the Chinese to the extent of utter falsification representing black as white, and confusing right and wrong. The Western readers generally know only their own foreign languages, and receive as true whatever their papers say. In international issues, the words that first reach the ears exert the greatest influence. The readers are biased from the beginning, and so it is difficult for China to argue. If we were in a position toguide opinion and could set forth c..refully the history of each particular issue, then the rights of the case might be manifested. Then how could the foreigners play their tricks?"

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In taking over printing equipment from the London Mission (in Hong Kong) and in starting the Tsun Wan Yat Po, Wang T'ao was assisted by Huang Ping-fu or Wong Shing as he is known in English, one of the three Morrison Education Society schoolboys who were taken to America in11847 to continue their education at Monson, Massachusetts. Because of his health Wong Shing returned to China in 1848. Andrew Shortrede, the Scottish editor-proprietor of the China Mail whoihad underwritten the boy's expenses, took Wong Shing into his printing office to learn the trade. Wong Shing then became the superintendent of the London Mission Press, and remained there some twenty years in spite of lucrative offers to join the Colonial Government Service. He was the first Chinese to sit with Englishmen on a jury. He put Legge's classics through the press with a care which Legge gratefully acknowledged, though he regretted Wong Shing's inadequacy as a proofreader. He perhaps assisted in editing "The Chinese Serial," and of course supervised its printing. In the year when the Tsun Wan Yat Po was begun, Wong Shing accompanied the second larger group of Chinese students to America, and was appointed interpreter to the Chinese legation established at Washington a few years later..

Another collaborator in founding the Tsun Wan Yat Po was Wu Ting-fang, (formerly Ng Choy of Hong Kong - see 14-2-34) who later had a long and popular career as the Chinese Minister at Washington, and served the court at Peking in its belated reform efforts after 1900, joined the revolutionists in 1911, and was for a time acting Premier of the Chinese Republic. Throughout his life Wu Ting fang was an advocate of the modern public press of China, and was an active support and contributor.

There is a common belief that he was responsible for starting the first Chinese newspapers at Hong Kong.

ile had however, come to longKong while still a child, to attend school and as a schoolboy here, with his ready command of English he spent much of his spare time translating news from the foreign press.

He did this from a sense of the need of world intelligence among his Chinese fellows, and not as a means of self-support as in the case of many such student news-translators in later years. About the time Chinese shipping and market sheets were beginning to be printed at ong Kong Wu T'ing-fang went to England, where he read law' and was admitted to the Bar. He returned to Hong Kong some time before the Tsun Wan Yat Po.

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Both Wang L'ao and Wu T'ing-fang seem to have co-operated with Ch'en Ai-t'ing in founding the Wah Tae Yat Po, another Chinese daily at Hong Kong, in 1872. This paper though perhaps not quite the success that the Tsun Wan Yat Po was, became and remains a leading paper in South China and since the expiration of the Chung Ngoi San Po om 1919, the oldest Chinese modern newspaper in publication.

Ch'en Ait'ing seems to have been connected with Nu Ting-fang by kinshp or marriage, but was of a rather