[
    {
        "id": 205507,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1968",
        "page_number": 49,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "44\n\n# THE HANKOW STEAMER TEA RACES\n\nT. J. LINDSAY*\n\nClipper ships, with their vast spread of canvas, racing home with the season's China teas have earned the admiration of artists and the narrative skill of many authors. But the steamer tea races from Hankow have attracted much less attention. Endurance of the crews aloft in clippers catches the imagination more than the endurance of the stokehold gangs, and the development of reliable and fast ocean-going steamers is not as picturesque a subject as that of the sailing ship.\n\nNevertheless, at the time, the annual steamer tea race from Hankow caused excitement enough in Far Eastern waters. Although steamers also sailed laden with tea from Foochow and from Japan, it was the race from the centre of China, with the first hazardous leg down the Yangtsze to Woosung, that held the public interest. Until 1869, when the Suez Canal was opened, the Clipper ship could hold its own with the steamer service to China via the Cape. But the much shorter route afforded by Suez, which cut across the wind routes and so was suitable only for steamers, meant the end of sailing vessels in the high-value cargo eastern trade.\n\nThe steamer tea races resulted in a reduction of transit time from Hankow to London from sixty-one days in 1870 to thirty-one days in 1883 (see Table I), although in later years a few more days were added to the passage. The account of the races in the following pages covers the eleven-year period from 1877 to 1887.\n\nEvery year in the beginning of May came Hankow's short period of excitement and glory. The tea buyers from Shanghai and England, the chuszes,† arrived to pit their wits against the Chinese\n\nMr. Lindsay joined Butterfield and Swire in Shanghai in 1933. He studied Chinese in Peking in 1934, served in Shanghai and Tsingtao, and was interned in Shanghai during the Pacific War. He was transferred to the firm's Hong Kong office in 1949 and was Staff Manager until he retired in 1966. He was a Councillor and Hon. Treasurer of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society until his retirement, and is M.A.\n\n† The newspapers use chaszes without characters. Matthews Dictionary gives ch'a shih (*) as the name for tea-tasters. The tea-taster was usually the tea-buyer, so perhaps the phrase \"tea-merchant\" would best cover it.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205508,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1968",
        "page_number": 50,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "THE HANKOW STEAMER TEA RACES\n\n45\n\ntea merchants on the one hand and the London market on the other. As the River rose the ocean fleet sailed up the Yangtsze. As many as sixteen or seventeen vessels made up the London fleet with the addition of a few vessels for Odessa or other Black Sea ports (Table 1). Of this fleet only two or three vessels were regarded as in the race and received higher rates of freight than the rest. Until the very end of the period the race was usually between the \"Castles\" of Thos. Skinner & Co. and the \"Glens\" of McGregor, Gow & Co. and the rivalry of the leading ships was intense. A special lottery was drawn.\n\nRates of freight were always high for the most likely winners and varied between £6.10.0. and £4.0.0. per space ton during the period. Slower vessels and later departures secured lower figures, usually between £3 and £4, although in one year the rate was down to £2.10.0. and less. The tradition of the Clipper races thus remained although the economic justification a very considerable difference in transit time which affected the quality of the tea was no longer as valid as it had been. Nevertheless the race carried on, partly by its own momentum and sentiment, until the ship owners realised the costliness of building expensive, fast vessels for one voyage a year, and costly losses on the market convinced the tea merchants that low freights were more essential to the continuance of the trade than fast passages.\n\nRivalry between the various tea buyers led to chaotic conditions which favoured the Chinese tea merchants. In 1879 the North China Daily News wrote:\n\n\"The supply of tea in China had already been in excess of European demand, and exports had only been checked in each case by the arrival of news of an overstocked market on the arrival of the first crops. But such a rush for hurrying teas to a glutted market was never cooled down. Why? In most professions there was a recognised etiquette which kept up the character of the profession and came to the help of each member. Unfortunately in China the absence rather than the presence of this etiquette has been the rule. Under this principle of everyone for himself there was exhibited an anxiety to get the better of each other rather than to purchase at remunerative rates. Each sought to raise the market on his neighbour, and a chasze might frequently be heard of boasting of how he had got a chop to which he had a fancy out of the hands of a brother chasze.\"",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]