CHINA’S GREATEST CITY IN RED HANDS

Hokitika Guardian, 22 January 1927, Page 4

CHINA’S GREATEST CITY IN RED HANDS

(By G. C. Dixon). t . Hankow, where serious anti-foreign disturbances are in progress, has been r called the Alanchester of China. Anil 7 with renson. For you find there none f of the reckless gaiety of Shanghai’s ( cabarets, none of Harbin’s dramatic s conflicts between yellow men and white, e nono of the dignity, historical colour, r , and social brilliance of Peking, lianj kow is essentially a city of commerce; | rich, staid, drab. Life beats there j with a slower pulse. , l For many reasons Hankow is the , greatest prize that the Chinese Reds ? I have yet captured. Besides doing a , vast trade it is tho terminus of the ] I Peking-Hankow railway and the strate- , gio key to tho entire upper Yangtse. 5 iAt Hankow, too, are the works of tho 1 I great Han-yeh-ping Company, which i I turns out 200.000 tons of iron and steel ’ a. year; the largest arsenal in China } (situated in the suburb of Hanyang); | and large electrical, bankings, and ; ! other undertakings financed and inan- > aged by the British. | There are about 1.200 foreigners in . j Hankow. 600 of whom arc British, 300 I j Germans, LTD Russians and the rest , ! maiiVy French and Japanese. . j Six hundred miles though they are . ’ from the sea, the Europeans are by 1 no means cut off from protection. The . I Yangtse is navigable by river vessels i | for 1.300 miles all the year round. i During the summer, when tho sun . | melts the snows of Tibet, ocean-going I boats, including H.AI.S. Hawkins, the ; flagship of our Chinese squadron, can 1 reach Hankow with safety and ease. ' Over 3000 years old, Hankow is not I only one of the most ancient of Chinese cities but the largest. Tti 1861, i when it was one of the *lB ports opened by treaty to foreign trade. Hankow was little more than a fishing village, poor, dirty and disease-ridden, sprawling upon a swamp beside the sluggish ; Yangtse. But then began a miraculous expansion hardly paralleled even in the mushroom growth of America. Lying at the junction of the Yangtse and the Han rivers. Hankow became the clearing house for myriads -> c junks and tho central trading depot for the whole of the immense A'angtse valley, which drains tan area of nearly a million square miles and fertilises the crops that feed 200 millions of people. The 'Amazon may he the world’s largest river ,and the Nile the most historic, but for power of life and death over mankind the Ylangtse is supreme. Fed by this great life stream, Hankow spread over the flats and marshes like some tropieal growth. To-day with

V population of I.(W<i.OOO ns compared with‘.Shanghai's J .dOO.OOO it is not only tlic largest city in'China, hut the largest in the whole of Asia. Kbit,. depressingly ugly—from. a height its roof tops form a sea of drab jjrey. broken only by the yellow waters of the Yaugtse—and sweltering for six month sin liic year beneath the blazing sun Hankow is generally avoided by Europeans in the East. At night the a ir is afivo with wlmt must surely he the largest and most ferocious mosquitoes in The world : and with this plague and an entire lack of sanitation and dean drinking water in the Chinese quarters. it is not surprising that diphtheria. typhoid, and several sorts of fever exact a heavy toll. Hut life has His compensations. In tho foreign concession there is a racecourse reckoned the finest in all! China (The Chinese, always great gamhleis, have recently built an opposition racecourse. where you may see the cool.es literallv staking their shirts.) Am there are also liwn tennis courts, a cricket and football ground and two tan ,o,lf courses-though go' l anywhe n China (and I have played from on - konto Ibirbin) is handicapped hi till extraordinary inability of the comm, to procure proper turf.