Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/287

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development of Chinese technical industry, in the manufacture of rifles and field-guns and the construction of ships of war.

It is computed that in 1898 there will be established at this port eighteen or twenty Chinese, Japanese and European cotton mills, equipped with the best and most modern appliances throughout. There are native mills already in operation, and in 1895 capital to the extent of 38,000 taels was subscribed by foreign joint-stock companies for the erection of four spinning and weaving mills. It will be gathered from this, and the cheap efficient labour available for the industry, that the Chinese are beginning to supply their own markets with a certain class of cotton goods, and that ere long a large export trade will be created in cotton fabrics suitable for commerce all over Eastern Asia. The native cotton is of short staple, and the thread spun only suitable for weaving the coarser fabrics of native wear.

The native walled city of Shanghai stands to the south of the foreign settlement, and is separated from it by the French concession ground, and by a canal which here sweeps round and forms with Soo-chow Creek and the river a water boundary for the entire English ground. The latter, on its western side, supports a Chinese population of over 50,000 souls; but inside the walls of the Chinese city, in an area measuring little over a mile long by three-fourths of a mile in breadth, and in a densely crowded suburb on the water's edge close by, about 130,000 inhabitants reside.

Like all other Chinese towns, Shanghai has its tutelary deity, upon whom the Emperor, as brother of the Sun, has conferred an honorary title. This guardian of the fortunes of Shanghai stands in the '* Cheng-hwang-Miau " or *' Temple of the City God, " in the northern quarter of the town; and though he and his shrine have from time to time been rudely overthrown, both,