Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China/Ningpo
NINGPO.
INGPO, one of the five ports opened in 1842, has been known to foreigners since 1522, when a number of Portuguese traders settled there. The Chinese, however, resented the lawlessness of the intruders, and in 1542 practically exterminated them, driving away the survivors and destroying their habitations. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the East India Company established a factory at Chusan, 40 miles distant, and made an attempt to trade with Ningpo, but this proved unsuccessful and the project was abandoned. It was not until October 13, 1841, that the port was again occupied by foreigners, the British in that year stationing a garrison at Ningpo. The Chinese made an attempt to retake the city in the following March, but were repulsed with heavy loss by the British artillery, and the garrison remained in occupation until shortly before the proclamation of Peace and the declaration of Ningpo as an open port.
Ningpo lies in a large alluvial plain, on the river Yung, in the province of Chekiang, its geographical position being 29° 55′ N. lat., and 121° 22′ E. long.
The town is enclosed by a brick wall 5 miles in circumference, 25 feet in height, and varying in width from 15 feet at the summit to 22 feet at the base. This wall is pierced by six gates, and on the landward side a moat runs beside it for a distance of three miles. The streets, the principal one of which runs east and west, are narrow and tortuous. Several are spanned by memorial arches of typical Chinese design. The library for which Ningpo has been celebrated is said to have been in point of numbers the fourth largest collection of Chinese works in the Empire.
There are two cotton mills in Ningpo—the first established in June, 1896, and the other more recently. The Company owning the latter mill have installed an electric lighting plant, and a scheme for lighting the city by electricity is under consideration. A flour mill has been started; and, as a competitor in the fishing industry, so largely carried on at Ningpo, a steam trawler has recently been introduced. Ningpo exported fish and fishery products to the value of Tls. 663,567 during 1906.
Exports of tea have declined owing to the diversion of the Foochow tea trade through Hangchow, the value of green tea shipped through Ningpo during 1906, being only Tls. 2,010,110, as compared with Tls. 2,165,127 in 1905; Tls. 3,408,574, in 1904, and Tls. 3,841,335 in 1903. White alum is largely exported, 92,352 piculs, together of the value of Tls. 120,058 coming from the district out of a total for all Customs districts of 101,839 piculs. Rush, wood-shaving, and chip-hat making, give employment to thousands of Chinese, no fewer than five and a half million hats being exported in 1906. Fans, feathers, mats and matting, medicines, musk, paper, rhubarb, samshu, cotton seed, silk piece goods and skins and furs are also articles of export. Sugar is now the principal import, the total quantity received in 1906 being 278,973 piculs of brown, and 117,611 piculs of refined. The net value of the trade of the port was Tls. 18,917,355 in 1906, Tls. 19,163,630 in 1905, and Tls. 12,297,412 in 1904.
The population is estimated at 255,000. The Foreign Settlement lies on the north side of the river, and contains an office of the Imperial Maritime Customs, and of the Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration, two Consulates,—British and Austro-Hungarian,—an Anglican church, a Church Missionary Society college, several Protestant missions, a Roman Catholic college, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Mission of Chekiang, Chinese and French post-offices, and branches of several well-known European firms.
