Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 147, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1919 — China’s Panorama City [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

China’s Panorama City

TIENTSIN, called the panorama city of China, came into public notice again recently because of disorders in which Americans and Japanese were involved. To walk aboutTientatnds.tQ-trav» el, says a bulletin of the National Geographic society. An afternoon’s stroll from the native to the British, J'rench, Italian, Russian and other foreign quarters gives the sensation of a magic tour through Peking, London, Paris, Rome and Petrograd. And the windmills among the salt mounds just outside the city add a touch of Holland. This panorama city has had a tempestuous history. There a group of American and other foreign residents*— Herbert C. Hoover among them —defended themselves for a month against the fanatic boxers in 1900. Since then the native city has been known as Cheng-li, or “Town Without Walls,” because the ancient barriers were demolished during the siege. Of the 500 doughty foreigners more than fifty were killed and many others wounded before military aid came. Tientsin was the scene of another famous siege, that* of the Taiping rebels in 1853. Followers of Hung Sin Tsuan, who had professed Christianity and set himself up In Nanking as the “Heavenly King,” marched toward Peking. But the Waterloo of the “longhaired rebels” so called because they would not plait their queues and thus signify loyalty to the Manchus, came at Tientsin. “Chinese” Gordon’s Victory. The success of the campaign against the revolutionists was due principally to the gallant “Chinese” Gordon, Gen. Charles George Gordon, and his “ever victorious army.” But the fact would not be suspected from reading the imperial edict issued by the former concubine who had elevated herself to Empress Dowager. The edict set forth that “this glorious victory is entirely due to the bountiful protection of heaven, to the ever-present help of our ancestors and to the foresight of the empress regent.” A tribute is paid to the Chinese generals, “who have been

combed by the wind and bathed in the rain,” and one of them was awarded the decoration of the double-eyed peacock’s feather. Commanding the native force at Tien* tsin was Seng-ko-lin-sin, a Mongol general, who later distinguished himself less creditably. In 1860 he sought to defend Tientsin against a foreign expedition by erecting an immense mud rampant outside the city. Tientsin was captured and held for two years by the British and French and the crude defense is Known in the foreign quarters as “Seng-ko-lin-sin’s folly.” The region about Tientsin was known as Chi-chou, under the Hsia dynasty, whose rulers, 4,000 years ago, already had court astronomers who could predict eclipses. Later it was caled Ya-chou, in the Chou dynasty, marked by the western wars waged by Mu-Wang against the “Dog Barbarians,” thought to he ancestors of the Huns. Tientsin dates back at least to the fourteenth century. Immense Salt Industry. The salt industry in the neighborhood of Tientsin fs prodigious. Windmills are used to pump salt water into the fields along the Hallo river, where the widely-known Chang-lu salt is made. Before the war nearly 20,000 tons were produced annually. But Tientsin is important commercially in many respects. It is a rice market, and Siberia’s tea formerly was shipped through here. Exports were as varied as the needs of the dozen or so nations which had separate settlements along five miles of the river front, and its imports were as diverse as the commodities those nations had to exchange. The Peiho and Hunho rivers converge at Tientsin. From the latter to the Yangtsze-Kiang extends the Grand canal, that remarkable specimen Of ancient engineering, mentioned by Confucius, which originally was more than 1,000 miles long. Tientsin has more people than Boston. It is the principal city of Chihli, and Is 86 miles southeast of Peking by rail,