TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES. — NINGPO. 149 



wealth of wheat and the fourfold rice-crop and cotton, now brown under winter skies with 

 clanging geese flying over the frozen lakes and pools. Events have occurred here which 

 doubtless broke the monotony of the busy city's life. But most of the old voices are 

 silent in history and silent to memory. I record one or two of her ancient and modern 

 historical events. 



During the Ming Dynasty, probably about the time of their commercial enterprises in 

 Japan, both Portuguese and Dutch merchants appear to have settled for a time in Foochow, 

 Amoy, and Ningpo. 



A Ningpo man once threatened the reigning dynasty, and in fact helped to bring to 

 an end the great and regretted rule of the Ming. He (^ ^) with the title of Q ^, was a 

 woodcutter on the hills near a town on the banks of the eastern lakes, twelve miles distant 

 from Ningpo, a district in which I have often preached and taught. One hot day, early in 

 the seventeenth century, he was stooping down to drink and bathe in the mountain-stream 

 when he saw, reflected in the mirror of the water, horse and foot-soldiers in bright array, 

 with banners flying, at whose head rode a man on a white horse, the very image of himself. 

 Astonished at the apparition he believed that it was his fate or his honour to lead 

 an army and to found a dynasty. He raised a rebellion, and so severely defeated the 

 Imperialist troops that the Emperor ^ ^ hanged himself on the Mesan, and Li mounted a 

 throne, if not the Dragon-throne. But eventually the generalissimo of the Ming, sent by 

 the Tartars who were now pressing into China, defeated Li and overthrew his power. 

 Possibly this general was an ancestor of Hung Sew-tsuen, the T'ai-p'ing supreme leader, 

 for his family boasted of this distinction as belonging to one of their ancestors. These 

 lake-people have much independence of spirit and, during the occupation of the country 

 by the T'ai-p'ings, the lakes were given by them a wide berth. Earlier than this, at a time 

 of oppressive and iniquitous imposition of taxes, the lake-people under chosen leaders 

 marched on Ningpo, and, defying the ragged soldiers of the time, compelled the magistrates 

 to accede to their demands. And then with that combination of contempt of life, regard 

 for law and order, and noblest altruism which the Chinese sometimes exhibit, the leaders, 

 having gained their point and rescued their fellow-lakesman, and the country generally 

 from oppression and wrong, in order to save the magistrate's face and to safeguard the law 

 calmly gave themselves up for execution. 



One poet and patron of literature is specially remembered in Ningpo, and a temple to 

 his honour stands still on the shores of the small West Lake within the city wall. He is 

 known in some connections (so Mayers tells us in his "Chinese Reader's Manual") as "The 

 Madcap of Szming." (H P^ ^ ^). But there must have been more in this man (Ho Che- 

 chang by name) than the stories of his joviality and dissipation would imply. His history 

 coincides nearly with the noble life and teaching of Cuthbert in Northumbria, and the 

 outburst of English sacred song from Casdmon's voice and harp in the halls of Whitby's 

 Abbey. The Ningpo poet and patron of letters is said to have brought to Imperial notice 

 and favour the most widely-celebrated poet of China, Li Peh (^ Q) by name, who flourished 

 and faded in fame and revived again and wandered from far Szech'uan to the Court, where 

 his Ningpo friend described him as an Immortal banished to earth. Subsequently becoming 



