First Railway in China 249 



thinking they would then work it themselves. He did not 

 understand the Chinese. No sooner bought, than the line 

 was pulled up and thrown into the sea, and Shanghai, the 

 commercial capital of China — built up as it has been by 

 foreign enterprise — is still dependent upon house-boats and 

 a few steam-launches for communication with its port 

 of Woosung, distant by water fourteen miles. The road (of 

 nine miles) on which the rails were laid, and which for a time 

 was used for a driving road, has been allowed to decay, and 

 communication has again reverted to the old footpaths. A 

 crucial test of the feeUng in the Chinese bureaucracy, in the 

 face of foreign innovations, is exhibited in their attitude 

 towards the Shanghai Waterworks. Alongside the magnifi- 

 cent foreign settlement of Shanghai, with its fine, wide, well- 

 kept streets, its grand quays and avenues of shade-trees, its 

 water, gas and electric light, stands the inexpressibly dirty 

 native city. The natives themselves fully appreciate the 

 difference, for, notwithstanding the high municipal taxation 

 and the despotic foreign rule of the " settlement," they have 

 flocked in to the land set apart for foreigners in such 

 numbers (about 250,000) that their presence has become 

 a nuisance to all of the European residents, except to the 

 landowners, whose rents have enormously increased in 

 consequence. Meanwhile, the high Chinese officials, to 

 whom the contrast is a bitter eyesore, sulk behind their 

 crumbling walls ; and when the Waterworks Company apply 

 for leave to confer the boon of a pure water supply on the 

 native city, will have none of it until such time as they shall 

 be able to do the work themselves and in their own way. 



I have not space to enter on a disquisition on the motives, 

 many worthy of respect, which induce this thorough-going 

 conservatism. On the river, they dread the army of trackers 

 being thrown out of work ; while their traditional objection 



