CHAPTER III - HANGCHOW

Summary

A journey of 150 miles to visit friends in the ancient city of Hangchow required no other preparations than the hire of a boat and the engaging of a servant, who I was compelled to dismiss a few days later for gross dishonesty. 2755 steam launches, owned and run by Chinese, towing 7889 passenger boats, carrying 605 foreign and 125,000 native passengers, entered and cleared in 1897 between Hangchow, Shanghai, and Soochow.

Every evening one of these launches, towing a long string of native boats, leaves the Soochow creek below the British Consulate for the new treaty ports, opened as such only in 1896. My small bamboo-roofed boat, in which I could just stand upright, much decorated in the tawdry style of Chinese fourth-class fancy, and through which irremediable draughts coursed friskily, was the contemptible final joint of a tail of nine quaint and picturesque passage junks and family houseboats, a varnished procession of high-sterned, two-storeyed, many-windowed arks, squirming and snaking along at the stern of a noisy, asthmatic tow-boat. There were red flags flying, gongs crashing out dissonance, crackers exploding, poles with clothes drying on them pushed out of windows, incense sticks smouldering, and reports of firearms; and with this cheerful din, the usual accompaniment of Chinese movement, we started in the red twilight.

I paid six dollars for my boat with three men, and five dollars fifty cents for towage, about 23s.