In the third book of Paradise Lost, Milton humorously discussed transportation in China as follows:

but the matter has now reached a development worthy of being discussed seriously.

China had in 1912 about 5,500 miles of railway in operation, new main lines having been built from Tientsin to Nanking (Pukow) by German and British contractors, and from Nanking to Shanghai by British contractors, so that it is now possible to take cars at Shanghai and go through to Calais, France, by rail. Branch lines connect the German colony of Kiaochou and Chifu with this Tientsin trunk railway, so that a German may go straight through from his Crown colony in cars to Berlin. Before long, when the Canton-Hankau section is completed, Hongkong’s colonial secretary will be able to leave Government House, facing the wonderful Botanical Garden on the hill of Hongkong, take a chair down to the Star Ferry Wharf, cross the mile of harbor, then take his railway carriage and be whisked through to Downing Street, London, to take his orders from the secretary of state for the Crown colonies, with only one ferriage, that from Calais to Dover. Not only a northern railway route is available, but a southern railway route will soon be open. When the easy section through Persia, and the short railway from Yunnan City through Mung Ting pass connects with Mandalay, it will be possible for the colonial secretary of Indo-China to leave the palatial Palais at Hanoi and entrain at the Tonquin Railway Gare on the palm-lined boulevard, going straight through to the MinistrÉ on the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, via Hyderabad, Teheran, Constantinople and the Gates of the Danube, all the way without seeing salt water. Likewise the governor of Singapore will soon be able to entrain opposite Government House for Calais and London, and cross the teeming continents, passing through the site of the Garden of Eden, on his way to Downing Street to consult with his chief. He can also pick up his traveled friend (since the entente cordiale), the Gouverneur at L’Hotel du Gouverneur, Saigon, and drop him at the Gare du Nord, Paris, on his way to the departments on the left bank of the Seine.

The Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo railway, built by the British and Chinese Corporation, and by the Chinese themselves, will soon be completed. The Peking-Kalgan railway (the route for the tombs of the Ming emperors) has been finely built by China’s leading engineer, Jeme Tien Yao (educated at Yale, 1883) and this road will some day, with Russian and French help, break across Gobi Desert to Kaikhta and Irkutsk, flanking two thousand miles of Manchurian railway, and saving all that distance in reaching Europe from Shanghai. The Kaifong-Singan railway will soon be ready. It is planned to open a new port at Haochow, where the Yellow River (Hoang Ho) used to meet the Yellow Sea, and to run the railway through to Kaifong, Singan, Lanchow (in Kansu province) and on to the historic Tarim valley, and Kashgar, opening up Turkestan. It is also proposed to open a new port at ice-free Hunshan on the Ginmen River, D’Anville Gulf, Sea of Japan, where China owns a narrow neck of land running between Northern Korea and the Vladivostok district of Siberia. From Hunshan a road would be run to Kirin, two hundred miles over difficult forest-covered country. From Kirin China has independent lines running between the Russian and Japanese lines. Hunshan would be an excellent port whence to attack commercially the two rich northern provinces of Manchuria. The road planned by America from Chin Wang Tao to Tsitsikar and Aigun is possibly more of a postponed than a dead road despite Russia and Japan.

The roads from Hankau north to Mukden have paid heavy dividends and helped the imperial exchequer during the revolution of 1911. These roads have been hindered neither by difficult construction, nor by obstacles to traffic such as the likin tax system, which has cursed the free trade and transportation of the southern part of the country. The Hanyang iron mills can supply rails at one-third the American cost, viz., nine dollars as compared with twenty-eight dollars per ton, so that China can afford to build four miles of railway to America’s one mile, and reduce rates accordingly because of the lower capital cost. The cars can be erected at Hongkong in the south, Hankau in the center, and at Tongshan in the north of China. The locomotives and trucks will be imported from America, Germany and England. The necessary coast railway from Hongkong to Ningpo has only been constructed in the neighborhood of Amoy. Something has been done on the railways from Hongkong to Yunnan City, and from Hongkong to Chungking, and from Yunnan to Chungking. American engineers have made the surveys. The railway along the ancient Ta Peh Lu (Great North Road) post road from Chingtu to Singan has not yet been begun. A road, too, will break across west from Chingtu to the Tibet gateway at Tachien. Mention should be made of the railway from Kidalova, following the north bank of the Amur to Blagovestchensk and Khabarovka, which Russia is building so as to have an all-Russian railway to Vladivostok. This railway is under way, although the debt of the Russo-Japan War has almost destroyed Russian railway building, and postponed Russia’s commercial (and other?) attack in India’s direction. Had it not been for that debt, Russia might to-day be striking for railway entrance to Peking, to Hankau, to Herat and Constantinople, as so many of the British imperialists like Kipling and Sir Gilbert Parker fear.

Hongkong has at last beat out Shanghai for the trade of the great western provinces of China. Transshipment is made at Hongkong for Haiphong, where the new French railway takes merchandise five hundred miles northwest to Yunnan as a distributing center. Hongkong also has the West (Si Kiang), Yu, Hong Chu, Eta and Peh Rivers as arteries into the west. Until two hundred miles of Yangtze gorges and rapids are flanked by a railway, Shanghai must lose more and more of the vast western trade which she used to control before the French railway was built. The French finished in 1910 this remarkable railway from Haiphong to Yunnan, five hundred miles, and have thus beat out the British, who, because of Colquhoun’s books, were approaching Yunnan from three points in Burma. This railway attack on Yunnan has been a battle of two imperial minds of the Kipling imperialistic type, Colquhoun and Doumer. Colquhoun, the British governor and author, began urging the construction of British railways in 1881, and followed up his arguments with a further book in 1898. In 1897, the famous Paul Doumer, once a printer, went to French China as governor. In 1898 he began his railway to Yunnan. The line, though narrow gage, has cost $50,000 a mile, even with cheap Oriental labor. Near the coast of Tonquin the country is that of flat rice fields and only requires trestling and banking. From Hung Hoa (Bed River) to Lao Kai no fewer than 180 bridges had to be erected (a fine contract for French structural firms) to cross the wild broken country of stream, marsh, gorge and mountain pass. The line rises from sea level to a pass of 5,000 feet altitude. Much of the Yunnan tin and other exports, which, by pack saddle and shoulder load, formerly went down to Nanning and took the Yu and Si Rivers to Hongkong, are now diverted to Haiphong, from which port the French run branch ship lines to Hongkong and Saigon, connecting with the great subsidized Messageries Maritimes line to Marseilles. The French need subsidies because the foreign trade which their bankers control is not so heavy as is that of Britain and America.

The Hongkong and Canton Railway, 106 miles, has been completed and marks a new lease of life for Hongkong as the emporium of South, West and Central China, when the railways from Canton are extended. The Hongkong Railway starts from Kowloon, across the narrow harbor, running through 19 miles of British territory, and the remainder through Chinese territory. The British section, on account of the many tunnels through mountains, cost almost as much as the entire Chinese section. The fine steamers of the Hongkong and Canton Steamboat Company, which are well known to world tourists, and many Chinese steamers and junks compete, but there is traffic for all, and when there isn’t there will be pooling for all. The Hongkong government, through the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, loaned the Kwangtung province government the money for the Chinese section. (This is an illustration of a few loans which have not been made to the national government at Peking, and represents provincial as against the nationalized trunk railway scheme which helped to bring on the revolution.) The road runs through a part of the country requiring much trestle work, and bridging on account of waterways. The long Chinese section of the road cost less with one exception than any standard gage railway in the world, $35,000 per mile, the nearest approach to this in America being sections of the Great Northern Railway built years ago at $40,000 per mile. Nearly all the freight and passenger cars were made at Hongkong. The best built railway in China is the Shanghai-Nanking. In easy country it cost $55,000 per mile. It was built by British contractors on the elaborate, permanent English plan, whose maxim is, “a stitch in time saves nine”. What spoiled the Chinese in hiring foreign contractors was their experience with a section of the Shanghai-Hangchow railway. The Kiangsu and Chekiang provincial governments, hiring native contractors and engineers (who were trained in America) built a satisfactory road of 125 miles at $25,000 per mile, as compared with the British continuation north, of $55,000 per mile. The Chinese have never ceased talking of this economy, although they admit that the English road is better and worth $35,000 per mile, but not $55,000. Another objection they make is that foreign syndicates charge five per cent. commission on their purchases. In the railway from Pukow (opposite Nanking) to Tientsin, the foreign syndicate was not allowed commission on purchases, so that the “Pukow plan” is favored. In reference to the low cost, $35,000 per mile, of the difficult Peking-Kalgan railway, 140 miles, which was built by the Chinese exclusively, the Chinese Students’ Journal says: “In the construction of the railway, economy, which must not be confounded with cheapness, must always be kept in view. All railways built in China must be paid for by our people, and our people are poor. A railway is not a club-house on which to expend millions. The redemption of bonds must not be forgotten for a moment. On the Peking-Kalgan railway there was no temptation to spend money recklessly, as no five per cent. commission was needed to enrich the coffers of the foreign corporation. There were no foreign style residences, cement tennis-courts, ice machines, palatial house-boats, and princely salaries; no interpreters to make a fortune (i.e., compradores); no graft. There were no unpleasantnesses through the interference of foreign consuls, and no reference of insignificant incidents to ministers at Peking.”

The Siberian Railway cost $150,000 a mile through flat country, but $100,000 of that amount was for nepotism, graft, bureaucracy, boodle and sweet Roederer champagne.

The revolution and the argument over the nationalization of railways of course delayed the great Gorge Railway which runs from Ichang to Wan Hsien on the Yangtze, thus surmounting the almost impassable rapids of the gorges, which heretofore have split populous Szechuen province from Hupeh. It would be hard to say how many books have been written about these difficult rapids and the sublime scenery. The most notable are by Archibald Little, the trade pioneer of the Yangtze, and then there are interesting works by Dingle, Geil, Mrs. Kemp, Mr. Bird, Mr. Blakiston, Mr. Hart and Mrs. Bishop. The road could not possibly parallel the river along the parapets of the gorges. It breaks inland through great tunnels, some 6,000 feet long. This gorge railway was the most necessary in the whole world; it should have been the first begun in China. When it is running, however, the finest scenery in the world will be shut out from the wondering eyes of man, as the famous gorge boatmen and trackers will give up their work, and, as it is, many of them have been killed in the recent war of the revolution, Szechuen and Hupeh provinces being the first to recruit armies. From Wan Hsien railways will go across country to Chingtu, and up the Yangtze to Chungking, thus linking the great west with India, French China and the populous eastern and northern provinces.

General Kuroki’s military railway from Antung to Mukden has now been turned into a standard-gage road, and a bridge has been thrown across the Yalu River (famous for its great naval engagement) to Wiju. It is now possible to take a sleeping-car from Tokio to Shinonoseki, cross the strait by ferry, take another sleeper at Fusan, and go all the way through Mukden to Kuang Chang Tsu, connecting there with the Russian line for Moscow and St. Petersburg. For fast service, however, the Russians are able to favor the all-Russian line to Vladivostok, whence steamers can be taken for Hakodate, etc. Passengers from Shanghai can take two routes, one by steamer to Dalny, and thence via the South Manchurian (Japanese) railway, or via Tientsin, Newchang, etc. (Chinese railways). The Korean-Yalu route, however, is infinitely the more scenic. Most of the bridges of this route were brought from America.

The German railway of 271 miles in Shangtung province shows the effects of the iron hand in paying small wages, the working expenses in 1910 being only thirty-five per cent. of the gross earnings. The gross earnings were $8,000 a mile. In a bare country, where mining is undeveloped, the average receipts were only seventy-one cents per passenger mile, and ninety cents per ton mile. Over 90 per cent. of the traffic is third class. The average mixed trainload is 150 tons of freight and sixty passengers. The famous beans, straw braid, grain and petroleum predominated in the traffic, but in 1912 coal was beginning to be a growing factor. The German railway in Shangtung province has set the example of planting trees. It was copied by the Pennsylvania railway. Nearly all the railways of China are copying the reforestation methods.

At Tongshan, eighty miles northeast of Tientsin, are the modern shops, engineering college and town of the national railways of North China. Here the first Chinese locomotive, the “Rocket”, was built in stealth by the British mechanical, railway and mining engineer, Mr. C.W. Kinder, who has done so much for the railways and mines of North China. The college turns out railway engineers, and some of the instructors are American, like Mr. F.A. Foster. Other lecturers are British, like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope.

Railway cars can now be built in the Tongshan shops, the Hanyang works, the Shanghai works and the Kowloon (Hongkong) works, as well as at Dalny. The Tongshan works can and have built locomotives.

In 1910 the Department of Communications established at Peking a railway school. Three hundred of the six hundred students were under twenty-five years of age. There were eight foreign and thirty-five foreign-trained Chinese teachers. The course was three years. English, mainly, and French, German and Chinese were taught. There is no military drill, and the curriculum includes history, economics, railway bookkeeping and law, engineering, management of traffic, shops and stations, physics, chemistry, drawing, mathematics, geography, etc.

Electric tramways have been established at Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton and the Manchurian cities, the example having been taken from Hongkong’s tramway, built in 1905. Recent photographs show the remarkable change in the bunds and roads of the treaty ports, where the automobile, electric car, rickshaw, wheelbarrow, chair and litter all have their fight for the passenger and his nimble coin.

On new lines it is necessary to use blue instead of white glass in the coaches, as the coolies in their excitement over the scenery forget and put their heads through the white glass, to which they are not accustomed.

The old system of transportation has not altogether departed, and even if it had, its memory would linger long. Neither the Peking cart, nor the mule litter of Shansi, in which one rides between two tandem mules, is on springs. They are padded so that the passenger, who is not made of rubber, may be somewhat protected. If the conveyances were not padded, only a man dressed up for American football could survive the jolting. These are the vehicles in which dignified (on other occasions) ambassadors have ridden at Peking in all the years since foreigners were granted the legation privileges.