China Seas

by John Harris

  ‘That’s not the reason we stay. We pay no taxes and we’re making a lot of money. That’s the reason. Back home you have to be society to be noticed. Here you just have to have money. Shanghai’s the most important city in the East and that’s where we ought to be.’

  ‘I’ll miss my friends.’

  ‘You’ll make more. And you’ll be safer. If trouble comes – and it might because there are people in China now saying that the Manchus have to go–’ Willie paused, ‘– if trouble came, we’d be too far from the coast in Peking. In Shanghai all we’d have to do would be to step on a British ship.’

  ‘And leave everything behind?’

  Willie grinned. ‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘I arranged for a lot of our capital to go to England. It’s safe in banks there. That’s where a proportion of everything we make here should go from now on. Then, if trouble comes, we head for Southampton or Liverpool and start again with what we’ve stacked away. We’re in business in Yangpo and we operate up and down the river. The ferries are good now. You travel in comfort and there are gunboats so that if anything goes wrong you’ve always got the British Navy to look after you. We’ll build a house at Yangpo–’

  ‘I thought we were going to build it in Shanghai.’

  ‘Why not one in both places? All the best people have a country retreat. When it’s too hot in Shanghai we’ll go up to Yangpo. When it’s too cold in Yangpo we’ll come down to the coast. What could be better?’

  Abigail considered there were a lot of things which could be better, but she didn’t voice her thoughts. ‘But we don’t give up the trade in Chinese artifacts?’

  ‘That’s your business.’ Willie’s gesture was expansive. ‘You handle it. I’ll look after the import-export business and the shipping.’

  ‘Shipping?’

  ‘I’ve got two now,’ Willie said proudly. ‘Kum Kum Kiuw. Five-hundred-ton coaster. I bought her in Shanghai when I got back. Company that had gone bust. I’ve just started the Sarth Line.’

  What Willie had suggested began to seem possible more quickly than he had anticipated. Moving with all their belongings to Shanghai, they set up house near the Bubbling Well Road among the new houses of other rising businessmen, and the office on the bund became the most important of their centres. It was not alone. There were plenty of others – Jardine Matheson’s, Sassoon’s, Butterfield and Swire’s, Mason and Marchant’s, even Wishart and Co., because Emmeline, married now to another of her office managers, had quickly followed them, almost as if she had been watching which way the wind blew and was using Sarth’s as the indicator.

  With Abigail in Shanghai looking after the children and developing the new house there to her taste, Willie started building the house in Yangpo. Most of the materials were local, but all the timber and glass had to come upriver by junk. Already Yangpo was developing as fast as its trade, and there was even a social life of a kind, mostly a deadly round of drinking and dinner parties, which fluctuated with the ebb and flow of the foreign community in response to the approach or retreat of danger. Danger was something that was never far away because, although General Fu had gone, there were others looking round for the opportunities in the vacuum he had caused.

  In the north, the Japanese were consolidating their gains in Korea and Manchuria and making sure that everybody noticed how powerful they had become. The Russians had lost not only their Port Arthur squadron but a fleet sent out from the Baltic to sail half-way round the world to suffer a shattering defeat at Tsushima. Despite the sneers and contempt with which the Japanese had been held, they had firmly established themselves as a power in the Far East.

  Willie was too busy to be concerned, however. He had already dismissed the war from his mind and was occupied in developing the business at Yangpo. There was iron, silver, lead, zinc, antimony and limestone nearby and, eager to see it moved, Willie had bought another ship, a 1,500-tonner, the Winifred Whitehead, to move it to where it was needed – India, Australia and the Dutch East Indies.

  ‘I got her cheap,’ he explained to Abigail. ‘Chap who wanted to concentrate ashore.’

  ‘You seem to have a gift for picking up old ships,’ Abigail commented.

  ‘Well, we’ll never be mail steamers,’ Willie admitted. ‘But she’s not that old and she can get all the way up to Yangpo. There’s a growing profitability in the China Seas trade.’

  Abigail smiled indulgently. ‘You sound like Samuel Cunard,’ she said.

  Willie grinned, well aware that his new enthusiasm had got a firm grip on him. ‘Tramp ships take fifteen per cent of world trade Ab, and here they’re important because the coastal railway services are non-existent. Reliability’s important and people’ll pay well for it. That’s what I’m aiming at, that and having my ships in the right place at the right time, because seasons affect freight rates.’ He looked faintly shame-faced. ‘I’ve even got my eye on another coaster, the Shamara, a fishing boat, for dodging between the islands. Seventy feet long with a hell of a range and a new engine.’

  Abigail gave him a worried look. ‘You’re not getting in too deeply, are you?’

  Willie grinned ‘Not me. Ab, old love, this is the time to expand. There’s money to be made and we’re neck-deep in it already.’

  There was no wall dividing the British Concession from the Chinese City at Yangpo, only a road that was never crossed. On one side were the smelly, narrow Chinese streets, teeming with people, colour, life and a reckless sprawling vitality, on the other British-paid police, sanitation, traffic regulations, an esplanade where you could see women with wide-brimmed hats strolling among the azaleas, a small girl with a hoop, a boy with a whip and top, and all the dignified stodginess of a British crown colony with stiff collars, walking sticks and raised hats. On one side you spat as you pleased. On the other you were liable to a fine.

  Willie loved it. He liked the gentle Luis Da Braga and enjoyed talking business with him over his brandy bottle, arguing with the compradores and listening to the high-pitched chatter of the coolies with their sense of fun and infectious laughter. There was nothing they liked better than to see the high and mighty in a position of indignity – a fat Chinese businessman slipping on a dog’s turd, a self-important white woman with her hat knocked sideways. He was still young, and he knew the women eyed him because he was still slim, didn’t drink much and wasn’t one to sit over heavy meals on hot evenings as most men did, and he enjoyed it. In Shanghai, he and Abigail had become part of the city’s society, always in demand, two attractive young people among a group of business taipans with their plump dull wives. Occasionally, he went to Peking either on his own to do business, which was still to be found there, or with Abigail when she was collecting Chinese treasures for sale in London, Paris or New York.

  Brassard had been as good as his word and was working honestly with them, but occasionally it meant visiting England, taking in India on the way because there were more treasures to be picked up there, and then on to America or France before, faintly outlandish with their tanned skins among all the British-based parents, ending up looking at prep schools and public schools for their children, who, like the children of most businessmen abroad, would have to come home for their education. Travelling was easy now, however, because they always travelled first class and people no longer looked down their noses at them.

  Then the Emperor died unexpectedly. Willie and Abigail were in Peking at the time, clearing up the last details of their move to Shanghai.

  The Emperor meant little because he had always been a pawn in the hands of the Empress Dowager, but to everyone’s surprise the following day the Empress Dowager died too. She had not been well for some time and, as she took to her bed, in typical fashion she prepared for her death with orders to everyone who mattered and a valedictory address to the Chinese people.

  The funeral was magnificent, the red robes of the bearers contrasting with the yellow robes of the priests, the rich silver and gold embroidery bringing the appropriate colours of
sunset. Missions from all over Asia arrived to pay homage as the corpse was carried to the Tung-Ling, the Eastern Tombs, and as the procession left the city the bier was preceded by one of the old woman’s favourites, carrying her pet dog, a yellow and white Pekingese.

  The corpse lay on a mattress embroidered with pearls and swathed in a coverlet of more pearls and a lace sheet with ‘Buddha’ outlined in still more pearls. It was dressed in jade ornaments and ceremonial clothes of gold thread, ropes of pearls encircled it and there were pearl images in the dead woman’s arms. Gold, jade and carved Buddas were placed in the tomb with her, with jade models of fruit and lotus roots and hundreds more scattered pearls and other jewels.

  ‘Worth looting,’ Willie said dryly.

  Almost immediately, they became aware of China’s problems again because a strong man had arisen by the name of Yuan Shih-K’Ai. He had held a variety of positions, at one moment in power, the next in disgrace. At that moment he was exiled far from the seat of government as Viceroy of the Metropolitan Province. But, as the Sarths’ home in Yangpo grew and Da Braga’s wooden hut became a brick godown four times the size, as Edward Sarth disappeared to a prep school in England, accompanied by his mother, who was in a late state of pregnancy with a third child, Yuan was dismissed.

  ‘There’ll be trouble,’ Da Braga said at once.

  ‘For us?’

  ‘For everybody with interests in China.’

  ‘There are a lot of us.’

  Da Braga nodded. ‘When the Japanese started to invest capital to start Japanese-controlled industries in China, everybody followed suit.’

  ‘So did we. We have cotton mills in Shanghai besides what we have up here. So have Wishart’s. And Mason and Marchant’s and Wissermann’s. We’re not the only ones either. We’ve all got places along the Yangtze, and we’ve all put money into the railways to make sure we can get to them.’

  ‘Perhaps it will turn out to be a mistake. Railways have a habit of disturbing ancestors. The Chinese might object. Especially if Yuan decides he has the power to overthrow the dynasty.’

  ‘Think he’ll try?’

  ‘I suspect it’s more than likely.’

  To Willie, Da Braga seemed to be making too much of the danger, but his worries seemed based on sound fears when, unexpectedly, riots started against the dynasty. In Sian, where the name of the Manchus had become execrated for their cruelty, corruption and reaction, hundreds of them and their followers were butchered by the angry population. Immediately, waves of nervousness swept through the European communities up and down the river. Then, in Szechwan, the provincial governor was replaced by a stronger man whose attempts at repressing the rising tide of hatred for the dynasty only made things worse, and at Wuchang, opposite Hankow on the Yangtze and close to Yangpo, where the fighting between the dissidents and the government troops had been ferocious, the garrison was instructed to put down the disturbance with the utmost severity.

  Once again the European community at Yangpo began to grow anxious. Meetings were called to decide what to do, but nothing came of them because there were too many nationalities and too many different interests. It seemed to Willie that, under the circumstances, it was best that he should be in Yangpo, and he was just going through Da Braga’s books, pretending to be interested but always with one ear on the sounds of dissension outside, when the Portuguese arrived. Da Braga was excited enough to leave the engine of his car running outside as he appeared in the doorway.

  ‘There was an explosion in a house in the Russian Concession at Hankow,’ he said. ‘They found guns and ammunition and the names of members of a revolutionary plot, most of them officers of the garrison. There was only one thing they could do. They took the bit between their teeth and the governor fled. Wuchang’s in their hands now and they’ve also occupied Hankow and Hanyang across the river, and declared their independence of Peking. The Regent’s called on Yuan Shih-K’Ai for help.’

  Immediately news came of similar uprisings across the whole country so that, within days almost, there were military governments in almost every province south of the Great Wall, most of them started by junior officers who had recruited senior officers to head their movement. With the Manchu army in disarray, the Regent – who was ruling the country because the Empress Dowager’s nominee as Emperor was only a boy of six – called the strong man, Yuan, from his exile and instructed him to set the Chinese house in order. Almost immediately, he emerged as Prime Minister.

  ‘Well,’ Willie said, raising his glass to Da Braga, ‘perhaps he’s the one feller who’s strong enough to restore peace. I hear the old revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen’s arrived in Shanghai to become temporary president of a republic until they can organise things for Yuan to take office. I think the Manchus are finished.’

  He was right, and the days of the Manchus were numbered. Within weeks they were gone and the Socialists and the followers of Sun Yat-Sen were forcibly cutting off the pigtails that the Manchus had forced people to wear. It was an indication of the way the future was shaping and, as Jardine Matheson’s led the way in moving their capital away, everybody started using British banks instead of The Bank of China, because they feared some undefined upheaval which could affect their funds.

  Sitting in the office in Yangpo, Willie read The North China Daily News’ view of the situation to Da Braga. ‘“History”,’ he read, ‘“has witnessed few such revolutions and perhaps none of equal magnitude which has been carried out with so little bloodshed.”’

  Da Braga was not so sure of the situation. ‘Some of us,’ he said, ‘are inclined to doubt whether a form of government alien to oriental traditions can suddenly be substituted for a monarchy. Especially in a nation ruled ever since the sun first rose by kings who’ve been regarded as semi-divine.’

  Willie nodded thoughtfully. ‘You might be more right than the Daily News,’ he agreed.

  By the time Abigail, after a visit to her old haunts in the States, returned, complete with a daughter born in a San Francisco nursing home, Willie had found new areas to conquer. He had been looking around for some time before it dawned on him that there was Russian territory not far to the north that was wide open to commerce.

  He was already involved in cargoes of zinc, tungsten, maize, castor oil, aniseed, silk and mother of pearl from Indo-China, doing the trips himself to build up the years of sea time he needed for a mate’s certificate, slipping into Haiphong where bougainvillaea draped the houses with magenta swathes and the gardens glowed with yellow and orange canna lilies, to Malaya for shellac and soya beans, to Hong Kong for British cement for Saigon. He was itching to expand further.

  He had even tried Japan because, since their victory over the Russians, the Japanese had become suprisingly popular in Europe and prints of their victories were on sale everywhere, and a fashion had started in London for fans, butterflies, geisha girls and netsuke jewellery. Shaiba had greeted him warmly, and laughed at his adventures on the night of the attack on Port Arthur. But there was little business to be done. Looking far into the future, the Japanese preferred to keep their trade largely to themselves and it was obvious that in their view if anyone was going to run the East it was not going to be Europeans but Orientals. They already had a foothold in China, not only along the Yangtze, but along the coast, and now, after the Russo-Japanese war, in Manchuria.

  Realising, therefore, that Japan was not going to provide much business, he decided to try Vladivostok. After all, you didn’t have to go to Moscow to buy Russian goods. Vladivostok was already in constant close touch with Shanghai, and was well known as a link in the opium trade, and the Shanghai customs always gave special attention to ships whose cargo manifests showed Vladivostok as their origin or destination. Officials didn’t hesitate to hold up a cargo if they felt like it, but, if they were in a hurry or dishonest, it was always possible to bamboozle them. The Upper Section Wharves in Shanghai were the dirtiest, smelliest and most dangerous of the whole waterfront, embracing the cobbled bund of the Fre
nch Concession and the more sinister bund of the old walled city, and there small steamers, changing berths at night, could easily leave the Customs men baffled by what appeared to be a change in identity.

  Buying a Russian grammar, Willie set out to learn a few useful words and phrases. His education had been limited to a few years at a poverty-stricken church school which had taut him little more than the three Rs, but he was quick to learn and was always busy acquiring knowledge and, a good linguist and based in a place where he could hear every language under the sun without walking from his office, he had already picked up a smattering of Japanese and French and a lot of Chinese. It had surprised him to find how good he was and, with his master’s certificate within sight as soon as he had completed the necessary number of years on the bridge of his own ships, he took to Russian like a duck to water.

  Vladivostok was at the end of the Trans-Siberian Railway and was said to be an outlandish place on the edge of nowhere, short of the things he had to sell such as Hong Kong kettles, pans, axes, crockery, cotton, leather and rubber goods, cigarettes, matches, shirts, tins of enamel and varnish, footwear, rattan chairs and rolls of printed cotton. Some of it ought to sell, he felt. Perhaps all of it, and there were always agents to drum up trade.

  George Kee had suggested a firm called A N Kourganov. ‘They do business with Tientsin,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ve known of them for some time.’

  Willie slapped his shoulder. ‘Well done, George. Why didn’t Lun Foo suggest this? He’s been in the game longer than you?’

  Kee smiled modestly. ‘Perhaps he is not very clever, sir. Perhaps he doesn’t listen enough. Perhaps he spends too much time eating and drinking.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Wang Li-Jen.’

  ‘Isn’t he the agent for Wishart’s?’

  ‘Also Hamming’s, Mason and Marchant’s and James MacConachie, sir.’

  ‘None of ’em very big. Or very sound either.’