Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PROLOGUE
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I MY FIRST VISIT TO PEKING: BEFORE THE SIEGE
- CHAPTER II PILOT TOWN: TAKU
- CHAPTER III AUGUST TN CHEFOO
- CHAPTER IV ON THE WALLS OF SHANGHAI CITY
- CHAPTER V INSIDE SHANGHAI CITY
- CHAPTER VI INTO THE CHINESE COUNTRY
- CHAPTER VII APRIL NEAR NINGPO
- CHAPTER VIII SEPTEMBER IN WUHU
- CHAPTER IX THE DRAGON KING'S CAVERN AND DOME: ICHANG
- CHAPTER X FENGTU: THE CHINESE HADES
- CHAPTER XI CHEAP MISSIONARIES
- CHAPTER XII LIFE ON A FARMSTEAD: FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES INSIDE CHINA
- CHAPTER XIII ANTI-FOREIGN RIOTS IN WESTERN CHINA
- CHAPTER XVI FURTHER ALARMS OF RIOTS
- CHAPTER XIV “BAD” WENTANG
- CHAPTER XVI LITTLE KNOWN BORDER TRIBES
- CHAPTER XVII TABLE DECORATIONS
- CHAPTER XVIII WHAT ARE MISSIONARIES DOING?
- CHAPTER XIX PART I.—AN ANTI-FOOTBINDING TOUR TO HANKOW, WUCHANG, HAN-YANG, CANTON AND HONG-KONG
- CHAPTER XX PART II.—TO MACAO, SWATOW, AMOY, FOOCHOW, HANGCHOW AND SOOCHOW
CHAPTER II - PILOT TOWN: TAKU
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2011
- Frontmatter
- PROLOGUE
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- CHAPTER I MY FIRST VISIT TO PEKING: BEFORE THE SIEGE
- CHAPTER II PILOT TOWN: TAKU
- CHAPTER III AUGUST TN CHEFOO
- CHAPTER IV ON THE WALLS OF SHANGHAI CITY
- CHAPTER V INSIDE SHANGHAI CITY
- CHAPTER VI INTO THE CHINESE COUNTRY
- CHAPTER VII APRIL NEAR NINGPO
- CHAPTER VIII SEPTEMBER IN WUHU
- CHAPTER IX THE DRAGON KING'S CAVERN AND DOME: ICHANG
- CHAPTER X FENGTU: THE CHINESE HADES
- CHAPTER XI CHEAP MISSIONARIES
- CHAPTER XII LIFE ON A FARMSTEAD: FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES INSIDE CHINA
- CHAPTER XIII ANTI-FOREIGN RIOTS IN WESTERN CHINA
- CHAPTER XVI FURTHER ALARMS OF RIOTS
- CHAPTER XIV “BAD” WENTANG
- CHAPTER XVI LITTLE KNOWN BORDER TRIBES
- CHAPTER XVII TABLE DECORATIONS
- CHAPTER XVIII WHAT ARE MISSIONARIES DOING?
- CHAPTER XIX PART I.—AN ANTI-FOOTBINDING TOUR TO HANKOW, WUCHANG, HAN-YANG, CANTON AND HONG-KONG
- CHAPTER XX PART II.—TO MACAO, SWATOW, AMOY, FOOCHOW, HANGCHOW AND SOOCHOW
Summary
THOSE, who passed by Taku in the old days, probably rarely landed to visit the little community at Pilot Town. Yet there the pilots, who guide the steamers across the two mile wide Taku Bar, live, and—though, as wicked rumour has it, often doing their best to kill themselves—do not die, so healthy is the air. Anyhow, whatever rumour says, the pilots had made a very ship-shape little colony for themselves. Their houses had mostly mud walls and mud roofs like those of the neighbouring Chinese villages, but how clean and tidy mud walls can look when freshly whitewashed people must go to Pilot Town to see, as also what a wonderful jauntiness can be given by a judicious mixture of coal tar and white paint on gate posts. Like a regular good old-fashioned, English country village round its green, Pilot Town is built round its lawn tennis ground. They had two courts when we visited the place, and there were actually benches, that seemed to belong to the community at large, where lookers-on could sit and watch the players. They boasted then of having thirteen ladies, and the manners of Pilot Town were said already to have greatly changed under their softening influence. They had their Jubilee too, and though they did not boast that theirs was the loveliest in all the world, like Shanghai and Peking, yet they seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed it, “A picnic, and a supper, and a dance. We should not think anything of anything in North China that did not wind up with a dance.”
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- The Land of the Blue Gown , pp. 14 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010