The gateway to China

"The Gateway to China" by Mary Ninde Gamewell is a travelogue and social-historical portrait written in the early 20th century. Through illustrated vignettes it presents Shanghai as a cosmopolitan “model settlement” and microcosm of China in transition, highlighting its blend of ancient customs and modern institutions across civic life, commerce, education, philanthropy, and missionary work. The opening of the work sets its aim: to capture Shanghai’s fast-changing scenes and kindle understanding of the Chinese people, then sketches the city’s growth from river silt and fishing hamlet to treaty port and commercial hub, its refugee surges during the T’aiping turmoil, the short-lived first railway, and the stabilizing rise of the Imperial Maritime Customs under Sir Robert Hart. It details the International Settlement’s governance, the Mixed Court and prisons, police corps (British, Sikh, and Chinese), volunteers, fire brigade, a patchwork postal system, and an energetic Health Department battling plague via rat-proofing and public hygiene campaigns, with special attention to tuberculosis. Street portraits follow: the Bund and its gardens, sampan communities, the glare and crowds of Nanking Road and its tea-houses, elite boulevards and race-course, bustling markets, mill districts, winding roads shaped by superstition, narrow lanes of shikumen housing, beggar guilds, and jarring juxtapositions of temples and trams. Commerce comes alive in silver and silk emporiums, roast-duck and bake shops, pawn and exchange houses, coffin dealers, curio dens on Pig Alley, and child apprentices documented by the Y.M.C.A.

The gateway to China, by Mary Ninde Gamewell. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77783.