CHINESE DISASTER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 223, 21 August 1931, Page 7

CHINESE DISASTER.

YANGTSE FLOOD BELT. HUGE AREA INUNDATED. Received August 20, 10.0 a.m. SHANGHAI, Aug.. 20. The Yangtse flood belt is 1000 miles long and 50 miles wide. A message from Washington states : The Red cross has allotted 100,000 dollars for relief in the Yangtse areas of China. It will bo dispensed by a committee at Hankow. HANKOW A BUSY CENTRE. Hankow, 630 miles from the sea, as a port of the Yangtse River, ranks second only to Shanghai in commercial importance. Strictly speaking, Hankow is a suburb of Han-yang (population, 100,000) and Wu-chang (750,000), having itself a total of 300,000 inhabitants. The three towns are situated on the three arms of land at the confluence of the Yangtse and Han Rivers. In the days before the Taiping rebellion the combined cities had a population of over 5,000,000. but to-day can boast just over 1,000,000. The river to Hankow is at the low season navigable to vessels of 30ft. draught, and the seasonal rises often extend to 50 or 60ft. To combat this menace huge stone embankments have been built to a height of 40ft. above the banks, along the two-mile river frontage of the British and other foreign concessions. The high water season is from July to September, and during this period the surrounding district is generally under water, leaving the three cities like islands in the midst of a lake. Because of this periodic flooding, the immediate vicinity is one of the richest rice-growing parts of China. During the flood season the river has a speed of about five knots, and all shipping has to take shelter behind the dykes. The riverbed is obstructed by sandbanks, bars and narrow channels, which divert the normal flow into very treacherous currents. i One of the original Treaty Ports, Hankow has been open to foreign trade since 1862, and is the central market of the tea district of the Upper Yangtse. Further exports aro silk, oil, vegetable tallow, tobacco, antimony, iron ore, coal, musk, wax, and all Chinese medicines. In 1889 a decree of the Emperor authorised the construction of a railway from Hankow to Pekin, a distance of 776 miles, which was completed in 1905. The province of Hu-peh, which is m Central China, and of which Hankow is the capital, has an area of about 70,000 square miles and a population of 35,000,000. The Han and Yangtse Rivers flow through it, and support a vast “house-boat” population that know no other home. Higher up the Yangtse, several useful coalmines are worked, and there are gold washings in the Han Valley.