Excerpt from Rambles in Central China Our first sight of China begins near Hongkong, and our first impression is an interesting one. We are detained in that magnificent natural harbour for a day or two. On the south is the hilly island which bears so many signs of English occupancy and European energy, and on the north are hills of China itself. Chinese boats and many things Chinese abound. But our journey to central China is far from over. We have fifteen hundred odd miles to go yet. We steam up the coast for a day or two until a sudden yellowing of the water tells us we are at the mouth of the great river Yangtse. We have to change boats at Shanghai. The name meaning Super-mare, we might naturally expect to find it on the sea coast, but as with many things in China, the name is only approximately true to fact. It is not on the Yangtse even, but sixteen miles up a small tributary called the Whangpo. The native city still exists, and a quaint old place it is, but the name Shanghai is always applied nowadays to that wonderfully up-to-date city of palaces which stretches before us in crescent form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.