[VOL IV] CITY OF AMOY FROM THE TOMBS

CITY OF AMOY FROM THE TOMBS

Cover Image: City of Amoy, from the Tombs / Xiamen Fujian China / Drawn by T. Allom Engraved by A.Willmore – ALAMY Image ID:2X55NDF

*Xiamen is a port city on China’s southeast coast, across a strait from Taiwan. It encompasses 2 main islands and a region on the mainland. Formerly known as Amoy, it was a British-run treaty port from 1842 to 1912.

Xiamen is located in the southern Fujian region, where Chaozhou and Minnan cultures blend with each other, creating a unique cultural landscape.

“A city pleases me: I have intense
Delight in human effort, and my soul
Becomes as ’twere a portion of the whole,
In all its beauty and magnificence.”

MARY HOWITT.

CAPTAIN STODDART’S accurate view of the site and scenery of this celebrated entrepôt, is a panorama of exquisite loveliness. Employing the ancient burial-ground as an observatory, the eye ranges over the low-lying city with its embattled walls; the widespread suburbs, with their countless cottages; beyond these, again, to the land-locked cove, dotted with busy merchant-men, there riding securely from every breath of wind. Above the waters of the inner bay, which closely resembles an inland lake, rises a noble chain of mountains, dentated in outline, and granitic in structure. Ko-long-soo, interposed between the outward ocean and this picturesque basin, acts as a natural and most efficient breakwater, imparting such entire and constant placidity to its surface, that vessels may lie here at all seasons regardless of the weather, biding their time for unfurling the sails; and transit from shore to shore by boats of tiny manage is never attended with risk or interruption.

When the habitual insolence, and practised duplicity of the Cantonese,—their increased resentment towards the English, arising from recent military humiliation, and the destruction of their mercantile monopoly,—are considered, it seems reasonable to conclude, that the island and city of Amoy will succeed to a large share of that trade, which is hourly passing away from Canton for ever. The navigation of the Canton river is tedious, and often insecure,—the entrance to the cove of Amoy is short, deep, and unimpeded. Egress is equally inconvenient from the former city, while vessels may wait in the inner harbour of Amoy, under island-shelter, for favourable weather, and sail almost the moment of its return. Besides these natural advantages, all which have more than once been dwelt on in these brief notices of the great empire of the Chinese, our embassies and expeditions have uniformly found a kindlier spirit, a more generous feeling, predominant at Amoy, towards foreigners, and traders, and visitors, than at other ports of China; and it is sufficiently shown by our missionaries and travellers, that the citizens of this populous place would long since have saluted the British flag, floating on the tranquil bosom of their sun-lit bay, if imperial menaces had not deterred them from every act of hospitality to the stranger.

Being nearer to Canton than the other open-ports of the empire, Amoy will probably be the most secure, as well as more securely, enriched, by the abolition of commercial monopoly at that much-disliked emporium; and, from the very flattering accounts given by Gutzlaff, Medhurst, and other learned travellers, of the social character of its citizens, intercourse with foreigners at this city is likely to be more close, more constant, and more conciliatory, than has ever hitherto been permitted by this very jealous and primitive people. (* See more full descriptions of the city and harbour of Amoy, in Vol. II., p. 69. Vol. III., p. 56.)