Yangtse

The only claim the writer has to deal with this subject is that of having resided some three years at Han-kow, a large city of 700,000 inhabitants, situated in the province of Hu-pe, on the banks of the Yang-tse, at the place where the Han River enters it, some 600 miles from the sea, situated in the centre of the flooded districts.

A stream called the Han River separates Hankow from Hanyang, and these two towns, together with Wu-chang across the Yangtse, are known as the Wu-Han cities. The steel mills, which are often referred to as the "Hankow mills," are at Hanyang.

War, real but undeclared, broke out at Shanghai on January 28, 1932. Two days later the National government which Chiang Kai-shek had established five years before at Nanking was moved to Loyang, far from the menace of Japanese men-of-war on the Yangtse.

This is the Yangtse—the Yangtse of the low-lying province of Kiangsu, from the ancient walled city of Chinkiang to the open sea—upon whose waters and along whose banks we shall live and move in this story.

This strech of Yangtse, so hard to navigate, is the subject of many beautiful legends. Eleven-fifteen brings us to Tzukuei, said to be the home of the poet Chu Yuan.

The Yangtse River can burst its banks, flooding large areas of China.