Shantou ~ 汕头/汕頭
SWATOW (now Shantou)
The second-largest city in Guangdong Province is a seaport and industrial center in the Han River delta on the South China Sea. Fish, fruit, processed food, and lumber are the Shantou's principal exports. Major industries include food processing and shipbuilding. A minor fishing village until the 19th century, Swatow, as it was then known in the West, developed rapidly as a seaport and commercial center after it was opened to foreign trade in 1860. It was occupied (1939-45) by Japan and was developed by the Chinese as an industrial center following the severance of traditional trade ties with nearby Taiwan after 1949. It is now the site of the highly rated Shantou University. The metropolitan area has a population of 4.7 million; the city proper, 1.2 million.
It is occasionally in the path of typhoons. A huge storm and tidal wave in August 1922 killed over 40,000 people. In May 2006 typhoon Chanchu hit land between Shantou and Xiamen, formerly Amoy. It is said to have beenthe strongest typhoon on record to enter the South China Sea in the month of May.
Right, a view of the damage caused by the storm of 1922.
In the 1930's Swatow had branches of six foreign banks, several Catholic and Protestant missions, churches and schools and the oil companies: Asiatic Petroleum Company, Standard Oil and Royal Dutch.
Above, Western buildings (post office is at right) that have survived in the Old Town frame a Chinese pavilion.
The Astor House Hotel in the early part of the 20th century.
On March 8, 1939 G.H. Thomas, traveling from Hong Kong to Tientsin by a Dutch steamer, writes of his brief stopover in Swatow. The Japanese would occupy the city just several months later.
Swatow city itself is small and flat, but across the harbor is a large green and rocky island where there are a few good foreign homes and a mission or two. Around the whole section is a rim of hills about eight or ten miles from the harbor. ...The most striking thing to be noted in a quick ride through the town is the number of American flags flying over the houses. I counted at least twenty during my twenty-minute ride. The reason is that from Swatow come almost all the fine handkerchiefs and drawn linen work sold in the States. The business is almost entirely in the hands of Syrian and American Jews from New York.
Letter written by a French Catholic missionary to Paris in 1939, after the Japanese invasion in June.
La vie de la population a été profondément bouleversée surtout dans les grands centres
des environs de Swatow et de la région côtière. Depuis longtemps les autorités, prévoyant
l’occupation de cette partie du territoire pressaient les habitants d’abandonner les villes
et de se réfugier au loin vers les montagnes.
Au printemps, les incursions d’avions, devenant de plus en plus fréquentes et les
bombardements plus désastreux, la population, cédant plus à la peur des avions
qu’aux ordres du gouvernement, quittait peu à peu les lieux où la vie n’était plus
en sûreté et partait pour la campagne. Quand vers la fin de juin le port de Swatow
fut enfin occupé par les troupes japonaises, la ville était presque vide.
US sailors in Swatow on June 22, 1939, shortly after Japan
had issued an ultimatum demanding that all Western armed forces
evacuate the area.
This may or may not be the Swatow Hotel.
During the Japanese occupation, Swatow, unable to import rice,
suffered tremendous famine.
"Coffins were lined up at a certain place by a charitable Buddhist organization,
and the people staggered there to lie down in the coffins to await death.
In that way, they were sure of some sort of a burial." Time magazine
Swatow, ie, Shantou, today. Can you spot the Astor House Hotel? Just kidding.
Am I wrong but do the Chinese seem to think Manhattan is the only way to go?
The population is about 4.6 million, ie the size of greater Boston.
Surely one on the most spectacular (and least known) harbors of the world.
