Firet Volume of the Municipal Council's Record—A Great Story of the "City of Reeds"
The long anticipated History of Shanghai, bogue. some years ago by the late Mr. George Lanning at the instance of the Municipal Council, and continued by Mr. Samuel' Couling, has at length appeared. We are sure it will be welcomed with equal interest by residents old and new, and a glance through the various chapters suffices to show that the authors have produced a work of extraordinary We shall review the work in due course, the present notice being intetiled only to describe the velums and its contents.' It is a work of some 500 pages, excellently produced by Messrs. Kelly and Walsh, with a number of interesting illustrations and maps, recalling historic places and events in old Shanghai. The early chapters serve the purpose of orientation, dealing, as they do, with Chinese history and government prior to the advent of the foreigner, subjects dealt with in detail just sufficient to indicate the important factors in the impact of Western civilization upon China. Then follows an account of the early history of Shanghai—a name which first came into history in A.D. 690. Earlier times, it is interesting to note, had known it under varying names. "We find it," say the authors, "as Hutu, Hua-ting-hai, Hai-Shang, Shang-Yang, Shen-Kiang, and Sin-I-hsien, the first named being probably the oldest since it means a fishing stream. But the earliest tradition of all shows Shanghai as the site of a soldiers' encampment. Native writers also called it in later times the "City of Reeds."
Here is another interesting note:—"One of the earliest local sites found in history is that of the temple known as the Ching An Ssi, close by the Bubbling Well. This, it is claimed, dates back to A.D. 250, or thereabouts, and is therefore contemporary with the middle of the Roman period in Britain. It doubtless owed its popularity and wealth to the well, the "sixth spring in the Empire," with its inflammable mixture of marsh and carbonic acid gas.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.