A Remarkable Production; Huge Field Covered: Many New Features one tne Year Book, 1923. Edited by tid Ssablished by the Tientsin Press.
W. Woodhead, c.! Printed The seventh issue of the China Year Book appeared on Monday. Upon taking a firs, glance through the volume, one is amazed at the amount and variety of the information it contains, and one sees mediately that mere industry was not the only driving force which produced the work, Courage and imagination were equally necessary in planning and producing on this scale a work which has all the best features of a reliable reference book and is as well something of an encyclopedia of China. An attempt has been made to cover the whole wide range of Chinese affairs, and one may certainly say that no "other single volume approaches it in amount and variety of practical information. It should be most valuable in official and business circles, and the leading Chinese must surely appreciate this creation of a standard work on their national affairs, political, commercial, scientific, Indeed, full realization of its informative value is evidenced by the fact that the Chinese Government took 200 copies of the last issue to Washington, where the book was in constant use by every delegation during the deliberations of the Far Eastern Committee.
The book has increased in size from a crown octavo volume of 463 pages, in 1912, to a demy octave volume of nearly 1,300 pages this year. The last edition has been revised from cover to cover, and many new features have been introduced. The chapters on geology, fauna, mines and minerals, communications, the Customs' Tariff, Greater China, and Finance have been completely re-written, each by specialists. The new features clude a particularly useful and i teresting chapter on the Chinese Language, by Sir Edmund Backhouse, and new chapters also on shipping, the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Washington Conference, the Shantung negotiations, and medical progress under the Republic; the Chinese Who's Who" has been much enlarged, and the value of commercial information increased with an extended list
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.