Amoy. Fu, Nov. 1.
It is over two years since the! writer visited this. part of the country and " few impressions may be of interest. Coining down to Amoy via Formosa there was.
chow about the beginning of Octo-opportunity to spend a day in Foo-ber. At that time there was' the greatest anxiety among Chinese and figners_on account. of the Red invasion of the northern part of the Province, A few days before my. Visit hundreds of Chinese had fled. to. Shanghai, "paying exorbitant prices for necommodation on an lent steamer. A number of mis aries had been foreed to come down to Foochow from the interior, and one got the impression. that ife and work up country was very dangerous. A friend told me that ten years ago it was quite possible to travel by' road all the way from Foochow to Nanchang in' Kiangsi, but that for several years now that} whole part of the country has been infested with bandits and Reds. For the uninitiated it ix hard to distinguish between these two.
spite of the disturbed. state of the country roads are being built and communications are improving gradually. At the time of my visit work was proceeding rapidly ona road from the city of Foochow' to the port" at Pagoda Anchorage, about twelve miles distant, The road is being built by the 19th Route Army, largely to make them independent of the Navy, which controls the water route front the Anchorage to the city. Informetion in Foochow, and Amoy indicates. that before long, perhaps in November, the road from Foochow' to," Bmoy' wile open to traffic, and it is hoped that} it wills then be pose'ble to get from one city to the other by motor bus in about eight to ten hours. Such 4 service will be a great conveni-fence, as the boat trip. takes about eighteen hours,- and is not very frequent, not to'mention the po discomfort to passengers in the Formosa Channel, Many. Improvements From Amoy it is now possible to et to many parts of the interior motor bus... The buses seem to good ce" ition, rud run pretty, well on time. The roads for the most part are in excellent condition, and are in some cases built and maintained, according to my. infor-motion, by the 19th Army. In some: sections the bus companies are building and maintaining the roads, It is dimeult to obtain precise infor-motion on this subject on a hasty visit. "From Amoy to Chuanchow the "distance is about sixty" mil and formerly it took all day 10 there, Now it is possible to go by bus with only one change, in about
pleasant way is to go by a new four hours or even less., A more boat, the Shun An, which runs from Amoy to Tungshih, twenty. miles from Chuanchow, and this. section 4s covered by bus in an hour. The. Shun An was designed by an Amo engineer and built in Shanghai.
ost comfortable boat capable atxying. several hundred passen-and from all accounts it. is return on capital for its owners, The city of Chuanchow looks very riy with its long main street of concrete, Several of, the freets are also paved. Most of the shops are new style, as in Amoy, built behind a covered archway Which forms the street. All sorts of foreign style articles are on sale, and there is every evidence ap sale, and tore i avery evidence may be only external, but there ig at Toast change, and a spirit of Progress, Part of this is probably due to the return of many people from the South Seas, where Dusiness is dull but where " people have made money and learned new
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.