The large market behind the Post] Omice has put on a cleaner appeartance and numerous new Japanese! teashops restaurants and hotels have! sprung up throughout the city" to eater to" the increased Japanese civilian population, the Aghting servies and the large number of tour-Ists who are expected from Japan this summer, The Chinese population is now} over the 350,000 mark and everything appears normal as far as their daily lives are concerned. The streets again are full of trame and shops are open again. The Peace Mainten~ ance Committee under Mr. Chao Chi is doing good work and its civic activities appear to. be In the right!
ection and for the good of the public and these efforts do not seem fo be subject to interference from the military.
Former wealthy Chinese merchants who evacuated are still away and it does not look as though they will be returning unfit more stable conditions exist and military interference definitely removed.
Due also to the shortage of rolling slock—practically all of which has been brought here from the S.M.R. from Dalren—very little export pro: duce {s coming into Tsingtao. And atler reason for this is that farmers In the interior are afraid to accept the new Federal currency In payment for their produce, as guerillas, Ted in some cases by students, preach and threaten dire results for those assisting the Japanese by acceptance fof these notes which are being more less forcefully put into circulation in this province. "The Peiping auth orities Intend to. elreulate 300,000,000 dollars worth of these notes in Shantung, 'Tobacco which forms a big. item of export from Tsingtao, is now being purchased locally and' due to the approach of the wet season, formers fare bringing in their produce every available means, railway con veyance being unobtainable. Formerly, buyers used to. send men to Evshilipu_and Fangtsze, where the tobacco ig grown, to: make purchases.
Japanese buyers, who two months ago, purchased about 2,000,000 Ib. in the interior, are finding it very dimeult to bring it to Tsingtao, Four of their buyers a short while back were killed at Fangtsze and it is not safe for them where their own military protection is not available. Old eutvency Is being paid by buyers for all their requirements.
Foreigners not Bothered Foreigners are subject to no restrictions and there Is no reason. why Tsingtao should not be as popular this summer as It has been. in the past. Prices for foodstuffs are naturally higher than formerly but compare well with Shanghai. Coat is stil! over $40 per ton. Taken all in all, the cost of living here is cheaper than in Shanghai. The pub-lie "and essential services "function properly and there is no shortage of anything, except perhaps coal.
There are not many troops quarter-(ed in the city and those that one does meet in the streets are civil and do not go out of their way to embar-ass one, Troops arriving here, leave for the front almost us quickly as they come and as for the wounded in hospitals, one does not sce very much of them.
Regarding—'Tsinanfu,~* conditions there are pretty much' the same they are in Tsingtao and foreign At Chefoo curfew Is at 10 pin. and business conditions there are better, an at Tsingtao. The small Japanese garrison of about three to 400 troops: Is not having an easy time, as. Chinese guerillas have been subjecting them to their harassing attentions at odd intervals.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.