Canton, one of the greatest cities in China, has a population of nearly a million and is the centre of southern culture, trade and political activity. It is the first city in China with which foreigners came into contact and has traded successively with the Portuguese, Dutch and British for over 4oo years.
Silk, tea and medicine are its chief exports, while its great attraction to tourists are its native industries of ivory-ware and blackwood furniture, and the famous jade market. Canton, as can be seen by the photograph, is a tropical, densely populated city. The severe bombing attacks to which it has been subjected over the past few weeks have caused a large evacuation of its inhabitants and destroyed many of the old monuments and relics which have made the city historically famous.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.