Extracts from private letters and from newspapers relating to the famine in China, December 27, 1877

Extracts from private letters and from newspapers relating to the famine in China.

[From The North China Daily News. Shanghai, January 12, 1878.]

tientsin.

The fate of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who are brought face to face with death by this terrible famine has come to be a problem too vast for this effete government to grapple with. One may well stand appalled at the proportions which the famine has assumed. It is estimated—and apparently with a fair degree of reliability—that there are 90,000 refugees at Tientsin now, and still they come. There is a large supply of grain both here and at Taku, but I hear doubts are expressed as to there being a sufficient quantity to meet the demand. Much of this grain, too, is in the hands of speculators, and if used for the poor must be bought at a high price.

Ten or twelve soup-kitchens and cake-shops, where millet gruel or steamed corn-bread is served, have been opened in and around Tientsin. A new soup-kitchen, just finished on the 22d instant, ready for its inmates to enter the next day, took fire and burned up early the next morning. All the buildings of the temple in connection with which the mat-sheds were erected were destroyed. This was in the city. Most of the soup-kitchens are a few li distant from the city.

It is reported that at each of these conventicles there were from 70 to 80 deaths on one cold night a few days since—the daily rate being near 30 at each. The quantity of food is reduced to the minimum; they are huddled together in mat-sheds as thick as they can lie on the ground, and it is impossible for it to be otherwise than that multitudes should perish.

The famine, or something else, seems to be having an influence on the troops in the employ of the viceroy. It is said that each liang-tsz, or company of 500, is now being reduced at a monthly rate of ten men—all of whom are being sent to their homes in the south.

A letter has just been received from Rev. T. Richard, who is now in Tai Yuenfoo, Shansi, in which he speaks of the famine as being “far more extensive,” and the suffering much greater, than in Shantung last year. “I wonder,” he says, “if any good people will once more pity their fellows, for the suffering I hear of on all hands is past description.” Extracts from various proclamations are also given. One very forcibly shows the present condition of this year by an allusion to each of the preceding four years.

The ascending gradation of which may be feebly represented thus—want, hunger, dearth, emptiness, fullness of distress. Another states that 230,000 tls. of silver and 130,000 tan of grain have been contributed by different persons, but that this will fall very far short of carrying the people of 78 chow and hsien districts through to the time of wheat harvest.

Another rumor is afloat, that heavy demands have again been made on the banks and pawn-shops of Tientsin in aid of the sufferers, an intimation being made that in contributing consists their happiness. I do not vouch for it.

It is very cold. Much snow has fallen far to the south. We are having dark, disagreeable days, but no snow.