Ningpo to Shanghai in 1857/Kong-keao to Ning-kong-jow
DEPARTMENT OF NINGPO.
District of Ningpo.
Kong keao 江口 (Stream's mouth) is a small village of one street on the right bank of a wide stream, crossed, though fordable in the dry season, by a substantial roofed bridge. This bridge is lined on the village or southern side, for about a hundred feet, with small shops and idol depositaries.
Proceding from kong-keao to Ning-kong jow * the course, to the right of a seven storied Pagoda on the hill over the north bank of the stream, is about N. by W. the distance 14 miles. The road, or pathway, about five feet wide, is laid with round and rough dark red granite blocks. Road ways of similar description, in some cases improved with a centre line of flat slabs, are found to run between most of the villages and thorough-fares throughout the province (Chekiang);—stone tablets here and there bearing and immortalizing the names of the individuals by whose means the works were effected.
The most unpleasant part of the travelling in this quarter is the continued sight of and effluvia from ordure pans and necessaries on the sides of the road. In half a dozen hours' travelling, as many as half a hundred of these necessaries are to be seen, and of pans, about three feet across and of similar depth, the number is uncountable. The absence of other material for manure is, of course, the apology; though, as such things are not met with in such profusion, or in such display in other parts of the province, the apology is a poor one. The land yields two crops annually—that of the autumn will be rice principally;—of the spring, Wheat, Grassicher (1) Beans, Tea and Clover. The latter is grown over the Paddy stumps, with which it is afterwards ploughed up and left to rot and enrich the soil. The Teas, Beans, and Bean seed of the Grassicher spoken of, are cultivated principally for the oil expressed from them. The leaves and sprouts of the latter are eaten as a vegetable. The region hereabout, however, is remarkable for the production of a medicinal bulb called peo-moo 貝母 (2) Growing as a grass, its blades resemble those of the carnation. It is planted in the fourth month of one year and remains until the fourth month of the year following, when it is taken up and sold to Druggets as a tonic for sixty cash a catty. During the year of its growth, Potatoes, Hemp or Cotton may be grown over it. A mow of land produces from two to five hundred Ching (3) of the bulb in a year. Rushes for mat making are grown here too, and Mulberry and Tallow trees flourish largely. From the berry of the latter the candles used in Chekiang are made. Coated with animal fat they burn well, though the clumsy bamboo wicks, swathed with cotton twist, emit a good deal of unpleasant smoke.
To reach Ning Kong jow, the stream has to be crossed three times, one of the bridges at a place called Seang-koh deo, with some 3,500 inhabitants, being rooofed over as at Kong Keo. About 5 lé (4) from Seang 'ko deo is another village called Dung-jehow with 100 families;—a family being estimated as consisting on the average of five souls. There may be other causes apart from the practice of recording families in the ancestral hall which induce an acquaintance with the subject;—but it is a circumstance of note that a Chinese, however low his rank, if asked the number of families in his village is invariably prompt with a reply,—and in three answers out of four the number approximates.
As Ning kong jow is often visited by Missionaries from Ningpo, no more need be said of it than that it appears to be a place of considerable traffic in timber and bamboos, as seen in rafts on the stream. Of its reported 3 000 families it boasts a fine ancestral Hall of the 富 Foo family.