Che-foo

Che-foo (properly the name of the European colony of the Chinese town of Yen-Tai), a treaty port on the north side of the peninsula of Shan-tung, at the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili, in which it is the only port that remains open throughout the winter. The foreign quarter, with about 120 Europeans and Americans, is in some sense a colony of Shanghai, and, having the wholesomest climate of all the treaty ports, it is much resorted to by convalescents. The Chinese town, built on the sandy shore, with exceedingly dirty streets, has a fort, a signal-station, and about 32,000 inhabitants. As a market for foreign manufactured goods, particularly English cotton yarn and American sheetings, Che-foo is of great and increasing importance. The annual value of the direct foreign imports is about £300,000, and of the exports direct to foreign lands, £150,000. The principal articles of import besides those mentioned are sugar, paper, iron, edible sea-weed, matches, and opium. The chief exports are silk, straw-braid, bean-cake, and vermicelli. About 2000 ships, of 1,600,000 tons, of which three-fourths of the tonnage represents British bottoms, annually enter and clear. The Che-foo Convention, which settled several disputed points between China and Great Britain, and extended certain commercial advantages to the latter country, besides throwing open four new treaty ports, was signed 13th September 1876.