The History of Hong Kong (Part 2)

Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Cost climb. Too little? Production slows. Grangers, two billion dollars in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it. So you can help keep budgets balanced in lines moving. Call 1-800-GRanger. Click ranger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. Hi everyone. Loss a little Montgomery again. Another China history podcast, our second in a series covering the history of Hong Kong. Today we're going to get into all the interesting things going on around South China that later culminated in the opium war, or the first Anglo Chinese war. Everything I mentioned in the last episode, well that part of Hong Kong's history has sort of been shunted aside for the part that we'll begin looking at today. I mentioned in the last episode the history, or at least Hong Kong's historical association with China, went all the way back to the Qin dynasty, and at least we know for certain, for absolute certain that there were Chinese officials coming all the way down to Hong Kong since at least the Han dynasty due to the tomb that was unearthed in Chiang Xiaowan back in 1955. Hong Kong wasn't any place of significance yet back then, and I guess all the way up to the opium war, Hong Kong was simply another local place of no particular political consequence or worthwhile economy. It was merely part of some county reporting to someone who reported to someone, you know, at the China command. So today let's just look at the whole lead-up. We'll look at all the names of those who had top billing in this major theatrical and historic event. We'll also look at the events that led up to the convention of Chen B, and then next time in part three, we'll see what happens with the Treaty of Nanjing. This is the watershed event where most historians say the history or the real history of Hong Kong began. Going way back, Hong Kong residents, including the five Bunte clans, remember there were five clans where the original Hong Kongers, everyone got caught up in the two Hai Jin. These were bans on foreign sea trade that were sort of implemented by executive order from the emperor. The first came in 1371, called for by the Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuan Zhang, the Hong Wu emperor. This later was rescinded and then, you know, beginning in 1405, you have the whole Zhanghe seven voyages that followed soon after the Hong Wu emperor's death. The second ban on foreign trade and the more serious of the two for Hong Kong people came in 1647. This one was called for by the Kangxi emperor. It was his way to deal with the havoc that Zhang Changgong was causing all up and down the southeast China coast. Zhang Changgong, aka Kaksinga, was one of the great heroes in the history of Taiwan. I'm not going to get into it here, but during the Qing, he was a major pain to the government, both in Fujian province and in Beijing. When we start our history of Taiwan series, we'll take a closer look at Zhang Changgong. Kangxi and his infinite wisdom called for a sea trade ban and then called for this great clearance in 1655. If you could picture this, everyone, and I mean everyone, even those down in Hong Kong, had to pick up and get out and evacuate the coastal areas. And if you didn't obey, you got beheaded and that alone induced everyone to comply with this new imperial edict. People had to move about 50 Li or 1520 miles inland. And if you had a boat or any kind of sea faring vessel, you had to burn it. This went on until 1684 when Kangxi reopened trade. When it was all over and people and all those who lived along the coast and who had settled in Hong Kong who lived through this period, when they went back to their homes after 20, 30 years of typhoons and number eight signals, the place was just wrecked and people had to start all over. And this very strict and draconian ban on sailing on vessels of any kind, as you can imagine, put a major crimp in the fishing business. So today, let's just fast forward to the Qing dynasty. This is where it all began as far as when Hong Kong went from being this sparsely settled land with an economy that relied on fishing, pearls, and salt to one of the great centers of China trade with the West. This was the time of these incredible merchant adventurers and the founding of the legendary firms like Jardine Matheson, Swire, Dent, Russell, Augustine Hurd, Howland, Aspenwall, Wheelock, Martin, and many, many others. But it's Jardine and Matheson that I want to talk about first today because these were the two chaps who joined together in 1827 to get the ball rolling in the 1830s. There's is quite the interesting story. Many of you are probably familiar with the company they started. James Klovel wrote a couple novels called Typan and Noble House that were loosely modeled on Jardine Matheson and Company. So today, let's sort of use William Jardine as one of the cornerstones to tell today's story. Last episode, we mentioned Jorge Alvarez. He was part of an early contingent of Portuguese who were scouting around the area in and around Hong Kong. The Portuguese were the first westerners to get a look-see at the economic opportunities available out this way. Their trading vessels were not only packed with provisions and cargo, but always with any number of Jesuits, looking to see what harvest they could reap out in these fireaway lands. So 16th and 17th century, we recall the great work of the Jesuits. I mentioned Ricci, Shalvan Bell, and Verbeast in a previous episode. That was number 98. There were others who followed, and then as soon as the scent of blood got in the water, as far as the riches of Cathay sitting there waiting to be had, all the other sharks started heading in that direction. There came the Dutch, the English, and the French, who you mostly stayed down in Vietnam for the time being. When Kanshi put an end to the Hai Jin in 1684, it's not like he welcomed the foreigners back. China was still closed for business and trade was restricted to Canton and Macau. The British, meanwhile, were making a ton of money in India and getting that place all set up. That was the springboard to China. It was the success in carrying out commerce in India since the Battle of Plasi in 1757 and the men of steel who grew out of that world that facilitated the whole opium war and everything that would later follow with Hong Kong. So here was the problem. It was called the Canton system. It had been developed between 1685 and 1752. Western traders made some efforts to do some direct trade with China via Ning Bo and Xiaoman. But if you wanted to do business with China, beginning around 1757, you had to work within this Canton system. It was corrupt, arbitrary, and quite an inefficient monopoly. The Qianlong Emperor was the first to command that all foreign trade had to go through this Canton system. Despite all the drawbacks, though, it was still a most profitable business for these foreign traders. But the whole system was skewed in favor of the Kohong or in Mandarin, the Gong Hang. These were the 13 Chinese merchants or hongs. I don't know how much money they had to pay to get this concession. But being a member of the Kohong was, if you played your cards right, like a diamond mine on top of a gold mine. 13 of these merchants, maybe some of them you remember, the more familiar guys who ran these hongs, the most notable of them was Haokua, known in Chinese, as Wu Bingtian. Haokua's particular hong was called the Yihuahong or in Mandarin, the Yixi Hang. When William Jardin later had to choose a Chinese name for his Jardin Matheson company, he adopted Haokua's venerable company name. Well, these 13 Kohong merchants, they had a lock on all official China trade. There was a lot of smuggling going on all over the place. These were the days, late 18th, early 19th century, that all those legendary days of smuggling were going on. There's countless stories of these smugglers and their exploits during the 1820s and 30s that are locked away in diaries, letters, and all kinds of obscure books. We remember the big names, though, in their daring exploits. The United States is still a brand new country in all. The Brits locked them out of all the decent Atlantic trade. So off to China, the Americans went to seek out any and all trade opportunities. This whole thing, the early Americans in China, that's a future CHP topic, they competed neck and neck with the British for any business they could get their hands on. They smuggled opium and other goods as much as the next European, but all the official trade, which by far was the lion's share, had to go through Haokua and in his 12 other members of this hated canton system. The 13 members of the Kohong, they reported to the Hapo or the Hapo. The Hapo, he was responsible for managing all the trade, dealing with an unending string of incidents and complaints and most important, collecting all the duties and anything it could squeeze out of the foreigners. He served in his capacity as Hapo for only three years. It said this position was so lucrative, vast, vast sums of money were paid and bribes to the imperial government to secure it. And it took two years of collecting duties and profits and shaking down the foreigners just to pay back the officials who were responsible for the Hapo's good fortune. So it was only in the third year that he made his own profit and being at the center of one of the world's great trading monopolies at the time it was quite a profit. This is more or less the crux of the problem. It was a clash of cultures. The Chinese decision makers at the time really didn't have a clue about what was coming. No one seemed scared of these foreigners. The Chinese couldn't have been more oblivious to the changes going on in Europe as a whole in the 18th and 19th centuries. After so many thousand years, the Chinese were so sure of their superiority and their entire manner of dealing with the foreigners was carried out in this way that just infuriated the British who themselves were so certain of their own cultural, economic, and political superiority. And the fact that the British were clamoring like crazy to buy all these commodities and finished manufactured goods from China, gave these Chinese merchants more than just the upper hand. In their little commercial trading world, the Chinese side acted like little more than a dictator. They weren't trying to buy anything from England or any of the European nations. Sure, there were some things that Chinese bought, but there was simply nothing Britain could provide that would give some semblance of a trade balance, like China had with tea. Tea had long been embraced by the swells of Britain. Now by the working class, folks too. And this was not a small market. But once things got nice and solid in India for the British, they acquired a little more confidence. And although the horrific canton system would do for the time being, the most astute and daring of the British traders knew they were determined to scrape this hated canton system off the bottom of their shoe and set up their own base in the Pearl River Delta region in order to get what they wanted. And if it meant going to war with China, they would find some way to do it. These budding companies crammed into these so-called factories in canton just outside the city walls. These were the only places open to the foreigners. And when I say foreigners, I mean foreign men, no Western women were allowed in any shape or form. This is where they ate, slept, transacted business, and stored their goods. No firearms were allowed and no foreign vessel was allowed to pass the bog. The bog was the name of that narrow channel where the Pearl River dumps out into the South China Sea. This is right near the town of Hulman. And the way the system worked, there was a five-month trading season. And once the season ended, the Chinese demanded these foreigners withdraw from canton and get out of town. They either headed to Portuguese Macau, not the friendliest place for the British, or they sailed to India or just back home to England, but they had to evacuate canton. Another problem was that since there was no official government to government relations between China and Britain or the US, all the diplomacy, if you want to call it that, was commercial in nature. And these merchants were hardly suited to be skilled diplomats. They were a rowdy bunch who were only interested in making money and trying to get around any kind of restriction or regulation that got in the way of themselves and making a huge profit off their trading endeavors. Well, backed up by all the benefits yielded so far by the Industrial Revolution. Britain was in a unique position in the 1830s to be able to project military power from a great distance. Whether they would be able to project such power from London, all the way to Guangzhou and beyond, remained to be seen. They had made fast work of Napoleon, and they seemed to have India under control. Now they were itching to test the metal of the Qing dynasty emperor and his military might. Let's sort of pick up right after the end of the East India Company, after they lost their monopoly in 1834 and when out of financial necessity, the East India Company began selling licenses to smaller traders. This is when things were totally up for grabs. During this transitional period of post EIC deregulation and rewriting of the laws, anybody could basically do anything. You had no holds barred trading and smuggling in the South China Sea. They couldn't have been happier after the EIC lost their monopoly. Now with those guys out of the way, the only thing prohibiting the kind of trade they were aiming for were the Chinese themselves. The merchant princes like Jardine, Matheson, Dent, Russell all began scheming. How to get around the China authorities as well. They had one single aim to bust China wide open and freely trade throughout the country. By now in the 1830s, the customs revenue that the British crown was collecting from the China traders was between 15 to 20% of everything the ex-checker took in. These traders were critical to the country's annual financial state. And of that, 8% of the revenue came from the one thing that British finally found that China wanted. And this, of course, was that excellent top quality opium that came out of British India and Bengal. Introducing opium on a mass scale had been the big game changer for the region. Opium during the early Qing period was a pleasure enjoyed only by the rich. But once prices came down to the level where the man on the street could afford it, that's when it became a menace to society. Prior to exporting all this opium from India, all this tea and silk was paid for in silver. But once the British introduced opium, it gave them a favorable trade balance. In fact, it did better than that. It threw things way out of whack in China and the tables were turned. Now the Chinese were paying silver for the opium, just like the British had been forced to do with tea and silk for all those years. Just sort of get the ball rolling. July 25th, 1834. Lord Napier arrived in Canton after a long voyage from England. For lack of any other suitable candidate, it was Napier who was given the title of first superintendent of trade. This position had been created to fill the void left by the East India company who had always sort of ran things. But now, as I said, they were no longer a force to be reckoned with. Although he was instructed before he left England, not to do anything rash with the Chinese and not to provoke any incidents, Napier had written in his diary, quote, "The empire of China is my own." What a glorious thing it would be to have a blockading squadron on the coast of the celestial empire. How easily a gun brigade would raise a revolution and cause them to open their ports to the trading world. I should like to be the medium of such a change. So with this hidden agenda in mind, even before he got there, Lord Napier charged in like a bowl in a china shop intent on teaching these Chinese a lesson. And you know what happens when you do that. Essentially Lord Napier got nowhere. He broke every established unwritten rule that these traders had learned over the years and how to deal with the local officials. Lord Napier figured he was British. They were all powerful and rising to the top of the world political food chain. And by God, these china officials better get in line or else. Well, this Napier mission, it started off bad, got worse and then it deteriorated from there. And when the Chinese began playing with Lord Napier, using the characters to write Lord Napier's name in Chinese and the official documents passed back and forth, when you translated these characters it meant it would mean something terribly offensive. Lord Napier just saw red. And he varupon initiated his own insults and heaped them upon his counterparts, these local officials in Canton. Things continued to go downhill from there. And in short order, the whole Napier mission broke down. And after two failed months of going nowhere, Lord Napier called him. in a couple of frigates that he had tucked away, not too far from Canton, and had them sail up the Pearl River to the bog to show these Chinese he meant business. But this provocation didn't phase the Chinese forces, and after an exchange of gunfire between Chinese troops based in the forts along the river, and the two vessels that Lord Napier had called in, had all went south from there for Lord Napier in his ill-fated mission, and to exacerbate matters for himself personally, Lord Napier had contacted Malaria, slowly dying. This was August, September, and the muggy, hot, unbearable summer that the Pearl River Delta was famous for, and you know how these guys all dressed back then, so coming straight from London like he did, the fact that Lord Napier wilted so fast, isn't so surprising. The Chinese blocked the port, and slowed the British down while Lord Napier languished on board, all his fights drained from him as the Malaria slowly killed him. After a couple of weeks the diplomatic standoff, the British vessels were allowed to sail, and Lord Napier gave orders to head to Macau, and there he died, shortly after making landfall on October 11th, 1834. Napier had written to the foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, quote, "Three or four frigates and Briggs, with a few steady British troops would settle the thing in a space of time, inconceivably short. Such an undertaking would be worthy of the greatness and power of England." Well, now with the humiliating demise of Lord Napier, the British had a Casas Beli. The question in England was, whether or not to use this incident to go to war and blast China open in order to create a full-blown system of trade, not to mention a new massive potential market for British goods, William Jardine had sailed back to England, and he used every single ounce of his considerable persuasive powers to bend the air of the politicians that he kept in his back pocket. His objective was to go to war with China and seize a base of operations from which full unfettered trade could be carried out without any of the craziness of the canton system to get in the way. This is where the idea of Hong Kong came about. As the 1830s unfolded, and all these foreign traders were scheming, how and a heck to get around these co-hong merchants and canton, it became a period of intense meetings in the forbidden city, with the Dao Guang emperor and his closest advisors. Different factions called for different actions to take against the foreigners. The argument was similar to today's argument regarding the American war on drugs. Should we just legalize it and regulate drugs or use brute force to stamp out the whole trade and go after users and dealers? One faction was strongly calling for the emperor to legalize the opium trade, and in so doing, vast fortunes could be earned for the treasury. Well, we've heard that argument before here in sunny California with the marijuana business. Another faction, and these were the guys who won out in the end, called for the emperor to outlaw the drug trade and round up all the users. One of the spokesman for this faction was Lin Zishu. You remember him from the opium war episode? He's a great hero in China, mainly for having the co-owners to stand up to the foreigners. One of the main points of contention was whether they needed a base that they could call their own or not. I mean, the ultimate objective was simply to get rid of the canton system and to enjoy free trade throughout China. No one was dead set on acquiring any land. I mean, that really meant a whole new set of headaches for the British government, and they weren't too keen on taking that on. Lord Napier, he had his site set on Hong Kong until he met his premature demise. The idea of a permanent British base of operations situated on some offshore island, but within close proximity to China, was bandied about. They were all in agreement. The current system in Canton had become too unbearable. That had to go. All were in agreement on this point. After taking stock of the whole situation, the general feeling was that the only way Britain was going to get what it wanted was by force. This meant some sort of naval operation needed to be carried out. The British obtained sovereignty over Singapore in 1824. And already a decade later, the benefits to having this kind of base of operations were immediately felt. And if this base near Canton had a British flag flying over the government house, all the better, the traders could speak with the entirety of the British government, backing them up rather than simply some superintendent of trade. It was toothless when it came to enforcing anything or speaking out on behalf of the traders. You know how the British were with their insistence on law and order. Laws which regulated trade and made it free and fair could only be enforced with the might of the British Empire behind it. Therefore, they needed an island of some sort to plant the flag and make it official. In 1838, the Dalgwang Emperor empowered Linse Xiu to go down to the south and force these foreigners to get with the program. And as the well-known story goes, Linse Xiu went down to Guangdong Province, arriving March 10th, 1839, and on March 18th, he gave an order to all foreigners, everyone. They all designed this opium bond, which in so many words made the signatory swear, never to deal in the opium business again in China. Plus they had a hand over all their stocks of opium to be destroyed. And to show he meant business, Linse Xiu had everyone placed under a kind of house arrest for two months. Everyone was confined to Canton. The one in charge back then was Captain Charles Eliot R.N., who was first superintendent of British trade. He had served under Lord Napier previously. And from his perch in Macau, Eliot took stock of the situation and told the British merchants to do as the Chinese say and that whatever losses there were, the British crown would back them up with whatever losses the traders incurred. And this amounted to two and a half million pounds sterling of which her Majesty's government later only ponied up 1,281,211 pounds. Captain Eliot did this under duress because, well, to have argued with Linse Xiu at a time when Lin had the home field advantage, you know, so to speak, would have been suicidal. So 20,291 chests of opium were handed over and Linse Xiu had his big bake sale in Humbun, where all this opium was destroyed. With this taken care of Linse Xiu allowed the British to leave and then they high-tailed it to Macau to regroup and come up with a plan. Lin continued to keep up the pressure and used his influence to exert pressure on the British that were pulled up in Macau. And this was simple because Macau survived, you know, on a day-to-day basis, you know, just with supplies that were, you know, handed to them by the Chinese. You know, if any monkey business going out in Macau, all of a sudden you'd find, "Oh, no water, no foodstuffs, or, you know, whatever, daily necessities." So the British were hounded in Macau as well. The British were making the Portuguese look bad, and, you know, those guys, the Portuguese had no dog in this fight. So Captain Eliot and the rest of the British, they had to get out and they sailed to Hong Kong. Tracing the routes that today are traversed dozens of times daily by jet foils and hydrofoils varying gamblers back and forth between these two places, Hong Kong and Macau. He dropped anchor in Hong Kong Harbor and planned his next move. They docked in Kaolun and several of the British sailors they, you know, set out for a little fun and adventure, much the same as many other naval or merchant sailors done for over 200 years since, they went ashore and they got all licked up in Jim Sa Jay and wouldn't you know it, one of the sailors shot and killed a local. Mr. Lin Wei Hai, and then all hell broke loose. Lin Zishu wanted reparations and for the offender, whoever he was, to be handed over for some quick justice, Chinese style. Well, with no rulebook to go manage the resolution of the incident, Eliot tried his best to handle this Kaolun incident of July 7th, 1839, Ringo's birthday. The Chinese attacked the British vessels using the old, tried and true method of fireboats, you know, a trick that was used most effectively by Leo Bay and, you know, against Halta at the Battle of Cherpie. So with this act, open warfare had begun. So the debate went on in London about. about how to deal with matters at hand and canton. Jardine and the other merchant princes all worked hard to lobby their MPs to do something to ameliorate the whole trading system. The present system was totally unacceptable in an way highly insulting to the highest team that the British held themselves. This was hotly debated. And there was a lot of vociferous opposition to the opium trade, especially by the religious community. However, thanks to all the heavy handedness and terror meted out against so many missionaries, the opposition of the religious community against open hostilities against China were somewhat muted. William Jardine and the other merchants in canton all petition the government in London and argued that had Lord Napier had some firepower to back him up, he wouldn't have gone down in flames like he did. They requested someone to come out who carried plenty of potentiary powers, someone that walked loudly and carried a big stick and who could walk in and demand reparations for the losses incurred when Lin's issue destroyed the opium. For the rest of the 1830s, this whole matter of, how to handle this matter of China trade was very hotly debated in Parliament. Lin's issues, justifiable actions taken against the British were all that Jardine and the other merchants needed. It was a gift from the gods. Now they were able to easily go to their MPs and to the foreign secretary, Lord Polymerston, and say, "See, see, see, look what they've done now. We gotta take action." Lord Polymerston fired off a diplomatic letter to the emperor and in so many words said that, the present arrangement is no longer acceptable to the British side and they wanted some small, insignificant islands somewhere close by, of which there were hundreds to choose from, where British subjects could carry out their trade unmalested and free from the potential violence that had just recently happened. Now again, the cessation of an island was negotiable. After all, the objective was free trade, not to seize land from China. Elliott and his cousin, Rear Admiral George Elliott, were made plenty of potential areas and they went in and did their thing. June 1840, they sailed out of Macau. First they blockaded Canton and then they blockaded the port of Zhou Shan off the coast of Ning Bo. They weren't there to fight a war. They simply wanted to show they meant business and to deliver a copy of Polymerston's letter to the local authorities who would send it up the chain of command to the emperor in theory. With the British getting too close for comfort, the Chinese sent in their negotiator to sit down and discuss matters in Canton. So they went back down south and assembled in Canton to hash things out. This was around August 1840. Captain Elliott was now the sole planet potential area in charge of the negotiations. To say they were torturous was an understatement. Elliott knew in 10 seconds flat that he was just spinning his wheels trying to negotiate equitable terms. By January 1841, everything had just fallen apart and this is when things got serious. Captain Elliott led his small body of troops to seize and occupy the Chinese forts along the Boge near Hulman and once this was successfully carried out, the Chinese huddled together and after, weighing all their options, resigned themselves to the inevitable. This whole diplomatic mess was ultimately mopped up and the British were allowed to keep trading from Canton as long as they didn't deal in opium. Those who refused, they couldn't trade. Well, Elliott did his best to enforce the ban. You know, actually himself was not a supporter of the opium trade and found it as odious as the next reasonable man. Elliott was the one who negotiated the treaty called the Convention of China B or the Chuan Bites' Hauya of January 20th, 1841. This is the deal where the British got Hong Kong in theory. The document was simple in what it stated, which was point one, the cessation of the island and harbor of Hong Kong to the British crown. All just charges and duties to the empire upon the commerce carrying on there to be paid as if the trade were conducted at Wampoa. Wampoa or Huangpu was the port of Canton. And indemnity to the British government of six million dollars, one million payable at once and the remainder in equal annual installments ending in 1846. Point three, direct official intercourse between the countries upon equal footing. Point four, the trade of the port of Canton to be open within 10 days after the Chinese New Year and to be carried on at Wampoa until further arrangements could be worked out at the new settlement. The British traders couldn't have been happier, but on January 23rd, 1841, the Canton Free Press ran a piece that gave the general attitude of the merchant community as far as Hong Kong was concerned. It said, we consider that for an independent British settlement, no situation can possibly be more favorably chosen than that of Hong Kong. The island itself is a little extent, but it forms with the neighboring lands, one of the finest ports existing. Hong Kong would, we doubt not, in a very short time, become a place of very considerable trade, where it's possession by the British not clogged with the condition that the same duties at Wampoa are to be paid there, which, in our estimation, destroys at once all the benefits that might be expected to trade there. So you see, there was mixed reactions to this, "Tuan Beets Halluit." Let's talk a moment about the guy who negotiated the convention of "Tuan Be" on behalf of the emperor, who, by the way, never signed it. This man's name was Qi Shan, who was he? Well, when Linz's shoe went down and burned all the opium down and whole men near Canton, it had some unintended blowback, namely a huge hit to the Qing imperial treasury. So Linz's shoe, you had to take the heat for that, and you ended up being exiled all the way out to Xinjiang. He was rehabilitated a few years later, and today, of course, he's immortalized as an official of great virtue and courage. And as far as the Chinese from history stood up to the west, he is one of their poster boys. So when he got exiled, Qi Shan became his successor, his governor general of Guangdong and Guangxi. He too got into a spot of trouble when he negotiated this convention of "Tuan Be". Like Linz's shoe, he took some heat from the emperor, but later on, he was also rehabilitated. And then in 1854, he died on the battlefield, fighting the typing rebels. The history books were also referred to Qi Shan as Qi Shan, K-E-S-H-A-N. Now, I'm gonna leave everyone hanging and stick the bookmark in right here. We all know this convention of "Tuan Be" was not signed and was thoroughly distanced on both sides. Qi Shan never signed it, but the fact that he was cornered like he was in the eyes of the Qing imperial court made them look bad. So Qi Shan had been hauled back to Beijing in chains and then a new guy was sent down to deal with this problem. And what happens next? Well, we'll look at that next time in part three. We'll continue on with the events that led up to the Treaty of Nanjing and all the exciting stuff that happened next should be a barn burner. So make sure to tune in. That's all I got for this time. I hope you enjoyed that as Serba Peck. It always says, "This is Lossel Montgomery signing off from yes, Canton, the scene of the crime. I'm actually here on some secret China history podcast business. I'll be in Guangzhou for the next few days and then off to Ning Bo for some company function. And then I have some speaking engagement and a little historical sightseeing in Hangzhou followed by a few days of well-deserved R&R in Shanghai. I'm back in LA on November 4th I hope to start on part three of this Hong Kong history series. Thanks to listener Craig who filled me in on a couple inaccuracies from last week's episode, the Cretaceous period I mentioned last time actually ran between 145 and a half to 65 and a half million years ago. Not 50 to 80 million years ago, like I said, erroneously. Also regarding the last ice age, this last ice age wasn't the one that was responsible for carving out that Hong Kong landscape. The glaciers didn't make it as far south as Hong Kong during this particular period. So thanks Craig and everyone else who from time to time, let me know when something isn't quite right. Take care everyone wherever you are in this world of ours. This is Laoslo Montgomery signing off from the 18th floor of the Guangzhou Marriott and beautiful Tianhe and wishing and hoping you'll join me next week for another exciting episode. for the China History Podcast. And when I say "exciting", I mean it this time. 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