I hated the dull, European buildings of Shamian, with their prim façades and their pediments of murderous greed: the new enclave was like a monument built by the forces of evil to celebrate their triumphal march through history. I could not bear to linger there: it was so unlike the Canton of my memories that I began to wonder whether my recollections were only a dream. But then I went to Thirteen Hong Street, which was the only part of Fanqui-town that remained. There were still some shops there that sold paintings. In one of them I found a picture of the Maidan and the Thirteen Factories …

Neel looked down again at Robin’s painting and a catch came into his throat.

The picture cost more than I could afford, he said, but I bought it anyway. I realized that if it were not for those paintings no one would believe that such a place had ever existed.

Acknowledgements

This book follows Neel’s khabardari in attending closely to the Chinese Repository and the Canton Register (which was edited, in this period, by John Slade). Apart from these journals it relies principally on books, memoirs, documents, travelogues and word-lists that were written and compiled by people who lived in or visited Canton at around the same time as Neel: David Abeel, Colin Campbell, C. Toogood Downing, Capt. Robert Elliot, Émile D. Forgues, Shen Fu, Thomas Gardiner, Henry Gribble, Charles Gutzlaff, William C. Hunter, J. Johnson, William Kershaw, Charles W. King, W. Lobscheid, Sir Anders Ljungstedt, Gideon Nye, Samuel Shaw, George Smith, Russell Sturgis, Harriet Low, William Henry Low and several other members of this well-travelled Brooklyn family.

Neel was a keen collector of documents relating to his experiences in China. His archive included parliamentary papers such as The Sessional Papers Printed by Order of the House of Lords, Session 1840, Vol VIII, Correspondence Relating to China (Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, printed by T. R. Harrison, London, 1840); and other related collections of documents like the Statement of Claims of the British Subjects interested in Opium surrendered to Captain Elliot at Canton for the Public Service (London, 1840). It also included compendia of Chinese official documents such as Portfolio Chinensis: or A Collection of Authentic Chinese State Papers Illustrative of the History of the Present Position of Affairs in China, ed. J. Lewis Shuck (Macau, 1840).

Neel’s archive was a testament to his catholic interests. It included, for example, some works of natural history, such as Cuthbert Collingwood’s Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores and Waters of the China Sea (John Murray, London, 1868); and several works on horticulture such as J. C. Loudon’s magisterial An Encyclopaedia of Gardening, Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture and Landscape-Gardening, including All the Latest Improvements, A General History of Gardening in All Countries and A Statistical View of Its Present State (Longman et al., London, 1824) and Sir William Chambers’ seminal work, A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, To Which is Annexed An Explanatory Discourse By Tan Chet-qua of Quang-chew-fu, Gent (London, 1773).