The port can handle 20,000 tons of cargo a day with ease. On the piers and wharf compounds there are fifty miles of tracks; fourteen locomotives constantly at service; 250 freight-cars of thirty-ton capacity each; four four-ton motor trucks with eight two-ton trailers, and eight twoton motor trucks, and two tractors with ten one-ton trailers. The port has a drydock which can accommodate ships up to 6,000 gross tons. The port has accommodations for 150,000 tons of shipping at one time. Its annual export and import tonnage ranges upward of 4,500,000 tons. The Dairen Bay wireless station stands at Liushutun across the bay from the city. In 1922 no less than 5,149 ships entered and cleared at Dairen of the total registered tonnage of 8,203,119 under the following flags: From 6,000 to 8,000 Chinese coolies are at work every day on the water front. There are fifty-seven ordinary warehouses covering 282,235 square meters: ten for inflammable goods covering 7,236 square meters, one cold storage warehouse covering 793 square meters, five bean-oil storage tanks of 120 tons each, three freight sheds covering 391 square meters. In addition to the above there is an open storage space of about 396,694 square meters. The maximum storage capacity of the above is about 750,000 tons. On the land side, the City of Dairen is the originating point of the great South Manchuria Railway system. There is no trade center of importance in all South Manchuria that cannot be reached within twenty-four hours from Dairen. It is the only ice-free port in Manchuria. It is indeed the only real port for the hinterland of something like 150,000 square miles of South Manchuria. SOYA BEANS AND THE MANCHURIAN TRADE The prizes and honors the soya bean has won in the profitable arena of commerce are countless and oldachieved long before the opening of the Port of Newchwang to foreign commerce. Like champions in any other field, it rarely took a backward step on its way to triumph. For the period of thirty years from 1872 to 1901, when the port of Yingkou, known to all the outside world as Newchwang, was the only outlet for Manchurian goods, the annual average shipments of soya beans out of Manchuria amounted to 2,592,869 piculs (1 picul is 133.3 pounds) valued at 10,222,471 Hk. taels. In the same thirty years the average annual export of bean cake amounted to 6,096,920 piculs worth 2,061,117 Hk. taels, and that of bean oil to 54,147 piculs of the value of 255,221 Hk. taels. From that time on the progress has been marked: in the ten-year period from 1913 to 1922, when Dairen and Antung and other points of outlet in Manchuria were opened and operating, the |