Well, I had failed! The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still
more horrid thought was ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my
footsteps, and I come of a family that does not like to fail.
I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great
waterways of Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them,
little-known rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I
might see something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the
streams, along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy
little villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and
means by which I might penetrate Siberia.
At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in
too easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I
met the veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not
feel so markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked
God that his letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully
my ways, for of one thing he was sure, there would have been but
one ending to the expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been
impossible.
Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals
I wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather
a humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr
Reginald Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu
ten days before I too had proposed to start West.
“I often wondered,” said he, “what became of you and how you had got on.
We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf
and then------” He paused.
Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have
spelled death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from
the left bank of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took
diametrically opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have
everything: one has to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new
world, the rush and the scramble and the progress, to the calm of the
Oriental. Very likely this is because I am a woman. In the East woman
holds a subservient position, she has no individuality of her own, and
I, coming from the newest new world, where woman has a very high place
indeed, is counted a citizen, and a useful citizen, could hardly be
expected to admire a state of society where her whole life is a torture
and her position is regulated by her value to the man to whom she
belongs. I put this to my friend when he was admiring the Chinese ladies
and he laughed.
“I admit,” said he, “that a young woman has a”--well, he used a very
strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough--“of a time when she is
young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position
she holds. That little old woman sitting on a _k'ang_ rules a whole
community.”
And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West.
But I am thankful that the Fates did not make me--a woman--a member of
a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no
great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came
if I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.
[Illustration: 0176]
[Illustration: 0177]
[Illustration: 0178]
On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except
at Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at
miserable inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and
allowed me to sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eighty _li_
from Fen Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would
be _anathema maranatha_ to the Nonconformists with whom I had been
staying. It is curious this schism between two bodies holding what
purports to be the same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a
doctor at Ping Ting Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren,
who spoke of the Roman Catholics as if they were in as much need of
conversion as the ignorant Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I
strongly suspect that Mr Farrer will put me in the same category as I
put my friend from Ping Ting Chou! However, here under the care of the
Alsatian Fathers the country was most beautifully cultivated. The
wheat was growing tall and lush in the land, emerald-green in the May
sunshine; there were avenues of trees along the wayside clothed in the
tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a whole village, men and
boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never in China have I seen
such evidences of well-conducted agricultural industry; and the Fathers
were militant too, for they were, and probably are, armed, and in the
Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and any missionaries
fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found much to commend
in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as useful to the
country people in their way as were the Americans to the people of the
towns.
Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to
the making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of
it set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting
more pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a
bank plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing
on top.
All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys,
and, strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden
too. A wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great
wheel, a man holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap
round his shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is
harnessed to help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the
roughest way, and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went
in China this was impressed upon me, that man was the least important
factor in any work of production. He might be used till he failed and
then thrown lightly away without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough
to take his place.
I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must
make some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey
through the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey
anywhere that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything
could possibly be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was
young. I stopped at inns that were the disgusting product of the
slums; I passed men working in the fields who were survivals of an old
civilisation, and when I passed any house that was not a hovel it was
secluded carefully, so that the owner and his womenkind might keep
themselves apart from the proletariat, the serfs who laboured around
them and for them.
Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su,
where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep
in, only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they
drove Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that
I hustled off the _k'ang_ by means of powdered borax and Keating's,
strewed over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and
dropped down upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a
horrid night. I don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on
the spot are far worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in
the future. All that night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's
energies and vowed I was a fool for coming to China, and then in the
morning as usual I walked it all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came
to me and, after the best personally conducted Cook's tourist style,
explained that here was a temple which “mus' see.”
I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little
way back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I
think, over nine warm springs--the sort of thing that weighed down the
scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce
such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved
dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal
entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze
figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The
steps up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet
through countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and
broken; from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they
once had borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China
allows to fall upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the
early morning, with the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full
leaf, the sunshine lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the
trees, it was gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain,
gentle, soft, warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive
grey mist that veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of
one of the beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.
At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him
a glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really
hope there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any
country; he was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did
get back safely, but I must confess to feeling on sending him away
much as I should do were I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way
across London. Indeed I have met many babies of four in Australia
who struck me as being far more capable than the interpreter who had
undertaken to see me across China.
I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the
matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I
lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that
town--somehow I had done with China--but because the personality of Mr
and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.
Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little
walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and
it is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi,
and beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf
Fort. The hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take
any animal, but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top,
and this, with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled,
so the story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on
his back; there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the
land and they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very
likely it is true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.
At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were
engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with
missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of
the Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings,
sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the
peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.
When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission
house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills
that surround the town. Their converts and friends--for they had many
friends who were not converts--hardly dared come near them, and
death was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was
summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all
their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for
themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.
“I could not help it,” said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being
human. “I used to look at my children and wonder how the saints _could_
rejoice in martyrdom!”
When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving
themselves up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of
the cave offered five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not
converts, merely pagan friends, had remembered their sufferings.
Still they looked at the scenes doubtfully, and though the little
children--they were only four and six--held out their hands for them
eagerly, they were obliged to implore them not to eat them, they
would make them so desperately thirsty. But their Chinese friends were
thoughtful as well as kind, and presently came the same soft voice
again and a hand sending up a basketful of luscious cucumbers, cool and
refreshing with their store of water.
But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way
down to the river bank, the Ching River--the Clear River we called it,
and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was
neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal--and slowly made
their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That
story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading.
Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang
and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An--not
the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River
in Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in
English-speaking lands--and here they, hearing a band was after them,
hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as
a man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh
hopeless--at least I should have been hopeless--but still their faith
upheld them. It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his
rays, but towards evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew
with little children they must leave their refuge.
“But surely, I know,” said Mrs Green, “the dear Lord will never let it
rain.”
And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with
which she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a
Chinese prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could
not stay.
It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the
fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.
“It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,” said
the teller of the tale fervently, “for we fell into the hands of a
comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten
by a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who
certainly would have killed us.”
But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed
against. They carried the children kindly enough--the worst of Chinamen
seem to be good to children--but they constantly threatened their elders
with death. They were going to their death, that they made very clear to
them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet, and the pins
came out of the women's long hair--there was another teacher, a girl,
with them--and it trailed in the dust of the filthy Chinese paths. And
Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck, but still they
had no pity.
Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the
Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao
Ting Fu that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol
there--and, knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness
of a Chinese gaol--and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had
dysentery; they had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were
always in the rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and
this was done, of course, of _malice prepense_, for no one values the
privacy of their women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission
to go down to the river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always
accompanied her, and always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went
along in the glaring sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from
these scornful people. Only strangely to the children were they kind;
the soldiers used to give them copper coins so that they might buy
little scones and cakes to eke out the scanty rations, and once--it
brought home to me, perhaps as nothing else could, the deprivations of
such a life--instead of buying the much-needed food the women bought
a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for their long hair was about their
shoulders, and though they brushed it to the best of their ability with
their hands it was to them an unseemly thing.
And before the order came--everything is ordered in China--that their
lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the little
maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay
dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In
the filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending
over her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard
your little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel
called upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.
After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the
desolated mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they
continue their work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose,
to the end, for most surely their sufferings and their endurance have
fitted them for the work they have at heart as no one who has not so
suffered and endured could be fitted. And so I think the whirligig of
Time brings in his revenges.
I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at
the other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful
things, and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have
ever met, walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when
I parted from her I knew that among a class I--till I came to China--had
always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only
respect, but whom I could love and admire.
Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had
not received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when
James Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon
the scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their
midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me--bless their kind
hearts!--with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise a
thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they
had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my
journey.
It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our
lives--our wedding day and such-like--and that coming back on the warm
summer's day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into
the cool, clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at
Pao Ting Fu is one of them. And that compound is one of the places in
the world I much want to visit again.
There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the
last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only
two members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James
Buchanan, and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me
to dinner. He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His
house was only about two miles away and it could be reached generally
by going round by the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the
ground by the rounded north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside
a city in China is ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the
moat is a relic of the past--useful in these modern times for disposing
of unwanted puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as
Shansi--but otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial
goldfields round Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the
houses are ramshackle to the last degree, and all the fields, even when
they are green with the growing grain, look unfinished. But round the
north-west corner of Pao Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are
thousands and thousands of them. And on that particular day it rained,
it rained, and it rained, steady warm summer rain that only stopped
and left the air fresh and washed about six o'clock in the evening.
I ordered a rickshaw--a rickshaw in Pao Ting Fu is a very primitive
conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and, with James Buchanan on my
knee, in the last evening dress that remained to me and an embroidered
Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had started early
because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there might be a
little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much because
I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than
three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man
elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language,
I was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come
back that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and
that only waits till the last train at nine o'clock.
It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started,
but when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the
tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to
our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling
up dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My
man only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went
on again--going through floods was apparently all in the contract--but
we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given
myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at
that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.
We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the
fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the
road was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for
a road at any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means
spells security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But
apparently my coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's
pace and the water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the
rickshaw, and when I had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in
the middle of the sheet of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie
stopped and gave me to understand that he had done his darnedest and
could do no more. He dropped the shafts and stood a little way off,
wringing the water out of his garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course,
but it was distinctly uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress
wading through two feet of dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at
the side. I waited a little because the prospect did not please me, and
though there were plenty of houses round, there was not a soul in sight.
It was getting dark too, and it was after eight o'clock.
Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned
vehemently.
Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners,
and they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank
tucked up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend
took a maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they
proceeded to drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow
pathway along the top and they apparently decided that if they could get
the conveyance up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to
step out, and it looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful.
As a preliminary I handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he
had to sit on my knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary.
Buchanan did not like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace
till I, stepping out, slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when
he promptly bit the man who was holding him and, getting away, expressed
his sympathy by licking my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two
men yelled in dismay. Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to
get on my feet again, for the path was very slippery. It was long past
eight now and could I have gone back I would have done so, but clearly
that was impossible, so by signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had
to be salved--copper did it--to push behind, and we resumed our way....
Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My
host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had
gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I
wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take
me home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.
He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that
the men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could
get over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart.
That was all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of
night, with the city gates shut?
Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and
would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two
members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner--a
Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late--and
we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas!
I was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium
light and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right,
and at two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin,
or some relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial
mule. I confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I
knew the state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges
we had to cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was
beginning to break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the
adventurous men who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much
silver and to me very little. I have been to many dinners in my life,
but the last meeting of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains
engraved on my memory.
Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my
Siberian trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the
missionaries were going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta
Ho for their summer holiday and the first stage of the journey was down
the Ching River to Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant
way of getting over the country, and it would be pleasant too to have
company. I am not enamoured of my own society; I can manage alone, but
company certainly has great charms.
So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.
In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done,
and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth
to try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the
things right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was
known I was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only
had to put my nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be
seller. I have had as many as nine men selling at once; they
enlisted the servants, and china ranged round the kitchen floor, and
embroideries, brass and mirrors were stowed away in the pantry. Indeed
I and my followers must have been an awful nuisance to the missionaries.
They knew no English, but as I could count a little in Chinese, when
we could not get an interpreter we managed; and I expect I bought an
immense amount of rubbish, but never in my life have I had greater
satisfaction in spending money. More than ever was I pleased when I
unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever since.
Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had
they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We
engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we
pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on
making the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal
blue vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved
wooden frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the
merchants and we started.
I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before
the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these
we embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao
Ting Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the
largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on
board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the
servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted
with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the
Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of
the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places
like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which
I could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage,
so was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be
exceedingly useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in
her youth and was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own
food, as I bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She
was a foolish soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in
Buchanan, offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted
apparently largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now
James Buchanan was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered
him, but he could not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went
to bed at night I often came in contact with something cold and clammy
which invariably turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals
bestowed upon my courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good
manners. There really was nowhere else to hide them.
They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by
little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities.
Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its
castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon
little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for
we knew then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought
provisions; sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the
pleasant summer weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more
unique voyage. And at last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my
friends, and they went on to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare
for my journey east and north.
And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China
that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in
my comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of
China; and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a
different place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On
our side, of course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a
losing cause. But, after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the
cave-dwellers in the _yaos_ of Shansi know about a world's war? The
very, very small section that rules China manages these affairs, and
the mass of the population are exactly as they were in the days of the
Cæsars, or before the first dynasty in Egypt for that matter.
“China,” said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just
before I left, “was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are
coming in and money was never so easy to get.”
“There was a row over the new tax,” said a missionary sadly, in the part
I know well, “in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the
tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men
were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely
nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay
the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.”
He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he
was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like
that which came within my ken during my last month in China.
The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge
generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted
there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers
revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of
villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in
the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations
of the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual
ought to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the
individual with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should
like to rule out the “few exceptions,” but that would be asking too much
of this present world. At least I like to think that most people have
a chance of happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the
population has that.
[Illustration: 0194]
[Illustration: 0195]
China left a curious impression upon my mind. The people are courteous
and kindly, far more courteous than would be the same class of people
in England, and yet I came back from the interior with a strong
feeling that it is unsafe, not because of the general hostility of the
people--they are not hostile--but because suffering and life count for
so little. They themselves suffer and die by the thousand.
“What! Bring a daughter-in-law to see the doctor in the middle of the
harvest! Impossible!” And yet they knew she was suffering agony, that
seeing the doctor was her only chance of sight! But she did not get it.
They were harvesting and no one could be spared!
What is the life then of a foreign barbarian more or less? These
courteous, kindly, dirty folk who look upon one as a menagerie would
look on with equal interest at one's death. They might stretch out
a hand to help, just as a man in England might stop another from
ill-treating a horse, though for one who would put himself out two
would pass by with a shrug of the shoulders and a feeling that it wras
no business of theirs. Every day of their lives the majority look upon
the suffering of their women and think nothing of it. The desire of the
average man is to have a wife who has so suffered. I do not know whether
the keeping of the women in a state of subserviency has reacted upon
the nation at large, but I should think it has hampered it beyond words.
Nothing--nothing made me so ardent a believer in the rights of women as
my visit to China.
“Women in England,” said a man to me the other day, a foreigner, one
of our Allies, “deserve the vote, but the Continental women are babies.
They cannot have it.” So are the Chinese women babies, very helpless
babies indeed, and I feel, and feel very strongly indeed, that until
China educates her women, makes them an efficient half of the nation,
not merely man's toy and his slave, China will always lag behind in the
world's progress.
Already China is split up into “spheres of influence.” Whether she likes
it or not, she must realise that Russian misrule is paramount in
the great steppes of the north; Japan rules to a great extent in
the north-east, her railway from Mukden to Chang Ch'un is a model of
efficiency; Britain counts her influence as the most important along
the valley of the Yang Tze Kiang, and France has some say in Yunnan.
I cannot help thinking that it would be a great day for China, for the
welfare of her toiling millions, millions toiling without hope, if she
were partitioned up among the stable nations of the earth--that is to
say, between Japan, Britain and France. And having said so much, I refer
my readers to Mr Farrer for the other point of view. It is diametrically
opposed to mine.