“A great army may be robbed of its leader, but nothing can rob one poor
man of his will”
--_Chinese proverb_
I shall always associate Kalgan with waiting for things to happen.
Rumours of war were constantly coming to one’s ears, news of
camel caravans on the point of starting for Mongolia reached one
periodically. Nothing ever seemed to culminate. The missionaries, of
whom there were some half a dozen, were very much opposed to my making
an expedition alone into Mongolia, and with my limited knowledge of
Chinese it was impossible without their help to make any plans for
doing so. My hostess, a delicate little thing, very much younger than
her colleagues, stood my friend throughout and did what she could
to make enjoyable my stay within the somewhat circumscribed area of
the compound. Deeply interested in English manners and customs her
conversation had an almost childish _naïveté_, and circled around our
royalties and other great English names that had come to her ears. She
was, she told me “tickled to death” at the idea of entertaining an
English lady, but was frankly disappointed that I bore no title. As a
small girl, she said, she had longed to be English, and loved reading
about lords and ladies (we now know the market for a certain class of
light fiction), and persuaded her mother to call her “Lady Ermyntrude”.
“Is it true,” she would ask me, “that if English girls don’t marry the
first man that asks them, they never get another chance?”
Life in a mission compound can never fail to interest the speculative
mind, and although waiting about for plans to resolve themselves is
a severe tax on one’s patience, my days at Kalgan are recalled with
considerable pleasure notwithstanding. What I wanted was an excuse
for taking a camel cart (which appealed to me as being exceedingly
comfortable as well as a great novelty), and I watched a couple in
course of preparation for the ill-fated expedition of Messrs. Grant and
Henningsen who were to journey across the Gobi to Urga on telegraph
service, which for the former was to end so disastrously. Camel carts
bear a certain amount of similarity to the Peking cart, with the
following differences: they are higher from the ground, having larger
wheels; they are covered in entirely, having a window and door on the
near side; they are of such ample dimensions that one may stretch
oneself at full length and live in them in considerable comfort. In
fact, I have in North Mongolia seen a man, woman, and two children
camping very comfortably in one cart.
One might well be asked what there was to prevent me from hiring a
camel cart--a very natural question when one lives in Europe and
where money will compass most of one’s desires. Not so in the East.
A solitary camel cart was held to be unsuitable for my purpose, for
a solitary camel cart wandering about Mongolia without escort would
undoubtedly attract an undue amount of attention. Camel carts usually
form part of a caravan.
Kalgan, with its population of some seventy or eighty thousand souls,
grown out of all proportion to the picturesque little walled-in city
in its midst, the unusual temples, among which a couple of Mohammedan
mosques came as a surprise to me, its many theatres, and little
shops containing much that was interesting and novel, would under
ordinary conditions have satisfied me for weeks; but the nearness to
the goal of my desire to some extent spoiled it for me, rendering it
tantalising and me restless. Not once, but many times, did I find
my way on foot through the thick dust of the narrow streets to the
wide road leading out to the north gate, the Mongol quarter of the
city. There one met hundreds of camels padding softly along in the
thick dust laden with immense bales of wool from Urga, picking their
way over boulders polished by the traffic of 1200 years. The camels
are in their most disreputable condition in April; their wool, being
in process of shedding, left big bare patches, and made them look
singularly naked in places. I loved to see their stately walk, and the
stolid Mongols sitting, pipe in mouth, on their backs. Fine beasts.
Fine men. To see, too, the Mongols themselves at their journey’s end,
galloping recklessly along this terrific road, raising clouds of dust
in their wake, stirrupless as often as not, their ponies slithering and
stumbling over the concealed stones, recovering themselves in a manner
perfectly marvellous. They are wonderful horsemen. A Russian post plies
between Kalgan and Urga, suspended now, however, on account of the
unrest in the country, and the Mongols cover the 800 miles in eight
days, relays of ponies waiting for them every twenty miles or so. They
ride at full speed during the entire journey, which averages ordinarily
from thirty to thirty-two days.
Small wonder that the wares in the innumerable little stalls which
line this great north road should be dirty and unattractive at first
glance. One must quickly consume one’s proverbial peck of dust here;
everything in this Mongol market is thick with it; hair, clothes,
food, and all. But what is the use of troubling about what cannot be
helped? A medicine stall was one of the many at which I lingered,
and from curiosity asked the prices of things that were displayed as
“cures”--snakes, lizards, and similar small fry were kept in bulk. A
rhinoceros tusk I gathered to be a charm of prophylactic nature, but
a furry foot altogether baffled my intelligence. The vendor was by
no means anxious to sell, but being pressed for a price said that I
might have the object for fifteen dollars, i.e. thirty shillings. I
discovered later that it was the pad of a bear, and esteemed of great
value from a medicinal point of view. I refrained from purchasing
it. Two charming souvenirs, however, I did pick up in Kalgan--a tiny
green jade wine cup, and, as a mascot, a jade thumb ring guaranteed to
bring me great good luck on all my wanderings. They were of the colour
of rivers bringing down the snow from mountains, and moreover were
bargains at a dollar and half a dollar respectively.
Everything that one could conceivably want for the great journey
across the desert is to be bought from this market, the last link
with civilisation, and few caravans push straight through this busy
quarter without a halt for a hank of rope, or another string of dried
persimmons, or such like. To the gregarious Celestial it must indeed be
a mighty effort to break away from Kalgan and start upon that lonely
trek so fraught with dangers and possibilities unknown.
The principal theatre in Kalgan is in this neighbourhood, and more than
once I got drawn into a crowd of five or six hundred people in the
triangular piece of waste ground near the north gate. The theatre was a
pretty little temple, the stage open to the heavens on three sides and
raised eight or ten feet from the ground. The play is as a rule, I am
told, composed of scenes and episodes from the Chinese classics. Be
that as it may, the actors, with handsome flowing beards, are as unlike
the modern Chinese as well could be.
Every one whose business was not too pressing strolled within seeing
and hearing distance--there were no barriers or enclosures. At the
back of the crowd, which, with less than half a dozen exceptions, was
composed of men and boys, numbers of ponies and mules waited patiently,
and among them from their Peking carts a few women obtained a good
view while not being too much in evidence. Kalgan is conservative
in preserving her traditions concerning the deportment of women.
Vendors of all sorts of things, from dusting brushes to cigarettes
and pea-nuts, took life easily on the outskirts of the laziest,
pleasantest, smelliest crowd I have ever been in. In the background
too were several barbers plying their trade, their victims gazing at
the play while their heads were shaved or their _queues_ combed and
plaited. The quaint mediæval play, with great clashing of cymbals, and
lunging about with swords and scimitars, was lively enough to please
the audience tremendously. The whole scene was picturesque to a degree,
what with bright clothes and action on the stage, with a background of
the mountains surrounding Kalgan, and nearer still the sombre old wall
of many, many centuries, and again, in front of it, the flat and gabled
roofs of Chinese houses and shops with their ornate fronts and gaudy
signs and symbols, the gilded lettering in two languages as befits the
meeting-place of China and Mongolia. Nearer still the handsome mules
with their richly decorated saddle-cloths, passed and re-passed, and
now and again a string of dromedaries pursued the even tenor of their
way, undisturbed and unattracted by the babel of the multitude. The
colour scheme was blue, blue, blue, in every conceivable tone, and for
variation, soft maizy yellow, prune, and mauve--the distant mountains
deeply purple.
The old men of China are not the least pleasing of its inhabitants.
They are so kindly, so dignified, so placid, and so really venerable.
They stood around, dozens of them, with their pet birds in pretty
wooden cages singing away all the time, often held on the flat of
their hands high up and out of danger from the crowd. The cages are
frequently finely carved and beautifully made, the little seed and
water-pots of good porcelain, and the fittings of wrought silver
or brass. In Kalgan a foreign woman is indeed a _rara avis_, but
Chinese manners can be beyond reproach. The people crowd round one,
and certainly in the city one never moved without a small following.
But here, weird object that one must have seemed, they seldom made
themselves objectionable or jeered. One cannot help reflecting upon the
difference there would be in the case of a Chinese visiting a northern
English town in his Oriental dress and with his stumbling speech. How,
one wonders, would the crowds treat him?
In pleasant contrast with the dust of the city were certain riding
expeditions which took me, accompanied by my host, to the foot hills
surrounding Kalgan, to inspect at close quarters the ruins of the Great
Wall and the watch-towers which punctuate it every 200 yards. Whether
he did it to test my riding capabilities or my courage before starting
me off on my lonely tour, I never quite discovered, but vivid in my
recollection is the climbing my host and I did on one occasion. By no
means an accomplished rider, the second day out on a new pony is always
more agreeable to me than the first, but when I saw how the little
black beast that had been lent to me and which I was subsequently to
take up-country, could scale precipitous banks, keep its feet among
loose shale lying on hard slippery surfaces, creep along narrow,
sloping tracks round mountain sides--places along which one would never
have dared to lead, much less ride, a horse at home--my confidence
developed considerably. In parts it was too dangerous to remain in the
saddle at all, and I shall never forget one thrilling moment when my
pony insisted upon turning right round upon our sole support, which was
a bit of a tuft overhanging a chasm some forty to sixty feet deep. His
heels sent the stones flying down, and I momentarily expected the whole
thing to give way, and that we should roll down hopelessly mixed-up,
sheer on to the rocks below.
In connection with the extensive railway works at Kalgan and the
projected extension of them, is quite an important little community
of well-educated Cantonese, with some of whom I became acquainted by
means of an introduction given to me in Peking by my friend, Dr. Wu
Lien Teh, whose research work, especially in connection with plague, is
well known throughout the scientific world. Several of these Cantonese
are Christians and are keen supporters of the work carried on by the
missionaries amongst their employees. My introduction was presented
at a fortunate moment, for a feast to celebrate the arrival of a
first-born son was just then in course of preparation, and the presence
of a foreign lady apparently lent to it a welcome novelty.
The proud father of the baby, Dr. Shi, knew a certain amount of
English, and, in consequence, I launched out alone, on to that sea of
unknown etiquette and custom, feeling a certain degree of security.
What was my horror on arriving at the house to find my host anxiously
awaiting my somewhat tardy arrival in order to introduce me to the
sixteen ladies already present so that he might hasten off to preside
at a similar banquet to his men friends at a restaurant near by. Not
one word of anything but the Cantonese dialect did the ladies speak,
and my carefully prepared sentences of felicitation in the Mandarin
tongue were in consequence discounted. The company, among whom was
the baby’s mother, greeted me with much ceremony and cordiality.
The precise form of salutation varies in different parts of China,
and here the correct bow resembles nothing so much as the action of
surreptitiously pulling up one’s stocking. Dr. Shi was careful to
explain to me that I was the guest of honour, and, after showing me
where to sit, he departed and left me to the tender mercies of the
little ladies. A little later on, however (and this suggests the innate
kindness and consideration of the Chinese) his heart must have smote
him, and thinking that chopsticks might be a source of embarrassment
to me, he flew round from the restaurant with a borrowed plate, spoon,
and fork. As a matter of fact these latter embarrassed me far more than
the chopsticks had done, for my big plate afforded my two generous
hostesses opportunity to overwhelm me with food which the ordinary
little bowl would never have contained.
Upon the round table were set no fewer than sixteen dishes, and these
I gathered were only accessories to the huge bowls which were brought
in from the kitchen, whence there appeared at least a dozen distinct
courses. Eggs served in cochineal-stained shells were, it was explained
to me, in special honour of the new baby, as also was the ginger of the
same glad hue. The feast was heralded in by the customary joy sounds of
China; crackers innumerable and deafening being fired off immediately
outside the room in which we were assembled. Little leaden kettles
of “the dew of the rose leaf” (samshui) were first of all brought in,
and each of us was assisted to at least a thimbleful. Then began the
“Ch’ing chih fan” (“invite you to eat”). Everybody “ch’inged” everybody
else, and we proceeded at the same time to help one another to dainty
morsels with our own chopsticks. Instead of drinking to each other in
occidental fashion, the Chinese “eat to each other,” and when one’s
neighbour planks a toothsome morsel of bird or fish into one’s bowl, it
is etiquette to rise slightly in one’s chair and say “thank you”.
Chopsticks, by the way, are like golf--it is largely a game of chance
and temperament. Sometimes one is on one’s game, and one manages to put
away a substantial meal; at other times one “can’t hit a ball,” and one
leaves the table feeling rather empty. The meal had not progressed far
before we were on terms of great conviviality, not to say familiarity.
They all laughed at the way in which I mismanaged my chopsticks (I
declined to give in and use a spoon and fork) and tried to teach me.
It was of no use, I was not “on my game” that evening. Next to me was
a dear old soul in a handsome black velvet coat; I think she must
have been a near relation on account of the way in which she took me
under her wing, from time to time popping a choice morsel, a chunk of
pine-apple, or a gigantic prawn, straight into my mouth. At intervals
dishes that I really enjoyed came on, buried eggs, bearing striking
resemblance, by the way, to plover’s eggs, crisply baked apricot
kernels, roast duck (horribly underdone), and the seeds of the lotus in
syrup, being among the most palatable. Half-way through the feast my
large plate was a horrible sight and full of things I felt I could not
possibly swallow.
A charming girl opposite me leaned forward and gave me a generous
helping of some nice-looking whitish stew which nearly made me sick
when I tried it. It was like eating a very slimy sponge. To cover
my confusion, and with, I thought, great aplomb, I managed with
some difficulty to perch a beautiful morsel of very raw duck on my
chopsticks, which, instead of eating myself, I unselfishly plunged into
the mouth of my old friend on my left. The attention nearly choked her.
She did not expect it of me. But pleasant relations were established
for the evening, and I received several invitations to other dinner
parties as a result. There was a good deal of giggling at my foreign
ways, but these, I imagine, were less productive of sheer glee than my
attempt to adapt myself to their customs.
At half-time or thereabouts, a woman servant of the coolie class,
very slatternly, and with her own baby upon her back, distributed
cigarettes, some cheap American brand in a tin, picking them out with
her dirty fingers and pressing them upon us in a most hospitable way.
All the servants, in fact, urged us on behalf of their master and
mistress to eat and drink. From time to time they would quietly sneak
a cigarette for themselves, and go to stand in the doorway to smoke
it. One of them was quite an old woman, and it amused me to watch her
casually take one from the table and light it between her withered old
hands with her back turned to the company. Our hostess, for whom with
two or three other guests there was not room at our table, came in
periodically to see how we were progressing, and would hand us one or
other of the delicacies persuasively. She peeled a Mandarin orange for
the old T’ai-t’ai next to me. The latter took it, but at once passed
it on to one of the urchins who were hanging around for tit-bits. It
seemed ungracious, but I suppose it was quite polite. A great tip to
be remembered at a Chinese feast is this; entice one of the many small
children always present to your side. You have then, conveniently
situated, a willing receptacle for the superfluous dainties that have
been heaped into your bowl, besides which you gain merit for your
“warm-heartedness” towards the dear little souls.
[Illustration: A BIRD FANCIER, KALGAN]
[Illustration: SERVANTS IN THE COURTYARD]
Between ten and half-past--we had sat down soon after 6 p.m.--I
felt that the time had arrived when I might reasonably, though
reluctantly, take my departure; but the attempt to do so was met by
much protestation and conversation, and it was borne in upon me that
my old friend the T’ai-t’ai was inviting me to go back with her to her
house there to “sit-a-sit”. I agreed with pleasure, and hand-in-hand we
sallied forth in the moonlight, together with her daughter-in-law
and her little daughter, a pretty little soul, this latter, who was
the proud possessor of an English watch bracelet as well as several
distinctly western rings and bangles. Their house was not very far
off, and when we arrived the old lady ushered me into a bedroom where
her husband and son were reading in somewhat _négligé_ costume. They
quickly invited me into the guest room and, hastily donning their long
coats of ceremony, joined us. The father spoke a little English--he
had once stayed for three weeks in England, coming over, I understood,
in the train of Li Hung Ch’ang; the son, with whom I had a most
illuminating conversation on Chinese topics, had been educated in
England, and another son was at that time an undergraduate at Caius
College, Cambridge.