DOWN THE YANGTSE
After the toilsome life of the last three months it was good to look
forward to ten days or so of laziness, for surely river travel may be
the most luxurious of any sort of journeying, and even a humble native
boat on the Yangtse affords many delights. You make yourself comfortable
with your own bed and chair, stop at your pleasure, go as you choose,
without hurry and without noise through charmingly varied scenery, now
soft and cultivated, now wild and grand.
My own little apartment occupied the middle of the boat, screened off
with mats and curtains from the ends occupied by the boat people and my
men, and though it was necessarily a thoroughfare, my privacy was always
respected and no one attempted to enter without permission. By an
ingenious arrangement of the mat roof I could lie at ease on my camp-bed
and watch the shores slip past, but toward evening when the sun was
setting, I often sat out on the extreme prow of the boat where I could
enjoy the full sweep of the view up and down. Liu, the cook, had
provided himself with a little cement cooking arrangement on which he
prepared me very savoury messes. He and the Yunnan coolie and the
interpreter and the boat people all chummed together very amicably, and
I was impressed again, as so many times before, by the essential
democracy of China. The interpreter was several pegs above the others,
socially, but he showed no objection at going in with them, and more
than once, when the inns were crowded, took up his quarters with the
coolies, but--he always got well waited upon. Nor was the captain's wife
kept in seclusion (it would have been hard, indeed, to get it in a
thirty-foot wu-pan), but all day long I could hear her chatting with the
men in cheerful give-and-take fashion.
By the way, the name which Europeans give to the river down which I was
floating, the Min, is quite unknown to the Chinese, and it may have
originated with the Jesuits, the first men from the West to make their
home in Szechuan. By the natives the river is sometimes called the "Fu"
because of the three "fu" towns on its banks, Chengtu, Chia-ting, and
Suifu, and sometimes they speak of it as the Ta-kiang, regarding it as
the upper waters of the Yangtse.
Below Chia-ting the river, by whatever name called, flows through a
smiling, open country, with gently varied scenery. The soft slopes on
either hand were richly cultivated with maize and rape, and nameless
little villages, picturesque with black timbered houses and red temples,
peeped out of groves of banyan and bamboo and orange. Then the hills
closed in on the river and the current ran like a millrace. Often a
promontory was crowned with one of the many-storied white "chuman"
pagodas of Szechuan, while in the face of a cliff I could now and then
discern openings which I knew were the famous, mysterious cave-dwellings
of a bygone time and an unknown people found all about Chia-ting. I
visited one that had been converted into a miniature temple, and there
are several in one of the mission compounds. I believe they are known
only in this region. They have been excavated by an expert hand, showing
traces, it is thought, of Indian influence. Much conjecture has been
expended upon them, and as yet there is no advance upon Baber's
conclusion "that these excavations are of unknown date, and have been
undertaken for unexplained purposes, by a people of doubtful identity."
As the river was now high, the current carried us along at a good speed,
but I was in no hurry and we made many stops, when I got out to stretch
my legs along the bank. At night we always tied up, and it took some
effort to secure a place to the liking of us all. I wanted air and
quiet, but the desire of my boat people was set on a chance to go
a-marketing or to do a little visiting. Sometimes I got what I wished,
sometimes they did, but they did their best, I think, to gratify my
strange whims.
One night when they had their way and we were tied up to a shingle
alongside some forty or fifty junks and small craft, we had all to turn
out on a grand hunt for the "tailless one" who had gone astray. As soon
as the plank was down, I went ashore followed by the dogs. As it grew
dark I sat down on a rock not far away, and Jack curled up by me, but
the other one went back to the boat. Presently I saw the men come ashore
and walk up and down swinging their paper lanterns and sending out long,
loud cries. The little dog was missing, and they were afraid he was
being kept concealed on one of the other boats, for, so they said,
people liked to steal little dogs. I asked if they thought it would help
if I went with them along the beach and they called out that I was
looking for the dog. They were sure it would, so we paraded up and down
the long line of junks, flashing out our lanterns while the men called,
not to the junk people, for "face" must be saved, but to the little dog
himself, "O tailless one, come home, O tailless one, come home, the
foreign devil is seeking thee." And presently there was a joyful shout
from our boat. The "tailless one" had come walking up the gangplank,
quietly returned under cover of darkness. The men were immensely
pleased, and said it was all due to me; the people were afraid to steal
from a foreigner.
Three days after leaving Chia-ting, we came in sight of Suifu, most
picturesquely set on a rocky slope at the junction of the Min and the
Yangtse. But how changed was the Great River since I crossed it at
Lung-kai, four hundred miles to the west. There it dashed furiously
along, dammed in between precipitous cliffs and fretted to foam by rocky
reefs. Now it flowed broad and deep and quiet between soft wooded banks,
bearing many craft on its strong current.
The streets of the prosperous city of Suifu, the starting-point of all
overland traffic to Yunnan, are broad and attractive, and there was a
great display of fruit and vegetables in the open shops, but it needs
much faith in the cleansing power of boiling to overlook the sights of
the river front where vegetables and feet are washed side by side, while
as to the fruit, that had been gathered green, as is so often the case
in China, why I could not learn. Some said the Chinese preferred it so,
others that if it were kept on the trees it would be stolen long before
it ripened. But to tell the truth, the goodness of Chinese fruit seems
to be all on the outside. I never saw finer-looking peaches than in
Szechuan, but they proved worm-riddled and tasteless. Apparently all
that the Chinese can teach themselves has been learned, in
fruit-growing as well as in other things. Now if they are to advance
they must begin to borrow, and much else besides money. I was glad to
learn that one of the American missionaries at Ya-chou is in close touch
with the Department of Agriculture at Washington on a basis of give and
take that ought to be to the advantage of both sides.
We covered the distance of nearly two hundred miles between Suifu and
Chung-king in good time; the weather was favourable, and the river now
ran so high that the troublesome rapids had disappeared. The scenery was
charming as ever, but I was wearying of inactivity and it was a relief
to see the crenellated walls of Chung-king come in sight. I paid off my
boatmen, who had lived up to their agreement (not written this time) in
every particular, and in an hour I had ferried across the river and
found myself once more being carried over the steep hills that here form
the south shore of the Yangtse, to meet a kind welcome from the friends
of friends to their charming summer refuge high above the depressing
heat of the Yangtse valley.
Chung-king, which has been dubbed the Chicago of West China,--Hankow
claims the name in East China,--is one of a trio of cities that cluster
around the junction of the Chia-ting and the Yangtse, and it is easily
the chief, with a population of close on half a million. The approach
from upstream is very striking, a grey city perched on a huge grey reef
and enclosed in a strong, crenellated grey wall. The narrow strip of
shore outside the walls is filled with poor, rickety buildings easily
removed when the river rises or as easily swept away if not taken down
in time. Broad, steep flights of steps lead up from the river to the
city gates, and over these stairs all the water used by hundreds of
thousands is carried in buckets.
In 1895 Chung-king was declared open as a treaty port, and since then
its commerce has grown in true modern fashion by leaps and bounds, and
there seems no limit to its development, for it is in a position to
control the up-country trade. The fleets of junks lie closely packed
three deep along the shore, and within the walls the multiplying
thousands are even more densely crowded, for the room to expand is set
by the limits of the great rock on which Chung-king stands, and
apparently every square foot of land within or without the city is
already occupied by the living or the dead. Nowhere did I see such
crowded streets, and nowhere missionaries living in such cramped
quarters as in Chung-king, a confinement all the more unendurable
because of the long months of damp heat.
The large foreign community of Chung-king has many elements, missionary,
merchant, and officials of the customs, post-office, and consular
services. And lying in the river opposite the city are generally
English, French, or German gunboats. The relations between all these
seem more cordial and helpful than in some treaty ports. So, too,
Europeans and Chinese are on an unwontedly friendly footing in
Chung-king; perhaps something may be due to the fine standard set in the
mercantile community by that pioneer trader, Archibald Little, who
boldly established himself here eight years before the town was made a
treaty port. And on the Chinese side there seemed readiness to
appreciate what the West has to offer; in fact the town has a distinctly
go-ahead air. It has already held one commercial exhibition on Western
lines, and is planning another, and it is now lighted by electricity,
boasting the best plant west of Shanghai, which it sets up against
Chengtu's mint and arsenal. There is, in fact, a real Western flavour
about the rivalry of the two Szechuan cities, recalling the relations of
Chicago and St Louis.
As a purely trading centre Chung-king lacks some of the interest of the
capital, but the merchant class, the backbone of China, is well
represented here, and is famed for its intelligence and initiative.
Through the kindness of Mr. Warburton Davidson, of the Friends' Mission,
I was given a chance to meet members of this class, and also to see
something of a very interesting experiment he had recently started.
Realizing the importance of making known to this influential element the
best that Christian civilization has to offer, but well aware of the
difficulty, indeed, the impossibility, of meeting them through the
ordinary channels of missionary effort, Mr. Davidson hit upon the idea
of starting a social club where men of standing, Christian and
non-Christian, European as well as Chinese, might mingle on an equal
footing. The plan proved successful from the start. Largely through the
interest of a Chinese gentleman of Chung-king an attractive house has
been put up and equipped with newspapers, books, games, and the
beginnings of a museum, and here in the reading and recreation rooms
some of the best business men of the city meet for social intercourse,
discussions, and occasionally a lecture on such up-to-date subjects as
X-rays, tuberculosis, and, very recently, the American Constitution. It
is now open every day and evening except Sunday, and already it is
making itself felt in the life of the city.
Mr. Davidson kindly planned for me to visit the Friends' Institute, as
the club is called, and to meet some of the Chinese committee by which
it is managed, for very wisely things are left as far as possible in the
hands of the natives. For two hours or more I had the pleasure of
talking with these gentlemen, and I was much impressed with their keen
interest in outside matters. All were of a type new to me, quiet,
dignified, interested, with the fine manners of the Chinese gentleman,
but without the rather lackadaisical superciliousness of some
officials, nor was there anything Western about them; they were not
copying Europe, but learning how to be a new, fine sort of Chinese.
Among those whom I met were Mr. Yang, president of the Institute, and a
prominent business man of Chung-king, and Mr. Cheo, the elderly head of
the Chinese Imperial Telegraph, who has now been succeeded by another
member whom I also met. When I left they all escorted me most
courteously to my chair, the passers-by stopping to gape with surprise.
So far as I know the club is a new departure in mission work, and most
worthy of support as a rational and hopeful method of presenting the
best of Christian civilization to a class often repelled by missionary
propaganda.
In Chung-king I parted with the faithful coolie who had come with me all
the way from Yunnan-fu. As carrier or as cook's helper he had worked
well; indeed, on more than one occasion he had cooked my dinner when Liu
was under the weather, and he had become so dexterous in waiting on the
table that he had grown ambitious and was now looking out for a place in
a restaurant. I wrote him a "chit," or letter of recommendation, which I
hope served his purpose if he could get any one to read it. At least I
made it look as imposing as possible. How would the wheels go round in
the East without "chits"? You are called upon to write them for every
sort of person and every kind of service or none. On one occasion the
recovery of a stolen necklace brought upon my head demands for a whole
sheaf of letters, every one concerned, no matter how remotely, wanted
one,--hotel proprietor (it was at a hotel that the affair occurred),
hotel manager, clerk, servants, chief of police, ordinary policemen.
Finally in desperation I offered one to the thief for allowing himself
to be caught so promptly. But I think the strangest one I was ever
called upon to write was for a tiger-tamer in the employ of an Indian
rajah. I protested I knew nothing about such things, but he would not
take no, and as he had reduced the big brute that he brought to my
bungalow to the point of drinking milk from a china bowl that I put
before him, I agreed to recommend him as a trainer of tigers. But for my
Yunnan coolie I wrote a good letter most willingly in spite of the fact
that he was a confirmed opium-smoker; in all the long journey that he
made with me I could not see that it weakened his wits or his muscles. I
was told that such journeyings were not at all uncommon, the coolies
taking work wherever offered, and going on and on as new jobs turned up.
With all its shortcomings the Manchu Government did not make the blunder
of imposing artificial restraints upon the movements of the people, and
since no passports were required within the empire, men could come and
go at their own will. The part of the commercial traveller in creating
the American nation has been noted. Who can tell what the Chinese coolie
is doing in the same way?
At Chung-king I had to arrange for the trip down the river. I might take
passage on the wonderful new steamer plying with some regularity between
the city and Ichang; but that went too fast for my liking, besides
giving me no chance to go ashore. Or I might engage a houseboat; but at
this season of the year the charges were high, as it might be weeks
before the return trip could be made, and one hundred taels was the best
rate offered. So in spite of the fact that "nobody travelled that way,"
or perhaps because of it, I, being a nobody, decided to try the humble
wu-pan again, and through the efforts of one of the Christian helpers in
the Friends' Mission I secured a very comfortable boat to take me and my
reduced following to Ichang for twenty-five dollars Mexican. The boat
was all that could be desired, and the captain, or "lao-pan," proved
skilful and obliging, but unfortunately he was not, as is usually the
case, the owner of the boat, and still more unfortunately, one of the
owners, a rather old man, was serving with the crew. Nothing happened,
but I had at times an uncomfortable feeling that nobody was in authority
over any one.
I started down the river at noon on a fine day at the end of June, and a
little over forty-eight hours brought us to Kwei-fu at the head of the
gorges. For the most part it was a country of soft undulating slopes and
comfortable farmhouses, with here and there a little hamlet or a
bustling town, framed the last part of the way by strange-looking
pyramidal hills. On we went, hurried along by the strong current,
stopping for an hour's marketing at Foo-chou at the mouth of the
Kung-tan Ho, navigable for one hundred and fifty miles by boats of
strange shape known as the "Crooked Sterns," and again at Wan-hsien,
famous for its cypress-wood junks, then on past the City of the Cloudy
Sun, attractive with broad streets and lovely temples, past the Mountain
of the Emperor of Heaven, where for a few cash you may have a pass
direct to Paradise, past Precious Stone Castle, a curious rock three
hundred feet high standing out boldly from the shore and surmounted by a
temple which contains gruesome paintings of the horrors of hell, through
the Goddess of Mercy Rapid and the Glorious Dragon Rapid, and several
smaller ones that I did not even know were rapids, for with the high
water these tend to disappear, while wicked-looking bays of swirling
water showed the peculiar danger of the summer, the great whirlpools.
The nights were very hot, and all our efforts did not avail to get the
air which alone could make sleep possible. Before this the mosquitoes
had given little trouble, but now they sang outside my net all night
long, while the poor, unprotected boatmen, robbed of their hard-earned
sleep, kept up an accompaniment of slapping on the other side of the
curtain. The river was falling again, leaving long stretches of mudbank
over which I had to clamber if I tried to leave the boat for a little
change, but I always managed to go on shore for a while when the men
were cooking and eating their supper. They took an interminable time
over it, and I never could see why they did not burn us all up, for
their cooking was done in the tiny hold in an unprotected brazier. In
fact, we did catch fire one day, but of course there was plenty of water
at hand.
The third day about noon we tied up for a short time to cook some sort
of a meal, and the rain coming on, the captain thought it best to wait.
To escape the bad air of the boat, where all the mattings were down, I
sat under an umbrella on the bank. A huge junk slowly pulling upstream
moored close at hand, and I watched with interest the trackers making
fast. They were men of all ages and sizes, but mostly young and well
grown. Their naked bodies were well developed and muscular, but often
cut or scarred with falling on the rocks. Having made all secure they
too got under cover on the junk, and fell to eating, naked and wet as
they were. It seemed to me that I sat for hours on that mudbank while
the rain fell in torrents and the river rose higher and higher, for the
changes in level are extraordinarily rapid. It was almost dark before we
could set off again, and then we got no farther than Kwei-fu, the
trackers' Paradise. Perhaps that was the reason why we could not start
the next morning, but I fancy it was the truth that the water was too
high to be safe, for there were double rows of junks moored under the
walls of Kwei-fu, and I saw no boats starting down. When the water
covers the great rock at the mouth of the Windbox Gorge, two miles down
the river, the authorities forbid all passing through. And anyway there
was nothing to do but make the best of it.
Kwei-fu is a pleasant-looking town set in maize-fields which grow quite
up to the walls. A few years ago it was notorious for its hostility to
foreigners. No missionaries were admitted, and when Mrs. Bird Bishop
came this way in 1897 she did not attempt to go inside the town. Now all
is changed; the China Inland Mission has a station here, and I went
about freely. But I did not see much of Kwei-fu, as I preferred to enjoy
that Paradise from afar; so we pulled a little way downstream, tying up
near some maize-fields in which I promptly got really lost, so tall and
thick was the growth.
The next morning dawned clear, and the lao-pan declared we could start,
as the water was falling, but he professed unwillingness to take me
through the dreaded Hei Shi Tan, or "Black Rock Rapid," near the
western end of the first gorge; so I carried two two-carrier chairs for
myself and the interpreter, paying one thousand cash for thirty li. At
starting, the road made a bend away from the river, passing through a
succession of hamlets, the homes of the trackers. Leaving my men at a
tea-house I walked on, following a well-made path which led me finally
into the White Emperor's Temple, beautifully set on the very edge of an
angle of the cliff, affording wonderful views down the gorge. It was
clean and light, and the priests who came to greet me in the usual
kindly Buddhist fashion had rather nice faces. It was a place to dream
away a glorious day. At our feet the rippling water just revealed the
dreaded Goosetail Rock, now almost submerged, but in winter standing
like a sentinel forty feet tall at the mouth of the gorge; and over our
heads towered, on both sides the narrow waterway, grey vertical cliffs,
fifteen hundred to two thousand feet high. I hated to leave, but as I
had plainly lost my way there was nothing to do but go back and seek to
overtake the men who were pounding along on the right path, trying to
come up with me.
It is here that the great Szechuan road begins, a pathway galleried into
the solid rock for the whole length of the gorge at about one hundred
and fifty feet above the winter level of the river. It is a fine piece
of road, the gift, I believe, of a rich Kwei-chou merchant. The
surprising thing, of course, is not that it is good--the Chinese have
built many good roads--but that it is new. At present it stops at the
Szechuan frontier, but there is talk of extending it across Hupeh.
The day and a half that I spent in going through the gorges of the
Yangtse were the most exhausting part of my whole trip; from the mere
strain of seeing and feeling, one's senses were all the time on the
rack. Scenes of overpowering savagery and grandeur that held one
spellbound, were relieved by beautiful bits of cultivation, little
hamlets of brown houses and red temples half concealed in groves of
golden bamboo and the glossy green of orange trees; moments when the
boatmen lounged on the deck or hung exhausted over their oars were
followed by grief, fierce struggles against the dreadful force of a
whirlpool that threatened to engulf us.
But, after all, that which most often comes back to me as I recall those
days is the feeling of the ruthless human will grappling with nature and
winning the mastery. Who can call China aged and in decay face to face
with her success in conquering a passage up these gorges? Who can
question the vitality of the Chinese, that has watched the trackers at
work pulling a huge junk against a current like the rapids of Niagara,
clambering over wet, rough boulders, creeping like cats along a thread
of a trail overhanging the gulf, clinging to the face of rocks that do
not seem to offer a foothold to a mountain goat, and all the time
straining with every muscle at a thousand-foot rope. An inhuman task
where men take great risks for a pittance, where death by drowning or by
being dashed to pieces on the rocks confronts them at every turn, and
where, at best, strains and exposure bring an early end. In my dreams I
see them, the long lines of naked men, their strong bodies shining with
wet and bleeding from many a cut, keeping time in a wild chant as they
tug at the taut line; a rope breaks and the toil of hours is lost; one
misstep and a life has ended.
[Illustration: _R. J. Davidson._
IN THE YANGTSE GORGES]
But this is the sole highway to Szechuan; all the trade of China's
largest province, the one best endowed by nature, must pass up and down
here. Any people less prodigal of their strength, less determined and
less resourceful than the Chinese, would have given up the struggle
before it was begun, and Szechuan would have slumbered undeveloped and
forgotten, instead of being as it is now the richest and most advanced
part of the empire.
And the next step is assured; before many years have passed, a railway
will connect the western capital with Wan-hsien and Hankow, the deserted
gorges will no longer reecho the cries of the trackers, and the upward
trip that now takes six weeks will be a matter of two or three days. It
will be a different Szechuan then, with its resources exploited, with
mines and factories, good roads and fine hotels, a power in the world's
market, the goal of the tourist, and--I am glad I saw Szechuan before
the railway came.