FROM THE GREAT RIVER TO THE GREAT WALL
At Ichang, a thousand miles from Shanghai, I met the West, modern
comforts, bad manners, and all. Situated at the eastern end of the
gorges, this town of thirty thousand Chinese inhabitants and a handful
of Europeans is just where all the merchandise going upstream must be
shifted from the light-draft steamers of the lower Yangtse to the native
junks of forty to a hundred tons which are still the only freight boats
that venture regularly through the rapids and whirlpools of the upper
waters of the Great River. So the water front of Ichang is a busy scene
at all times, and in the winter season the boats are packed together
sardine fashion. When the railway is put through, all the river traffic
will cease, but Ichang proposes to control the new route as it has the
old, and already an imposing station has been completed, even though
only a few miles of iron rail have been laid down.
I shifted my belongings directly from the wu-pan to the Kweilu, a
Butterfield & Swire boat leaving the same evening. It was very
comfortable, although crowded, as everything seems to be in China.
Ichang stands at the extreme eastern edge of the tangle of mountains
that stretch across Szechuan to the Tibetan plateau, and just below this
point the scenery changes, the hills dwindle, and the valley opens into
the wide flat plains of the lower Yangtse. It is a merciful arrangement,
allowing the eyes and brain a chance to recover their tone after the
strain of trying to take in the wonders of the gorges, and I was glad
for the open, vacant land, thankful that there was nothing to look at.
The second morning in the early dawn we moored off Hankow, where I
planned to stay a day or two before turning northward. Hankow, Hanyang,
Wuchang, these three cities lie at the junction of the Han and the
Yangtse, having, all told, a population of some two millions. Located on
the Yangtse, at the mouth of the Han, one of the great waterways of
China, halfway between Shanghai and Ichang, and a little more than
halfway from Peking to Canton, and at present the terminus of the Peking
railway, which in good time will be extended to Canton, the future of
these cities is assured. Each of the three has some special claim to
preeminence, but the greatest of them is Hankow. Hanyang's chimneys are
preparing to rival those of Bombay, and it boasts the largest ironworks
in China. Wuchang is the provincial capital, and the seat of the viceroy
or governor, as it happens, and its mint and arsenal are the most
important in the south, while Hankow is the trading centre, and the
headquarters of the great banking and shipping concerns.
When I was there in early July of last year I noticed only the look of
substantial prosperity about the place, and the comfortable bustle and
stir in the streets. Chinese and Europeans alike seemed intent on making
money, pound-wise or cash-wise. The one matter of concern was the high
water in the river, here nearly a mile wide. Already it was almost up to
the top of the "bund"; a few inches more and it would flood the lowland,
destroying life and property, and stopping all business. There were no
outward signs of commotion underneath, but in about three months the
viceroy's yamen was in flames, shops and offices were looted, and the
mint and arsenal in the hands of the Revolutionary party. One stroke had
put it in possession of a large amount of treasure, military stores, and
a commanding position.
I planned to stay in Hankow just long enough to pack a box for England,
and efface a few of the scars of inland travel before confronting
whatever society might be found in Peking in midsummer, but rather to my
dismay I found the weekly express train left the day after my arrival.
It was out of the question to take that, and apparently I would have to
wait over a week unless I dared try the ordinary train that ran daily,
stopping two nights on the road. But there seemed many lions in the way.
It would be quite impossible to go by this train unless I could take
all my things into the carriage with me; nothing was safe in the luggage
van. It would be a long and tedious journey, and I could get nothing to
eat on the way, and of course it would be impossible to put up at
Chinese inns at night. But face the Eastern lions and they generally
turn to kittens. Travelling by way trains had no terrors for me, it
would give me a chance to see the country, and it was for that I had
come to China, and I knew I could manage about my things; but the
Chinese inn was something of a difficulty, as I was leaving interpreter
and cook in Hankow. I jumped into a rickshaw and by good luck found the
genial superintendent, M. Didier, at the station. _Mais oui_, I might
stop in the train at night; _mais oui_, the little dog could be with me;
_mais oui_, I could certainly manage a trunk in my compartment. And he
did even better than his word, wiring ahead to the nights'
stopping-places, Chu-ma-tien and Chang-te-ho, and when the train pulled
in at each place, I was charmingly welcomed by the division
superintendent with an invitation from his wife to put up with them; and
so instead of two nights in the stuffy sleeping-compartment of the
express train, I had two enjoyable evenings in French homes, and long
nights in a real bed. It was indeed a bit of France that these
delightful Frenchwomen had created in the plain of Central China; books
and journals, dogs and wines from home, and French dishes skilfully
prepared by Chinese hands. But the houses where they lived opened out of
the strongly walled station enclosure; it would not take long to put it
in condition to stand a siege. No one in China forgets the days of 1900.
The train was of the comfortable corridor sort. Most of the time I was
the only European, and the only person in the first class, but the
second and especially the third were crowded full, although the
passengers did not seem about to flow out of the windows, feet foremost,
as so often on an Indian railway. The Chinese is beset by many fears,
superstitious fears or real mundane ones, but he has the wit to know a
good thing when he sees it, and it does not take him long to overcome
any pet fear that stands in the way of possessing it. In 1870 the first
Chinese railway was built by the great shipowners of the East, Jardine,
Mattheson & Co. It was only twelve miles long, connecting Shanghai with
Woosung. At first there was no trouble, then certain native interests,
fearing the competition, stirred up the people by the usual methods,
finally clinching the opposition by a suicide (hired) under a train; so
in the end the Government bought out the English firm and dismantled the
railway. That was forty years ago, and to-day all that stands in the way
of gridironing China with iron highways is the lack of home capital and
the perfectly reasonable fear of foreign loans. The Chinese want
railways, and they want to build them themselves, but they have not got
the money, and for the moment they prefer to go without rather than put
themselves in the power of European capitalists and European
governments. And who can blame them?
The Six Power Railway Loan of 1908 proved the undoing of the Manchus,
and the inevitable sequence, the appointing of European and American
engineers,--to the American was assigned the important section between
Ichang and Chengtu,--was bringing matters to a head before I left China.
The Changsha outbreak in the early summer was directed against the
Government's railway policy, represented for the moment in the newly
appointed Director of Communications, the Manchu Tuan Fang, who visited
the United States in 1906 as a member of the Imperial Commission. Many
will remember the courteous old man, perhaps the most progressive of all
the Manchu leaders. I had hoped to meet him in China, but on inquiring
his whereabouts when in Shanghai I was told that he had been degraded
from his post as Viceroy of Nanking and was living in retirement. A few
weeks later the papers were full of his new appointment, extolling his
patriotism in accepting an office inferior to the one from which he had
been removed. But delays followed, and when the rioting occurred in
Changsha he had not yet arrived at headquarters in Hankow. It was said
openly that he was afraid. On my way north the train drew up one evening
on a siding, and when I asked the reason I was told a special train was
going south bearing His Excellency Tuan Fang to his post. He had just
come from a conference at Chang-te-ho with Yuan Shih Kai, who was living
there in retirement nursing his "gouty leg." If only one could have
heard that last talk between the two great supporters of a falling
dynasty.
And one went on his way south to take up the impossible task of stemming
the tide of revolution, and before four months were past he was dead,
struck down and beheaded by his own soldiers in a little Szechuan town,
while the other, biding his time, stands to-day at the head of the new
Republic of the East.
The Lu-Han railway, as the Peking-Hankow line is called, crosses three
provinces, Hupeh, Honan, and Chihli. Save for low hills on the Hupeh
frontier, it runs the whole way through a flat, featureless country,
cultivated by hand, almost every square foot of it. Seven hundred miles
of rice- and millet-fields and vegetable gardens unbroken by wall or
hedge; nothing to cast a shadow on the dead level except an occasional
walled town or temple grove! And the horrible land was all alive with
swarming, toiling, ant-hill humanity. It was a nightmare.
On the second day we reached the Hoang Ho, China's sorrow and the
engineer's despair. The much-discussed bridge is two miles long,
crossing the river on one hundred and seven spans. As the train moved at
snail's pace there was plenty of time to take in the desolate scene,
stretches of mudflats alternating with broad channels of swirling,
turbid water; and, unlike the Yangtse, gay with all sorts of craft, the
strong current of the Yellow River rolled along undisturbed by sweep or
screw.
Once across the Hoang Ho and you enter the loess country, dear to the
tiller of the soil, but the bane of the traveller, for the dust is often
intolerable. But there was little change in scenery until toward noon of
the following day, when the faint, broken outlines of hills appeared on
the northern horizon. As we were delayed by a little accident it was
getting dark when we rumbled along below the great wall of Peking into
the noisy station alive with the clamour of rickshaw boys and hotel
touts. In fifteen minutes I was in my comfortable quarters at the Hotel
des Wagons Lits, keen for the excitement of the first view of one of the
world's great historic capitals.
Peking is set in the middle of the large plain that stretches one
hundred miles from the Gulf of Pechihli to the Pass of Nankow. On the
north it is flanked by low hills, thus happily excluding all evil
influences, but it is open to the good, that always come from the south.
So from a Chinese point of view its location is entirely satisfactory,
but a European might think it was dangerously near the frontier for the
capital city of a great state. Years ago Gordon's advice to the Tsungli
Yamen was, "Move your Queen Bee to Nanking." And just now the same thing
is being said, only more peremptorily, by some of the Chinese
themselves. But for the moment lack of money and fear of Southern
influences have carried the day against any military advantage, and the
capital remains where it is. Perhaps the outsider may be permitted to
say she is glad, for Nanking could never hope to rival the Northern city
in charm and interest.
The most wonderful thing in Peking is the wall. That is what first holds
your attention, and you never for a moment forget it. There it stands,
aloof and remote, dominating the city it was set to defend, but not a
part of it. Huge, massive, simple, it has nothing in common with the
gaudy, over-ornamented, unrestful buildings of the Chinese, and as you
enter its shadow you seem to have passed into a different world.
Often before breakfast I climbed to the top of the wall beyond the Water
Gate for a run with Jack before the heat of the day set in. It was a
glorious place for a morning walk. The wall is some forty feet high,
and along the top runs a broad path enclosed by crenellated parapets.
From here your vision ranges north and south and east and west; no
smoke, no tall chimneys, no towering, hideous buildings to break and
spoil the view.
North you look over the Tartar City, which is really three cities, all
walled, and one within the other like the boxes of a puzzle, the Tartar
City enclosing the Imperial City, and that in turn the Forbidden City.
If you stand under the many-storied tower that surmounts the Chien-Men,
you look straight along the road that leads through the vermilion walls,
right into the Purple City, the heart of Peking. In Marco Polo's time
the middle door of the great portal was never opened save to admit the
emperor, and that was still true a few months ago, but last winter a day
came when the bars rolled back, and there entered no emperor, no ruler,
but the representative of the People's Assembly, and then a placard was
posted announcing that hereafter the door was open to every one, for all
China belonged to the people. For a matter-of-fact man the Chinese has a
very dramatic way of doing things.
Turning southwards from the top of the wall you look beyond the Chinese
City, which is nothing but a walled suburb, to the gleaming white walls
of the Temple of Heaven, half buried in the trees. There each year the
emperor comes to offer sacrifices to his ancestors, the crowning
expression of China's truest religion, ancestor worship. In a few months
only, Prince Ch'un, the Regent, whom you have just met driving in state
through the Imperial City, standing among his ministers, and acting for
the baby emperor, will take the oath, not to the people of China, nor to
any representative assembly, but to the imperial ancestors to accept and
obey the new constitutional principles. "I, your descendant, P'u Yi," he
will say, "have endeavoured to consummate the constitutional programme,
but my policy and my choice of officials have not been wise. Hence the
recent troubles. Fearing the fall of the sacred dynasty I accept the
advice of the National Assembly, and I vow to uphold the nineteen
constitutional articles, and to organize a Parliament.... I and my
descendants will adhere to it forever. Your Heavenly Spirits will see
and understand."
[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
TARTAR WALL, PEKING]
[Illustration: _Underwood & Underwood_
CARAVAN OUTSIDE THE TARTAR WALL]
There is unfailing charm and interest in the view over Peking from the
top of the wall. Chinese cities are generally attractive, looked down
upon from above, because of the many trees, but here the wealth of
foliage and blaze of colour are almost bewildering; the graceful
outlines of pagoda and temple, the saucy tilt of the roofs, yellow and
green, imperial and princely, rising above stretches of soft brown
walls, the homes of the people, everything framed in masses of living
green; and stretching around it all, like a huge protecting arm, the
great grey wall. You sigh with satisfaction; nowhere is there a jarring
note; and then--you turn your eyes down to the grounds and buildings of
the American Legation at your feet, clean, comfortable, uncompromising,
and alien. Near you paces to and fro a soldier, gun on shoulder, his
trim figure set off by his well-fitting khaki clothes, unmistakably
American, unmistakably foreign, guarding this strip of Peking's great
wall, where neither Manchu nor Chinese may set foot. And then your gaze
travels along the wall, to where, dimly outlined against the horizon,
you discern the empty frames of the wonderful astronomical instruments
that were once the glory of Peking, now adorning a Berlin museum, set up
for the German holiday-makers to gape at. After all, there are
discordant notes in Peking.
Down in the streets there is plenty of life and variety. Mongol and
Manchu and Chinese jostle each other in the dust or mud of the broad
highways. The swift rickshaws thread their way through the throng with
amazing dexterity. Here the escort of a great official clatters by, with
jingling swords and flutter of tassels, there a long train of camels
fresh from the desert blocks the road. The trim European victoria, in
which sits the fair wife of a Western diplomat, fresh as a flower in her
summer finery, halts side by side with the heavy Peking cart, its curved
matting top framing the gay dress and gayer faces of some Manchu women.
And the kaleidoscopic scene moves against a background of shops and
houses gay with paint and gilding. The life, the colour, the noise are
bewildering; your head begins to swim. And then you look away from it
all to the great wall. There it stands, massive, aloof, untouched by the
petty life at its foot. And you think of all it has looked upon; what
tales of men and their doings it could tell. And you ask the first
European you meet, or the last,--it is always the same,--about the place
and its history, and he says, "Oh, yes, Peking is full of historical
memorials which you must not fail to see"; but they always turn out to
be the spots made famous in the siege of the legations. To the average
European, Peking's history begins in 1900; you cannot get away from that
time, and after a while you tire of it, and you tire, too, of all the
bustle and blaze of colour. And you climb again to the top of the wall
that seems to belong to another world, and you look off toward the great
break in the hills, to Nankow, the Gate of the South. On the other side
the road leads straight away to the Mongolian uplands where the winds
blow, and to the wide, empty spaces of the desert.
So you turn your back upon Peking, and the railway takes you to Kalgan
on the edge of the great plateau. It is only one hundred and twenty-five
miles away, but you spend nearly a whole day in the train, for you are
climbing all the way. And time does not matter, for it is interesting to
see what the Chinese can do in railway building and railway managing,
all by themselves. The Kalgan-Peking railway was the first thing of the
kind constructed by the Chinese, and the engineer in chief,
Chang-Tien-You, did the work so well (he was educated in America, one of
the group that came in the early seventies) that he was later put in
charge of the railway that was to be built from Canton northwards. It
seems to be an honest piece of work; at any rate, the stations had a
substantial look.
At the grand mountain gateway of Nankow you pass under the Great Wall,
which crosses the road at right angles, and as you slowly steam across
the plateau on the outer side, you see it reappearing from time to time
like a huge snake winding along the ridges. Old wall, new railway; which
will serve China best? One sought to keep the world out, the other
should help to create a Chinese nation that will not need to fear the
world.
My first impression of Kalgan was of a modern European station, and many
lines of rails; my last and most enduring, the kindness of the Western
dweller in the East to the stray Westerner of whose doings he probably
disapproves. Between these two impressions I had only time to gain a
passing glimpse of the town itself. It is a busy, dirty place, enclosed
in high walls, and cut in two by the rapid Ta Ho. A huddle of palaces,
temples, banks lies concealed behind the mud walls that hem in the
narrow lanes, for Kalgan has been for many years an important trading
centre, and through here passes the traffic across the Gobi Desert. In
the dirty, open square crowded with carts are two or three incongruous
Western buildings, for the foreigner and his ways have found the town
out. Of the small European community, missionaries of different
nationalities and Russians of various callings form the largest groups.
The energetic British American Tobacco Company also has its
representatives here, who were my most courteous hosts during my two
days' stay.
Kalgan stands hard-by the Great Wall; here China and Mongolia meet, and
the two races mingle in its streets. Nothing now keeps them in or out,
but the barrier of a great gulf is there. Behind you lie the depressing
heat and the crowded places of the lowlands. Before you is the untainted
air, the emptiness of Mongolia. You have turned your back on the
walled-in Chinese world, walled houses, walled towns, walled empire; you
look out on the great spaces, the freedom of the desert.