portrayed in Fig. 73, in corresponding costume, are typical
illustrations of the manner in which food for body warmth is
minimized and of the way the heat generated in the body is
conserved. Observe his wadded and quilted frock, his trousers of
similar goods tied about the ankle, with his feet clad in multiple
socks and cloth shoes provided with thick felted soles. These types
of dress, with the wadding, quilting, belting and tying, incorporate
and confine as part of the effective material a large volume of air,
thus securing without cost, much additional warmth without
increasing the weight of the garments. Beneath these outer garments
several under pieces of different weights are worn which greatly
conserve the warmth during the coldest weather and make possible a
wide range of adjustment to suit varying changes in temperature. It
is doubtful if there could he devised a wardrobe suited to the
conditions of these people at a smaller first cost and maintenance
expense. Rev. E. A. Evans, of the China Inland Mission, for many
years residing at Sunking in Szechwan, estimated that a farmer's
wardrobe, once it was procured, could be maintained with an annual
expenditure of $2.25 of our currency, this sum procuring the
materials for both repairs and renewals.
The intense individual economy, extending to the smallest matters,
so universally practiced by these people, has sustained the massive
strength of the Mongolian nations through their long history and
this trait is seen in their handling of the fuel problem, as it is
in all other lines. In the home of Mrs. Wu, owner and manager of a
25-acre rice farm in Chekiang province, there was a masonry kang
seven by seven feet, about twenty-eight inches high, which could be
warmed in winter by building a fire within. The top was fitted for
mats to serve as couch by day and as a place upon which to spread
the bed at night. In the Shantung province we visited the home of a
prosperous farmer and here found two kangs in separate sleeping
apartments, both warmed by the waste heat from the kitchen whose
chimney flue passed horizontally under the kangs before rising
through the roof. These kangs were wide enough to spread the beds
upon, about thirty inches high, and had been constructed from brick
twelve inches square and four inches thick, made from the clay
subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plastic mass, mixed
with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a
mortar of the same material. These massive kangs are thus capable of
absorbing large amounts of the waste heat from the kitchen during
the day and of imparting congenial warmth to the couches by day and
to the beds and sleeping apartments during the night. In some
Manchurian inns large compound kangs are so arranged that the guests
sleep heads together in double rows, separated only by low dividing
rails, securing the greatest economy of fuel, providing the guests
with places where they may sit upon the moderately warmed fireplace,
and spread their beds when they retire.
The economy of the chimney beds does not end with the warmth
conserved. The earth and straw brick, through the processes of
fermentation and through shrinkage, become open and porous after
three or four years of service, so that the draft is defective,
giving annoyance from smoke, which requires their renewal. But the
heat, the fermentation and the absorption of products of combustion
have together transformed the comparatively infertile subsoil into
what they regard as a valuable fertilizer and these discarded brick
are used in the preparation of compost fertilizers for the fields.
On account of this value of the discarded brick the large amount of
labor involved in removing and rebuilding the kangs is not regarded
altogether as labor lost.
Our own observations have shown that heating soils to dryness at a
temperature of 110 deg C. greatly increases the freedom with which
plant food may be recovered from them by the solvent power of water,
and the same heating doubtless improves the physical and biological
conditions of the soil as well. Nitrogen combined as ammonia, and
phosphorus, potash and lime are all carried with the smoke or soot,
mechanically in the draft and arrested upon the inner walls of the
kangs or filter into the porous brick with the smoke, and thus add
plant food directly to the soil. Soot from wood has been found to
contain, as an average, 1.36 per cent of nitrogen; .51 per cent of
phosphorus and 5.34 per cent of potassium. We practice burning straw
and corn stalks in enormous quantities, to get them easily out of
the way, thus scattering on the winds valuable plant food,
thoughtlessly and lazily wasting where these people laboriously and
religiously save. These are gains in addition to those which result
from the formation of nitrates, soluble potash and other plant foods
through fermentation. We saw many instances where these discarded
brick were being used, both in Shantung and Chihli provinces, and it
was common in walking through the streets of country villages to see
piles of them, evidently recently removed.
The fuel grown on the farms consists of the stems of all
agricultural crops which are to any extent woody, unless they can be
put to some better use. Rice straw, cotton stems pulled by the roots
after the seed has been gathered, the stems of windsor beans, those
of rape and the millets, all pulled by the roots, and many other
kinds, are brought to the market tied in bundles in the manner seen
in Figs. 74, 75 and 76. These fuels are used for domestic purposes
and for the burning of lime, brick, roofing tile and earthenware as
well as in the manufacture of oil, tea, bean-curd and many other
processes. In the home, when the meals are cooked with these light
bulky fuels, it is the duty of some one, often one of the children,
to sit on the floor and feed the fire with one hand while with the
other a bellows is worked to secure sufficient draft. The
manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake is one of the
common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw
rice hulls and rice straw being used as fuel. In the large low,
one-story, tile-roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory
and dwelling, a family of four generations were at work, the
grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading in
the home and store where the cotton seed oil was being. retailed for
22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cake at 33 cents, gold, per
hundredweight. Back of the store and living rooms, in the mill
compartment, three blindfolded water buffalo, each working a granite
mill, were crushing and grinding the cotton seed. Three other
buffalo, for relay service, were lying at rest or eating, awaiting
their turn at the ten-hour working day. Two of the mills were
horizontal granite burrs more than four feet in diameter, the upper
one revolving once with each circuit made by the cow. The third mill
was a pair of massive granite rollers, each five feet in diameter
and two feet thick, joined on a very short horizontal axle which
revolved on a circular stone plate about a vertical axis once with
each circuit of the buffalo. Two men tended the three mills. After
the cotton seed had been twice passed through the mills it was
steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The
steamer consisted of two covered wooden hoops not unlike that seen
in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal was
placed over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water
from which the steam was forced through the charge of meal. Each
charge was weighed in a scoop balanced on the arm of a bamboo scale,
thus securing a uniform weight for the cakes.
On the ground in front of the furnace sat a boy of twelve years
steadily feeding rice chaff into the fire with his left hand at the
rate of about thirty charges per minute, while with his right hand,
and in perfect rhythm, he drew back and forth the long plunger of a
rectangular box bellows, maintaining a forced draft for the fire. At
intervals the man who was bringing fuel fed into the furnace a
bundle of rice straw, thus giving the boy's left arm a moment's
respite. When the steaming has rendered the oil sufficiently fluid
the meal is transferred, hot, to ten-inch hoops two inches deep,
made of braided bamboo strands, and is deftly tramped with the bare
feet, while hot, the operator steadying himself by a pair of hand
bars. After a stack of sixteen hoops, divided by a slight sifting of
chaff or short straw to separate the cakes, had been completed these
were taken to one of four pressmen, who were kept busy in expressing
the oil.
The presses consisted of two parallel timbers framed together, long
enough to receive the sixteen hoops on edge above a gap between
them. These cheeses of meal are subjected to an enormous pressure
secured by means of three parallel lines of wedges forced against
the follower each by an iron-bound master wedge, driven home with a
heavy beetle weighing some twenty-five or thirty pounds. The lines
of wedges were tightened in succession, the loosened line receiving
an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the
master wedge, which was then driven home. To keep good the supply of
wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy,
older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping
new ones, the broken wedges and the chips going to the furnace for
fuel.
By this very simple, readily constructed and inexpensive mechanism
enormous pressures were secured and when the operator had obtained
the desired compression he lighted his pipe and sat down to smoke
until the oil ceased dripping into the pit sunk in the floor beneath
the press. In this interval the next series of cakes went to another
press and the work thus kept up during the day.
Six hundred and forty cakes was the average daily output of this
family of eight men and two boys, with their six water buffalo. The
cotton seed cakes were being sold as feed, and a near-by Chinese
dairyman was using them for his herd of forty water buffalo, seen in
Fig. 78, producing milk for the foreign trade in Shanghai. This herd
of forty cows one of which was an albino, was giving an average of
but 200 catty of milk per day, or at the rate of six and two-thirds
pounds per head! The cows have extremely small udders but the milk
is very rich, as indicated by an analysis made in the office of the
Shanghai Board of Health and obtained through the kindness of Dr.
Arthur Stanley. The milk showed a specific gravity of 1.028 and
contained 20.1 per cent total solids; 7.5 per cent fat; 4.2 per cent
milk sugar and .8 per cent ash. In the family of Rev. W. H. Hudson,
of the Southern Presbyterian Mission, Kashing, whose very gracious
hospitality we enjoyed on two different occasions, the butter made
from the milk of two of these cows, one of which, with her calf, is
seen in Fig. 79, was used on the family table. It was as white as
lard or cottolene but the texture and flavor were normal and far
better than the Danish and New Zealand products served at the
hotels.
The milk produced at the Chinese dairy in Shanghai was being sold in
bottles holding two pounds, at the rate of one dollar a bottle, or
43 cents, gold. This seems high and there may have been
misunderstanding on the part of my interpreter but his answer to my
question was that the milk was being sold at one Shanghai dollar per
bottle holding one and a half catty, which, interpreted, is the
value given above.
But fuel from the stems of cultivated plants which are in part
otherwise useful, is not sufficient to meet the needs of country and
village, notwithstanding the intense economies practiced. Large
areas of hill and mountain land are made to contribute their share,
as we have seen in the south of China, where pine boughs were being
used for firing the lime and cement kilns. At Tsingtao we saw the
pine bough fuel on the backs of mules, Fig. 80, coming from the
hills in Shantung province. Similar fuels were being used in Korea
and we have photographs of large pine bough fuel stacks, taken in
Japan at Funabashi, east from Tokyo.
The hill and mountain lands, wherever accessible to the densely
peopled plains, have long been cut over and as regularly has
afforestation been encouraged and deliberately secured even through
the transplanting of nursery stock grown expressly for that purpose.
We had read so much regarding the reckless destruction of forests in
China and Japan and had seen so few old forest trees except where
these had been protected about temples, graves or houses, that when
Rev. R. A. Haden, of the Elizabeth Blake hospital, near Soochow
insisted that the Chinese were deliberate foresters and that they
regularly grow trees for fuel, transplanting them when necessary to
secure a close and early stand, after the area had been cleared, we
were so much surprised that he generously volunteered to accompany
us westward on a two days journey into the hill country where the
practice could be seen.
A family owning a houseboat and living upon it was engaged for the
journey. This family consisted of a recently widowed father, his two
sons, newly married, and a helper. They were to transport us and
provide sleeping quarters for myself, Mr. Haden and a cook for the
consideration of $3.00, Mexican, per day and to continue the journey
through the night, leaving the day for observation in the hills.
The recent funeral had cost the father $100 and the wedding of the
two sons $50 each, while the remodeling of the houseboat to meet the
needs of the new family relations cost still another $100. To meet
these expenses it had been necessary to borrow the full amount,
$300. On $100 the father was paying 20 per cent interest; on $50 he
was compelled to pay 50 per cent interest. The balance he had
borrowed from friends without interest but with the understanding
that he would return the favor should occasion be required.
Rev. A. E. Evans informed us that it is a common practice in China
for neighbors to help one another in times of great financial
stress. This is one of the methods:
A neighbor may need 8000 cash. He prepares a feast and sends
invitations to a hundred friends. They know there has been no death
in his family and that there is no wedding, still it is understood
that he is in need of money. The feast is prepared at a small
expense. The invited guests come, each bringing eighty cash as a
present. The recipient is expected to keep a careful record of
contributing friends and to repay the sum. Another method is like
this: For some reason a man needs to borrow 20,000 cash. He proposes
to twenty of his friends that they organize a club to raise this
sum. If the friends agree each pays 1000 cash to the organizing
member. The balance of the club draw lots as to which member shall
be number two, three, four, five, etc., designating the order in
which payments shall be made. The man borrowing the money is then
under obligation to see that these payments are met in full at the
times agreed upon. Not infrequently a small rate of interest is
charged.
Rates of interest are very high in China, especially on small sums
where securities are not the best. Mr. Evans informs me that two per
cent per month is low and thirty per cent per annum is very commonly
collected. Such obligations are often never met but they do not
outlaw and may descend from father to son.
The boat cost $292.40 in U. S. currency; the yearly earning was
$107.50 to $120.40. The funeral cost $43 and $43 more was required
for the wedding of the two sons. They were receiving for the
services of six people $1.29 per day. An engagement for two weeks or
a month could have been made for materially lower rates and their
average daily earning, on the basis of three hundred days service in
the year, and the $120.40 total earning, would be only 40.13 cents,
less than seven cents each, hence their trip with us was two of
their banner days. Foreigners in Shanghai and other cities
frequently engage such houseboat service for two weeks or a month of
travel on the canals and rivers, finding it a very enjoyable as well
as inexpensive way of having a picnic outing.
On reaching the hill lands the next morning there were such scenes
as shown in Fig. 82, where the strips of tree growth, varying from
two to ten years, stretched directly up the slope, often in strong
contrast on account of the straight boundaries and different ages of
the timber. Some of these long narrow holdings were less than two
rods wide and on one of these only recently cut, up which we walked
for considerable distance, the young pine were springing up in
goodly numbers. As many as eighteen young trees were counted on a
width of six feet across the strip of thirty feet wide. On this area
everything had been recently cut clean. Even stumps and the large
roots were dug and saved for fuel.
In Fig. 83 are seen bundles of fuel from such a strip, just brought
into the village, the boughs retaining the leaves although the fuel
had been dried. The roots, too, are tied in with the limbs so that
everything is saved. On our walk to the hills we passed many people
bringing their loads of fuel swinging from carrying poles on their
shoulders. Inquiries regarding the afforestation of these strips of
hillside showed that the extensive digging necessitated by the
recovery of the roots usually caused new trees to spring up quickly
as volunteers from scattered seed and from the roots, so that
planting was not generally required. Talking with a group of people
as to where we could see some of the trees used for replanting the
hillsides, a lad of seven years was first to understand and
volunteered to conduct us to a planting. This he did and was
overjoyed on receipt of a trifle for his services. One of these
little pine nurseries is seen in Fig. 84, many being planted in
suitable places through the woods. The lad led us to two such
locations with whose whereabouts he was evidently very familiar,
although they were considerable distance from the path and far from
home. These small trees are used in filling in places where the
volunteer growth has not been sufficiently close. A strong
herbaceous growth usually springs up quickly on these newly cleared
lands and this too is cut for fuel or for use in making compost or
as green manure.
The grass which grows on the grave lands, if not fed off, is also
cut and saved for fuel. We saw several instances of this outside of
Shanghai, one where a mother with her daughter, provided with rake,
sickle, basket and bag, were gathering the dry stubble and grass of
the previous season, from the grave lands where there was less than
could be found on our closely mowed meadows. In Fig. 85 may be seen
a man who has just returned with such a load, and in his hand is the
typical rake of the Far East, made by simply bending bamboo splints,
claw-shape, and securing them as seen in the engraving.
In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in Manchuria, millet stems,
especially those of the great kaoliang or sorghum, are extensively
used for fuel and for building as well as for screens, fences and
matting. At Mukden the kaoliang was selling as fuel at $2.70 to
$3.00, Mexican, for a 100-bundle load of stalks, weighing seven
catty to the bundle. The yield per acre of kaoliang fuel amounts to
5600 pounds and the stalks are eight to twelve feet long, so that
when carried on the backs of mules or horses the animals are nearly
hidden by the load. The price paid for plant stem fuel from
agricultural crops, in different parts of China and Japan, ranged
from $1.30 to $2.85, U. S. currency, per ton. The price of
anthracite coal at Nanking was $7.76 per ton. Taking the weight of
dry oak wood at 3500 pounds per cord, the plant stem fuel, for equal
weight, was selling at $2.28 to $5.00.
Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries
and sent to market baled in rough matting or in basketwork cases
woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels.
When such wood is not converted into charcoal it is sawed into one
or two-foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen in
Fig. 77.
Along the Mukden-Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being
shipped in four-foot lengths, in the form of cordwood. In Korea
cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in
four-foot sticks laid blanket-fashion over the animal, extending far
down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to the
railway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small
trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China where we visited, the
tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the
ground wherever there was not individual ownership in small
holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many
cases, but these were always small, evidently not more than two or
three years standing, and appearing to have been repeatedly cut
back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy
oak boughs brought to the rice fields and used as green manure.
There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and
Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju and Fusan in Korea; and throughout
most of our journey in Japan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from
Shimonoseki to Yokohama. In all of these countries afforestation
takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings are made
once in ten, twenty or twenty-five years. When the wood is sold to
those coming for it the takers pay at the rate of 40 sen per one
horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87.
Director Ono, of the Akashi Experiment station, informed us that
such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in
ten years, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the
ten-year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre but when they are
suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom
culture is extensively practiced under the shade of some of these
wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of
$100 per acre.
The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto,
amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of
which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state
and to the Imperial Crown.
In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of
materials other than wood for building purposes and very many of the
substitutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields.
The use of rice straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village,
Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, and
even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed
in the Canton delta region, such a construction being warm for
winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs,
however, is short and they must be renewed as often as every three
to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for
the fields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes
only going to the fields.
Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings,
are very extensively used for roofing, clay being abundant and near
at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used
alone or plastered, as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes
mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings
outside the larger cities.
At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet
roofs and the use of kaoliang stems as lumber. Rafters were set in
the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the
long kaoliang stems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were
tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of
matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the
surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side.
Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in
bundles eight inches thick, cut square across the butts to eighteen
inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses
after the manner of shingles but the butts of the stems are driven
forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, making the
courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be
plastered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, which is
less liable to wash in heavy rain.
The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the
long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts
about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates
carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to
them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were
plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A
similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts and
similarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house,
leaving dead air spaces between the girts.