from such hills and from such forest growth as are here represented,
but on lands more distant from the city. But Tsingtao, with its
forty thousand Chinese, and Kiaochow across the bay, with its one
hundred and twenty thousand more, and other villages dotting the
narrow plains, maintain a very great demand for such growth on the
hill lands. The wonder is that forest growth has persisted at all
and has contributed so much in the way of fuel.
Growing in the Forest Garden was a most beautiful wild yellow rose,
native to Shantung, being used for landscape effect in the parking,
and it ought to be widely introduced into other countries wherever
it will thrive. It was growing as heavy borders and massive clumps
six to eight feet high, giving a most wonderful effect, with its
brilliant, dense cloud of the richest yellow bloom. The blossoms are
single, fully as large as the Rosa rugosa, with the tips of the
petals shading into the most dainty light straw yellow, while the
center is a deep orange, the contrast being sufficient to show in
the photograph from which Fig. 121 was prepared. Another beautiful
and striking feature of this rose is the clustering of the blossoms
in one-sided wreath-like sprays, sometimes twelve to eighteen inches
long, the flowers standing close enough to even overlap.
The interpreter engaged for us failed to appear as per agreement so
the next morning we took the early train for Tsinan to obtain a
general view of the country and to note the places most favorable as
points for field study. We had resolved also to make an effort to
secure an interpreter through the American Presbyterian College at
Tsinan. Leaving Tsingtao, the train skirts around the Kiaochow bay
for a distance of nearly fifty miles, where we pass the city of the
same name with its population of 120,000, which had an import and
export trade in 1905 valued at over $24,000,000. At Sochen we passed
through a coal mining district where coal was being brought to the
cars in baskets carried by men. The coal on the loaded open cars was
sprinkled with whitewash, serving as a seal to safe-guard against
stealing during transit, making it so that none could be removed
without the fact being revealed by breaking the seal. This practice
is general in China and is applied to many commodities handled in
bulk. We saw baskets of milled rice carried by coolies sealed with a
pattern laid over the surface by sprinkling some colored powder upon
it. Cut stone, corded for the market, was whitewashed in the same
manner as the coal.
As we were approaching Weihsien, another city of 100,000 people, we
identified one of the deeply depressed, centuries-old roadways, worn
eight to ten feet deep, by chancing to see half a dozen teams
passing along it as the train crossed. We had passed several and
were puzzling to account for such peculiar erosion. The teams gave
the explanation and thus connected our earlier reading with the
concrete. Along these deep-cut roadways caravans may pass, winding
through the fields, entirely unobserved unless one chances to be
close along the line or the movement is discovered by clouds of
dust, one of the methods that has produced them, and we would not be
surprised if gathering manure from them has played a large part
also.
Weihsien is near one of the great commercial highways of China and
in the center of one of the coal mining regions of the province.
Still further along towards Tsinan we passed Tsingchowfu, another of
the large cities of the province, with 150,000 population. All day
we rode through fields of wheat, always planted in rows, and in
hills in the row east of Kaumi, but in single or double continuous
drills westward from here to Tsinan. Thousands of wells used for
irrigation, of the type seen in Fig. 123, were passed during the
day, many of them recently dug to supply water for the barley
suffering from the severe drought which was threatening the crop at
the time.
It was 6:30 P. M. before our train pulled into the station at
Tsinan; 7:30 when we had finished supper and engaged a ricksha to
take us to the American Presbyterian College in quest of an
interpreter. We could not speak Chinese, the ricksha boy could
neither speak nor understand a word of English, but the hotel
proprietor had instructed him where to go. We plunged into the
narrow streets of a great Chinese city, the boy running wherever he
could, walking where he must on account of the density of the crowds
or the roughness of the stone paving. We had turned many corners,
crossed bridges and passed through tunneled archways in sections of
the massive city walls, until it was getting dusk and the ricksha
man purchased and lighted a lantern. We were to reach the college in
thirty minutes but had been out a full hour. A little later the boy
drew up to and held conference with a policeman. The curious of the
street gathered about and it dawned upon us that we were lost in the
night in the narrow streets of a Chinese city of a hundred thousand
people. To go further would be useless for the gates of the mission
compound would be locked. We could only indicate by motions our
desire to return, but these were not understood. On the train a
thoughtful, kindly old German had recognized a stranger in a foreign
land and volunteered useful information, cutting from his daily
paper an advertisement describing a good hotel. This gave the name
of the hotel in German, English and in Chinese characters. We handed
this to the policeman, pointing to the name of the hotel, indicating
by motions the desire to return, but apparently he was unable to
read in either language and seemed to think we were assuming to
direct the way to the college. A man and boy in the crowd apparently
volunteered to act as escort for us. The throng parted and we left
them, turned more corners into more unlighted narrow alleyways, one
of which was too difficult to permit us to ride. The escorts, if
such they were, finally left us, but the dark alley led on until it
terminated at the blank face, probably of some other portion of the
massive city wall we had thrice threaded through lighted tunnels.
Here the ricksha boy stopped and turned about but the light from his
lantern was too feeble to permit reading the workings of his mind
through his face, and our tongues were both utterly useless in this
emergency, so we motioned for him to turn back and by some route we
reached the hotel at 11 P. M.
We abandoned the effort to visit the college, for the purpose of
securing an interpreter, and took the early train back to Tsingtao,
reaching there in time to secure the very satisfactory service of
Mr. Chu Wei Yung, through the further kind offices of Mr. Scott. We
had been twice over the road between the two cities, obtaining a
general idea of the country and of the crops and field operations at
this season. The next morning we took an early train to Tsangkau and
were ready to walk through the fields and to talk with the last
generations of more than forty unbroken centuries of farmers who,
with brain and brawn, have successfully and continuously sustained
large families on small areas without impoverishing their soil. The
next illustration is from a photograph taken in one of these fields.
We astonished the old farmer by asking the privilege of holding his
plow through one round in his little field, but he granted the
privilege readily. Our furrow was not as well turned as his, nor as
well as we could have done with a two-handled Oliver or John Deere,
but it was better than the old man had expected and won his respect.
This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped
piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned
the soil well. The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of
the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow. The cost of
this plow, to the farmer, was $2.15, gold, and when the day's work
is done it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the distance
may be a mile or more, and carefully housed. Chinese history states
that the plow was invented by Shennung, who lived 2737-2697 B. C.
and "taught the art of agriculture and the medical use of herbs". He
is honored as the "God of Agriculture and Medicine."
Through my interpreter we learned that there were twelve in this
man's family, which he maintained on fifteen mow of land, or 2.5
acres, together with his team, consisting of a cow and small donkey,
besides feeding two pigs. This is at the rate of 192 people, 16
cows, 16 donkeys and 32 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and of a
population density equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys
and 512 swine per square mile of cultivated field.
On another small holding we talked with the farmer standing at the
well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating a little piece of barley 30
feet wide and 138 feet long. He owned and was cultivating but one
and two-thirds acres of land and yet there were ten in his family
and he kept one donkey and usually one pig. Here is a maintenance
capacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs on a
forty-acre farm; and a population density of 3840 people, 384
donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile. His usual annual sales in good
seasons were equivalent in value to $73, gold.
In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, barley, large and
small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans or peanuts. Much straw
braid is manufactured in the province by the women and children in
their homes, and the cargo of the steamer on which we returned to
Shanghai consisted almost entirely of shelled peanuts in gunny sacks
and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture of hats
in Europe and America.
Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 24 inches
annually, and this fact has played an important part in determining
the agricultural practices of these very old people. In Fig. 123 is
a closer view than Fig. 27 of the farmer watering his little field
of barley. The well had just been dug over eight feet deep,
expressly and solely to water this one piece of grain once, after
which it would be filled and the ground planted.
The season had been unusually dry, as had been the one before, and
the people were fearing famine. Only 2.44 inches of rain had fallen
at Tsingtao between the end of the preceding October and our visit,
May 21st, and hundreds of such temporary wells had been or were
being dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fifty miles of
railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on the ground was
irrigated, to release the land for one to follow. The homes are in
villages a mile or more apart and often the holdings or rentals are
scattered, separated by considerable distances, hence easy
portability is the key-note in the construction of this irrigating
outfit. The bucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed
with a paste of bean flour. The windlass turns like a long spool on
a single pin and the standard is a tripod with removable legs. Some
wells we saw were sixteen or twenty feet deep and in these the water
was raised by a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope.
The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, as
indicated by the mean of ten years' records at Tsingtao, obtained at
the German Meteorological Observatory through the courtesy of Dr. B.
Meyermanns, are given in the table in which the rainfall of Madison,
Wisconsin, is inserted for comparison.
Mean monthly rainfall. Mean rainfall In 10 days.
Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao, Madison,
Inches. Inches. Inches. Inches.
January .394 1.56 .131 .520
February .240 1.50 .080 .500
March .892 2.12 .297 .707
April 1.240 2.62 .413 .840
May 1.636 3.62 .545 1.207
June 2.702 4.10 .901 1.866
July 6.637 3.90 2.212 1.300
August 5.157 3.21 1.719 1.070
September 2.448 3.15 .816 1.050
October 2.258 2.42 .753 .807
November .398 1.78 .132 .593
December .682 1.77 .227 .590
------------
Total 24.682 31.65
While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain during the year,
against Wisconsin's more than 31 inches, the rainfall during June,
July and August in Shantung is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin
receives but 11.2 inches. This greater summer rainfall, with
persistent fertilization and intense management, in a warm latitude,
are some of the elements permitting Shantung today to feed
38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon which Wisconsin is
yet feeding but 2,333,860. Must American agriculture ultimately feed
sixteen people where it is now feeding but one? If so,
correspondingly more intense and effective practices must follow,
and we can neither know too well nor too early what these Old World
people have been driven to do; how they have succeeded, and how we
and they may improve upon their practices and lighten the human
burdens by more fully utilizing physical forces and mechanical
appliances.
As we passed on to other fields we found a mother and daughter
transplanting sweet potatoes on carefully fitted ridges of nearly
air-dry soil in a little field, the remnant of a table on a deeply
eroded hillside, Fig. 124. The husband was bringing water for
moistening the soil from a deep ravine a quarter of a mile distant,
carrying it on his shoulder in two buckets, Fig. 125, across an
intervening gulch. He had excavated four holes at intervals up the
gulch and from these, with a broken gourd dipper mended with
stitches, he filled his pails, bailing in succession from one to the
other in regular rotation.
The daughter was transplanting. Holding the slip with its tip
between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow
in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a
downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving
a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from
another gourd dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth
was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn over
this, the only tools being the naked hands and dipper.
The father and mother were dressed in coarse garb but the daughter
was neatly clad, with delicate hands decorated with rings and a
bracelet. Neither of the women had bound feet. There were ten in his
family; and on adjacent similar areas they had small patches of
wheat nearly ready for the harvest, all planted in hills, hoed, and
in astonishingly vigorous condition considering the extreme drought
which prevailed. The potatoes were being planted under these extreme
conditions in anticipation of the rainy season which then was fully
due. The summer before had been one of unusual drought, and famine
was threatened. The government had recently issued an edict that no
sheep should be sold from the province, fearing they might be needed
for food. An old woman in one of the villages came out, as we walked
through, and inquired of my interpreter if we had come to make it
rain. Such was the stress under which we found these people.
One of the large farmers, owning ten acres, stated that his usual
yield of wheat in good season was 160 catty per mow, equivalent to
21.3 bushels per acre. He was expecting the current season not more
than one half this amount. As a fertilizer he used a prepared earth
compost which we shall describe later, mixing it with the grain and
sowing in the hills with the seed, applying about 5333 pounds per
acre, which he valued, in our currency, at $8.60, or $3.22 per ton.
A pile of such prepared compost is seen in Fig. 126, ready to be
transferred to the field. The views show with what cleanliness the
yard is kept and with what care all animal waste is saved. The cow
and donkey are the work team, such as was being used by the plowman
referred to in Fig. 122. The mounds in the background of the lower
view are graves; the fence behind the animals is made from the stems
of the large millet, kaoliang, while that at the right of the donkey
is made of earth, both indicative of the scarcity of lumber. The
buildings, too, are thatched and their walls are of earth plastered
with an earthen mortar worked up with chaff.
In another field a man plowing and fertilizing for sweet potatoes
had brought to the field and laid down in piles the finely
pulverized dry compost. The father was plowing; his son of sixteen
years was following and scattering, from a basket, the pulverized
dry compost in the bottom of the furrow. The next furrow covered the
fertilizer, four turned together forming a ridge upon which the
potatoes were to be planted after a second and older son had
smoothed and fitted the crest with a heavy hand rake. The fertilizer
was thus applied directly beneath the row, at the rate of 7400
pounds per acre, valued at $7.15, our currency, or $1.93 per ton.
We were astonished at the moist condition of the soil turned, which
was such as to pack in the hand notwithstanding the extreme drought
prevailing and the fact that standing water in the ground was more
than eight feet below the surface. The field had been without crop
and cultivated. To the question, "What yield of sweet potatoes do
you expect from this piece of land?" he replied, "About 4000 catty,"
which is 440 bushels of 56 pounds per acre. The usual market price
was stated to be $1.00, Mexican, per one hundred catty, making the
gross value of the crop $79.49, gold, per acre. His land was valued
at $60, Mexican, per mow, or $154.80 per acre, gold.
My interpreter informed me that the average well-to-do farmers in
this part of Shantung own from fifteen to twenty mow of land and
this amount is quite ample to provide for eight people. Such farmers
usually keep two cows, two donkeys and eight or ten pigs. The less
well-to-do or small farmers own two to five mow and act as
superintendents for the larger farmers. Taking the largest holding,
of twenty mow per family of eight people, as a basis, the density
per square mile would be 1536 people, and an area of farm land equal
to the state of Wisconsin would have 86,000,000 people; 21,500,000
cows; 21,500,000 donkeys and 86,000,000 swine. These observations
apply to one of the most productive sections of the province, but
very large areas of land in the province are not cultivable and the
last census showed the total population nearly one-half of this
amount. It is clear, therefore, that either very effective
agricultural methods are practiced or else extreme economy is
exercised. Both are true.
On this day in the fields our interpreter procured his dinner at a
farm house, bringing us four boiled eggs, for which he paid at the
rate of 8.3 cents of our money, but his dinner was probably included
in the price. The next table gives the prices for some articles
obtained by inquiry at the Tsingtao market, May 23rd, 1909, reduced
to our currency.
Cents
Old potatoes, per lb 2.18
New potatoes, per lb 2.87
Salted turnip, per lb .86
Onions, per lb 4.10
Radishes, bunch of 10 1.29
String beans, per lb 11.46
Cucumbers, per lb 5.78
Pears, per lb 5.73
Apricots, per lb 8.60
Pork, fresh, per lb 10.33
Fish, per lb 5.73
Eggs, per dozen 5.16
The only items which are low compared with our own prices are salted
turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of the articles listed were out of
season for the locality and were imported for the foreigners,
turnips, radishes, pork, fish and eggs being the exceptions. Prof.
Ross informs us that he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one
cent of our money.
Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, Mexican, or 43
cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnishing his own meals. The
usual wage for farm labor here was $8.60, per year, with board and
lodging. We have referred to the wages paid by missionaries for
domestic service. As servants the Chinese are considered efficient,
faithful and trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. League
to intrust them with the purse for marketing, feeling that they
could be depended upon for the closest bargaining. Commonly, when
instructed to procure a certain article, if they found the price one
or two cash higher than usual they would select a cheaper
substitute. If questioned as to why instructions were not followed
the reply would be "Too high, no can afford."
Mrs. League recited her experience with her cook regarding his use
of our kitchen appliances. After fitting the kitchen with a modern
range and cooking utensils, and working with him to familiarize him
with their use, she was surprised, on going into the kitchen a few
days later, to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on the
range and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furniture.
When asked why he was not using the stove his reply was "Take too
much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of these people more than
incurring of needless expense, extravagance in any form, or poor
judgment in making purchases.
Daily we became more and more impressed by the evidence of the
intense and incessant stress imposed by the dense populations of
centuries, and how, under it, the laws of heredity have wrought upon
the people, affecting constitution, habits and character. Even the
cattle and sheep have not escaped its irresistible power. Many times
in this province we saw men herding flocks of twenty to thirty sheep
along the narrow unfenced pathways winding through the fields, and
on the grave lands. The prevailing drought had left very little
green to be had from these places and yet sheep were literally
brushing their sides against fresh green wheat and barley, never
molesting them. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the
grain by an approaching train, but immediately they returned to
their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and
an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring
them back to their uninviting pastures.
In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen white goats
were often seen feeding single file along the pathways, held by a
cord like a string of beads, sometimes led by a child. Here, too,
one of the most common sights was the water buffalo grazing
unattended among the fields along the paths and canal banks, with
crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in
Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at
the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese
houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the canal
bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we
looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of grass, that we were
gliding along Whitewater creek through familiar meadows and that
standing up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there
glided into view, framed in the doorway and projected high against
the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant water buffalo standing
motionless as a statue on the summit of a huge grave mound, lifted
fully ten feet above the field. But in a flash this was replaced by
a companion scene, and with all its beautiful setting, which had
been as suddenly fixed on the memory fourteen years before in the
far away Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn
in the hills, suddenly exposed a wild ox of Scotland similarly
thrust against the sky from a small but isolated rocky summit, and
then, outspeeding the wireless, recollection crossed two oceans and
an intervening continent, bringing us back to China before a speed
of five miles, per hour could move the first picture across the
narrow doorway.
It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stalwart
freighters referred to, Fig. 32, passed us on one of the paths
leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country villages, already
eleven miles on their way with their wheelbarrows loaded with
matches made in Japan. Many of the wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai
and other cities are from Shantung families, away for employment,
expecting to return. During the harvest season, too, many of these
people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employment,
returning to their homes in winter. Alexander Hosie, in his book on
Manchuria, states that from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese
laborers cross to Newchwang every spring by steamer, others finding
their way there by junks or other means, so that after the harvest
season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than left that way in
the spring, from which he concludes that Shantung annually supplies
Manchuria with agricultural labor to the extent of 30,000 men.