and how many are the little comic touches of travel, which are too small
to enumerate, but which lend such charm to daily life, when you have
a congenial fellow traveller at your elbow! Very soon our interpreter
found his mountain chair not suitable to his dignity, and told me he had
decided to travel in a “paper box”: this is an accurate definition of
the chair which is commonly in use, and which is so carefully enclosed
that from its depths you can scarcely see anything of the scenery. When
the front blind is down there is nothing to be seen, but the passenger
in this chaste seclusion can indulge in philosophic meditation—or sleep.
Our cook, on the other hand, found his chair an unnecessary luxury, and
soon the thrifty fellow asked permission to have the money instead of the
coolie hire. I willingly agreed, as he never lagged behind and was always
eager to do any stray job, and to collect wild flowers for us from the
fragrant rose bushes and hedgerows.
That first day from Yünnanfu we passed fields full of beans and corn and
rape, not to mention opium poppy, which was to be the main crop we saw
all along the way in these southern provinces.
Very soon our joy was chastened by a tremendous rainstorm, but we were
glad to find that our chairs were perfectly rainproof. The top was
covered with American cloth and there were blinds of the same material
to let down on all sides. When we reached our inn, Yao had a room ready
for us, which he had swept out. Our procedure from that time forward
was to send him on ahead after lunch, and he would secure the best
possible room—pretty bad at that—sweep it out, together with any movable
furniture, and have clean straw mats—or as clean as were obtainable—laid
down. When we arrived it took very little time to set up our camp beds,
table, chairs and washstand. We had a canteen with us, so that all the
food was cooked in our own pans, and Yao proved an excellent cook and
foraged well on the road. We only took such necessaries as butter, jam,
milk, tea, bread and biscuits with us, but Yao was clever in making
bread under great difficulties when we happened to run short of it. All
travellers, however, experience the generous hospitality of missionaries,
who seem to consider it a commonplace to provide travellers with bread
and cakes galore. We rarely failed to come to a mission station once a
week, and then our provision baskets were re-stocked. We only carried two
baskets of provisions, namely one coolie load, for three months’ journey,
and had a good deal left at the end: some of the things were special
foods in case of illness, but fortunately they were not required.
From the time we left the capital we gradually rose till we came to the
pass leading into Kweichow. The very first day we came to an altitude of
fifty-nine hundred feet, and this was at the foot of an imposing mountain
called Tu-Du-Shan, or Lord of the Earth; all the next day we skirted
round its base. This day the road was not considered dangerous, so we
only had unarmed police as our escort. They were more decorative than
useful, as generally was the case, but the following day we saw a ghastly
spectacle, which suggested a possible need for protection—two human heads
in a tree and other remains being devoured by a dog in a neighbouring
field. The beauty of the road and all the loveliness of nature seemed
blighted, and it was difficult to rid oneself of the painful impression.
Yet my father saw the body of a criminal swinging in chains on an Essex
common not a hundred years ago, and the musical world listens with
enchantment to “Le Gibet” and enjoys Ravel’s realistic presentation of
it. Some people love horrors: I confess it is the one thing that took the
joy out of our wanderings.
We were asked by one of the missionaries before leaving Yünnan to make
a slight detour on our way to visit a sick woman, as he had done what
he could to relieve her, but not being a doctor he was uncertain as to
treatment, and wished my niece to diagnose the case; if any medicine
could be of use, he would see that she got it. Our arrival created much
interest in the village, and every one would have liked to be spectators
when the medical examination was made. In fact the paper windows
disappeared as by magic, so we had to have a shutter put up, and a native
lamp threw little light on the patient. The one noticeable fact was that
although she was too ill to do any housework the place was scrupulously
clean, and the husband had everything ready in the way of water for
washing. The contrast between a Christian and a non-Christian house in
the matter of cleanliness was really remarkable.
In several of our halting-places there were small Christian communities,
though no resident missionary. They always welcomed us with great
cordiality and invited us to their meetings. These are held in rooms
which are usually paid for by some member of the community, which carries
on the work without much help from any mission: just an occasional visit
and the knowledge that the missionary will help them in any time of need.
In the village of Yi-ling there was an evangelist, who came to call
on us with one of his chief helpers, a grocer; this man had been most
generous in furnishing the hall, and they begged us to come to meeting
that evening. There was quite a large crowd present and the service was
a hearty one; the people looked mostly of a low type and very unlike
Chinese. They asked me to speak, and listened well. After interpreting
for me, Mr. Li, our interpreter, gave an impassioned address, which
revealed to me the fact that he was more keen than I had realized.
His first inquiry in every place was to know if there was a Christian
community.
We were more and more enchanted with the fine scenery as we rose to
greater heights. White and yellow jasmine, white and yellow Banksia
roses, both single and double, filled the air with their fragrance, and
vivid bushes of azalea made glorious patches of colour on the steep
hill-sides. At night we were about sixty-four hundred feet up, and in
the daytime we climbed to considerably higher altitudes. The dangers of
the road were supposed to be increasing as we neared the picturesque
town of Malong, so our military escort rose to ten, further supported by
two policemen not in uniform. Other travellers eagerly took advantage
of their protection and we looked quite an imposing procession. The way
led up very steep mountains and dived sharply down into deep valleys.
Trees full of white or pale mauve blossom were numerous, and scarlet
azalea made a fine contrast. The people in the villages looked hideously
poor and degraded, some of them obviously imbeciles and many with
large goitres: in some villages there were fifty per cent. suffering
from goitre; the beggars were simply terrifying. Again we had a severe
thunderstorm, which came on quite suddenly when we were lunching by the
wayside, and we made ourselves as small as possible in crevices of the
rock. Our poor coolies got very wet and took us at a great pace, as soon
as the rain stopped, to our next halting-place—Malong. The temperature
was 61°.
The night was stormy, and in the morning clouds betokened the
thunderstorm which soon broke, driving us to take scanty refuge in the
crevices of the hill-side. We were glad to reach a mission station early
in the afternoon at Küticul, where we stayed the night. We heard much
about the poverty of the district and the increasing cultivation of
opium poppy. It is tragic to see this when a few years ago the land was
filled with crops needed for the daily food of the people. In some parts
half the crops are opium, and it demands a great deal of labour! The land
has to be twice ploughed, the second time crosswise, well manured, and
the seed (mixed with four times its quantity of sand) is sown three times
between October and March. After the sowing the land has to be harrowed,
then the young plants are hoed and weeded, generally by the women and
children. I have seen the women sitting on stools to do it on account
of their poor little bound feet. This weeding goes on from early spring
till the poppy flowers—generally in May. The petals fall quickly and the
capsule swells till it is about one and a half inches in diameter; this
takes about nine to fifteen days. A special instrument has to be used
to make an incision three-quarters of the way round the capsule, and
this must be done with care as it must not penetrate more than a certain
depth, or the juice will flow inward instead of outward. The incision
is generally made after the middle of the day, on account of the heat,
and the juice must be collected next morning, being scraped off with
a knife and put in a poppy leaf. It is said that the knife has to be
moistened with saliva after every alternate poppy, to prevent the juice
from sticking to it! As soon as the poppy leaf is filled with juice,
another leaf is put over it and it is laid aside in the shade to dry.
This takes several days; the opium in each varies from two ounces to two
pounds, according to the district where it is grown. Sometimes the juice
is collected twice, or even three times, though no second incision of the
capsule is required. It makes one tired to think of the labour required,
especially at the time of collecting the juice, which is necessarily
limited, despite the three sowings.[19]
Opium is said to have been introduced into China in the seventeenth
century, and the first Imperial edict forbidding the use of it was in
1729. The Portuguese were mainly employed in the trade in those early
days. Fresh edicts against it failed to prevent its being smuggled in,
as at the present day, though they became increasingly severe, till the
death penalty was inflicted. The last edict under the Imperial rule was
in 1906, but the dowager empress herself enjoyed her opium pipe, so she
ordained that people over sixty were not to come under the scope of the
act!
[Illustration: The Gate of the Elements.
_Page 84_]
The great Chang Chih-Tung is very emphatic in his denunciation of the
drug. “A hundred years ago the curse came upon us, more blasting and
deadly in its effects than the Great Flood or the scourge of the Fierce
Beasts, for the water assuaged after nine years, and the ravages of the
man-eaters were confined to one place. Opium has spread with frightful
rapidity and heartrending results through the provinces. Millions upon
millions have been struck down by the plague. To-day it is running
like wild-fire. In its swift deadly course it is spreading devastation
everywhere, wrecking the minds and eating away the strength and wealth
of its victims. The ruin of the mind is the most woeful of its many
deleterious effects. The poison enfeebles the will, saps the strength
of the body, renders the consumer incapable of performing his regular
duties, and unfit for travel from one place to another. It consumes his
substance and reduces the miserable wretch to poverty, barrenness and
senility. Unless something is soon done to arrest this awful scourge in
its devastating march, the Chinese people will be transformed into satyrs
and devils!”[20] Many thoughtful Chinese are apprehensive that opium will
finally extirpate the race. This is a severe indictment, but there are
plenty of leading men who will endorse it.
The Republican Government determined to stamp out the evil, and none but
the Chinese could have accomplished so great a reform so rapidly: in
many of the northern provinces there is no poppy grown. But the Southern
Government has not followed suit. No doubt the question of revenue
prevents it; for opium is one of the most lucrative crops as regards
taxation. Naturally there are times of great scarcity, and then it is
quite common for the people to sell their children for food. A missionary
told us of one child being sold for one and a half dollars (about three
shillings): this was a boy of three years old. We saw two nice little
girls on the road being taken to be sold as slaves.
After leaving Küticul we found our coolies very troublesome, and had to
have recourse to the magistrate on two occasions, with a good result. One
day the men firmly refused to go more than an absurdly short stage, and
deposited us in the middle of a village. Our head man stormed and raged,
not another step would they budge. Finally we made a compromise: we
stayed there on the understanding that they would do a hundred and five
li next day, about thirty-two miles. The magistrate later in the day had
an interview with Li and the head coolie, and emphasized the fact that
the agreement had got to be carried out, and the escort was instructed to
come early.
The spell worked! We started about six o’clock on a lovely misty morning,
the dew lying heavy on the grass, and our men walked with a will for some
hours. But like the mist, their zeal evaporated: after lunch they said
they must each have a dollar to go on. Li was in despair at seeing his
remonstrances unheeded. I sent him off to the magistrate. He counselled
giving them ten cents each, and ordered them to start: there was nothing
to be done save agree to it, as the head coolie had disappeared,
evidently feeling unable to cope with the situation. The men grumbled,
but set off, and by a quarter past six we reached Ping-yi, a stiff
twelve hours’ journey. We felt a little sorry for the luggage coolies
and wondered if the loads were not rather heavy, but as they raced at
the end of the stage to see who would be in first, we felt our pity was
misplaced. We stayed in mission premises where a kind old caretaker was
most solicitous for our welfare. Yao could hardly be persuaded not to
prepare our evening meal, but we decided to prepare it for ourselves and
sent him off to the inn with Li.
This was our last night in Yünnan, and we had a wonderful moonlight view
over the valley, which, combined with a hard bed, led me to spend much of
the night beside the window, writing letters. It was an unwonted pleasure
to sleep upstairs and to have a view.
Next day in our escort we had a most friendly young policeman, who was
keen to help us pick flowers after assiduously dealing with our luggage.
We crossed several fine bridges and counted seven varieties of roses,
five varieties of azaleas, iris, Japanese anemones, etc., etc. By midday
we had climbed up to the dividing line between the provinces of Yünnan
and Kweichow: it was marked by a most dilapidated archway leading into
a little village. The usual tutelary stone lions are on either side the
pailou, but those facing into Yünnan have dust and fishy scales carved
on their backs, while those facing into Kweichow have only scales. What
is the meaning of this symbolism? Dust stands for wind and scales for
water, and truly Yünnan has not only rain but also wind in full measure,
while as for Kweichow, we no sooner crossed the threshold than the sun
disappeared and down came the rain.
One day we asked a Kweichow man who had attached himself uninvited to
our company, when we might hope to see the sunshine! He took a long
time to answer the question, and appeared to have been giving Li an
exhaustive discourse on the nature of sunshine. However, the summary of
the discourse was that under the old Imperial regime things were fixed,
and you could count upon them—but under a Republic you could be sure of
nothing!
_Chapter IV_
_The Province of Kweichow_
“Methinks there’s a genius
Roams in the mountains.
...
But dark is the forest
Where now is my dwelling,
Never the light of day
Reaches its shadow.
Thither a perilous
Pathway meanders.
Lonely I stand
On the lonelier hill-top,
Cloudland beneath me
And cloudland around me.
Softly the wind bloweth,
Softly the rain falls,
Joy like a mist blots
The thoughts of my home out.”
—(Ch’ü Yüan: Fourth Century B.C.)
Translated by Cranmer Byng.
_Chapter IV_
_The Province of Kweichow_
[Illustration: A HAYSTACK.]
Not only is there a gateway leading out of Yünnan, but also one of a
quite different character leading into Kweichow, and situated at the
other end of the little frontier village. It is a solid stone gateway in
a stone wall. We passed along a short bit of level street at a height of
6,200 feet before we came to the wall, and then we plunged down a steep
rocky path, with a wonderful view of deep valleys surrounded by abrupt
and jagged mountains.
We found that day seven new varieties of roses, all very sweet-scented,
also rhododendrons, azaleas and irises. At our halting-place for the
night (5,300 feet) we climbed a little hill crowned with a Buddhist
temple, and looked down on trees, which formed a floor of delicate
white blossom as light as snowflakes, trees quite unknown to me, and no
one there seemed able to give us even a Chinese name for them. It is
very difficult to get information, and we had not the time for making
collections.
I tried to learn about them when I came home, and found that there is
in existence a large folio of manuscript of descriptions and specimens
of plants collected by French fathers in this province; but as no one
visits Kweichow there was no demand for such a work, and there is no
hope of it being published. The collection is at the Edinburgh Botanical
Gardens. It was the same with other things: the mountains often had the
strangest forms, and I made careful drawings of their outlines. Photos
were usually out of the question, as the mountains were too close; they
rose up like walls all round us, and the light was always in the wrong
quarter. On my return home I went cheerfully to learned societies with
confident hope of slaking my thirst for knowledge, but alas! No books on
_such_ an unknown part, the very name of course unknown. When my drawings
had been duly inspected, the remark made was, “I must compliment you on
your sketches, I have never seen mountains like that!” Was there a touch
of irony in the remark?
Truly Kweichow is a wonderful country and beautiful in the extreme, as
the late Dr. Morrison (adviser to the Chinese Government) told me when I
went to get his advice before starting. “You could not have chosen a more
interesting part to travel in,” he said, “nor a more beautiful one”; and
he had travelled in almost every part of China. It is full of different
aboriginal races of whom very little is known, its flora is remarkably
rich and varied, and its geology a continual surprise.
The second day across the border we crossed a small plain from which
rise a series of round low mounds, like pudding-basins, from the flat
ricefields—an extraordinary contrast to the lofty, jagged mountains from
which we had just descended. In the midst of it all was a curious tumbled
heap of lava-like appearance, looking as if it had been ejected from the
earth by some colossal earthworms. Sir Alexander Hosie says[21] that
there is a parallel row of these mounds about ten miles to the south:
they run east and west. In the ricefields I saw a brilliant kingfisher,
hanging poised in mid-air in search of prey, while a heron stalked away
at our approach.
The rain grew more and more persistent, and the roads were muddy and
slippery to the last degree. Even the sure-footed Chinese kept tumbling
down, and it was almost less trying to walk than to be bumped down in our
chairs. As we advanced into the province the culture of the opium poppy
(papaver somniferum) increased till it was as much as ninety-nine per
cent. of the crops, and the appearance of the inhabitants showed only
too plainly its disastrous effects. In some of the villages the children
were naked, although it was still cold weather, being only the beginning
of April. In the markets the goods were of the meanest and cheapest
description, and the people looked abject. They rushed out to beg from
us. The main industry of the district was evidently the making of coal
balls. The coal lies actually on the surface, and has only to be scraped
together, mixed with a little earth and water, and then dried: it burns
quite well. Some of the coal is used for fertilizing the ground, being
reduced to ash by being burnt in pits with stones piled on it. Lime also
is used for the poppy fields. Sometimes the coal holes by the wayside
are a couple of yards in diameter. The coir palm is to be seen in every
village, and loquats and walnut trees are cultivated for their fruit.
We struggled along through a thick mist one day, and one after another
went down like ninepins on the slippery path. One of my bearers cut his
ankle, and was thankful for the doctor’s attentions. Suddenly I heard an
ominous roaring sound, and looked in vain for the cause. It proved to be
produced by a big stream, which disappeared into a hole in the earth;
this appears to be quite a common phenomenon, and later on we saw one
bubble out of the ground in the same strange fashion.
Another shape of hill attracted my attention, and as I tried to reproduce
it accurately on paper it became obvious that this was one of the Chinese
mountain forms with which one has been familiar from childhood in their
pictures, and which one had supposed to be a work of imagination. As
they always hold in their canons of art that “form” is quite subsidiary
to “spirit,” I imagined that it was not inability to imitate form
accurately, but a deliberate intention of ignoring it in order to
express some more important truth that was the cause of their drawing,
what seemed to me, such unnatural mountains. But here one discovered
that these forms _are_ natural in China, and it is after all only our
ignorance that makes us so misjudge them.
There were hedges by the roadside all bursting into leaf and blossom, and
I never saw such a wealth of ferns of many kinds. There was material for
a whole volume on ferns alone. Lofty trees of catalpa bungei with their
purple blossom, and Boehmeria nivea grew by the roadside, and rhea grass
in the village gardens.
We generally started the day in a damp mist, and were happy when it
cleared away, even though there was no sunshine. We scanned the hedges
for roses, and felt quite aggrieved if we failed to find fresh varieties
every single day. A lovely blush rose filled us with delight, but pink
moss-roses were only seen on one occasion. We decided that nowhere else
could a greater variety of roses be found: we counted twenty-three
varieties before we left the province, and felt sure we should have found
many more had we stayed longer, for they were hardly in full bloom by the
end of April. One day I picked up a broken branch on the road, thrown
away by some passer-by no doubt because it had no blossoms on it, but
the bright green leaves were a lovely violet on the under side, and I
searched in vain to find a bush of it growing, in order to see what the
flowers were like.
Then, too, the birds were reminiscent of home—magpies, larks,
woodpeckers, wagtails, and even the aggravating cuckoo. But there was
one elusive little fellow, known to all dwellers in Kweichow, though
no one could tell me his name: he had a long shrill note with a short
tut-tut-tut at the end. We both watched for him daily, as he seemed to
haunt our path continually, but never could we catch a sight of him, so
dexterously did he hide himself. Occasionally we thought we saw him, but
it was so momentary a glimpse that we were never sure; the bird we saw
looked about the size and shape and colour of a linnet.