_Stampede of frightened women_. _To the Eagle Nest_. _An acrobatic
performance, and some retaliation at the author's expense_. _Over the
mountains to Pu-pêng A magnificent storm, and a description_. _In a
"rock of ages." Hardiness of my comrades_. _Early morning routine and
some impressions_. _Unspeakable filth of the Chinese_. _Lolo people of
the district_. _Physique of the women_. _Aspirations towards Chinese
customs_. _Skilless building_. _Mythological, anthropological,
craniological and antediluvian disquisitions_. _At Yün-nan-ï_. _Flat
country_. _Thriftless humanity_. _To Hungay_. _A day of days_. _Traveler
in bitter cold unable to procure food_. _Fright in middle night_. _A
timely rescue_. _Murder of a bullock on my doorstep_. _Callous
disposition of fellow-travelers_. _Leaving the capital of an old-time
kingdom_. _Bad roads and good men_. _National virtue of unfailing
patience_. _Human consumption of diseased animals. Minchia at Hungay_.
_Major Davies and the Minchia_. _Author's differences of opinion.
Increasing popularity of the small foot._
But the storm came the next day, as we were on our way to Pu-pêng,
during the ninety li when we passed the highest point on this journey.
By name The Eagle Nest Barrier (Ting-wu-kwan), this elevated pass, 8,600
feet above the level, reached after a gradual ascent between two
mountain ranges, was surmounted after a couple of hours' steep climbing,
where rain and snow had made the paths irritatingly slippery and the
task most laborious. Although the condition of the road was enough to
take all the wind out of one's sails, the sublimity of the scenery of
the dense woods which clothed the mountains, exquisitely pretty ravines,
tumbling waterfalls, running rivulets and sparkling brooks, with little
patches of snow hidden away in the maze of greens of every hue, all
rendered it a climb less tiring than the narrow pathways over which we
were then to travel. Half-way up we met a string of ponies, and I
underwent a few nervous moments until they had passed in the twenty-inch
road--a slight tilt, a slip, a splutter, probably a yell, and I should
have dropped 500 feet without a bump.
As we went along together, just before reaching this hill, we saw women
carrying bags of rice. They saw us, too. One passed me safely, but with
fear. The others carelessly dropping their burdens, scampered off,
afraid of their lives; and when one of my soldiers (whose sense of humor
was on a par with my own when as a boy I used to stick butterscotch
drops on the bald head of my Sunday School teacher, and bend pins for
small boys to sit on and rise from) shouted to them, they dived straight
as a die over the hedge into a submerged rice-field, and made a sorry
spectacle with their "lily" feet and pale blue trousers, covered with
the thin mud. In struggling to get away, one of them, the silly
creature, went sprawling on all fours in the slime, and with only the
imperfect footing possible to her with her little stumps, she would have
been submerged, had not the man who had frightened her, at my bidding,
gone to drag her out. As it was, they looked anything but beautiful with
their wet and muddy garments clinging tightly to their bodies, and
betraying every curve of their not unbeautiful figures. One of the
women, a comely damsel of some twenty summers, did not jump into the
field, but lay flat on the ground behind some bushes, thereby hoping to
get out of sight, and now came forward with amorous glances. We,
however, sent them on their way, and I will lay my life that they will
not "scoot" at the sight of the next foreigner.
And now we are at the "Nest." Many travelers have made remarks upon this
place, where I was waited upon by a shrivelled, shambling specimen of
manhood, whose wife--in contrast to her kind in China--seemed to rule
house and home, bed and board. Whilst we were there, a Chinese, bound
on the downward journey, endeavored to mount his mule at the very moment
the animal was reaching out for a blade of straw. As he swung his leg
across the mule took another step forward, and the rider fell bodily
with an enormous bump into the lap of one of my coolies, upsetting him
and his bowl of tea over his trousers and my own. I could not suppress
hearty approval of this acrobatic incident.
But the end was not yet.
I sat on one end of one of those narrow forms, and this same coolie sat
on the other. He rose up suddenly, reached over for the common salt-pot,
and I came off--with the multitude of alfresco diners laughing at this
smart retaliation until their chock-full mouths emitted the grains of
rice they chewed.
After that I cleared off. Descending through a fertile valley, from the
bottom there loomed upwards higher mountains, looking black and dismal,
with clouds black and dismal keeping them company. We had now to cross
the undulating ground still separating us from Pu-pêng. The early
portion of the ground was something like Clifton Downs, something like
Dartmoor. The country was poor, and the people barely put themselves out
to boil water for chance travelers.
The storm broke suddenly. From the shelter of a hollowed rock I watched
it all.
Over the submerged plain and the bare hills the blackness was as of
night. Red earth without the sun looked brown, brown looked black, and
the trees, swaying helplessly before the raging fury of the gale, seemed
struck by death. Lightning continued its electrical vividity of
fork-like greenish white among the heavy clouds, drooping threateningly
from the hill-tops to the darkened valleys below, laden still with their
waiting, unshed deluge. Through a narrow incision in the cruel clouds
the sun peeped out with a nervous timidity, and a tiny patch over
yonder, in a flash illuminated with gold and purple, across which the
lightning danced in heavenly rivalry, displayed the magic touch of the
Artist of the skies. Then came a rainbow of sweetest multi-color, of a
splendor glorious and exquisite, delicate as the breath from paradise,
stretching its majestic archbow athwart the waning gloom from range to
range. As one drank in the glimpses of that dark corner in this peculiar
fairyland, a mighty peal of magnificent, stentorian clashing broke
finally upon me, and heaven's electricity again flitted fearfully over
the earth, aslant, upwards, downwards again, upwards again, disappearing
over the unmoved hills like a thousand tortured souls fleeing from
Dante's Hades. And here I sit on, in that veritable "rock of ages" cleft
for me, glad that no human touch save that of my own mean clay, that no
human voice came between me and the voice of that Infinite beyond. I
seemed to have been standing on the verge of another world, another
great unknown. The heavens raged and the thunders thereof roared, and
the wild wind hissed and moaned and wailed the hopeless wail of a
lonely, tormented soul. The cold was intense, and through it all I sat
drenched to the skin.
On the bleak mountain thus I was the pitifulest atom of loneliest
humanity, yet felt no loneliness. The face of the earth frowned in angry
fury, the awfulness of the raging elements dwarfed all else to utter
annihilation. But even at such a time, coming all too seldom in the
lives of most of us, when standing in some remote spot which still tells
forth the story of the world's youth, one's inmost nature thrills with a
sense of unison with it all beyond human expression. All was so grand,
inspiring one with an awe beyond one's comprehension, a peculiar, dread
of one's own earthly insignificance. These pictures, graven in one's
memory with the strong pencil of our common mother, are indelible, yet
quite beyond expression. As in our own souls we cannot frame in words
our deepest life emotions, so as we penetrate into the depths of that
kindly common mother of us all we find human words the same utterly
futile channel of expression. To have our souls tuned to this silent
eloquence of Nature, to catch the sweetness of those wind-swept,
heaven-directed mountains, to understand the unspoken messages of those
rushing rivers and those gigantic gorges, to feel the heart-beat of
Nature and her beauty in perfect harmony with all that is best within
us, we must be silent, undisturbed, preferably alone. This is not
flowery sentiment--it is what every true lover of old and lovely Nature
would feel in Western China, yet still unspoiled by the taint of man's
absorbing stream of civilization. And in the stress of modern life, and
the progress of man's monopolization of the earth on which he lives, it
is beautiful to some of us, of whom it may be said the highest state of
inward happiness comes from solitary meditation in unperturbed
loneliness under the broad expanse of heaven, to know that there are
still some spots of isolation where human foot has never turned the
clay, and where, out of sight and sound of fellow mortals, we may even
for a time shake off the violating, unnatural fetters of a harassing
Western life.
Soon it seemed as if a silken cord had suddenly been severed, and I had
been dragged from a world of sweet infinitude down to a sphere mundane
and everyday, to something I had known before.... "....Or what is
Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the 'Living Garment
of God'? O Heaven, is it in very deed, He, then, that ever speaks
through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in
me?"[AP]
I heard the crack of the bamboo and the patter of feet in the sodden,
slippery pathway, and I knew my men were come. Crawling out from my
rock, I descended again to common things, having to listen to the
disgusting talk of my Chinese followers, though a very slender
vocabulary saved me from losing entirely the memory of that great
picture then passing away. The sun shone through the clouds, which had
given place again to blue, the pervading blackness of a few moments
before had disappeared, and with the sinking sun we descended
thoughtfully to the town. The hill is solid sandstone, and the uneven
ruts made by the daily procession of ponies were transformed into a
network of tiny streams.
That my comrades were drenched to the skin gave them no thought; they
turned to immediately, while I dived hurriedly to the bottom of my box
and gulped down quinine. They sat around and drank hot water, holding
forth with eloquence beyond their wont on the general advantages,
naturally and supernaturally, of their native city of Tong-ch'uan-fu.
And well they might, for I know no prettier spot in the whole of Western
China.
Fifty men--coolies who were carrying general merchandise in all
directions, and who had taken shelter in the large inn I stayed at--rose
with me the next morning. As I ate my morning meal, spluttering the rice
over the floor as I tried vainly to control my chopsticks with
frost-nipped fingers, they went through the filthy round of early
morning routine. Squatting about with their dirty face-rags, and a
half-pint of greasy water in their brass receptacle shaped like the
soup-plate of civilization, and leaving upon their necks the traces of
their swills, they wiped the dirt into their hair, and considered they
had washed themselves. Men would emerge from their rooms, fully dressed,
with the dishclout in one hand and the hand-basin in the other--on the
way to their morning tub. Oh, the filth, the unspeakable filth of these
people! Would that the Chinese would emulate the cleanliness of the
Japs, though even that I would question. In several years in the Orient
I have not yet come across the cleanliness in any race of people to be
compared with that cleanliness which in England is next to godliness.
The people of Pu-pêng were pleased to see me. They hurried about
obligingly to get food for man and beast, and the womankind, poor but
light-hearted, cracked suggestive jokes with my men with the utmost
freedom.
In this town there are many Lolo--it might be said that the entire
population is of Lolo origin, although had I suggested to any particular
inhabitant that this was a fact he would probably have taken keen
offense, and things might have gone badly with me. With the men it is
most difficult to tell--there is little difference between the _Han ren_
and the tribesman. But the difference is often most marked in respect to
the women. The Chinese woman has a considerably fairer skin than the
female of Lolo descent, and her customs and manners, apart from the
distinct colloquial accent, are quite evident as pretty sure proof of
distinction of race. After the Lolo have mingled with the Chinese for a
few years, however, it is quite difficult to differentiate between them,
as most of the Lolo women now speak Chinese (in this town I did not hear
any language foreign to the Chinese language), and a good many of the
men are sufficiently educated to read the Chinese character even if they
do not write it. The forward racial condition of the Lolo people in this
district is far greater than that of the people of the same tribe to the
west of Tali-fu, and in latitudes where their language and customs of
life and dress are more or less maintained. The women are generally of
better physique than the Chinese, principally on account of the fact
that their work is almost exclusively outdoor; but as they begin to copy
the Chinese, and live a more sedentary life, this fine physique will
probably gradually disappear. A good many already bind their feet.
When I came out in the early morning the thermometer was twenty degrees
below zero, and my nose was red and without feeling. _Feng-mao_[AQ] and
great coat were required, but I was totally oblivious of the hour's
stiff climbing awaiting me immediately outside the town, to reach the
highest point in which bathed me in perspiration as if I had played
three sets of tennis in the tropics.
Mountains were wild and barren, with nothing in them to enable one to
forget in natural beauty the fatigues of a toilsome ascent. Villages
came now and again in sight, stretched out at the extremity of the plain
before my eyes, with their white gables, red walls, and black tiled
roofs, but during the day we passed through two only. The first was a
little place where decay would have been absolute had it not been for
the likin[AR] flag, which enables "squeezes" to be extorted ruthlessly
from the muleteer and conveyed to the pockets of the prospering customs
agent. It boasted only ten or twelve tumbling lean-to tenements, where
my sympathy went out to the half-dozen physical wrecks of men who came
slowly and stared long, and wondered at the commonest article of my
meager impedimenta. They seemed poorer and lower down the human scale
than any I had yet seen. On one of the ragged garments worn by a man of
about twenty-five I counted no less than thirty-four patches of
different shapes, sizes and materials, hieroglyphically and skillessly
thrown together to hide his sore-strewn back; but still his brown
unwashed flesh was visible in many places.
Looking upon them, one did not like to think that these beings were men,
men with passions like to one's own, for all the interests, real and
imaginary, all the topics which should expand the mind of man, and
connect him in sympathy with general existence, were crushed in the
absorbing considerations of how rice was to be procured for their
families of diseaseful brats. They had no brains, these men; or if
Heaven had thus o'erblessed them, they did not exercise them in their
industry--their coarse, rough hands alone gained food for the day's
feeding. And these mud-roofed, mud-sided dwellings--these were their
homes, to me worse homes than none at all. In their architecture not
even a single idea could be traced--the Chinese here had proceeded as if
by merest accident. All I could think as I returned their wondering
glances was that their world must be very, very old. But I have no time
or space to talk of them here. To throw more than a cursory glance at
them Would lead me into interminable disquisitions of a mythological,
anthropological, craniological, and antediluvian nature for which one
would not find universal approval among his readers. To those who would
study such questions I say, "Fall to!" There is enough scope for a
lifetime to bring into light the primeval element so strangely woven
into the lives of these people.
At Yün-nan-ï bunting and weird street decoration made the place hideous
in my eyes. The crowded town was making considerable ado about some
expected official. I saw none, more than a courteous youth--to whom, of
course, I was quite unknown and deaf and dumb--who graciously shifted
goods and chattels from the inn's best room to hand it over to me for my
occupation. With due tact and some excitability, I protested vigorously
against his coming out. He insisted. Smiling upon him with grave
benignity, I said that I would take a smaller room, and gave orders to
that effect to my man, adding that my whole sense of right and justice
towards fellow-travelers revolted against such self-sacrifice on his
part. He still insisted. Smiling again, this time the timid smile of the
commoner looking up into the face of the great, I allowed myself
reluctantly to be pushed bodily into the best apartment.
This was my intention from the first. Although not too familiar with
it, I allowed the Chinese to imagine that I was well grounded in the
absurdities of his national etiquette; whilst he, observing, too, the
outrageous routine of common politeness, probably went away swearing
that he had been turned out. He had cut off his nose to spite his face.
I cannot truthfully deny, however, that the fellow was very kind, but he
would persist in the belief that it was an impossibility for me to tell
the truth. Later, pointing at me and eyeing me up and down as I shaved
in the twilight, he sneered, "Engleeshman! Engleeshman!" and scooting
with an armful of clothing, small pots of eatables, official documents
and other sundries, told me point-blank that he did not believe that
such a noble person could not speak such a contemptible language as
Chinese.
Seeing no official, then, I presumed I was their man. Whilst I fed
slowly on my rice and cabbage in a small earth-floor room, with my nose
as near as convenient to my oil lamp to get a little warmth, the
discomfort of Chinese life was forced upon me, and I imagined I was
having a good time. I was the best off in the inn by far; the others
must have been colder, certainly had worse food to eat, and yet to me it
was all the height of utmost cheerlessness.
From a hamlet opposite the town, where I sat down by the fire
exhausted in an old woman's shaky dwelling, and fed on aged
sardines and hot rice (atrocious mixture), there is a plain extending
for twenty li to Yün-nan-ï--flat as country in the Fen district. The
road was good (in wet weather, however, it must be terrible), and I
would drive a motor-car across, were it not for the 15-in. ruts which
disfigure the surface. And I know a man who would do this even, despite
the ruts: he takes a delight in running over dogs and small boys,
damaging rickshaws, bumping into bullock-carts, and so on--he would
have done it with liveliest freedom.
But what poverty there was! What women! What Children! With barely an
exception, the women had faces ground by want and bare necessity, in
which every cheerful and sympathetic lineament had been effaced by
life-long slavery and misery. In the bitter cold they, women and
children, crouched round a scanty fir-wood firing, not enough even to
keep alive their natural heat. One long pitiful sight of thriftless
poverty.
To Hungay was a fearful day. Little to eat could I procure, and the cold
gave me a lusty ox's appetite. To me a bellyful came as a windfall.
At last we sat down by the roadside at one small table, hearing the test
of age, rickety and worm-eaten. We gathered like hogs at their troughs,
with the household hog scratching at our feet. I grew impatient and
querulous over constant culinary disappointment. I longed not for the
heaped-up board of the pampered and luxurious, I wanted food. Indigent
man was I, whose dietetical elegancies had been forgotten, a man with
ravenous desires seeking sustenance, not relishes; the means of life,
not the means of pampering the carcass; I wanted food.
And here I had it. The hungry were to be fed.
It was a foul orgy, a gruesome spectacle, a horrible picture of the
gluttony of famished men. This meal conjured up visions of the "most
unlovely of the functions." We fed on _mien_, that long, greasy, grimy,
slippery, slimy string of boneless white--I see it now! And the
half-done tin of sardines set before me, too, the broken stools in the
thatch-worn shed, the dismantled hearth, the muddy earthen floor, the
haggard, hungry villains--I see them all again.[AS]
It should, however, be said that I went away from the main road over a
range of hills where nobody lives. Had I kept to the "ta lu" food would
have been quite easy to get.
To Hungay was given the honor of entertaining me over the Sunday, a
pleasant rest after a week of arduous and exhausting walking. I arrived
late at night, and the old town's rough streets were bathed in a silver
shower of moonbeams, the air was cold and frosty, little groups of the
curious came to the doors of their dwellings, laughing sarcastically,
despite their own poverty, at the distinguished traveler thus coming
upon them.
In marked contrast to this outside animation were the happenings at the
inn which gave me shelter. Business was bad. Three undistinguished
travelers--coolies with loads--and myself and men made up the meager
total of paying guests. This was the reason why it was chosen for me,
for peace and quiet. Quiet had been forced upon the household, so I was
told, by the death by fits of a haughty and resolute lady; and now that
the night had fallen and we had all had our rice, the deep hush--or its
equivalent in Cathay, at all events--seemed likely to be unbroken until
a new day should dawn. My room here had a verandah overlooking a back
court, and here I sat at midnight, unseen by anyone, looking up to the
changeless stars in an unpitying sky; and as I stood thus there blew
from the gates of night and across the mountains a wind that made me
shiver less with physical cold than with a sense of loneliness and
captivity. For on to my verandah came four soldiers, and it seemed as if
the hour of death drew nigh; and as I looked again, first upon the
cloudswept sky and upon the cold and steely glitter of the stars, and
then again at the soldiers with their guns, I turned giddy, shuddering
at the darkness and the loneliness, and with a nameless fear lying at
the center of life like a lurking shadow of an unknown, unseen foe.
They addressed me, but I cared not what they said. I pretended I could
not speak Chinese, watched the quartet form a circle, and talk slowly
and low, and it did not need the mind of a prophet to see that they were
discussing how best they could capture me. Were they going to kill me?
My boy and the other friends I had in the place were sleeping
blissfully, ignorant that their master was in such trying straits. I was
asked my name, and the inquirers, not over civil, were told. They again
asked me for something, I knew not what, probably for my passport. I
had none, and cursed my luck that I had forgotten to pack it when I had
left Tong-ch'uan-fu.
To me it was quite evident that they were deciding my destiny, or so it
seemed in the stillness of the night. Looking upwards, I wondered
whether I was soon to learn the secret of the stars and sky, and those
men seemed to watch the secret workings of my soul. Outside the wind
made moan continuously.
Suddenly my door opened noisily, a light was flashed upon us, and I saw
the bulky form of the landlord. Then all was well. Soon one of my men
appeared, and explained that the soldiers were on their way to meet an
official who was coming from Tali-fu, that their instructions were that
they would meet him at Hungay. They took me for the "gwan."
So my end was not yet. But now, months afterwards, when I stand and
listen to the wind at midnight, there seems borne to me in every sob and
wail a memory of that hateful night and the four soldiers with their
guns.
It seemed not long afterwards that I was awakened by noises on the
doorstep. Looking out, I found a bullock, its four feet tied together
with a straw rope, writhing in its last agonies; the butcher, in his
hand a cruel 24-inch bladed knife still red with blood, smiling the
smile of ironic torture as he looked down upon his struggling victim. He
straightway skinned the animal and cut up the carcass immediately in
front of my door, where Lao Chang waited to get the best cut for my
dinner. My three fellow-lodgers squatted alongside, going through their
apologetic ablutions as if naught were happening. Their dirty face-rags
were wrung and rewrung; they got to work with that universal tooth-brush
(the forefinger!), and that the dead body of a bullock was being
dissected two feet from the table at which they ate their steaming rice
was a detail of not the slightest consequence in the world.
Hungay is an old-time capital of one of the original kingdoms,
destroyed in the year A.D. 749. The road leading out towards Chao-chow
was built some considerable time before that year, and has never been
subject to any repairs whatever (for this fact I have drawn upon my
imagination, but should be very much surprised to know that I am far out
in my reckoning). Villagers have appropriated the public slabs and small
boulders which comprised the wretched thoroughfare; reminiscent puddles
tell you the tale, and the badness of the road renders it necessary for
the traveler to be out of bed a little earlier than usual to face the
ordeal. The road to-day has been practically as bad as walking along the
sides of the Yangtze. But as I studied the patience and physical
vitality of my three men, laughing and joking with the light-heartedness
of children, with nearly seventy catties dangling from their
shoulder-pole, without a word of murmuring, I felt a little ashamed of
myself that I, whose duty it was merely to _walk_, should have made such
a fuss. These men were prepared to work a very long time for very little
reward, as no matter how small the rewards for the terribly exhausting
labor, it were better than none at all,--so they philosophized.
That quiet persistence and unfailing patience form a national virtue
among the Chinese--the capacity to wait without complaint and to bear
all with silent endurance. This virtue is seen more clearly in great
national disasters which occasionally befall the country. The terrible
famine of 1877-8 was the cause of the death of millions of people, and
left scores of millions without house, food or clothing; they were
driven forth as wanderers on the face of the earth without home, without
hope. The Government does nothing whatever in these cases. The people
who wish to live must find the means to live, and what impressed me all
through my wanderings was the absolute science to which poverty is
reduced. In such calamities the Chinese, of all men on the earth's
surface, will battle along if there is any chance at all. If he is
blessed, he once more becomes a farmer; but if not, he accepts the
position as inevitable and irremediable. The Chinese race has the finest
power in the world to withstand with fortitude the ills of life and the
miseries which follow inability to procure the wherewithal to live.
Their nerves are somehow different from our Western nerves.
In China nothing is wasted, not only in food, but in everything
affecting the common life.
That a beast dies of disease is of no concern. It is eaten all the same
from head to hoof, from skin to entrail, and the remarkable fact is that
they do not seem to suffer from it, either. At Kiang-ti (mentioned in a
previous chapter) I saw a horse being pushed down the hillside to the
river. It was not yet dead, but was dying, so far as I could see, of
inflammation of the bowels. Its body was cut up, and there were several
people waiting to buy it at forty cash the catty.
From Hungay onwards I met a class of people I had not seen before. They
were the Minchia (Pe-tso).
Major H.R. Davies, whose treatise on the tribes of Yün-nan at the end of
his excellent work on travel in the province, is probably the best yet
written, writes that he met Minchia people only on the plains of Tali-fu
and Chao-chow, and never east of the latter place. This was in travel
some ten or twelve years ago, and the fact that there are now many
Minchia families living in Hungay is a testimony to their enterprise as
a tribe in going farther afield in search of the means to live. There is
little doubt that the Minchia originally came from country lying between
the border of the province and round Li-chiang-fu and the Tali-fu plain
and lake. Most of them wear Chinese dress; many of the women bind their
feet (and the practice is growing in popularity), although those who
have not small feet are still in the majority. In a small city lying
some few li from the city of Tali all the inhabitants are Minchia, and I
found no difficulty in spotting a Chinese man or woman--there is a
distinct facial difference. Minchia have bigger noses, generally the
eyes are set farther apart, and the skin is darker. Pink trousers are in
fashion among the ladies--trace of base feminine weakness!--but are not
by any means the distinguishing features of race.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote AP: Carlyle, _Sartor Resartus_.]
[Footnote AQ: Wind-cap, a long Chinese wadded hat which reaches over
one's head and down over the shoulders, tied under the chin with
ribbons.--E.J.D.]
[Footnote AR: Likin, as everyone knows, is custom duty. All along the
main roads of China one meets likin stations, distinguished by the flag
at the entrance.--E.J.D.]
[Footnote AS: I passed this spot a month or so afterwards, and am
convinced that at the time I wrote the above there must have been
something radically wrong with my liver. Had it been in Killarney in
summer, nothing could have been more entrancing than the two lakes
midway between Yün-nan-ï and Hungay. Patches of light green vegetation,
interspersed with brown-red houses, skirting the lake-shore in pleasant
contrast to the green of the water, which, bathed in soft sunshine,
lapped their walls in endless restlessness. Of that delicate blue which
is indescribably beautiful, the morning sky looked down tranquilly upon
the undulating hills of grey and brown, which seemed to hem in and guard
a very fairyland. Geomancers of the place did not go wrong when they
suggested the overlooking hill-sides as suitable resting-places for the
departed. All was ancient and primitive, yet simple and glorious, and as
one of my followers called my attention to the telegraph wires, I was
struck by the fact that this alone stood as the solitary element of what
we in the West call civilization. Yet nothing bore traces of gross
uncivilization; the people, hard workers albeit, were happy and quite
content, with their slow-moving caravan, which we would, if we could,
soon displace for the railway engine. Ploughmen with their buffaloes and
their biblical ploughshare, raked over the red ground; women, with
babies on their backs, picked produce already ripe; children played
roundabout, and those old enough helped their fathers in the fields;
coolies bustled along with exchanges of merchandise with neighboring
villages, quite content if but a couple of meals each day were earned
and eaten; the official, the ruler of these peaceful people, passed with
old-time pomp--not in a modern carriage, not in a modern saloon, but in
the same way as did his ancestors back in the dim ages, in a sedan-chair
carried by men. There was plenty of everything--enough for all--but all
had to contribute to its getting. There was no greed, their few wants
were easily satisfied, and here, as everywhere in my journeyings, I have
noticed it to be the case among the common people, there was no desire
to get rich and absorb wealth. They wanted to live, to learn to labor as
little as the growth of food supplies demanded, to become fathers and
mothers, and, to their minds, to get the most out of life. And who will
contradict it? They do not see with the eyes of the West; we do not, we
cannot, see with their eyes. But surely the living of this simple life,
the same as it was in the beginning, has a good deal in it; it is not
uncivilization, not barbarism, and the fair-minded traveler in China can
come to but one opinion, even in the midst of all the conflicting
emotions which result from his own upbringing, that we could, if we
would, learn many a good lesson from the old-time life of the Celestial
in his own country.
Yet these are the very people who may jostle us harshly later on in the
racial struggle.
I am not suggesting that when the Chinese adopts the cult of the West,
and comes into general contact with it--and I believe that I am right in
saying that this is the desire, generally speaking, of the whole of the
enlightened classes--he continues with his few wants. As a matter of
fact, he does not. He is as extravagant, and perhaps more so, than the
most of us. I have seen Straits Chinese waste at the gaming tables in
their gorgeous clubs as much in one night as some European residents
handle in one year, and he is quick to get his motor-car, his horses and
carriages, and endless other ornaments of wealth. So that if progress in
the course of the evolution of nations means that the Chinese too will
demand all that the European now demands, and will cease to find
satisfaction in the existing conditions of his life in the new goal
towards which he is moving, and if he, in course of time, should
increase the cost of living per head to equal that of the Westerner,
then he will lose a good deal of the advantage he now undoubtedly has in
the struggle for racial supremacy. But if, gradually taking advantage of
all in religion, in science, in literature, in art, in modern naval and
military equipment and skill, and all that has made nations great and
made for real progress in the West, he were also to continue his present
hardy frugality in living--which is not a tenth as costly in proportion
to that of the Occident--then his advantage in entering upon the
conflict among the nations for ultimate supremacy would be undoubted,
immeasurable.
The question is, will he?
If he will, then the Occident has much to fear. China, going ahead
throughout the Empire as she is at the present moment in certain parts,
will in course of time (as is only fair and natural to expect) have an
army greater in numbers than is possible to any European power, and her
food-bill will be two-thirds lower per head per fighting man.
Subsequently, granting that China fulfils our fears, and becomes as
great a fighting power as military experts declare she will, even in our
generation, by virtue of her numbers alone, apart from phenomenal powers
of endurance, which as every writer on China and her people is agreed,
is excelled by no other race on earth, she would be able to dictate
terms to the West. But, again, will she? Will the people continue to
live as they are living?
I personally believe that the Chinese will not. I believe that as the
nation progresses, more in accordance with lines of progress laid down
by the West, so will her wants increase, and consequent expenses of life
become greater. The Yün-nanese even are beginning to acknowledge that
they have no ordinary comforts. In other parts of the empire the people
are already beginning to learn what comfort, sanitation, lighting, and
general organization means--in the home, in the city, in the country, in
the nation.
And they are learning too that it all costs money, and means, perhaps, a
higher state of social life. For this they do not mind the money. They
are not going half-way--they are going to be whole-hoggers. And when in
the future, near or far, we shall find them, as is almost inevitable,
able to compete in everything with other nations, we shall find that
they have not been successful in learning the source of strength without
having absorbed also some of the weaknesses; they will not escape the
vices, even if they learn some of the virtues of the West.--E.J.D.]