_Stages to the Mekong Valley_. _Hardest part of the walking tour_.
_Author as a medical man_. _Sunday soliloquy_. _How adversity is met_.
_Chinese life compared with early European ages_. _Womens enthusiasm
over the European_. _A good send-off_. _My coolie Shanks, the songster_.
_Laughter for tears_. _Pony commits suicide_. _Houses in the forest
district_. _Little encampments among the hills, and the way the people
pass their time_. _Treacherous travel_. _To Hwan-lien-p'u_. _Rest by the
river, and a description of my companions_. _How my men treated the
telegraph_. _Universal lack of privacy_. _Complaints of the carrying
coolies._
From whichever standpoint you regard the cities and villages of Western
China, the views are full of interest. Each forms a new picture of rock,
river, wood and temple, crenellated wall, and uplifted roof, crowded
with bewildering detail.
I am not the first traveler who has remarked this. Several of Mr.
Archibald Little's books speak of it. He says: "In Europe, except where
the scenery is purely wild, and more especially in America, the delight
of gazing on many of the most beautiful scenes is often alloyed by the
crude newness of man's work. This is true now of Japan, since the rage
for copying western architecture and dress has fallen upon the Islands
of the Rising Sun. But here in Western China little has intervened to
mar the accord between nature and man." In the country on which we are
now entering the natural grandeur is finer than anything I had seen
since I left the Gorges, and incidentally I do not mind confessing to
the indulgent reader that when I came again through Hsiakwan, again
westward bound, I was tired, my feet were blistered and broken, each day
and every day had brought me a hard journey, and here I was now facing
the most difficult journey yet met with--literally not a li of level
road.
My journey was by the following route:--
Length Height
of Stage Above Sea
1st day Ho-chiang-p'u 90 li 5,050 ft.
2nd day Yang-pi 60 li 5,150 ft.
3rd day T'ai-p'ing-p'u 70 li 7,400 ft.
5th day Hwan-lien-p'u 50 li 5,200 ft.
6th day Ch'u-tung 95 li 5,250 ft.
7th day Shayung 75 li 4,800 ft.
T'ai-p'ing-p'u (two days from Tali-fu), bleak and perched away up among
the clouds, could never be called a town; it is merely a ramshackle
place which gives one sleep and food in the difficult stage between
Hwan-lien-p'u and Yang-pi.
Like most of the small places which suffered from the ravishings of the
Mohammedan destructions of the fifties, it has seen better days.
Cottages hang clumsily together on ledges in the mountains, 7,400 feet
above the sea, standing in their own vast uncultivated grounds. People
are of the Lolo origin, but all speak Chinese; their ways of life,
however, are aboriginal, and still far from the ideal to which they
aspire. They are poor, poor as church mice, dirty and diseased and
decrepit, and their existence as a consequence is dreary and dull and
void of all enlightenment. The women--sad, lowly females--bind their
feet after a fashion, but as they work in the fields, climb hills, and
battle in negotiations against Nature where she is overcome only with
extreme effort, the real "lily" is a thing possible with them only in
their dreams. By binding, however, be it never so bad an imitation, they
give themselves the greater chance of getting a Chinese husband.
I stayed here the Sunday, and as I went through my evening ablutions,
among my admirers in the doorway was an old woman, who in gentlest
confidences with my boy, explained awkwardly that her little daughter
lay sick of a fever, and could he prevail upon his foreign master, in
whom she placed implicit faith, to come with her and minister? Lao Chang
advised that I should go, and I went. My shins got mutilated as I fell
down the slippery stone steps in the dark into a pail of hog's wash at
the bottom. Having wiped the worst of the grease and slime onto the mud
wall, by the aid of a flickering rushlight I saw the "child," who lay on
a mattress on the floor in the darkest corner of the room. I reckoned
her age to be thirty-five, her black hair hung in tangled masses, the
very bed on which she lay stank with vermin, two feet away was the fire
where all the cooking was gone through, and everywhere around was filth.
When she saw me the "child" raised her solitary garment, whispered that
pains in her stomach were well-nigh unendurable, that her head ached,
that her joints were stiff, that she was generally wrong, and--"Did I
think she would recover?" I thought she might not.
Rushing back to my medicine chest, I brought along and administered a
maximum dose of the oil called castor, and later dosed her with quinine.
In the morning she was out and about her work, while the old mother was
great in her praises for the passing European who had cured her child.
After that came the deluge! They wanted more medicine--fever elixir,
toothache cure, and so on, and so on--but I stood firm.
The tedium of the Sunday in that draughty inn gave me an insight into
their common lives which I had not before, causing me to meditate upon
their simple lives and their simple needs. They did not raise the
forests in order to get gold; they did not squander their patrimony in
youth, destroying in a day the fruit of long years. They held to simple
needs; they had a simplicity of taste, which was also a peculiar source
of independence and safety. The more simple they lived the more secure
their future, because they were less at the mercy of surprises and
reverses. In adversity these people would not act like nurslings
deprived of their bottles and their rattles, but would, by virtue of
their common simplicity, probably be better armed for any struggles. I
do not desire the life for myself, but the ethics of their simple living
cannot but be recommended. Multitudes possess in China what multitudes
in the West pursue amid characteristic hampering futilities of European
life. We would aspire to simple living, and the simplicity of olden
times in manners, art and ideas is still cherished and reverenced; but
we cannot be simple or return to the simplicity of our forefathers
unless we return to the spirit which animated them. They possessed the
spirit of real simplicity. And this same spirit the Chinese possess
to-day; but they are minus the incomparable features of healthful
civilization, inward and outward, of which our forebears were masters.
Our ways to-day are not their ways, and their ways not our ways; but one
cannot but realize as he moves among them that with a happy infusion of
the spirit of their simplicity into the restlessness of our modern life
our wearied minds would dream less and realize more of the true
simplicity of simple living.
* * * * *
To a man the village of T'ai-p'ing-p'u turned out early on the Monday
morning to express regrets that my departure was at hand. When, in
parting with this people who had done all in their power to make my
comfort complete, I threw a handful of cash to some little children
standing wonderingly near by, general approval was expressed, and
elaborate felicities anent my beneficence exchanged by the ear-ringed
Lolo women. A short apron hung down over their blue trousers, and as I
passed out of their sight, they admired me and gossiped about me, with
their hands under their aprons, in much the same manner as their more
enlightened sisters of the wash-tub gossip sometimes in the West.
It was a beautiful spring morning; the sweet song of the birds pierced
through the noise of the rolling river below, the air was fragrant and
bracing, and as I left and commenced the rocky ascent leading again to
the mountains, the barks of some fierce-disposed canines, who alone
objected to my presence among the hill-folk, died away with the rustle
of the leafage in a keen north wind.
One of my men was poorly, the solitary element to disturb the equanimity
of our camp.
It was Shanks. He had been suffering from toothache, and unfortunately I
had no gum-balm with me; without my knowledge Lao Chang had rubbed in
some strong embrocation to the fellow's cheek, so that now, in addition
to toothache, he had also a badly blistered face, swollen up like a
pudding. Upon learning that I had no means of curing him or of
alleviating the pain, Shanks bellowed into my ear, loud enough to bring
the dead out of the grave-mounds on the surrounding hill-sides, "Puh p'a
teh, pub p'a teh"; then, raising his carrying-pole to the correct angle
on the hump on his back, went merrily forward, warbling some squealing
Chinese ditty. But Shanks was the songster of the party. He often madly
disturbed the silence of middle night by a sudden outburst inte song,
and when shouted down by others who lay around, or kicked by the man who
shared his bed, and whose choral propensities were less in proportion,
he would laugh wildly at them all. Poor Shanks; he was a peculiar
mortal. He would laugh at men in pain, and think it sympathy. If we
could get no food or drink on the march, after having wearily toiled
away for hours, he would not be disposed to grumble--he would laugh.
Such tragic incidents as the pony jumping over the precipice provoked
him to extreme laughter.[AX]
And when I caught him sewing up an open wound in the sole of his foot
with common colored Chinese thread and a rusty needle, and told him that
he might thereby get blood poisoning, and lose his life or leg, he cared
not a little. As a matter of fact, he laughed in my face. Not at me, not
at all, but because he thought his laughter might probably delude the
devil who was president over the ills of that particular portion of
human anatomy. He came to me just outside Pu-pêng, where we saw a coffin
containing a corpse resting in the roadway whilst the bearers refreshed
near by and, pointing thereto, told me that the man was "muh tsai" (not
here)--the Chinese never on any account mention the word death--and his
sides shook with laughter, so much so that he dropped his loads
alongside the corpse, and startled the cock on top of the coffin
guarding the spirit of the dead into a vigorous fit of crowing for fear
of disaster.
We enjoyed fairly level road, although rough, for ten li after leaving
T'ai-p'ing-p'u. It rose gradually from 7,400 feet to 8,500 feet, and
then dipped suddenly, and continued at a fearful down gradient. I might
describe it as a member of a British infantry regiment once described to
me a slope on the Himalayas. It was about eight years ago, and a few
fellows were at a smoker given to some Tommies returning from India,
when a bottle-nosed individual, talking about a long march his battalion
had made up the Himalayas, in excellent descriptive exclaimed, "'Twasn't
a 'ill, 'twasn't a graydyent, 'twas a blooming precipice, guvnor." The
Himalayas and the country I am now describing have therefore something
in common.
Just before this the beautiful mountains, behind which was the Tali-fu
Lake, made a sight worth coming a long way to see.
Midway down the steep hill we happened on some lonely log cottages,
twenty-five li from T'ai-p'ing-p'u (it is reckoned as thirty-five li
traveling in the opposite direction). In the forest district I found the
houses all built of timber--wood piles placed horizontally and
dovetailed at the ends, the roofs being thatched. You have merely to
step aside from the road, and you are in dense mountain forest; it is
manifestly easier and less costly than the mud-built habitation,
although for their part the people are worse off because of the lack of
available ground for growing their crops. Here the people were still
essentially Lolo, and the big-footed women who boiled water under a shed
had difficulty in getting to understand what my men were talking about.
The second descent is begun after a pleasant walk along level ground
resembling a well-laid-out estate, and a treacherously rough mile
brought us down to an iron chain bridge swung over the Shui-pi Ho, at
the far end of which, hidden behind bamboo matting, are a few idols in
an old hut; they act in the dual capacity of gods of the river and the
mountain. Tea and some palatable baked persimmon--very like figs when
baked--were brought me by an awful-looking biped who was still in
mourning, his unshaven skull sadly betokening the fact. As I sipped my
tea and cracked jokes with some Szech'wan men who declared they had met
me in Chung-king (I must resemble in appearance a European resident in
that city; it was the fourth time I had been accused of living there), I
admired the grand scenery farther along. Especially did I notice one
peak, towering perpendicularly away up past woods of closely-planted
pine and fir trees, the crystal summit glistening with sunlit snow; as
soon as I started again on my journey, I was pulling up towards it. Soon
I was gazing down upon the tiny patches of light green and a few
solitary cottages, resembling a little beehive, and one could imagine
the metaphorical wax-laying and honey-making of the inhabitants. These
people were away from all mankind, living in life-long loneliness, and
all unconscious of the distinguished foreigner away up yonder, who
wondered at their patient toiling, but who, like them, had his
Yesterday, To-day and To-morrow. There they were, perched high up on the
bleak mountain sides, with their joys and sorrows, their pains and
penalties, struggling along in domestic squalor, and rearing young
rusticity and raw produce.
On these mountains in Yün-nan one sees hundreds of such little
encampments of a few families, passing their existence far from the road
of the traveler, who often wished he could descend to them and quench
his thirst, and eat with them their rice and maize. Most of them here
were isolated families of tribespeople, who, out of contact with their
kind, have little left of racial resemblance, and yet are not fully
Chinese, so that it is difficult to tell what they really are. Most were
Lolo.
Walking here was treacherous. A foot pathway was the main road, winding
in and out high along the surface of the hills, in many places washed
away, and in others overgrown with grass and shrubbery. "Across China on
Foot" would have met an untimely end had I made a false step or slipped
on the loose stones in a momentary overbalance. I should have rolled
down seven hundred feet into the Shui-pi Ho. Once during the morning I
saw my coolies high up on a ledge opposite to me, and on practically
the same level, a three-li gully dividing us. They were very small men,
under very big hats, bustling along like busy Lilliputians, and my loads
looked like match-boxes. I probably looked to them not less grotesque.
But we had to watch our footsteps, and not each other.
We were rounding a corner, when I was surprised to see Hwan-lien-p'u a
couple of li away. The _fu-song_ were making considerable hue and cry
because Rusty had rolled thirty feet down the incline, and as I looked I
saw the animal get up and commence neighing because he had lost sight of
us. He was in the habit of wandering on, nibbling a little here and a
little there, and rarely gave trouble unless in chasing an occasional
horse caravan, when he gave my men some fun in getting him again into
line.
It was not yet midday, and we had four hours' good going. So I
calculated. Not so my men. They could not be prevailed upon to budge,
and knowing the Chinese just a little, I reluctantly kept quiet. It was
entirely unreasonable to expect them to go on to Ch'u-tung, ninety li
away--it was impossible. And I learnt that the reason they would not go
on was that no house this side of that place was good enough to put a
horse into, even a Chinese horse, and they would not dream of taking me
on under those conditions. There was not even a hut available for the
traveler, so they said. I had come over difficult country, plodding
upwards on tiptoe and then downwards with a lazy swing from stone to
stone for miles. Throughout the day we had been going through fine
mountain forest, everywhere peaceful and beautiful, but it had been hard
going. In the morning a heavy frost lay thick and white about us, and by
10:30 a.m. the sun was playing down upon us with a merciless heat as we
tramped over that little red line through the green of the hill-sides.
Often in this march was I tempted to stay and sit down on the sward,
but I had proved this to be fatal to walking. In traveling in Yün-nan
one's practice should be: start early, have as few stops as possible,
when a stop _is_ made let it be long enough for a real rest. In
Szech'wan, where the tea houses are much more frequent, men will pull up
every ten li, and generally make ten minutes of it. In Yün-nan these
welcome refreshment houses are not met with so often, and little
inducement is held out for the coolies to stop, but upon the slightest
provocation they will stop for a smoke. On this walking trip I made it a
rule to be off by seven o'clock, stop twice for a quarter of an hour up
to tiffin (my men stopped oftener), when our rest was often for an hour,
so that we were all refreshed and ready to push on for the fag-end of
the stage. We generally were done by four or five o'clock. And I should
be the last in the world to deny that by this time I had had enough for
one day.
Upon arrival I immediately washed my feet, an excellent practice of the
Chinese, changed my footgear, drank many cups of tea, and often went
straight to my p'ukai. The roads of China take it out of the strongest
man. There are no Marathon runners here; progress is a tedious toil,
often on all fours.
My room at Hwan-lien-p'u was near a telegraph pole; there was a
telegraph station there, where my men showed their admiration for the
Governmental organization by at once hammering nails into the pole. It
was close to their laundry, and served admirably for the clothes-line, a
bamboo tied at one end with a string to a nail in the pole and the other
end stuck through the paper in the window of the telegraph operator's
apartment. But this is nothing. Years ago, when the telegraph was first
laid down, the people took turns to displace the wires and sell them for
their trouble, and to chop the poles up for firewood. It continued for a
considerable period, until an offender--or one whom it was surmised had
done this or would have done it if he could--had his ears cut off, and
was led over the main road to the capital, to be admired by any
compatriot contemplating a deal in wiring or timber used for telegraphic
communication purposes.
Just below the town the river ran peacefully down a gradual incline. I
decided that a comfortable seat under a tree, spending an hour in
preparing this copy, would be more pleasant than moping about a noisome
and stench-ridden inn, providing precious little in the way of
entertainment for the foreigner. Next door a wedding party was making
the afternoon hideous with their gongs and drums and crackers, and
everywhere the usual hue and cry went abroad because a European was
spending the day there.
I imparted to my man my intentions for the afternoon. Immediately
preparations were set on foot to get me down by the river, and it was
publicly announced to the townspeople. The news ran throughout the town,
that is Hwan-lien-p'u's one little narrow street, a sad mixture of a
military trench and a West of England cobbled court. And instead of
going alone to my shady nook by that silvery stream, 1 was accompanied
by nine adult members of the unemployed band, three boys, and sundry
stark-naked urchins who seemed to be without home or habitation. One of
these specimens of fleeting friendship was one-eyed, and a diseased hip
rendered it difficult for him to keep pace with us; one was club-footed,
one hair-lipped fellow had only half a nose, and they were nearly all
goitrous. As I write now these people, curious but not uncouth, are
crouched around me on their haunches, after the fashion of the ape,
their more Darwinian-evolved companion and his shorthand notes being
admired by an open-mouthed crowd. Down below my horse is entertaining
the more hilarious of the party in his tantrums with the man who is
trying to wash him--
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote AX: The day before, whilst we were passing along the edge of a
cliff, we saw a deliberate suicide on the part of a pony. Getting away
from its companions, it first jumped against a tree, then turned its
head sharply on the side of a cliff, finally taking a leap into mid-air
over the precipice. It touched ground at about two hundred and fifty
feet below this point, and then rolled out of sight. My men exhibited no
concern, and laughed me down because I did. It was, as they said, merely
diseased, and the muleteers went on their way, leaving horse and loads
to Providence. This sort of thing is not uncommon.--E.J.D.]