_The mountains of Yün-nan_. _Wonderful scenery_. _Among the
Mohammedans_. _Sorry scene at Ch'u-tung_. _A hero of a horrid past_.
_Infinite depth of Chinese character_. _Mule falls one hundred and fifty
yards, and escapes unhurt_. _Advice to future travelers_. _To Shayung_.
_We meet Tibetans on the mountains_. _Chinese cruelty_. _Opium smoker as
a companion_. _Opium refugees_. _One opinion only on the subject_.
_Mission work among smokers and eaters._
Mere words are a feeble means to employ to describe the mountains of
Yün-nan.
As I start from Hwan-lien-p'u this morning, to the left high hills are
picturesquely darkened in the soft and unruffled solemnity of their own
still unbroken shade. Opposite, rising in pretty wavy undulation, with
occasional abruptions of jagged rock and sunken hollow, the steep
hill-sides are brought out in the brightest coloring of delicate light
and shade by the golden orb of early morn; towering majestically
sunwards, sheer up in front of me, high above all else, still more
sombre heights stand out powerfully in solemn contrast against the pale
blue of the spring sky, the effect in the distance being antithetical
and weird, with the magnificent Ts'ang Shan[AY] standing up as a
beautiful background of perpendicular white, from whence range upon
range of dark lines loom out in the hazy atmosphere. From the extreme
summit of one snow-laden peak, whose white steeple seems truly a
heavenward-directed finger, I gaze abstractedly all around upon nothing
but dark masses of gently-waving hills, steep, weary ascents and
descents, green and gold, and yellow and brown, and one's eyes rest upon
a maze of thin white lines intertwining them all. These are the main
roads. I am alone. My men are far behind. I am awed with an unnatural
sense of bewildered wonderment in the midst of all this glory of the
earth.
Everything is so vast, so grand, so overpowering. Murmurings of the
birds alone break the sense of sadness and loneliness. Away yonder
full-grown pine trees, if discernible at all, are dwarfed so as to
appear like long coarse grass. For some thirty li the road runs through
beautiful woods, high above the valleys and the noise of the river; and
now we are running down swiftly to a point where two ranges meet, only
to toil on again, slowly and wearily, up an awful gradient for two hours
or more. But the labor and all its fatiguing arduousness are nothing
when one gets to the top, for one beholds here one of the most
magnificent mountain panoramas in all West China. Far away, just peeping
prettily from the silvered edges of the bursting clouds, are the giant
peaks which separate Tali-fu from Yang-pi--white giants with rugged,
cruel edges pointing upwards, piercing the clouds asunder as a ship's
bow pierces the billows of the deep; and then, gradually coming from out
the mist, are no less than eight distinct ranges of mountains from
14,000 feet to 16,000 feet high, besides innumerable minor heights,
which we have traversed with much labor during the past four days, all
rich with coloring and natural grandeur seen but seldom in all the
world. Switzerland could offer nothing finer, nothing more sweeping,
nothing more beautiful, nothing more awe-inspiring. With the glorious
grandeur of these wondrous hills, rising and falling playfully around
the main ranges, the marvellous tree growth, the delicate contrasts of
the formidable peaks and the dainty, cultivated valleys, and the face of
Nature everywhere absolutely unmarred, Switzerland could in no way
compare.
Is it then surprising that I look upon these stupendous masses with
wonder, which seem to breathe only eternity and immensity?
The air is pure as the breath of heaven, all is still and peaceful, and
the fact that in the very nature of things one cannot rush through this
pervading beauty of the earth, but has to plod onwards step by step
along a toilsome roadway, enables the scenery to be so impressed upon
one's mind as to be focussed for life in one's memory. One is held
spellbound; these are the pictures never forgotten. Here I sit in a
corner of the earth as old as the world itself. These mountains are as
they were in the great beginning, when the Creator and Sustainer of all
things pure and beautiful looked upon His handiwork and saw that it was
good.
The country here seems so vast as to render Nature unconquerable by man:
man is insignificant, Nature is triumphant. Railways are defied; and
these mountains, running mostly at right angles, will probably
never--not in our time, at least--be made unsightly by the puffing and
the reeking of the modern railway engine. They present so many natural
obstacles to the opening-up of the country, according to the standard we
Westerners lay down, that one would hesitate to prophesy any mode of
traffic here other than that of the horse caravan and human beast of
burden. Nature seems to look down upon man and his earth-scouring
contrivances, and assert, "Man, begone! I will have none of thee." And
the mountains turn upwards to the sky in_ silent reverence to their
Maker, whose work must in the main remain unchanged until eternity.
It is now 12:30, and we have fifty li to cover before reaching
Ch'u-tung. We sit here to feed at a place called Siao-shui-tsing, a
sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, where in subsequent travel
I was hung up in bitter weather and had to pass the night. The people,
courteous and civil as always, show a simple trustfulness with which is
associated some little suspicion. I gave a cake to a little child, but
its mother would not allow it to be eaten until she was again and again
assured and reassured that it was quite fit to eat. This home life of
the very poor Chinese, if indeed it may be called home life, has a
listlessness about it in marked contrast to that of the West. There is
little housework, no furniture more than a table and chair or two, and
the simplicity of the cooking arrangements does not tend to increase the
work of the housewife.
People here to-day are going about their work with a restful
deliberation very trying to one in a hurry. The women, with infants tied
to their backs, do not work hard but very long. A mud-house is being
built near by, and between the cooking and attending to passing
travelers, two women are digging the earth and filling up the baskets,
while the men are mixing the mud, filling in the oblong wooden trough,
and thus building the wall. At my elbow a man--old and grizzled and
dirty--is turning back roll upon roll of his wadded garments, and
ridding it of as many as he can find of the insects with which it is
infested. A slobbering, boss-eyed cretin chops wood at my side, and when
I rise to try a snap on the women and the children they hide behind the
walls. Thus my time passes away, as I wait for the coolies who sit on a
log in the open road feeding on common basins of dry rice.
After that we had to cross the face of a steep hill. We could, however,
find no road, no pathway even, but could merely see the scratchings of
coolies and ponies already crossed. It was an achievement not unrisky,
but we managed to reach the other side without mishap. My horse, owing
to the stupidity of the man who hung on to his mouth to steady himself,
put his foot in a hole and dragged the fool of a fellow some twenty
yards downwards in the mud. My coolies, themselves in a spot most
dangerous to their own necks, stuck the outside leg deep in the mud to
rest themselves, and set to assiduously in blackguarding the man in
their richest vein, then, extricating themselves, again continued their
journey, satisfied that they had shown the proper front, and saved the
face of the foreigner who could not save it for himself. Then we all
went down through a narrow ravine into a lovely shady glade, all green
and refreshing, with a brook gurgling sweetly at the foot and birds
singing in the foliage. There was something very quaint in this cosy
corner, with the hideous echoes and weird re-echoes of my men's
squealing. Then we went on again from hill to hill, in a ten-inch
footway, broken and washed away, so that in places it was necessary to
hang on to the evergrowing grass to keep one's footing in the slopes.
One needs to have no nerves in China.
Down in the valley were a number of muleteers from Burma, cooking their
rice in copper pans, whilst their ponies, most of them in horrid
condition, and backs rubbed in some places to the extent of twelve
inches square, grazed on the hill-sides. In most places the foot of this
ravine would have been a river; here it was like a park, with pretty
green sward intersected by a narrow path leading down into a lane so
thick with virgin growth as to exclude the sunlight. As we entered a man
came out with his p'ukai and himself on the back of a ten-hand pony; the
animal shied, and his manservant got behind and laid on mighty blows
with the butt-end of a gun he was carrying. The pony ceased shying.
To Ch'u-tung was a tedious journey, rising and falling across the wooded
hills, and when we arrived at some cottages by the riverside, the
_fu-song_ had a rough time of it from my men for having brought us by a
long road instead of by the "new" road (so called, although I do not
doubt that it has been in use for many generations). Some Szech'wan
coolies and myself had rice together on a low form away from the smoke,
and the while listened to some tales of old, told by some half-witted,
goitrous monster who seemed sadly out at elbow. The soldier meantime
smelt round for a smoke. As he and my men had decided a few moments ago
that each party was of a very low order of humanity, their pipes for him
were not available. So he took pipe and dried leaf tobacco from this
half-witted skunk, who, having wiped the stem in his eight-inch-long
pants, handed it over in a manner befitting a monarch. It measured some
sixty or seventy inches from stem to bowl.
From Hwan-lien-p'u to Ch'u-tung is reckoned as eighty li; it is quite
one hundred and ten, and the last part of the journey, over barren,
wind-swept hills, most fatiguing.
In contrast to the beauty of the morning's scenery, the country was
black and bare, and a gale blew in our faces. My spirits were raised,
however, by a coolie who joined us and who had a remarkable knowledge of
the whole of the West of China, from Chung-king to Singai, from Mengtsz
to Tachien-lu. Plied with questions, he willingly gave his answers, but
he would persist in leading the way. As soon as a man endeavored to pass
him, he would trot off at a wonderful speed, making no ado of the 120
pounds of China pots on his back, yelling his explanations all the time
to the man behind. Yung-p'ing-hsien lay over to the right, fifteen li
from Ch'u-tung, which is protected from the elements by a bell-shaped
hill at the foot of a mountain lit up with gold from the sinking sun,
which dipped as I trudged along the uneven zigzag road leading across
the plain of peas and beans and winter crops. Four eight-inch planks,
placed at various dangerous angles on three wood trestles, form the
bridge across the fifty-foot stream dividing Ch'u-tung from the world on
the opposite side. Across this I saw men wander with their loads, and
then I led Rusty in. Whilst the stream washed his legs, I sat dangling
mine until called upon to make way for another party of travelers.
Remarkable is the agility of these men. They swing along over eight
inches of wood as if they were in the middle of a well-paved road.
Ch'u-tung is a Mohammedan town. There are a few Chinese only--Buddhists,
Taoists and other ragtags; although when the follower of the Prophet has
his pigtail attached to the inside of his hat, as it not unusual when he
goes out fully dressed, there is little difference between him and the
Chinese.
Pigs here are conspicuously absent. People feed on poultry and beef. I
rested in this city some month or so after my first overland trip whilst
my man went to convert silver into cash, a trying ordeal always. Whilst
I sipped my tea and ate a couple of rice cakes, I was impressed, as I
seldom have been in my wanderings, with the remarkable number of people,
from the six hundred odd houses the town possesses, who during that
half-hour found nothing whatever to do to benefit themselves or the
community, as members of which they passed monotonous lives, but to
stare aimlessly at the resting foreigner. The report spread like
wildfire, and they ran to the scene with haste, pulling on their coats,
wiping food from their mouths, scratching their heads _en route_, one
trouser-leg up and the other down, all anxious to get a seat near the
stage. A river flows down the center of the street, and into this a
sleepy fellow got tipped bodily in the crush, sat down in the water,
seemingly in no hurry to move until he had finished his vigorous
bullying of the man who pushed him in. Those who could not get standing
room near my table went out into the street and shaded the sun from
their eyes, in order that they might catch even a glimpse of the
traveler who sat on in uncompromising indifference.
Several old wags were there who had witnessed the Rebellion--at the
moment, had I not become callous, another might have seemed
imminent--and were looked up to by the crowd as heroes of a horrid past,
being listened to with rapt attention as they described what it was the
crowd looked at and whence it came. Had I been a wild animal let loose
from its cage, mingled curiosity and a peculiar foreboding among the
people of something terrible about to happen could not have been more
intense.
But I had by this time got used to their crowding, so that I could
write, sleep, eat, drink, and be merry, and go through personal and
private routine with no embarrassment. If I turned for the purpose, I
could easily stare out of face a member of the crowd whose inquisitive
propensities had become annoying, but as soon as he left another filled
the gap. Quite pitiful was it to see how trivial articles of foreign
manufacture--such, for instance, as the cover of an ordinary tin or the
fabric of one's clothing--brought a regular deluge of childish interest
and inane questioning; and if I happened to make a few shorthand notes
upon anything making a particular impression, a look half surprised,
half amused, went from one to another like an electric current. Had I
been scheming out celestial hieroglyphics their mouths could not have
opened wider. As I write now I am asked by a respectable person how many
ounces of silver a Johann Faber's B.B. costs. I have told him, and he
has retired smiling, evidently thinking that I am romancing.
That I impress the crowd everywhere is evident. But with all their
questioning, they are rarely rude; their stare is simply the stare of
little children seeing a thing for the first time in their lives. It is
all so hard to understand. My silver and my gold they solicit not; they
merely desire to see me and to feel me. A certain faction of the crowd,
however, do solicit my silver.
Lao Chang has been buying vegetables, and has brought all the vegetable
gardeners and greengrocers around me. The poultry rearers are here too,
and the forage dealers and the grass cutters and the basket makers, and
other thrifty members of the commercial order of Ch'u-tung humankind.
When I came away the people dropped into line and strained their necks
to get a parting smile. I was sped on my way with a public curiosity as
if I were a penal servitor released from prison, a general home from a
war, or something of that kind. And so this wonderful wonder of wonders
was glad when he emerged from the labyrinthic, brain-confusing
bewilderment of Chinese interior life of this town into somewhat clearer
regions. I could not understand. And to the wisest man, wide as may be
his vision, the Chinese mind and character remain of a depth as infinite
as is its possibility of expansion. The volume of Chinese nature is one
of which as yet but the alphabet is known to us.
My own men had got quite used to me, and their minds were directed more
to working than to wondering. In China, as in other Asiatic countries,
one's companions soon accustom themselves to one's little peculiarities
of character, and what was miraculous to the crowd had by simple
repetition ceased to be miraculous to them.
As I put away my notebook after writing the last sentence, I saw a mule
slip, fall, roll for one hundred and fifty yards, losing its load on the
down journey, and then walk up to the stream for a drink.[AZ]
We started for Shayung on February 2nd, 1910, going over a road
literally uncared for, full of loose-jointed stones and sinking sand,
down which ponies scrambled, while the Tibetans in charge covered
themselves close in the uncured skins they wore. This was the first time
I had ever seen Tibetans. They had huge ear-rings in their ears, and
their antiquated topboots--much better, however, than the Yün-nan
topboot--gave them a peculiar appearance as they tramped downward in the
frost.
Going up with us was a Chinese, on the back of a pony not more than
eleven hands high, sitting as usual with his paraphernalia lashed to the
back of the animal. He laughed at me because I was not riding, whilst I
tried to solve the problem of that indefinable trait of Chinese nature
which leads able-bodied men with sound feet to sit on these little
brutes up those terrible mountain sides. Some parts of this spur were
much steeper than the roof of a house--as perpendicular as can be
imagined--but still this man held on all the way. And the Chinese do it
continuously, whether the pony is lame or not, at least the majority.
But the cruelty of the Chinese is probably not regarded as cruelty,
certainly not in the sense of cruelty in the West. Being Chinese, with
customs and laws of life such as they are, their instinct of cruelty is
excusable to some degree. Not only is it with animals, however, but
among themselves the Chinese have no mercy, no sympathy. In Christian
England within the last century men where hanged for petty theft; but in
Yün-nan--I do not know whether it is still current in other
provinces--men have been known to be burnt to death for stealing maize.
A case was reported from Ch'u-tsing-fu quite recently, but it is a
custom which used to be quite common. A document is signed by the man's
relatives, a stick is brought by every villager, the man lashed to a
stake, and his own people are compelled to light the fire. It seems
incredible, but this horrible practice has not been entirely extirpated
by the authorities, although since the Yün-nan Rebellion it has not been
by any means so frequent. I have no space nor inclination to deal with
the ghastly tortures inflicted upon prisoners in the name of that great
equivalent to justice, but the more one knows of them the more can he
appreciate the common adage urging _dead men to keep out of hell and the
living out of the yamens_!
Hua-chow is thirty li from here at the head of an abominable hill, and
here women, overlooking one of the worst paved roads in the Empire, were
beating out corn. Then we climbed for another twenty-five li, rising
from 5,900 feet to 8,200 feet, till we came to a little place called
Tien-chieng-p'u. It took us three hours. Looking backwards,towards
Tali-fu, I saw my 14,000 feet friends, and as we went down the other
side over a splendid stone road we could see, far down below, a valley
which seemed a veritable oasis, smiling and sweet. A temple here
contained a battered image of the Goddess of Mercy, who controls the
births of children. A poor woman was depositing a few cash in front of
the besmeared idol, imploring that she might be delivered of a son. How
pitiable it is to see these poor creatures doing this sort of thing all
over the West of China!
For two days we had been accompanied by a man who was an opium smoker
and eater. Now I am not going to draw a horrible description of a
shrivelled, wasted bogey in man's form, with creaking bones and
shivering limbs and all the rest of it; but I must say that this man,
towards the time when his craving came upon him, was a wreck in every
worst sense--he crept away to the wayside and smoked, and arrived always
late at night at the end of the stage. This was the effect of the drug
which has been described "as harmless as milk." I do not exaggerate. In
the course of Eastern journalistic experience I have written much in
defence of opium, have paralleled it to the alcohol of my own country.
This was in the Straits Settlements, where the deadly effects of opium
are less prominent. But no language of mine can exaggerate the evil, and
if I would be honest, I cannot describe it as anything but China's most
awful curse. It cannot be compared to alcohol, because its grip is more
speedy and more deadly. It is more deadly than arsenic, because by
arsenic the suicide dies at once, while the opium victim suffers untold
agonies and horrors and dies by inches. It is all very well for the men
who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about
the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through
this once fair land of Yün-nan and see everywhere--not in isolated
districts, but everywhere--the ravaging effects in the poverty and
dwarfed constitutions of the people before they advocate the continuance
of the opium trade. I have seen men transformed to beasts through its
use; I have seen more suicides from the effect of opium since I have
been in China than from any other cause in the course of my life. As I
write I have around me painfullest evidence of the crudest ravishings of
opium among a people who have fallen victims to the craving. There is
only one opinion to be formed if to himself one would be true. I give
the following quotation from a work from the pen of one of the most
fair-minded diplomatists who have ever held office in China:--
"The writer has seen an able-bodied and apparently rugged laboring
Chinese tumble all in a heap upon the ground, utterly nerveless and
unable to stand, because the time for his dose of opium had come, and
until the craving was supplied he was no longer a man, but the merest
heap of bones and flesh. In the majority of cases death is the sure
result of any determined reform. The poison has rotted the whole system,
and no power to resist the simplest disease remains. In many years'
residence in China the writer knew of but four men who finally abandoned
the habit. (Where opium refuges have been conducted by missionaries,
reports more favorable have been given concerning those who have become
Christians.) Three of them lived but a few months thereafter; the fourth
survived his reformation, but was a life-long invalid."[BA]
Much good work is now being done by the missionaries, and the number of
those who have given up the habit has probably increased since Mr.
Holcombe wrote the above. In point of fact, helping opium victims is one
of the most important branches of mission work.
_China's Past and Future_ (p. 165) by Chester Holcombe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote AY: The range of mountains which I had skirted since leaving
Tali-fu.--E.J.D.]
[Footnote AZ: On my return journey into Yün-nan, I again called at
Ch'u-tung, traveling not by the main road, but by a steep path
intertwisting through almost impossible places, and requiring four times
the amount of physical exertion. I was led over what was called a new
road. It was quite impossible to horses carrying loads, and only by
tremendous effort could I climb up. How my coolies managed it remains a
mystery. And then, as is almost inevitable with these "new" roads and
the "short" cuts, they invariably lose their way. Mine did. Hopeless was
our obscurity, unspeakable our confusion. Men kept vanishing and
re-appearing among the rocks, and it was very difficult to fix our
position geographically. Up and up we went, in and out, twisting and
turning in an endless climb. A gale blew, but at times we pulled
ourselves up by the dried grass in semi-tropical heat. After several
hours, standing on the very summit of this bleak and lofty mountain, I
could just discern Ch'u-tung and Yung-p'ing-hsien far away down in the
mists. There lay the "ta lu" also, like a piece of white ribbon
stretched across black velvet--the white road on the burnt hill-sides.
We were opposite the highest peaks in the mountains beyond the plain,
far towards Tengyueh--they are 12,000 feet, we were at least 10,500
feet, and as Ch'u-tung is only 5,500 feet, our hours of toil may be
imagined. When we reached the top we found nothing to eat, nothing to
drink (not even a mountain stream at which we could moisten our parched
lips), simply two memorial stones on the graves of two dead men, who had
merited such an outrageous resting-place. I donned a sweater and lay
flat on the ground, exhausted. It must have been a stiff job to bring up
both stones and men.
I strongly advise future travelers to keep to the main road in this
district.--E.J.D.]
[Footnote BA:]
FOURTH JOURNEY
THE MEKONG VALLEY TO TENGYUEH