_The Valley of the Shadow of Death_. _Stages to Tengyueh_. _The River
Mekong, Bridge described_. _An awful ascent_. _On-the-spot conclusions_.
_Roads needed more than railways_. _At Shui-chai_. _A noisy domestic
scene at the place where I fed_. _Disregard of the value of female
life_. _Remarkable hospitality of the gentry of the city_. _Hard going_.
_Lodging at a private house on the mountains_. _Waif of the world
entertains the stranger_. _From Ban-chiao to Yung-ch'ang_. _Buffaloes
and journalistic ignorance_. _Excited scene at Pu-piao_. _Chinese
barbers_. _A refractory coolie_. _Military interest._
The journey which I was about to undertake was the most memorable of my
travels in China, with the exception of those in the unexplored Miao
Lands; for I was to pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the
dreaded Salwen Valley. I had made up my mind that I would stay here for
a night to see the effects of the climate, but postponed my sojourn
intead to a later period, when I stayed two days, and went up the
low-lying country towards the source of the river; I am, so far as I
know, the only European who has ever traveled here. Not that my
journeyings will convey any great benefit upon anyone but myself, as I
had no instruments for surveying or taking accurate levels, and might
not have been able to use them had I had them with me. However, I came
in contact with Li-su, and saw in my two marches a good deal of new
life, which only acts as an incentive to see more. My plan on the
present occasion was to travel onwards by the following stages:--
Length Height
of Stage Above Sea
1st day--Tali-shao 65 li. 7,200 ft.
2nd day--Yung-ch'ang-fu 75 li. 5,500 ft.
5th day--Fang-ma-ch'ang 90 li. 7,300 ft.
6th day--Ta-hao-ti 120 li. 8,200 ft.
7th day--Tengyueh (Momien) 85 li. 5,370 ft.
On Friday, February 26th, 1909, I steamed up the muddy mouth of the
Mekong to Saigon in Indo-China in a French mail steamer. To-day,
February 3rd, 1910, I cross the same river many hundreds of miles from
where it empties into the China Sea. I cross by a magnificent suspension
bridge.
A cruel road, almost vertical and negotiated by a twining zigzag path,
has brought me down, after infinite labor, from the mountains over 4,000
feet below my highest point reached yesterday, and I now stand in the
middle of the bridge gazing at the silent green stream flowing between
cliffs of wall-like steepness. I am resting, for I have to climb again
immediately to over 8,000 feet. This bridge has a wooden base swinging
on iron chains, and is connected with the cliffs by bulwarks of solid
masonry. It is hard to believe that I am 4,000 feet above the mouth of
the river. To my left, as I look down the torrent, there are tea-shops
and a temple alongside a most decorative buttress on which the carving
is elaborate. At the far end, just before entering the miniature tunnel
branching out to a paved roadway leading upwards, my coolies are sitting
in truly Asiatic style admiring huge Chinese characters hacked into the
side of the natural rock, descriptive of the whole business, and under a
sheltering roof are also two age-worn memorial tablets in gilt. My men's
patriotic thermometer has risen almost to bursting-point, and in
admiring the work of the ancients they feel that they have a legitimate
excuse for a long delay.
At a temple called P'ing-p'o-t'ang we drank tea, and prepared ourselves
for the worst climb experienced in our long overland tramp.
The Mekong is at this point just 4,000 feet above sea level, as has been
said; the point in front of us, running up perpendicularly to a narrow
pass in the mountains, leads on to Shui-chai (6,700 feet), and on again
to Tali-shao, itself 7,800 feet high, the mountains on which it occupies
a ledge being much higher. For slipperiness and general hazards this
road baffles description. It leads up step by step, but not regular
steps, not even as regularity goes in China.
"There are two small arched bridges in the journey. On the first I sit
down and gaze far away down to the shining river below, and must ascend
again in the wake of my panting men.... Where the road is not natural
rock, it is composed of huge fragments of stone in the rough state,
smooth as the face of a mirror, haphazardly placed at such dangerous
spots as to show that no idea of building was employed when the road was
made. Sometimes one steps twenty inches from one stone to another, and
were it not that the pathway is winding, although the turning and
twisting makes unending toil, progress in the ascent would be
impossible.... Mules are passing me--puffing, panting, perspiring. Poor
brutes! One has fallen, and in rolling has dragged another with him, and
there the twain lie motionless on those horrid stones while the
exhausted muleteers raise their loads to allow them slowly to regain
their feet. There are some hundreds of them now on the hill."
This description was made in shorthand notes in my notebook as I
ascended. And I find again:--
"I have seen one or two places in Szech'wan like this, but the danger is
incomparably less and the road infinitely superior. We pull and pant
and puff up, up, up, around each bend, and my men can scarce go forward.
Huge pieces of rock have fallen from the cliff, and well-nigh block the
way, and just ahead a landslip has carried off part of our course. The
road is indescribably difficult because it is so slippery and one can
get no foothold. My pony, carrying nothing but the little flesh which
bad food has enabled him to keep, has been down on his knees four times,
and once he rolled so much that I thought that he must surely go over
the ravine.... Rocks overhang me as I pass. If one should drop!... But
one does not mind the toil when he looks upon his men. In the midst of
their intense labor my men's squeals of songs echo through the mountains
as the perspiration runs down their uncovered backs; they chaff each
other and utmost good feeling prevails. Poor Shanks is nearly done, but
still laughs loudly.... A natural pathway more difficult of progress I
cannot conceive anywhere in the world; and yet this is a so-called paved
road, the road over which all the trade of the western part of this
great province, all the imports from Burma, are regularly carried.
Should the road ever be discarded, that is if the railway ever comes
over this route, only a long tunnel through the mountain would serve its
purpose.... We have just sat down and fraternized with the man carrying
the mails to Tali-fu, and now we are working steadily for the top,
around corners where the breeze comes with delicious freshness. Here we
are on a road now leading through a widening gorge to Shui-chai, and as
I cross the narrow pass I see the river down below looking like a snake
waiting for its prey."
Roads are needed far more than railways.
Being hungry, we sat down at Shui-chai to feed on rice at a place where
a man minded the baby while the woman attended to the food. Over my head
hung sausages--my men swore that they were sausages, although for my
life I could see no resemblance to that article of food--things of 1 1/2
inches in circumference and from 12 to 60 inches long, doubled up and
hung up for sale over a bamboo to dry and harden in the sun. Hams there
were, and dried bacon, and dirty brown biscuits, and uninviting pickled
cabbage. By the side of the table where I sat was a wooden pun of
unwashed rice bowls, against which lay the filthy domestic dog.
Outside, the narrow street was lined to the farthest point of vantage by
kindly people, curious to see their own feeding implements in the
incapable hands of the barbarian from the Western lands, and the
conversation waxed loud and excited in general hazards regarding my
presence in their city.
Stenches were rife; they nearly choked one.
A little boy yelled out to his mother in complaint of the food he had
been given by a feminine twelve-year-old, his sister. The mother
immediately became furious beyond all control. She snatched a bamboo to
belabor the girl, and in chasing her knocked over the pun of pots
aforesaid. The place became a Bedlam. Men rose from their seats, and
with their mouths full of rice expostulated in vainest mediation, waving
their chopsticks in the air, and whilst the mother turned upon them in
grossest abuse the daughter cleared out at the back of the premises. I
left the irate parent brandishing the bamboo; her voice was heard beyond
the town.
But I was not allowed to leave the town. All the intellect of the place
had assembled in one of the shops, into which I was gently drawn by the
coat sleeve by a good-natured, well-dressed humpback, and all of the men
assembled began an examination as to who the dignitary was, his
honorable age, the number of the wives, sons and daughters he possessed,
with inevitable questioning into the concerns of his patriarchal
forbears. Accordingly I once again searched the archives of my elastic
memory, and there found all information readily accessible, so that in
a few moments, by the aid of Bailer's _Primer_, I had explained that I
was a stranger within their gates, wafted thither by circumstances
extraordinarily auspicious, and had satisfied them concerning my
parentage, birthplace, prospects and pursuits, with introspective
anecdotal references to various deceased members of my family tree. I
did not tell them the truth--that I was a pilgrim from a far country,
footsore and travel-soiled, that I had been well-nigh poisoned by their
bad cooking and blistered with their bug-bites!
I rose to go. Like automotons, everyone in the company rose with me. The
humpback again caught me, this time by both hands, and warmly pressed me
to stay and "uan" ("play") a little. "Great Brother," he ejaculated,
"why journeyest thou wearisomely towards Yung-ch'ang? Tarry here." And
he had pushed me back again into my chair, he had re-filled my teacup,
and invited me to tell more tales of antiquarian relationship. And
finally I was allowed to go. Greater hospitality could not have been
shown me anywhere in the world.
The day had been hard going. We pursued our way unheedingly, as men
knowing not whither we went; and at 4:00 p.m., fearing that we should
not be able to make Ban-chiao, where we intended stopping, I decided to
go no farther than Tali-shao. The evening was one of the happiest I
spent in my journeys, although personal comfort was entirely lacking.
The place is made up of just a few hovels; people were hostile, and
turned a deaf ear to my men's entreaties for shelter. For very
helplessness I laughed aloud. I screamed with laughter, and the folk
gathered to see me almost in hysterics. They soon began to smile, then
to laugh, and seeing the effect, I laughed still louder, and soon had
the whole village with tears of laughter making furrows down their
unwashed faces, laughing as a pack of hyenas. At last a kind old woman
gave way to my boy's persuasions, beckoning us to follow her into a
house. Here we found a young girl of about nine summers in charge. It
was all rare fun. There was nothing to eat, and so the men went one here
and another there buying supplies for the night. Another cleared out
the room, and made it a little habitable. The bull-dog coolie cooked the
rice, Shanks boiled eggs and cut up the pork into small slices, another
fed the pony, and then we fed ourselves.
In the evening a wood fire was kindled in the corner near my bed, and we
all sat round on the mud floor--stools there were none--to tell yarns.
My confederates were out for a spree. We smoked and drank tea and
yarned. Suddenly a stick would be thrust over my shoulder to the fire:
it was merely a man's pipe going to the fire for a light. Chinese never
use matches; it is a waste when there are so many fires about. If on the
road a man wants to light his pipe, he walks into a home and gets it
from the fire. No one minds. No notice is taken of the intrusion.
Everybody is polite, and the man may not utter a word. At a wayside
food-shop a man may go behind to where the cooking is being conducted,
poke his pipe into the embers, and walk out pulling at it, all as
naturally as if that man were in his own house. An Englishman would have
a rough time of it if he had to go down on his hands and knees and pull
away at a pipe from a fire on the floor.
No father, no mother, no elder brother had the little girl in charge.
She was left without friends entirely, and a man must have been a hard
man indeed were he to steel his heart against such a helpless little
one. I called her to me, gave her a little present, and comforted her as
she cried for the very knowledge that an Englishman would do a kind act
to a little waif such as herself. She was in the act of giving back the
money to me, when Lao Chang, with pleasant aptitude, interposed,
explained that foreigners occasionally develop generous moods, and that
she had better stop crying and lock the money away. She did this, but
the poor little mite nearly broke her heart.
Ban-chiao, which we reached early the next morning, is a considerable
town, where most of the people earn their livelihood at dyeing. Those
who do not dye drink tea and pass rude remarks about itinerant magnates,
such as the author. I passed over the once fine, rough-planked bridge at
the end of the town.
In the evening we are at Yung-ch'ang. Here I saw for the first time in
my life a man carrying a _cangue,_ and a horrible, sickening feeling
seized me as I tramped through the densely-packed street and watched the
poor fellow. The mob were evidently clamoring for his death, and were
prepared to make sport of his torments. There is nothing more glorious
to a brutal populace than the physical agony of a helpless
fellow-creature, nothing which produces more mirth than the despair, the
pain, the writhing of a miserable, condemned wretch.
Great drops of sweat bathed his brow, and as one, looked on one felt
that he might pray that his hot and throbbing blood might rush in
merciful full force to a vital center of his brain, so that he might
fall into oblivion. The jeers and the mockery of a pitiless multitude
seemed too awful, no matter what the man's crime had been.
Yung-ch'ang (5,500 feet) is as well known as any city in Far Western
China. I stayed here for two days' rest, the only disturbing element
being a wretch of a mother-in-law who made unbearable the life of her
son's wife, a girl of about eighteen, who has probably by this time
taken opium, if she has been able to get hold of it, and so ended a
miserable existence.
On a return visit this mother-in-law, as soon as she caught sight of me,
ran to fetch an empty tooth-powder tin, a small black safety pin, and
two inches of lead pencil I had left behind me on the previous visit. I
have made more than one visit to Yung-ch'ang, and the people have always
treated me well.
Along the ten li of level plain from the city, on the road which led up
again to the mountains, I counted-no less than 409 bullocks laden with
nothing but firewood, and 744 mules and ponies carrying cotton yarn and
other general imports coming from Burma. There was a stampede at the
foot of the town, and quite against my own will, I assure the reader, I
got mixed up in the affair as I stood watching the light and shade
effects of the morning sun on the hill-sides. Buffaloes, with a crude
hoop collar of wood around their coarse necks, dragged rough-hewn planks
along the stone-paved roadway, the timber swerving dangerously from side
to side as the heavy animals pursued their painful plodding. To the
Chinese the buffalo is the safest of all quadrupeds, if we perhaps
except the mule, which, if three legs give way, will save himself on the
remaining one. But it is certainly the slowest. I am here reminded that
when I was starting on this trip a journalistic friend of mine, who had
spent some years in one of the coast ports, tried to dissuade me from
coming, and cited the buffalo as the most treacherous animal to be met
on the main road in China. He put it in this way:
"Well, old man, you have evidently made up your mind, but I would not
take it on at any price. The buffaloes are terrors. They smell you even
if they do not see you; they smell you miles off. It may end up by your
being chased, and you will probably be gored to death."
The buffalo is the most peaceful animal I know in China. Miniature
belfries were attached to the wooden frames on the backs of carrying
oxen, and were it not for the huge tenor bell and its gong-like sound
keeping the animal in motion, the slow pace would be slower still.
Turning suddenly and abruptly to the left, we commenced a cold journey
over the mountains, although the sun was shining brightly. A goitrous
man came to me and waxed eloquent about some uncontrollable pig which
was dragging him all over the roadway as he vainly tried to get it to
market. Some dozen small boys, with hatchets and scythes over their
shoulders for the cutting of firewood they were looking for, laughed at
me as I ploughed through the mud in my sandals. We had been going for
three hours, and when, cold and damp, we got inside a cottage for tea, I
found that we had covered only twenty li--so we were told by an old
fogey who brushed up the floor with a piece of bamboo. He was dressed in
what might have been termed undress, and was most vigorous in his
condemnation of foreigners.
Leng-shui-ch'ang we passed at thirty-five li out, and just beyond the
aneroid registered 7,000 feet; Yung-ch'ang Plain is 5,500 feet; Pu-piao
Plain-is 4,500 feet. The range of hills dividing the two plains was
bare, the clouds hung low, and the keen wind whistled in our faces and
nipped our ears. Ten li from Pu-piao, on a barren upland overlooking the
valley, a mere boy had established himself as tea provider for the
traveler. A foreign kerosene tin placed on three stones was the general
cistern for boiling water, which was dipped out and handed round in a
slip of bamboo shaped like a mug with a stick to hold it by. Farther on,
sugar-cane grew in a field to the left, and near by a man sat on his
haunches on the ground feeding a sugar-grinding machine propelled by a
buffalo, who patiently tramped round that small circle all day and every
day.
Turning from this, I beheld one of the worst sights I have ever seen in
China. Seven dogs were dragging a corpse from a coffin, barely covered
with earth, which formed one of the grave mounds which skirt the road.
No one was disturbed by the scene; it was not uncommon. But the
foreigner suffered an agonizing sickness, for which his companions would
have been at a loss to find any possible reason, and was relieved to
reach Pu-piao.
Market was at its height. It was warm down here in the valley. The
streets were packed with people, many of whom were pushed bodily into
the piles of common foreign and native merchandise on sale on either
side of the road. A clodhopper of a fellow, jostled by my escort, fell
into a stall and broke the huge umbrella which formed a shelter for the
vendor and his goods, and my boy was called upon to pay. Fifty cash
fixed the matter. I walked into a crowded inn and made majestically for
the extreme left-hand corner. Everybody wondered, and softly asked his
neighbor what in the sacred name of Confucius had come upon them.
"See his boots! Look at his old hat! What a face! It _is_ a monstrosity,
and--"
But as I sat down the general of the establishment cruelly forced back
the people, and screamingly yelled at the top of his voice that those
who wanted to drink tea in the room must pay double rates. His unusual
announcement was received with a low grunt of dissatisfaction, but no
one left. Every table in the square apartment was soon filled with six
or eight men, and the noise was terrific. Curiosity increased. The fun
was, as the comic papers say, fast and furious; and despite the
ill-favored pleasantries passed by my own men and the inquisitive
tea-shop keeper-as to peculiarities of heredity in certain noisy
members of the crowd, a riot seemed inevitable. I stationed my two
soldiers in the narrow doorway to defend the only entrance and entertain
the uninitiated with stories of their prowess with the rifle and of the
weapon's deadliness. Boys climbed like monkeys to the overhead beams to
get a glimpse of me as I fed, and incidentally shook dust into my food.
Everyone pushed to where there was standing room. Outside a rolling sea
of yellow faces surmounted a mass of lively blue cotton, all eager for a
look. The din was terrible. All very visibly annoyed were my men at the
rudeness of their low-bred fellow countrymen, and especially surprised
at the equanimity of Ding Daren in tolerating quietly their pointed and
personal remarks. I became more and more the hero of the hour.
Turning to the crowd as I came out, I smiled serenely, and with a quiet
wave of the hand pointed out in faultless English that the gulf between
my own country and theirs was already wide enough, and that Great
Britain might--did not say that she _would_, but might--widen it still
more if they persisted in treating her subjects in China as monstrous
specimens of the human race. This was rigorously corroborated by my two
soldier-men, to whom I appealed, and a parting word on the ordinary
politeness of Western nations to a greasy fellow (he was a worker in
brass), who felt my clothes with his dirty fingers, ended an interesting
break in the day's monotony. In the street the crowd again was at my
heels, and evinced more than comfortable curiosity in my straw sandals.
They cost me thirty cash, equal to about a halfpenny in our coinage.
Since then I have paid other visits to Pu-piao. On one occasion in
subsequent travel I had a public shave there. My arrival at the inn in
the nick of time enabled me to buttonhole the barber who was picking up
his traps to clear, and I had one of the best shaves I have ever had in
my life, in one of the most uncomfortable positions I ever remember. My
seat was a low, narrow form with no back or anything for my neck to rest
upon, and afterwards I went through the primitive and painful massage
process of being bumped all over the back. Between every four or five
whacks the barber snapped his fingers and clapped his hands, and right
glad was I when he had finished. The yard was full, even to the stable
and cook-house alongside each other, the anger of a grizzly old dame,
who smoked a reeking pipe and who had charge of the rice-and-cabbage
depot, being eclipsed only by my infuriated barber as he gave cruel vent
to his anger upon my aching back.
This reminds me of an uncomfortable shave I had some ten years ago in
Trinidad, where a black man sat me on the trunk of a tree whilst he got
behind and rested my head on one knee and got to work with an implement
which might have made a decent putty knife, but was never meant to cut
whiskers. However, in the case of the Chinese his knife was in fair
condition, but he grunted a good deal over my four-days' growth.
This little story should not convey the impression that I am an advocate
of the public shave in China, or anywhere else; but there are times when
one is glad of it. I have been shaved by Chinese in many places; and
whilst resident at Yün-nan-fu with a broken arm a man came regularly to
me, his shave sometimes being delightful, and--sometimes not.
I had another rather amusing experience at Pu-piao about a month after
this. A supplementary coolie had been engaged for me at Tengyueh at a
somewhat bigger wage than my other men were getting, and this, known, of
course, to them, added to the fact that he was not carrying the heaviest
load, did not tend to produce unmarred brotherhood among them. The man
had been told that he would go on to Tali-fu with me on my return trip,
so that when I took the part of my men (who had come many hundreds of
miles with me, and who had engaged another man on the route to fill the
gap), in desiring to get rid of him, he certainly had some right on his
side. The day before we reached Yung-ch'ang he was told that at that
place he would not be required any longer; but he decided then and there
to go no farther, and refused point-blank to carry when we were ready
to start. I should have recompensed him fully, however, for his
disappointment had he not made some detestable reference to my mother,
in what Lao Chang assured me was not strictly parliamentary language. As
soon as I learnt this--I was standing near the fellow--he somehow fell
over, sprawling to the floor over my walnut folding chair, which snapped
at the arm. It was my doing. The man said no more, picked up his loads,
and was the first to arrive at Yung-ch'ang, so that a little force was
not ineffective.
Indiscriminate use of force I do not advocate, however; I believe in the
reverse, as a matter of fact. I rarely hit a man; but there have been
occasions when, a man having refused to do what he has engaged to do, or
in cases of downright insolence, a little push or a slight cut with my
stick has brought about a capital feeling and gained for me immediate
respect.
Fang-ma-ch'ang, off the main road, was our sleeping-place. Travelers
rarely take this road. Gill took it, I believe, but Baber, Davies and
other took the main road. This short road was more fatiguing than the
main road would have been.
We again turned a dwelling-house upside down. People did not at first
wish to take me in, so I pushed past the quarrelsome man in the doorway,
took possession, and set to work to get what I wanted. Soon the people
calmed down and gave all they could. My bed I spread near the door, and
to catch a glimpse of me as I lay resting, the inhabitants, in much the
same manner as people at home visit and revisit the cage of jungle-bred
tigers at a menagerie, assembled and reassembled with considerable
confusion. But I was beneath my curtains. So they came again, and when I
ate my food by candlelight many human and tangible products of the past
glared in at the doorway. After dark we all foregathered in the middle
of the room and round the camp fire, the conversation taking a pleasant
turn from ordinary things, such as the varying distances from place to
place, how many basins of rice each man could eat, and other Chinese
commonplaces, to things military. Everybody warmed to the subject. My
military bodyguard were the chief speakers, and cleverly brought round
the smoky fire, for the benefit of the thick-headed rustics who made up
the fascinated audience, a modern battlefield, and made their
description horrible enough.
One carefully brought out his gun, waving it overhead to add to the
tragedy, as he weaved a powerful story of shell splinters, blood-filled
trenches, common shot, men and horses out of which all life and virtue
had been blown by gunpowder. The picture was drawn around the Chinese
village, and in the dim glimmer each man's thought ran swiftly to his
own homestead and the green fields and the hedgerows and dwellings all
blown to atoms--left merely as a place of skulls. They spoke of great
and horrible implements of modern warfare, invented, to their minds, by
the devilry of the West. Each man chipped in with a little color, and
the company broke up in fear of dreaming of the things of which they had
heard, afraid to go to their straw to sleep.
As I lay in my draughty corner, my own mind turned to what the next day
would bring, for I was to go down to the Valley of the Shadow of
Death--the dreaded Salwen. I had read of it as a veritable death-trap.