THE JOURNEY FROM CHUNGKING TO SUIFU--CHINESE INNS.
I left the boat at Chungking and started on my land journey, going west
230 miles to Suifu. I had with me two coolies to carry my things, the
one who received the higher pay having also to bring me my food, make my
bed, and pay away my copper cash. They could not speak a single word of
English. They were to be paid for the journey one _4s. 10d._ and the
other _5s. 7d._ They were to be entitled to no perquisites, were to find
themselves on the way, and take their chance of employment on the return
journey. They were to lead me into Suifu on the seventh day out from
Chungking. All that they undertook to do they did to my complete
satisfaction.
On the morning of March 14th I set out from Chungking to cross 1600
miles over Western China to Burma. Men did not speak hopefully of my
chance of getting through. There were the rains of June and July to be
feared apart from other obstacles.
Père Lorain, the Procureur of the French Mission, who spoke from an
experience of twenty-five years of China, assured me that, speaking no
Chinese, unarmed, unaccompanied, except by two poor coolies of the
humblest class, and on foot, I would have _les plus grandes
difficultés_, and Monsieur Haas, the Consul _en commission_, was equally
pessimistic. The evening before starting, the Consul and my friend
Carruthers (one of the _Inverness Courier_ Carruthers) gave me a lesson
in Chinese. "French before breakfast" was nothing to this kind of
cramming. I learnt a dozen useful words and phrases, and rehearsed them
in the morning to a member of the Inland Mission, who cheered me by
saying that it would be a clever Chinaman indeed who could understand
Chinese like mine.
I left on foot by the West Gate, being accompanied so far by A. J.
Little, an experienced traveller and authority on China, manager in
Chungking of the Chungking Transport Company (which deals especially
with the transport of cargo from Ichang up the rapids), whose book on
"The Yangtse Gorges" is known to every reader of books on China.
I was dressed as a Chinese teacher in thickly-wadded Chinese gown, with
pants, stockings, and sandals, with Chinese hat and pigtail. In my dress
I looked a person of weight. I must acknowledge that my outfit was very
poor; but this was not altogether a disadvantage, for my men would have
the less temptation to levy upon it. Still it would have been awkward if
my men had taken it into their heads to walk off with my things, because
I could not have explained my loss. My chief efforts, I knew, throughout
my journey would be applied in the direction of inducing the Chinese to
treat me with the respect that was undoubtedly due to one who, in their
own words, had done them the "exalted honour" of visiting "their mean
and contemptible country." For I could not afford a private sedan chair,
though I knew that Baber had written that "no traveller in Western China
who possesses any sense of self-respect should journey without a sedan
chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the honour and glory of
the thing. Unfurnished with this indispensable token of respectability
he is liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at
ferries, to be relegated to the worst inn's worst room, and generally to
be treated with indignity, or, what is sometimes worse, with
familiarity, as a peddling footpad who, unable to gain a living in his
own country, has come to subsist on China." ("Travels and Researches in
Western China," p. 1.)
Six li out (two miles), beyond the gravemounds there is a small village
where ponies are kept for hire. A kind friend came with me as far as the
village to act as my interpreter, and here he engaged a pony for me. It
was to carry me ten miles for fourpence. It was small, rat-like and
wiry, and was steered by the "mafoo" using the tail like a tiller.
Mounted then on this small beast, which carried me without wincing, I
jogged along over the stone-flagged pathway, down hill and along valley,
scaling and descending the long flights of steps which lead over the
mountains. The bells of the pony jingled merrily; the day was fine and
the sun shone behind the clouds. My two coolies sublet their contracts,
and had their loads borne for a fraction of a farthing per mile by
coolies returning empty-handed to Suifu.
[Illustration: ON THE MAIN ROAD TO SUIFU.]
Fu-to-kuan four miles from Chungking is a powerful hill-fort that guards
the isthmus where the Yangtse and the Little River come nearly together
before encircling Chungking. Set in the face of the cliff is a gigantic
image of Buddha. Massive stone portals, elaborately carved, and huge
commemorative tablets cut from single blocks of stone and deeply
engraved, here adorn the highway. The archways have been erected by
command of the Emperor, but at the expense of their relatives, to the
memory of virtuous widows who have refused to remarry, or who have
sacrificed their lives on the death of their husbands. Happy are those
whose names are thus recorded, for not only do they obtain ten thousand
merits in heaven, as well as the Imperial recognition of the Son of
Heaven on earth; but as an additional reward their souls may, on
entering the world a second time, enjoy the indescribable felicity of
inhabiting the bodies of men.
Cases where the widow has thus brought honour to the family are
constantly recorded in the pages of the _Peking Gazette_. One of more
than usual merit is described in the _Peking Gazette_ of June 10th,
1892. The story runs:--
"The Governor of Shansi narrates the story of a virtuous wife who
destroyed herself after the death of her husband. The lady was a native
of T'ienmen, in Hupeh, and both her father and grandfather were
officials who attained the rank of Taotai. When she was little more than
ten years old her mother fell ill. The child cut flesh from her body and
mixed it with the medicines and thus cured her parent. The year before
last she was married to an expectant magistrate. Last autumn, just after
he had obtained an appointment, he was taken violently ill. She mixed
her flesh with the medicine but it was in vain, and he died shortly
afterwards. Overcome with grief, and without parents or children to
demand her care, she determined that she would not live. Only waiting
till she had completed the arrangements for her husband's interment, she
swallowed gold and powder of lead. She handed her trousseau to her
relatives to defray her funeral expenses, and made presents to the
younger members of the family and the servants, after which, draped in
her state robes, she sat waiting her end. The poison began to work and
soon all was over. The memorialist thinks that the case is one which
should be recorded in the erection of a memorial arch, and he asks the
Emperor to grant that honour to the deceased lady." ("_Granted._")
Near the base of the rock upon which the hill-fort is built, and between
it and the city, the Methodist Episcopalian Mission of the U.S.A.
commenced in 1886 to build what the Chinese, in their ignorance, feared
was a foreign fort, but what was nothing more than a mission house in a
compound surrounded by a powerful wall. The indiscreet mystery
associated with its erection was the exciting cause of the anti-foreign
riot of July, 1886.
From the fort the pathway led us through a beautiful country. We met
numbers of sedan chairs, borne by two coolies, or three, according to
the importance of the traveller. There were Chinese gentlemen mounted on
ponies or mules; there were strings of coolies swinging along under
prodigious loads of salt and coal, and huge bales of raw cotton.
Buffaloes with slow and painful steps were ploughing the paddy fields,
the water up to their middles--the primitive plough and share guided by
half-naked Chinamen. Along the road there are inns and tea-houses every
mile or two, for this is one of the most frequented roadways of China.
At one good-sized village my cook signed to me to dismount; the mafoo
and pony were paid off, and I sat down in an inn, and was served with an
excellent dish of rice and minced beef. The inn was crowded and open to
the street. Despite my Chinese dress anyone could see that I was a
foreigner, but I was not far enough away from Chungking to excite much
curiosity. The other diners treated me with every courtesy; they offered
me of their dishes, and addressed me in Chinese--a compliment which I
repaid by thanking them blandly in English.
Now I went on, on foot, though I had difficulty in keeping pace with my
men. Behind the village we climbed a very steep hill by interminable
steps, and passed under an archway at the summit. Descending the hill,
my cook engaged in a controversy with a thin lad whom he had hired to
carry his load a stage. The dispute waxed warm, and, while they stopped
to argue it out at leisure, I went on. My cook, engaged through the kind
offices of the Inland Mission, was a man of strong convictions; and in
the last I saw of the dispute he was pulling the unfortunate coolie
downhill by the pigtail. When he overtook me he was alone and smiling
cheerfully, well satisfied with himself for having settled _that_ little
dispute. The road became more level, and we got over the ground quickly.
Late in the evening I was led into a crowded inn in a large village,
where we were to stay the night. We had come twenty-seven miles, and had
begun well. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden
bedsteads, a rough table, lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a
rough seat, and the naked earth floor. Hot water was brought me to wash
with and tea to drink, and my man prepared me an excellent supper. My
baggage was in the corner; it consisted of two light bamboo boxes with
Chinese padlocks, a bamboo hamper, and a roll of bedding covered with
oilcloth. An oilcloth is indispensable to the traveller in China, for
placed next the straw on a Chinese bed it is impassable to bugs. And
during all my journey in China I was never disturbed in my sleep by this
unpleasant pest. Bugs in China are sufficiently numerous, but their
numbers cannot be compared with the gregarious hosts that disturb the
traveller in Spain.
My last night in Spain was spent in Cadiz, the most charming city in
the peninsula. I had lost the last boat off to the steamer, on which I
was a passenger; it was late at night, and I knew of no inn near the
landing. At midnight, as I was walking in the Plaza, called after that
revered monarch, Queen Isabel II., I was spoken to at the door of a
fonda, and asked if I wanted a bedroom. It was the taberna "La
Valenciana." I was delighted; it was the very thing I was looking for, I
said. The innkeeper had just one room unoccupied, and he showed me
upstairs into a plain, homely apartment, which I was pleased to engage
for the night. "_Que usted descanse bien_" (may you sleep well), said
the landlord, and left me. Keeping the candle burning I tumbled into
bed, for I was very tired, but jumped out almost immediately, despite my
fatigue. I turned down the clothes, and saw the bugs gathering in the
centre from all parts of the bed. I collected a dozen or two, and put
them in a basin of water, and, dressing myself, went out on the landing
and called the landlord.
He came up yawning.
"Sir," he said, "do you wish anything?"
"Nothing; but it is impossible, absolutely impossible, for me to sleep
in that bed."
"But why, señor?"
"Because it is full of bugs."
"Oh no, sir, that cannot be, that cannot be; there is not a bug in the
house."
"But I have seen them."
"You must be mistaken; it is impossible that there can be a bug in the
house."
"But I have caught some."
"It makes twenty years that I live in this house, and never have I seen
such a thing."
"Pardon me, but will you do me the favour to look at this basin?"
"Sir, you are right, you are completely right; it is the weather; _every
bed in Cadiz is now full of them_."
In the morning, and every morning, we were away at daylight, and walked
some miles before breakfast. All the way to Suifu the road is a paved
causeway, 3 feet 6 inches to 6 feet wide, laid down with dressed flags
of stone; and here, at least, it cannot be alleged, as the Chinese
proverb would have it, that their roads are "good for ten years and bad
for ten hundred." There are, of course, no fences; the main road picks
its way through the cultivated fields; no traveller ever thinks of
trespassing from the roadway, nor did I ever see any question of
trespass between neighbours. In this law-abiding country the peasantry
conspicuously follow the Confucian maxim taught in China four hundred
years before Christ, "Do not unto others what you would not have others
do unto you." Every rood of ground is under tillage.
Hills are everywhere terraced like the seats of an amphitheatre, each
terrace being irrigated from the one below it by a small stream of
water, drawn up an inclined plain by a continuous chain bucket, worked
with a windlass by either hand or foot. The poppy is everywhere abundant
and well tended; there are fields of winter wheat, and pink-flowered
beans, and beautiful patches of golden rape-seed. Dotted over the
landscape are pretty Szechuen farmhouses in groves of trees. Splendid
banyan trees give grateful shelter to the traveller. Of this country it
could be written as a Chinese traveller wrote of England, "their fertile
hills, adorned with the richest luxuriance, resemble in the outline of
their summits the arched eyebrows of a fair woman."
The country is well populated, and a continuous stream of people is
moving along the road. Grand memorial arches span the roadway, many of
them notable efforts of monumental skill, with columns and architraves
carved with elephants and deer, and flowers and peacocks, and the
Imperial seven-tailed dragon of China. Chinese art is seen at its best
in this rich province.
[Illustration: CULTIVATION IN TERRACES. In the foreground the poppy in
bloom.]
[Illustration: SCENE IN SZECHUEN.]
I lived, of course, in the common Chinese inn, ate Chinese food, and was
everywhere treated with courtesy and good nature; but at first I found
it trying to be such an object of curiosity; to have to do all things in
unsecluded publicity; to have to push my way through streets thronged by
the curious to see the foreigner. My meals I ate in the presence of the
street before gaping crowds. When they came too close I told them
politely in English to keep back a little, and they did so if I
illustrated my words by gesture. When I scratched my head and they saw
the spurious pigtail, they smiled; when I flicked the dust off the table
with my pigtail, they laughed hilariously.
The wayside inns are usually at the side of an arcade of grass and
bamboo stretched above the main road. Two or three ponies are usually
waiting here for hire, and expectant coolies are eager to offer their
services. In engaging a pony you make an offer casually, as if you had
no desire in the world of its being accepted, and then walk on as if you
had no intention whatever of riding for the next month. The mafoo
demands more, but will come down; you stick to your offer, though
prepared to increase it; so demand and offer you exchange with the mafoo
till the width of the village is between you, and your voices are almost
out of hearing, when you come to terms.
Suppose I wanted a chair to give me a rest for a few miles--it was
usually slung under the rafters--Laokwang (my cook) unobserved by anyone
but me pointed to it with his thumb inquiringly. I nodded assent and
apparently nothing more happened and the conversation, of which I was
quite ignorant, continued. We left together on foot, my man still
maintaining a crescendo conversation with the inn people till well away.
When almost out of hearing he called out something and an answer came
faintly back from the distance. It was his ultimatum as regards price
and its acceptance--they had been bargaining all the time. My man
motioned to me to wait, said the one word "_chiaodza_" (sedan chair) and
in a few moments the chair of bamboo and wicker came rapidly down the
road carried by two bearers. They put down the chair before me and bowed
to me; I took my seat and was borne easily and pleasantly along at four
miles an hour at a charge of less than one penny a mile.
My men received nearly 400 cash a day each; but from time to time they
sweated their contract to unemployed coolies and had their loads carried
for so little as sixty cash (one penny halfpenny), for two-thirds of a
day's journey.
At nightfall we always reached some large village or town where my cook
selected the best inn for my resting place, the best inn in such cases
being usually the one which promised him the largest squeeze. All the
towns through which the road passes swarm with inns, for there is an
immense floating population to provide for. Competition is keen. Touts
stand at the doorway of every inn, who excitedly waylay the traveller
and cry the merits of their houses. At the counter inside the entrance,
piles of pukais (the warm Chinese bedding), are stacked for hire--few of
the travellers carry their own bedding. The inns are sufficiently
comfortable. The bedrooms are in one or two stories and are arranged
round one or more, or a succession of courts. The cheapness is to be
commended. For supper, bed, and light, tea during the night and tea
before starting in the morning, and various little comforts, such as hot
water for washing, the total charge for the six nights of my journey
from Chungking to Suifu was 840 cash (_1s. 9d._).
Rice was my staple article of diet; eggs, fowls, and vegetables were
also abundant and cheap; but I avoided pork which is the flesh
universally eaten throughout China by all but the Mohammedans and
vegetarians. In case of emergency I had a few tins of foreign stores
with me. I made it a point never to drink water--I drank tea. No
Chinaman ever drinks anything cold. Every half hour or hour he can reach
an inn or teahouse where tea can be infused for him in a few minutes.
The price of a bowl of tea with a pinch of tea-leaves, filled and
refilled with hot water _ad lib_, is two cash--equal to the twentieth
part of one penny. Pork has its weight largely added to by being
injected with water, the point of the syringe being passed into a large
vein; this is usually described as the Chinese method of "watering
stock."
On the third day we were at Yuenchuan, sixty-three miles from Chungking.
On the 5th, we passed through Luchow, one of the richest and most
populous cities on the Upper Yangtse, and at noon next day we again
reached the Yangtse at the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, two miles
down the river from the large town of Lanchihsien. According to my
interpretation of the gesticulations of Laokwang, we were then forty
miles from Suifu, and a beautiful sunny afternoon before us, in which to
easily cover one half the distance. But I must reckon with my guide. He
wished to remain here; I wished to go on; but as I could not understand
his Chinese explanation, nor advance any protest except in English, of
which he was innocent, I could only look aggrieved and make a virtue of
a necessity. He did, however, convey to me his solemn assurance that
to-morrow (_ming tien_) he would conduct me into Suifu before sunset. An
elderly Chinaman, who had given us the advantage of his company at
various inns during the last three days, here entered into the
conversation, produced his watch, and, with his hand over his heart,
which, in a Chinaman, is in the centre of the breast-bone, added his
sacred asseveration to my guide's. So I stayed. We were quite a friendly
party travelling together.
In the middle of the night a light was flashed into our room and a voice
pealed out an alarm that awoke even my two Chinese, who always
obligingly slept in the same room with me. I had protested against their
doing so, but they mistook my expostulation for approbation. We rose at
once, and came down the steep bank to a boat that was lying stern to
shore showing a light. I was charmed to get such an early start, and
construed the indications into a ferry boat to take me across the river,
whence we would go by a short route into Suifu. The boat was loaded with
sugar and had a crew of two men and three boys. There was an awning over
the cargo, but most of the space under it was already occupied by twelve
amiable Chinese, among whom were six promiscuous friends, who had kept
with us for several stages, and had, I imagine, derived some pecuniary
advantages from my company. Yet this was not a ferry boat, but a
passenger boat engaged especially for me to carry me to Suifu before
nightfall. The Chinese passengers had courteously projected their
companionship upon the inarticulate stranger. An elderly gentleman, with
huge goggles and long nails, whose fingers were stained with opium, was
the pacificator of the party, and calmed the frequent wranglings in
which the other eighteen Chinese engaged with much earnestness.
Well, this boat--a leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly
all the way--carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time.
The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two
hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once
did our boat get entangled with any other. Towards sundown we were
abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the
landing. The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills
behind it. It lies in the angle of bifurcation formed by the Yangtse
river (here known as the "River of Golden Sand"), going west, and the
Min, or Chentu river, going north to Chentu, the capital city of the
province. I landed below the southern wall, and said good-bye to my
companions. Climbing up the bank into the city, I passed by a busy
thoroughfare to the pretty home of the Inland Mission, where I received
a kind welcome from the gentleman and lady who conduct the mission, and
a charming English girl, also in the mission, who lives with them.