TONGCHUAN TO YUNNAN CITY.
From Tongchuan to Yunnan city, the provincial seat of Government and
official residence of the Viceroy, whither I was now bound, is a
distance of two hundred miles. My two carriers from Chaotong had been
engaged to go with me only as far as Tongchuan, but they now re-engaged
to go with Laohwan, my third man, as far as the capital. The conditions
were that they were to receive _6s. 9d._ each (2.25 taels), one tael
(_3s._) to be paid in advance and the balance on arrival, and they were
to do the distance in seven days. The two taels they asked the
missionary to remit to their parents in Chaotong, and he promised to
receive the money from me and do so. There was no written agreement of
any kind--none of the three men could read; they did not even see the
money that the missionary was to get for them; but they had absolute
confidence in our good faith.
I had a mule with me from Tongchuan to Yunnan, which saved me many miles
of walking, and increased my importance in the eyes of the heathen. I
was taking it to the capital for sale. It was a big-boned rough-hewn
animal, of superior intelligence, and I was authorised to sell it,
together with its saddle and bridle, for four pounds. Like most Chinese
mules it had two corns on the forelegs, and thus could see at night.
Every Chinaman knows that the corns are adventitious eyes which give the
mule this remarkable power.
We were on our way early in the afternoon of the 7th, going up the
valley. Below the curiously draped pagoda which commands Tongchuan we
met two pairs of prisoners, who were being led into the city under
escort. They were coupled by the neck; they were suffering cruelly, for
their wrists were so tightly manacled that their hands were
strangulated, a mode of torture to which, it will be remembered, the
Chinese Government in 1860 subjected Bowlby, the _Times_ correspondent,
and the other prisoners seized with him "in treacherous violation of a
flag of truce," till death ended their sufferings. These men were
roadside robbers caught red-handed. Their punishment would be swift and
certain. Found guilty on their own confession, either tendered
voluntarily to escape torture, or under the compulsion of torture,
"self-accusation wrested from their agony," they would be sentenced to
death, carried in baskets without delay--if they had not previously
"died in prison"--died, that is, from the torture having been pushed too
far--to the execution ground, and there beheaded.
We stopped at an inn that was not the ordinary stage, where in
consequence we had few comforts. In the morning my men lay in bed till
late, and when I called them they opened the door and pointed to the
road, clearly indicating that rain had fallen, and that the roads were
too slippery for traffic. But what was my surprise on looking myself to
find the whole country deeply under snow, and that it was still snowing.
All day, indeed, it snowed. The track was very slippery, but my mule,
though obstinate, was sure-footed, and we kept going. We passed a huge
coffin--borne by a dozen men with every gentleness, not to disturb the
dead one's rest--preceded, not followed, by mourners, two of whom were
carrying a paper sedan chair, which would be burnt, and so, rendered
invisible, would be sent to the invisible world to bear the dead man's
spirit with becoming dignity. All day we were in the mountains
travelling up the bed of a creek with mountains on both sides of us. We
passed Chehki, ninety li from Tongchuan, and thirty li further were glad
to escape from the cold and snow to the shelter of a poor thatched mud
inn, where we rested for the night.
A hump-back was in charge. The only bedroom was half open to the sky,
but the main room was still whole, though it had seen better days. There
was a shrine in this room with ancestral tablets, and a sheet of
many-featured gods, conspicuous amongst them being the God of Riches,
who had been little attentive to the prayers offered him in this poor
hamlet. In a stall adjoining our bedroom the mule was housed, and
jingled his bell discontentedly all through the night. A poor man,
nearly blind with acute inflammation of the eyes, was shivering over the
scanty embers of an open fire which was burning in a square hole scooped
in the earthern floor near the doorway. He ate the humblest dishful of
maize husks and meal strainings. That night I wondered did he sleep out
in the open under a hedge, or did the inn people give him shelter with
my mule in the next room. My men and I had to sleep in the same room.
They were still on short rations. They ate only twice a day, and then
sparingly, of maize and vegetables; they took but little rice, and no
tea, and only a very small allowance of pork once in two days. Food was
very dear, and, though they were receiving nearly double wages to carry
half-loads, they must needs be careful. What admirable fellows they
were! In all my wanderings I have never travelled with more good-natured
companions. The attendant Laohwan was a powerful Chinese, solid and
determined, but courteous in manner, voluble of speech, but with an
amusing stammer; he had a wide experience of travel in Western China. He
seemed to enjoy his journey--he never appeared lovesick; but, of course,
I had no means of asking if he felt keenly the long separation from his
bride.
At the inn there was no bedding for my men; they had to cover
themselves, as best they could, with some pieces of felt brought them by
the hunchback, and sleep all huddled together from the cold. They had a
few hardships to put up with, but their lot was a thousand times better
than that of hundreds of their countrymen who were dying from hunger as
well as from cold.
On the 9th, as I was riding on my mule up the mountain road, with the
bleak, bare mountain tops on every side, I was watching an eagle
circling overhead, when my men called out to me excitedly and pointed to
a large wolf that leisurely crossed the path in front of us and slunk
over the brow. It had in its mouth a haunch of flesh torn from some poor
wretch who had perished during the night. This was the only wolf I saw
on my journey, though they are numerous in the province. Last year, not
twenty li from Chaotong, a little girl of four, the only child of the
mission cook, was killed by a wolf in broad daylight before its mother's
eyes, while playing at the cabin door.
Again, to-day, I passed a humpbacked dwarf on the hills, making his
solitary way towards Tongchuan, and I afterwards saw others, an
indication of the prosperity that had left the district, for in time of
famine no child who was badly deformed at birth would be suffered to
live.
We stopped the night at Leitoupo, and next day from the bleak tableland
high among the mountains, where the wind whistled in our faces, we
gradually descended into a country of trees and cultivation and
fertility. We left the bare red hills behind us, and came down into a
beautiful glade, with pretty streams running in pebbly beds past
terraced banks. At a village among the trees, where the houses made some
pretension to comfort, and where poppies with brilliantly coloured
flowers, encroached upon the street itself, we rested under a sunshade
in front of a teahouse. A pretty rill of mountain water ran at our feet.
Good tea was brought us in new clean cups, and a sweetmeat of peanuts,
set in sugar-like almond toffee. The teahouse was filled. In the midst
of the tea drinkers a man was lying curled on a mat, a bent elbow his
pillow, and fast asleep, with the opium pipe still beside him, and the
lamp still lit. A pretty little girl from the adjoining cottage came
shyly out to see me. I called her to me and gave her some sweetmeat. I
wished to put it in her mouth but she would not let me, and ran off
indoors. I looked into the room after her and saw her father take the
lolly from her and give it to her fat little baby brother, who seemed
the best fed urchin in the town. But I stood by and saw justice done,
and saw the little maid of four enjoy the first luxury of her life-time.
Girls in China early learn that they are, at best, only necessary evils,
to be endured, as tradition says Confucius taught, only as the possible
mothers of men. Yet the condition of women in China is far superior to
that in any other heathen country. Monogamy is the rule in China,
polygamy is the exception, being confined to the three classes, the
rich, the officials, and those who can by effort afford to take a
secondary wife, their first wife having failed to give birth to a son.
It is impossible to read the combined experiences of many missionaries
and travellers in China without forming the opinion that the condition
of women in China is as nearly satisfactory as could be hoped for, in a
kingdom of "civilised and organised heathenism," as the Rev. C. W.
Mateer terms it. The lot of the average Chinese woman is certainly not
one that a Western woman need envy. She cannot enjoy the happiness which
a Western woman does, but she is happy in her own way nevertheless.
"Happiness does not always consist in absolute enjoyment--but in the
idea which we have formed of it."
There was no impertinent curiosity to see the stranger. The people in
Yunnan seem cowed and crushed. That arrogance which characterises the
Chinese elsewhere is entirely wanting here. They have seen the horrors
of rebellion and civil war, of battle, murder and sudden death, of
devastation by the sword, famine, ruin, and misery. They are resigned
and spiritless. But their friendliness is charming; their courtesy and
kindliness is a constant delight to the traveller. At meal time you are
always pressed to join the table in the same manner, and with the
identical phrases still used by the Spaniards, but the request is one of
politeness only, and like the "_quiere Vd. gustar?_" is not meant to be
accepted.
We continued on our way. Comparatively few coolies now met us, and the
majority of those who did were travelling empty-handed; but there were
many ponies and mules coming from the capital, laden with tea and with
blocks of white salt like marble. Every here and there a rude shelter
was erected by the wayside, where a dish of cabbage and herbs could be
obtained, which you ate out of cracked dishes at an improvised bench
made from a coffin board resting on two stones. Towards sundown we
entered the village of Kong-shan, a pretty place on the hill slope, with
views across a fertile hollow that was pleasant to see. Here we found an
excellent inn with good quarters. Our day's journey was thirty-seven
miles, of which I walked fifteen miles and rode twenty-two miles. We
were travelling quickly. Distances in China are, at first, very
confusing. They differ from ours in a very important particular: they
are not fixed quantities; they vary in length according to the nature of
the ground passed over. Inequalities increase the distance; thus it by
no means follows that the distance from A to B is equal to the distance
from B to A--it may be fifty per cent. or one hundred per cent. longer.
The explanation is simple. Distance is estimated by time, and, speaking
roughly, ten li (3-1/3 miles) is the unit of distance equivalent to an
hour's journey. "Sixty li still to go" means six hours' journey before
you; it may be uphill all the way. If you are returning downhill you
need not be surprised to learn that the distance by the same road is
only thirty li.
To-night before turning in I looked in to see how my mule was faring. He
was standing in a crib at the foot of some underground stairs, with a
huge horse trough before him, the size and shape of a Chinese coffin. He
was peaceful and meditative. When he saw me he looked reproachfully at
the cut straw heaped untidily in the trough, and then at me, and asked
as clearly as he could if that was a reasonable ration for a
high-spirited mule, who had carried my honourable person up hill and
down dale over steep rocks and by tortuous paths, a long spring day in
a warm sun. Alas, I had nothing else to offer him, unless I gave him the
uncut straw that was stitched into our paillasses. What straw was before
him was Chinese chaff, cut into three-inch lengths, by a long knife
worked on a pivot and board, like the tobacco knife of civilisation. And
he had to be content with that or nothing.
Next day we had an early start soon after sunrise. It was a lovely day
with a gentle breeze blowing and a cloudless sky. The village of
Kong-shan was a very pretty place. It was built chiefly on two sides of
a main road which was as rugged as the dry bed of a mountain creek. The
houses were better and the inns were again provided with heaps of
bedding at the doorways. Advertisement bills in blue and red were
displayed on the lintels and doorposts, while fierce door-gods guarded
against the admission of evil spirits. Brave indeed must be the spirits
who venture within reach of such fierce bearded monsters, armed with
such desperate weapons, as were here represented. I stood on the edge of
the town overlooking the valley while my mule was being saddled. Patches
of wheat and beans were scattered among fields of white-flowered poppy.
Coolies carrying double buckets of water were winding up the sinuous
path from the border of the garden where "a pebbled brook laughs upon
its way." Boys were shouting to frighten away the sparrows from the
newly-sown rice beds; while women were moving on their little feet among
the poppies, scoring anew the capsules and gathering the juice that had
exuded since yesterday. Down the road coolies were filing laden with
their heavy burdens--a long day's toil before them; rude carts were
lumbering past me drawn by oxen and jolting on wheels that were solid
but not circular. Then the mule was brought to me, and we went on
through an avenue of trees that were half hidden in showers of white
roses, by hedges of roses in full bloom and wayside flowers, daisies and
violets, dandelions and forget-me-nots, a pretty sight all fresh and
sparkling in the morning sun.
We went on in single file, my two coolies first with their light loads
that swung easily from their shoulders, then myself on the mule, and
last my stalwart attendant Laohwan with his superior dress, his huge sun
hat, his long pipe, and umbrella. A man of unusual endurance was
Laohwan. The day's journey done--he always arrived the freshest of the
party--he had to get ready my supper, make my bed, and look after my
mule. He was always the last to bed and the first to rise. Long before
daybreak he was about again, attending to the mule and preparing my
porridge and eggs for breakfast. He thought I liked my eggs hard, and
each morning construed my look of remonstrance into one of approbation.
It is very true of the Chinaman that precedent determines his action.
The first morning Laohwan boiled the eggs hard and I could not reprove
him. Afterwards of course he made a point of serving me the eggs every
morning in the same way. I could say in Chinese "I don't like them," but
the morning I said so Laohwan applied my dislike to the eggs not to
their condition of cooking, and saying in Chinese "good, good," he
obligingly ate them for me.
Leaving the valley we ascended the red incline to an open tableland,
where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest.
Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the
downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of
pines that the axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the
geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood. The roadway in
places is cut deeply into the ground; for the path worn by the
attrition of countless feet soon becomes a waterchannel, and the roadway
in the rains is often the bed of a rapid stream. At short intervals are
vast numbers of grave mounds with tablets and arched gables of well
dressed stone. No habitations of the living are within miles of them, a
forcible illustration of the devastation that has ravaged the district.
This was still the famine district. In the open uncultivated fields
women were searching for weeds and herbs to save them from starvation
till the ingathering of the winter harvest. Their children it was
pitiful to see. It is rare for Australians to see children dying of
hunger. These poor creatures, with their pinched faces and fleshless
bones, were like the patient with typhoid fever who has long been
hovering between life and death. There were no beggars. All the beggars
were dead long ago. All through the famine district we were not once
solicited for either food or money, but those who were still living were
crying for alms with silent voices a hundred times more appealing. When
we rested to have tea the poor children gathered round to see us,
skeletons dressed in skins and rags, yet meekly independent and
friendly. Their parents were covered with ragged garments that hardly
held together. Many wore over their shoulders rude grass cloths made
from pine fibre that appear to be identical with the native petticoats
worn by the women of New Guinea.
Leaving the poor upland behind us, we descended to a broad and fertile
plain where the travelling was easy, and passed the night in a large
Moslem inn in the town of Iangkai.
All next day we pursued our way through fertile fields flanked by pretty
hills, which it was hard to realise were the peaks of mountains 10,000
to 11,000 feet above sea-level. Before sundown we reached the prosperous
market town of Yanglin, where I had a clean upstairs room in an
excellent inn. The wall of my bedroom was scrawled over in Chinese
characters with what I was told were facetious remarks by Chinese
tourists on the quality of the fare.
In the evening my mule was sick, Laohwan said, and a veterinary surgeon
had to be sent for. He came with unbecoming expedition. Then in the same
way that I have seen the Chinese doctors in Australia diagnose the
ailments of their human patients of the same great family, he examined
the poor mule with the inscrutable air of one to whom are unveiled the
mysteries of futurity, and he retired with his fee. The medicine came
later in a large basket, and consisted of an assortment of herbs so
varied that one at least might be expected to hit the mark. My Laohwan
paid the mule doctor, so he said, for advice and medicine 360 cash
(ninepence), an exorbitant charge as prices are in China.
On Friday, April 13th, we had another pleasant day in open country,
leading to the low rim of hills that border the plain and lake of Yunnan
city. Ruins everywhere testify to the march of the rebellion of thirty
years ago--triumphal arches in fragments, broken temples, battered idols
destroyed by Mohammedan iconoclasts. Districts destitute of habitations,
where a thriving population once lived, attest that suppression of a
rebellion in China spells extermination to the rebels.
On the road I met a case of goitre, and by-and-by others, till I counted
twenty or more, and then remembered that I was now entering on a
district of Asia extending over Western Yunnan into Thibet, Burma, the
Shan States, and Siam, the prevailing deformity of whose people is
goitre.
[Illustration: THE BIG EAST GATE OF YUNNAN CITY.]
Ten miles before Yunnan my men led me off the road to a fine building
among the poplars, which a large monogram on the gateway told me was the
Catholic College of the _Missions Étrangères de Paris_, known throughout
the Province as Jinmaasuh. Situated on rising ground, the plain of
Yunnan widening before it, the College commands a distant view of the
walls and turretted gateways, the pagodas and lofty temples of the
famous city. Chinese students are trained here for the priesthood. At
the time of my visit there were thirty students in residence, who, after
their ordination, will be scattered as evangelists throughout the
Province. Père Excoffier was at home, and received me with
characteristic courtesy. His news was many weeks later than mine. M.
Gladstone had retired from the Premiership, and M. Rosebery was his
successor. England had determined to renew the payment of the tribute
which China formerly exacted by right of suzerainty from Burma. The
Chinese were daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from
Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai
(Bhamo), M. Warry, as a present to the Emperor, and were the official
recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle
Kingdom. I may here say that I often heard of this tribute in Western
China. The Chinese had been long waiting for the arrival of the
elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs,
announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking,
"Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that
there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese
arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge
that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to
send, every ten years, a complimentary mission from the Chief
Commissioner of Burma to the Viceroy of Yunnan.
It was late when I left Jinmaasuh, and long after sundown before I
reached the city. The flagged causeway across the plain was slippery to
walk on, and my mule would not agree with me that there was any need to
hurry. He knew the Chinese character better than I did. Gunfire, the
signal for the closing of the gates, had sounded when we were two miles
from the wall; but sentries are negligent in China and the gates were
still open. Had we been earlier we should have entered by the south
gate, which is always the most important of the gates of a Chinese city,
and the one through which all officials make their official entry; but,
unable to do this, we entered by the big east gate. Turning sharply to
the right along the city wall we were conducted in a few minutes to the
Telegraph Offices, where I received a cordial welcome from Mr. Christian
Jensen, the superintendent of telegraphs in the two great provinces of
Yunnan and Kweichow. These are his headquarters, and here I was to rest
a delightful week. It was a pleasant change from silence to speech, from
Chinese discomfort to European civilisation. Chinese fare one evening,
pork, rice, tea, and beans; and the next, chicken and the famed Shuenwei
ham, mutton and green peas and red currant jelly, pancakes and
aboriginal Yunnan cheese, claret, champagne, port, and cordial Medoc.