RAILWAYS AND RIVERS
The rivers and railways of China form a very marked contrast. The
rivers represent the old means of communication, the railways the new,
and the comparison between the river and the railway enables the
traveller to compare new with old China and to realise the great
changes that are taking place there and the transitional character of
the phase through which the country is now passing.
Ancient China, as compared to ancient Europe, was a most progressive
country, a very essential point to remember when we have to consider
what will be the attitude of the Chinese with regard to modern
progress. Theoretically they have always been progressive; practically
they have passed through an age of progress and reached the other side.
That age of progress improved very much their means of communication.
China is naturally well endowed with rivers, and those rivers were
infinitely extended by a system of canals. Of these the Grand Canal is
the most perfect example. The traveller cannot sail along the Grand
Canal and look at the masonry walls of that great work, or the high
bridges that span it, without realising that in its time it was one
{81} of the greatest works the world had ever seen. That canal,
typical of modern China, is now in disrepair, but the spirit of the men
who built it is not gone; it is the same spirit that now welcomes
railways all over China.
The greatest of China's natural waterways is the Yangtsze-Kiang; it
cuts right through the centre of China from the sea to Chungking and
further; it has many important tributaries, which lead through great
lakes and afford a very useful means of communication to vast districts
in Central China.
Along that great river for six hundred miles, ships of the largest size
can sail in the summer; battleships, though not of the largest class,
can ascend to Hankow. Beyond Hankow the river is much shallower, and
communication with Ichang is often interrupted in the winter by want of
water. A thousand miles from the sea begin those wonderful gorges of
the Yangtsze which are among the greatest wonders of the world.
Up to Ichang, the Yangtsze is still a big, rather dull yellow river, a
vastly overgrown Thames, a mass of sandbanks, running through almost
consistently uninteresting country; but after that thousand miles, it
develops into a sort of huge Rhine. The river is still yellow, but it
runs through green mountains and grey rocks. At times it swirls along
with an oily surface dented here and there by whirlpools which tell of
some sunken rock; at other times the grey rocks creep closer together
and the yellow {82} Yangtsze foams itself white in its effort to
squeeze through the narrow opening left. In quieter reaches of the
river a house-boat or luban can be rowed or sailed. The rowing is
rather jerky, the sailing delightful, and so the advance of the
traveller is pleasant and uneventful; but when the boat reaches the
rapids, the only way to get her through is by towing.
There is a temptation always to delay putting men ashore to tow--a
temptation which ended in our house-boat being bumped upon a rock.
Our captain (we call him "lowdah" in China) had cleverly devised, by
creeping along the side of the river under shelter of projecting rocks
and then by dodging round the points, everybody shrieking and yelling
as they strained at the oar, to avoid the necessity of towing; but a
more malign whirlpool than the rest twisted us round till the oars on
one side of the boat could not row because they were fouled on the
rocks, and then another twisted us sideways on to a submerged rock, and
there the current held us till the police-boat the Chinese Government
supplies to foreign travellers kindly took our rope ashore and we were
hauled off without apparently having suffered any damage.
These police-boats, or "red boats," are a great feature in travelling
on the Yangtsze. They add enormously, to begin with, to the artistic
effect, as they are furnished with an art-blue sail, which would
rejoice the heart of an artist, but the nervous traveller {83} regards
them with feelings of a warmer nature than those their æsthetic effect
would arouse. They guarantee, if not the safety of boats and goods, at
least the safety of his person amidst the terrible rapids of the river.
If his boat should be wrecked and his goods become the property of the
fishes, he knows that the "red boat" will dart into the rapids, and
owing to its peculiar construction and the skill of the boatmen, will
be able to rescue and return him, a washed and grateful traveller, to
Ichang.
The excitement of passing the rapids is intense. It is a pleasurable
sensation when you watch from the shore some one else passing through
them; it is more exciting but less pleasurable to be on the boat itself
at that moment. The excitement is largely a question of the size of
the boat, whence the wisdom of taking a small boat even if it is less
comfortable. To watch an eighty-ton junk being hauled through a narrow
passage of foaming water is intensely thrilling. It is a matter of
great difficulty owing to the rocky nature both of the channel and the
shore.
The Yangtsze rises and falls some hundreds of feet in the year, and at
low water the banks are a mass of rough rocks which remind one more of
the sea than of a river. The men who tow are called trackers, and they
have to climb over these rocks tugging and straining at the rope while
a certain number of them, stripped to nudity, try to keep the rope
clear of the rocks which constantly entangle it both on shore and in
the water. It is splendid to {84} watch these men as they bound from
rock to rock to disengage the rope from some projecting point, or as,
leaping into the stream, they swim across to isolated rocks and
extricate it from all sorts of impossible situations. Meanwhile the
junk creeps up inch by inch, at times standing almost still while the
water surges past her and makes a wave at her bow which would not
misbecome a torpedo-destroyer in full steam. Woe betide the junk if
the rope should foul and break in spite of the efforts of these men,
for then she would be at the mercy of the current, and if it should so
happen that there was no wind, the mariners on board have no command
over her, and she must drift as chance will guide her till quieter
water is reached. Of course if there is a wind they can haul up their
sail, and then, though they will descend backwards down the stream,
they will do it with dignity and safety. We passed a junk doing this.
Her rope had apparently broken, her huge sails were set to a stiff
breeze; as you watched her by the water she seemed to be sailing at a
good rate forwards; as you watched her by the land she was travelling a
good steady pace down stream. If she cannot hoist her sail because the
wind is unfavourable, then she will rush back, inadequately guided by
three huge strange-looking oars. The one at the bow, worked by six
men, can twist her round like a teetotum, so that as she dashes down
stream, the captain can select which part of her shall bump against the
submerged rocks, which after all is but a poor {85} privilege, when you
remember that eighty tons of woodwork banged against massive granite
rock must be resolved into its constituent boards, whatever part of it
strikes the rock first. The two other oars are even less helpful.
With eight men at each, they can propel the boat at the rate of about
three miles an hour; but what use is that when the stream is bearing
the junk to destruction at twenty miles an hour. If the rope breaks,
it is rather a question of good luck than good guidance. If there is
no rock in the way, the junk happily sails down and is brought up in
the quieter waters below the rapids. If there is a rock in the way,
the junk arrives at the end of the rapid in a condition which would
please firewood collectors but no one else. Those of the crew who can
swim get ashore, and those who cannot are either picked up by the "red
boat," or if there is not one there, they disappear; their bodies are
recovered several days later lower down the river. From a Chinese
point of view this is all a small matter; what is important is that a
junk containing a valuable cargo has been lost. So frequent have been
these losses that five per cent. insurance is demanded for cargoes
going above Ichang.
[Illustration: GORGES OF THE YANGTSZE: AN AWKWARD MOMENT. JUNK
NEGOTIATING RAPIDS. (Notice coils of bamboo rope)]
Perhaps I ought to say one word about the rope on which the safety of
the junk depends. It is made of plaited bamboo, which is
extraordinarily light, and does not fray, though it is so stiff that it
behaves like a wire rope. Its great lightness {86} allows of the use
of ropes of enormous length. I do not think it is an exaggeration to
say that some of them are a quarter of a mile long. They are very
strong, and therefore can be of wonderfully narrow diameter, but
apparently they last but a short time, and every boat is furnished with
coil after coil of bamboo rope ready for all emergencies. A horrible
accident happens when owing to bad steering the trackers are pulled
back off the narrow ledges cut into the face of the precipices, which
at times border the river, so that they fall into the rapid.
They are an attractive body of men, these trackers. They leap over the
most incredible chasms in the rocks, they climb like cats up the
precipices, they pull like devils, while one master encourages them by
beating a drum on board the junk, and another belabours them on shore
with a bit of bamboo rope, which makes an excellent substitute for a
birch rod, and yet withal they are cheerful. When it rains or snows
they are wet through; when the sun is hot--and remember the Yangtsze is
in the same latitude as North Africa--they expose their bent backs to
the scorching sun; yet apparently they never grumble, but they wile
away the hours of their labour with cheerful song. When they row or
pull easily, the song is a weird antiphonal chant--it seems to be
sometimes a solo and a chorus, sometimes two equally balanced choruses;
but when the work becomes hard, the song changes into a wild snarl and
they laugh a savage laugh as they strain and sweat to the {87}
uttermost. I will complete their description by saying that their
views of decency are those of Adam before the Fall, and that they
preserve their strength by a diet of rice and beans with a handful of
cabbages as a relish. At night they sleep on the deck of the junk on
their rough Chinese bedding with only a mat roofing to keep the rain
off them. And as I watched their cheerful demeanour, I felt more
convinced than ever that the natural virtues of the Chinese are of the
very highest order.
Perhaps I ought to say one word about the beauty of the gorges. I
think in two points they excel. First, in the height of the massive
cliffs, through which the Yangtsze has cut its way like a knife; the
size of the river and the size of the cliffs are so much in proportion
that the eagle circling above the gorge looks like a swallow, and the
crowd of trackers appears as a disturbed ant colony. The other way in
which the gorges excel in beauty is in colouring; at one point
especially it was most remarkable--the rocks were red, the mountains
when we saw them were purple, and the purple and red harmonising with
the fresh green foliage of early summer and the deep yellow of the
river, made a rich combination of tints in the landscape which could
hardly be surpassed. It is typical of the state in which China is at
the present day that a scheme should be on foot for building a railway
which no doubt will render the gorges of the Yangtsze a silent highway,
and, instead of hearing the wild song of the tracker or the savage
beating of the tom-tom, {88} the lonely eagle will circle above a
silent river on which the fisherman's bark alone will sail in the
future.
For all schemes to tame the wild and fierce Yangtsze are clearly
impossible. The river rises and falls more than a hundred feet with
great rapidity, and no human hand could ever throw a dam across this
mass of surging water. Possibly it might be used as a source of power
for electrical work, but it is far more probable that the smaller
rivers which fall into the Yangtsze will be chosen for that purpose.
This district may be a tourist resort, and dwellers in the plains of
China may seek coolness and beauty on one of the crags that overhang
the river; the modern hotel may perch itself beside the ancient
Buddhist temple; but the days of the river as a great commercial route
of China are numbered as soon as the railway linking far-western
Szechuan to the rest of China is completed. One wild scheme proposes
that the railway should come from Russia straight down from Szechuan,
in which case more than probably Szechuan will fall completely under
the influence of the Russian Government.
One of the results of Westernising China must be to produce an
industrial revolution. All those men, for instance, who make a living
by leaping from crag to crag, from rock to rock, and swimming,
struggling, rowing in that river Yangtsze will find their living gone.
But not only will the railway make many poor who had a competence, but
it must make many rich {89} who before were poor. In this case, for
instance, all those commodities which are now extremely dear in
Szechuan, because of the cost of transit, will fall in price, and there
will be a period when there will be a wide margin of profit between the
cost of importation and the conventional price the people are used to
pay, and those who live by trade will grow rich.
What has happened in the West must also happen in the East. The
introduction of steam did not make the official classes or even the
working classes immediately rich. The people who immediately profited
by improved means of production and communication were the great middle
class; afterwards as the working class realised that the margin of
profit would allow of larger wages, they compelled the masters to share
these advantages with them. So it will probably happen in China. With
the railway will come a rich middle class who will be a factor of
growing importance in future China.
A great contrast between the Yangtsze and its wild gorges is the great
trunk line from Peking to Canton which runs at right angles through the
Yangtsze north and south, and must make Hankow, the place where it
crosses the Yangtsze, one of the greatest cities in the whole world.
The railway is only completed as far as Hankow. It runs from Peking
right across the plains of China, which are so desolate in the spring
and so fertile in the summer, and which depend for their fertility on
the July rains. At every station a great Chinese inn is erected--that
{90} is to say, a big courtyard with rooms round. At first, of course,
trade was small; the Chinese village community has but little that it
wants either to buy or sell; each community is to a great extent
self-supporting. A farmer reckoned, I was told by a Chinese official,
that if he had made 30s. a year, he had done well. That does not mean
that he lived on 30s. a year, though in a country where men are paid
threepence a day, one would almost have been ready to believe it; but
it means that he had fifteen dollars a year to spend on things outside
his daily food. His farm supplies him with food and drink and his
vicious luxury, opium; his women make his clothes; it only remains for
him to buy material for the clothes and the little extras that they
cannot make, besides salt. He pays for the few things that he has
bought, probably with the opium he produces, or in Manchuria with
beans; but the trade has been of microscopical dimensions owing to the
difficulties of transit.
When the railway is made he finds at the railway inn the Chinese
merchant ready to buy and sell anything that he on his part is ready to
trade. At first, such things as sewing cotton and cigarettes are the
things that are traded against silk or opium, and then comes Chinese
medicine and mineral oil, and so trade begins, and soon the Chinese inn
becomes a market-place, and the railways begin carrying goods.
Of course the full development of the railway system must depend on the
feeding lines and in what {91} we had in Europe before the railway
system, and what the Chinese have not got, the feeding roads. In
Manchuria--for China, like England, is more go-ahead in the north than
in the south--they are already moving in this direction. The Russian
railways, possessed now by the Japanese, are very busy carrying beans
to Dalny, and soon the Japanese lines from Mukden to Antung will be
equally busy, and the line from Mukden to Tientsin also will carry this
crop. What they are now considering at Mukden is how they can arrange
a feeding system of light railways, by which a bigger area of ground
can be brought within reach of the railway system. To give some idea
of the energy and progressive character of the officials in those
parts, I may mention that they are already making inquiries as to the
mono-rail system for such railways.
The Chinese have made up their minds to welcome railways, and though
they would far prefer railways to be built with Chinese capital, they
are of necessity compelled to accept European capital, since their
fellow-countrymen want very high interest for their money. The Germans
have taken very full advantage of the Chinese desire for railways, and
have linked Kiauchau with the railway system of China.
The effect of all this must be very far reaching. To begin with, it
will alter the influence of foreign powers. As the railway service is
completed, Kiauchau will become a very much more important centre than
it is now. If a railway that links Peking to Nanking, {92} or, to be
accurate, to a town on the Yangtsze opposite to Nanking, is cut by a
railway from Kiauchau, the result will be that Kiauchau will become the
nearest ice-free port for an enormous district of China. This cannot
fail to strengthen the German influence, and the German influence is
connected, as we have already explained, too much with that political
side of missions which has caused them to be distrusted by peace-loving
Chinese. The Chinese will ask themselves, will there not soon be a
missionary incident which will justify a further aggression by Germany
along the railway, which lies so handy for a military advance, and they
will be suspicious of any German missionary effort in that quarter.
But the effect of the railways is much more far reaching than any
casual advantage that it may give to various powers, whether it be to
Germany in Shantung, or to Russia or Japan in Manchuria, or to France
in Yunnan, or to Russia in Szechuan. It will have two main effects.
First and foremost it must place the whole of China in the same
position that Shanghai and Tientsin occupy at the present moment--that
is, it must make the whole of China a mixture of Eastern and Western
civilisation. It may be urged that the rivers of China have already
been the means of bringing East and West into close contact with one
another, and yet that China remains still a separate and different
country to the treaty ports.
{93}
The answer is, firstly, that it is comparatively only a short time
since the river has been opened to foreign trade, and that a great
advance has been made in the treaty ports, so much so that a man in the
customs service living by the gorges of the Yangtsze described the
difference between the treaty ports and the rest of China by saying, "A
man who has only seen Shanghai and Hankow has never seen China."
Secondly, a railway has a great educational effect. When a railway is
first opened the Chinese crowd to see it; they get in the way of the
engine, they are run over, they accuse it of malign powers, and then
they come to the conclusion that it is after all only a machine, and
they take readily to travelling by rail.
For instance, the railway from Tientsin up to Manchuria has already
completely altered the conditions of culture in the north. It has
enabled a large number of labourers to migrate every year to cultivate
the fertile but icy districts of Manchuria, so that it is quite a sight
to see truck-load after truck-load of farm labourers travelling like
cattle, going up from the south to the districts of the north at the
rate of three dollars for a twenty-two hours' journey.
Not only does the railway carry the Tientsin labourer in a truck to the
Manchurian beanfield, but it also carries first-class the Chinese
merchant who will buy the crop of beans to the advantage of the farmer
and to his own greater advantage. The {94} Chinese are rich in
traders, and such an opportunity would never be allowed to pass. Every
year will produce a greater number of wealthy Chinese merchants, many
of them very ignorant both of Western and Eastern knowledge, but
probably some of them owning a respect for that knowledge whose lack
they have felt in proportion to their own ignorance, for there is no
man more inclined as a class to endow educational institutions than he
who in his youth has felt the need of them.
China now needs help to found a University teaching Western knowledge.
Once it is formed, there is every reason to believe that it will be
endowed by the same class that has endowed similar institutions in our
own country.
{95}