Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation, diacritics, and spelling in the original
document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been
corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
On page 18, "sanpans" should possibly be "sampans".
[Illustration: THE WAY IN.]
INTIMATE
CHINA
The Chinese as I have
seen them. By Mrs.
Archibald Little, Author
of _A Marriage in China_
With 120 Illustrations
HUTCHINSON & CO.
Paternoster Row, London ... 1899
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
CONTENTS.
PRELUDE.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
PAGE
Arriving in Shanghai.--My First Tea-season.--Inside a
Chinese City.--Shanghai Gardens.--In the Romantic East at
last! 1
CHAPTER I.
ON THE UPPER YANGTSE.
Boat-travel.--Vegetation.--Trackers.--Terrace of the
Sun.--Gold Diamond Mountain.--Meng Liang's Ladder.--Great
Szechuan Road.--Steamer Voyage.--Chinese Hades.--Caves 31
CHAPTER II.
A LAND JOURNEY.
Large Farmsteads.--Wedding Party.--Atoning for an
Insult.--Rowdy Lichuan.--Old-fashioned Inn.--Dog's
Triumphal Progress.--Free Fight.--Wicked
Music.--Poppy-fields.--Bamboo Stream 58
CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN A CHINESE CITY.
Arrangement of a Chinese House.--Crowd in Streets.--My
First Walk in Chungking City.--Presents.--Cats, Rats, and
Eggs.--Paying a Call.--Ladies Affectionate.--Shocked at
European Indecency.--Cost of Freight.--Distance by
Post.--Children's Pleasures.--Precautions during
Drought.--Guild Gardens.--Pretty Environs.--Opium Flowers,
and Smokers.--Babble of Schools.--Chinese Girl-child 74
CHAPTER IV.
HINDRANCES AND ANNOYANCES.
Sulphur Bath.--Rowdy Behaviour.--Fight in
Boat.--Imprisonment for letting to
Foreigners.--Book-keeper in Foreign Employ
beaten.--Customs Regulations.--Kimberley Legacy.--Happy
Consul.--Unjust _Likin_ Charges.--Foreigners
massacred.--Official Responsibility 98
CHAPTER V.
CURRENT COIN IN CHINA.
Taels.--Dollars.--Exchange.--Silver Shoes.--Foreign Mints 120
CHAPTER VI.
FOOTBINDING.
Not a Mark of Rank.--Golden Lilies.--Hinds'
Feet.--Bandages drawn tighter.--Breaking the Bones.--A
Cleft in which to hide Half a Crown.--Mothers sleep with
Sticks beside them.--How many die.--How many have all
their Toes.--Feet drop off.--Pain till Death.--Typical
Cases.--Eczema, Ulceration, Mortification.--General Health
affected 134
CHAPTER VII.
ANTI-FOOTBINDING.
Church Mission's Action.--American Mission's
Action.--Tʽien Tsu Hui.--Chinese Ladies' Drawing-room
Meeting.--Suifu Appeal.--Kang, the Modern Sage.--Duke
Kung.--Appeal to the Chinese People 145
CHAPTER VIII.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN.
Official Honours to Women.--Modesty.--Conjugal
Relations.--Business Knowledge.--Opium-smoking.--Typical
Women 164
CHAPTER IX.
BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES.
Missing Bride.--Wedding Reception.--Proxy Marriage.--
Servants' Weddings.--Love for Wives.--Killing a
Husband.--Wifely Affection.--Chinese Babies.--Securing a
Funeral 184
CHAPTER X.
CHINESE MORALS.
How Chinese look upon Shanghai.--A Viceroy's
Expedient.--Method of raising Subscriptions.--Deserving
Deities.--Trustworthiness.--Hunan Hero.--Marrying English
Girls 197
CHAPTER XI.
SUPERSTITIONS.
_Fung shui._--Devastating Eggs.--Demon Possession.--Sacred
Trees.--Heavenly Silk.--Ladder of Swords.--Preserving only
Children.--God of Literature on Ghosts.--God of
War.--Reverence for Ancestors 211
CHAPTER XII.
OUR MISSIONARIES.
European Prejudice.--French Fathers.--Italian
Sisters.--Prize-giving.--Anti-Christian Tracts.--Chinese
Saints and Martyrs 230
CHAPTER XIII.
UP-COUNTRY SHOPPING AND UP-COUNTRY WAYS.
Buying Curios.--Being stoned.--Chinese New Year.--
Robbers.--Protesting Innocence.--Doing Penance.--Medicines 253
CHAPTER XIV.
SOLDIERS.
Tiger Soldiers.--Woosung Drill.--General's
Gallantry.--Japanese War.--Admiral Ting.--Dominoes with a
Sentry.--Viceroy's Review 269
CHAPTER XV.
CHINESE STUDENTS.
Number of Degrees.--Aged Bachelors.--Up for
Examination.--Necessary Qualifications.--Crowding.--
Scarcity of Posts.--Chinese Dress 292
CHAPTER XVI.
A FATHER'S ADVICE TO HIS SON.
Tseng Kuo Fan.--"Neither envious nor fawning."--Repose of
Manner.--Cultivation of Land.--Early Rising, Diligence in
Business, and Perseverance.--Dignity.--Family
Worship.--Reading 317
CHAPTER XVII.
BUDDHIST MONASTERIES.
Monastery near Ichang.--For the Dead.--Near
Ningpo.--Buddhist Service.--Tʽien Dong.--Omi Temples.--Sai
King Shan.--Monastery of the Particoloured Cliff 327
CHAPTER XVIII.
A CHINESE ORDINATION.
Crowd.--Nuns.--Final Shaving.--Woven Paces.--Burning
Heads.--Relationships.--A Living Picture 350
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF OMI.
Luncheon with a Chief Priest.--Tigers.--Mysterious
Lights.--The View of a Lifetime.--Pilgrims.--Glory of
Buddha.--Unburied Priests 362
CHAPTER XX.
CHINESE SENTIMENT.
In Memory of a Dead Wife.--Of a Dear Friend.--Farewell
Verses.--Æsthetic Feeling.--Drinking
Song.--Music.--Justice to Rats 383
CHAPTER XXI.
A SUMMER TRIP TO CHINESE TIBET.
Drying Prayerbooks Mountain.--Boys' Paradise.--Lolo
Women.--Salt-carriers.--Great Rains.--Brick-tea
Carriers.--Suspension Bridge.--Granite Mountains.--Tibetan
Bridge.--Lamas.--Tibetan Women.--Caravanserai at
Tachienlu.--Beautiful Young Men.--_Lamaserai._--Prayers?--
Fierce Dogs.--Dress.--Trying for a Boat 396
CHAPTER XXII.
ARTS AND INDUSTRIES.
Porcelain.--Bronzes.--Silver-work.--Pictures.--
Architecture.--Tea.--Silk.--White Wax.--Grass-cloth.--
Ivory Fans.--Embroidery 425
CHAPTER XXIII.
A LITTLE PEKING PUG.
Enjoyment.--Anticipation.--Regret 446
_AFFAIRS OF STATE._
PRELUDE.
PART I.--GETTING TO PEKING.
House-boat on the Peiho.--Tientsin.--Chefoo.--A Peking
Cart.--Camels.--British Embassy.--Walking on the
Walls.--Beautiful Perspectives 457
PART II.--THE SIGHTS OF PEKING.
Tibetan Buddhism.--Yellow Temple.--Confucian Temple.--Hall
of the Classics.--Disgraceful
Behaviour.--Observatory.--Roman Catholic
Cathedral.--Street Sights.--British
Embassy.--Bribes.--Shams.--Saviour of Society.--Sir Robert
Hart 473
CHAPTER I.
THE CHINESE EMPEROR'S MAGNIFICENCE.
The Emperor at the Temple of Heaven.--Mongol Princes
wrestling.--Imperial Porcelain Manufactory.--Imperial Silk
Manufactory.--Maids of Honour.--Spring Sacrifices.--Court
of Feasting.--Hunting
Preserves.--Strikes.--Rowdies.--Young Men to be prayed for 493
CHAPTER II.
THE EMPRESS, THE EMPEROR, AND THE AUDIENCE.
A Concubine no Empress.--Sudden
Deaths.--Suspicions.--Prince Chʽün.--Emperor's
Education.--His Sadness.--His Features.--Foreign
Ministers' Audience.--Another Audience.--Crowding of the
Rabble.--Peking's Effect on Foreign Representatives 515
CHAPTER III.
SOLIDARITY, CO-OPERATION, AND IMPERIAL FEDERATION.
Everybody guaranteed by Somebody Else.--Buying back
Office.--Family Responsibilities.--Guilds.--All Employés
Partners.--Antiquity of Chinese Reforms.--To each Province
so many Posts.--Laotze's Protest against Unnecessary
Laws.--Experiment in Socialism.--College of
Censors.--Tribunal of History.--Ideal in Theory 532
CHAPTER IV.
BEGINNINGS OF REFORM.
Reform Club.--Chinese Ladies' Public Dinner.--High School
for Girls.--Chinese Lady Doctors insisting on Religious
Liberty.--Reformers' Dinner.--The Emperor at the Head of
the Reform Party.--Revising Examination Papers.--Unaware
of Coming Danger.--Russian Minister's Reported Advice 549
CHAPTER V.
THE COUP D'ÉTAT.
Kang Yü-wei.--_China Mail's_ Interview.--Beheading of
Reformers.--Relatives sentenced to Death.--Kang's
Indictment of Empress.--Empress's Reprisals.--Emperor's
Attempt at Escape.--Cantonese Gratitude to Great
Britain.--List of Emperor's Attempted Reforms.--Men now in
Power.--Lord Salisbury's Policy in China 570
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
The Way in _Frontispiece_
Shanghai from the River 1
Shanghai Creek, with Drawbridge 3
Tea-garden in Shanghai Chinese City 7
Porters waiting for Work 11
The Bubbling Well 15
Soochow Creek, Shanghai 18
Guild Garden at Kiangpei 22
Pavilion in Country Gentleman's Garden 25
Street Scene 29
Wheelbarrow 30
Bow of Travelling-boat 32
Entrance to Yangtse Gorges 33
Trackers 36
Poling a Boat up a Rapid 43
In the Niukan Gorge 48
White Emperor's Temple, looking down the Gorge of the Fearsome
Pool, or Bellows Gorge 49
New and Glorious Rapid 53
Tree moved 100 Yards by Landslip that formed New Rapid 54
Iron Cover of Bottomless Well 55
At Fengtu 56
Free School 67
Poppies and Terraced Rice-fields 71
Chungking, Commercial Capital of Western China 75
Dinner Party in the Garden of a Member of the Hanlin
College,--White Cloth spread in Compliment to Europeans 78
Morning Toilette 80
Outside Governor's Residence in Chungking 83
Country House near Kiukiang 86
A Chinese Country Club, or Guild Garden 94
A Hot Day 95
Market Street outside City 101
The Oldest Official in the Province of Szechuan 105
Giving Evidence in a Court of Justice 111
Chinese Mode of Salutation 123
Chinese Roman Catholics of Many Generations 135
Woman's Natural Foot, and another Woman's Feet bound to 6
Inches 138
Woman's Natural Foot, and another Woman's Feet bound to 4½
Inches 139
Chinese Roman Catholic Burial-ground 146
Family of Literati, Leaders in the Anti-footbinding Movement
in the West of China 157
Bridge near Soochow 163
Memorial Arch leading to Confucius' Grave 165
A Country House Party 174
Foot Shuttlecock 175
Wedding Procession 185
New Kweichow, built by Order 193
Memorial Arch 201
Shoes to mend 206
Ichang from the City Wall, Hall of Literature, and Pyramid
Hill 212
Monastery 217
The 564 Images of Hangchow 221
Pavilion of the Moon in Grounds of God of War's Temple 225
Missionary Group at our House-warming 231
Soochow, with Mission Church 243
Temple to God of War, Yünyang 246
Colossal Gilded Buddha 248
Punch and Judy 255
Stone Animals at General's Grave. A Peasant seated on one with
Straw Hat 259
Entrance to Fairies' Temple, Chungking 261
Play at a Dinner Party in a Guildhall 262
Audience at a Play in a Guildhall 263
Junk 271
Captain of Chinese Gunboat 276
Soldier 278
Soldier 279
Gunboat Soldiers 284
Soldiers 287
Temple of God of Literature 294
Map of China, showing Chief Examination Centres 297
Outside Confucius' Grave 303
Approach to Confucius' Grave 307
Fortress of Refuge, Country House, and Memorial Arch 319
Near Ningpo 331
Salisburia adiantifolia 335
Entrance to Monastery 343
Buddhist Images cut in Cliffs on the River Ya 347
At Fengtu, Chinese Hades 351
Begging Priest, once a General 359
Jack (Long-haired Shantung Terrier) 365
Sacred Tiger 367
Great Precipice of Mount Omi 369
Priest and Pilgrims on Edge of Omi Precipice 373
Cloud Effects on Mount Omi 377
Guard-house near the Arsenal 384
Roof and Roof-end at Chungking 387
Bridge at Hangchow 389
Bridge and Causeway on West Lake 395
Sacred Sai King Mountain 397
Brick-tea Carriers on the Great Brick-tea Road 403
Caravanserai at Tachienlu 410
In a Chungking Guild-house 431
Packing Tea 435
Chinese Hydraulic Apparatus 439
Peking Pug (Short-haired) 447
Peking Lion-dog (Long-haired) 451
On a Mountain Road 454
A Wheelbarrow Stand 456
Interior of Governor's Official Residence at Hangchow 459
Farmer and Water Buffaloes 466
Paper-burning Temples 468
Approach to Ming Emperors' Tombs, Peking 471
Tomb over Banjin Lama's Clothes, built after Tibetan Model
of Marble. Bell-like Cupola and Upper Ornaments of Gold.
Inscriptions in Devanagari Character, Sanscrit, and Chinese 477
Lotus Pond and Dagoba in Emperor's Garden 483
Mountain Village, with Sham Beacon Fires to Left, Foochow
Sedan-chair in Front 489
Shan Chʽing, Prince Chʽün, and Li Hung-chang 495
Late Viceroy Tso Tsung-tang 505
Emperor Kwang-shü, 1875 516
Prince Kung 523
The Great Wall 528
Incense-burner 531
Country House in Yangtse Gorges 537
Kiangsi Guild-house in Chungking 540
Downward-bound Cargo-boat 548
Bridge at Soochow 549
Mr. King, Manager of the Chinese Telegraph Company and
Founder of High Schools for Girls 554
Wên Ting-shih, the Reformer, Late Tutor to the Ladies of
the Imperial Household 563
Head Eunuch of the Empress-Dowager 574
Kiaochou, seized by Germany 583
British and Chinese Flags, June 15th, 1898: Town of
Wei-hai-wei in Distance 586
Ferry at Ichang 597
Approach to Ming Emperor's Tomb, Nanking 605
DRY STATEMENTS.
(TO BE CARRIED WITH THE READER, IF POSSIBLE.)
The Chinese Empire is rather larger than Europe.
Being on the eastern side of a great continent, it has the
same extremes of climate as are to be found in the United
States.
Fruits, flowers, and crops vary in like manner.
Peking is on about the same parallel as Madrid, Chungking
as Cairo, Shanghai as Madeira.
The population of China is over 385 millions.
That of the British Isles in 1891 not quite 38 "
That of France in 1896 38½ "
One alone of China's eighteen provinces, Kiangsu,
has over 39½ "
The Russian nation, already extending over one-sixth of
the globe, while China only extends over a little more
than one-twelfth, musters little over 129 millions, and
thus has about one-third of the Chinese population, with
about twice its territory to stretch itself in.
There is no Poor Law in China. There are no Sundays.
It is considered very unwomanly not to wear trousers, and
very indelicate for a man not to have skirts to his coat;
consequently our European dress is reckoned by Chinese as
indecorous.
Chinese begin dinner with dessert or Russian _sakouska_,
and finish with hot soup instead of hot coffee.
Their cooks are second only to the French; their
serving-men surpass the Germans.
Chinese love children; are ready to work day and night for
their masters; and if occasion demand, to be beaten in
their place, or even, if needs be, to die for them.
In fine, although in all details unlike ourselves, a great
race, with some magnificent qualities.
7, PARK PLACE, ST. JAMES'S, S.W.
[Illustration: SHANGHAI FROM THE RIVER.]
PRELUDE.
_FIRST IMPRESSIONS._
Arriving in Shanghai.--My First Tea-season.--Inside a
Chinese City.--Shanghai Gardens.--In the Romantic East at
last!
I. ARRIVING IN SHANGHAI.
It was in the merry month of May, 1887, that I first landed in China;
but from the first there was nothing merry about China. It felt
bitterly cold, after passing through the tropics; and in Shanghai one
shivered in a warm wrap, as the wind blew direct from the North Pole
straight at one's chest, till one day it suddenly turned quite hot,
and all clothes felt too heavy. Every one almost knows what Shanghai
is like. It has been admirably described over and over again, with its
rows of fine European houses fronting the river, the beautiful public
gardens and well-trodden grass-plats interposed between the two; with
its electric lights and its carriages, and great European stores, at
which you can buy everything you could possibly want only a very
little dearer than in London. There used to be nothing romantic or
Eastern about it. Now, darkened by the smoke of over thirty factories,
it is flooded by an ever-increasing Chinese population, who jostle
with Europeans in the thoroughfare, till it seems as if the struggle
between the two races would be settled in the streets of Shanghai, and
the European get driven to the wall. For the Chinaman always goes a
steady pace, and in his many garments, one upon the top of the other,
presents a solid, impenetrable front to the hurrying European; whilst
the wheelbarrows on which his womankind are conveyed rush in and out
amongst the carriages, colliding here and there with a coolie-drawn
ricksha, and always threatening the toes of the foot-passenger. Too
often there are no foot-pavements, and the whole motley crowd at its
very varying paces is forced on to the muddy street. Ever and anon
even now a closed sedan-chair, with some wealthy Chinaman from the
adjacent Chinese city, threads its way in and out among the vehicles,
noiseless and stealthy, a reminder of China's past glories. There are
also now wholly Chinese streets in the foreign settlement, where all
the shop-fronts are gorgeous with gilding and fine decorative Chinese
characters, where all the shops have signs which hang perpendicularly
across the street-way, instead of horizontally over the shop-front as
with us, and where Chinese shopkeepers sit inside, bare to the waist,
in summer presenting a most unpleasing picture of too much flesh, and
in winter masses of fur and satin.
[Illustration: SHANGHAI CREEK, WITH DRAWBRIDGE.]
Shanghai has got a capital racecourse, and theatre, and
cricket-ground--grounds for every kind of sport, indeed. It has a
first rate club, and an ill-kept museum. Its sights are the bubbling
well and the tea-garden in the China town, believed by globe-trotters,
but erroneously, to be the original of the willow-pattern plate.
Beside this, there is what is called the Stone Garden, full of
picturesque bits. A great deal that is interesting is to be seen in
the China town by those who can detach their minds from the dirt; in
one part all the houses have drawbridges leading to them. But even
the Soochow Road in the foreign settlement has never yet been treated
pictorially as it deserves. It is the Palais Royal of Chinese
Shanghai. At the hour when carriage traffic may only pass one way
because of the crowd, it would reward an Alma-Tadema to depict the
Chinese dandies filling all its many balconies, pale and silken clad,
craning their necks to see, and by the haughtiness of their gaze
recalling the decadent Romans of the last days of the empire. Their
silken garments, their arched mouths, the coldness of their icy stare,
has not yet been duly depicted. _Chun Ti Kung_, by the late Mr. Claude
Rees, is so far the only attempt to describe their life. Yet they,
too, have souls possibly worth the awakening. With their long nails,
their musk-scented garments, their ivory opium-pipes, and delicate
arrangements of colours, they cannot be without sensibilities. Do they
feel that the Gaul is at the gates, and that the China of their
childhood is passing away?
It is this China of their childhood, with here an anecdote and there a
descriptive touch, which I hope to make the English reader see dimly
as in a glass in the following pages, which are not stored with facts
and columns of statistics. People who want more detailed information
about China, I would refer to Sir John Davis's always pleasant pages;
or to my husband's _Through the Yangtse Gorges_, containing the result
of years of observation; or to dear old Marco Polo's account of his
travels in the thirteenth century, revivified by the painstaking
labours of Colonel Yule, and thereby made into one of the best books
on China extant. For my part, I shall endeavour to make the reader see
China and the Chinese as I have seen them in their homes and at their
dinner parties, and living long, oh! such long summer days among them,
and yet wearier dark days of winter. And to make the reader the more
feel himself amongst the scenes and sights I describe, I mean to adopt
various styles, sometimes giving him the very words in which I at the
time dashed off my impressions, all palpitating with the strangeness
and incongruity of Chinese life, at others giving him the result of
subsequent serious reflections.
But here let me record my first great disappointment, because it may
be that of many another. Brown mud is the first thing one sees of
China. Brown mud accompanies the traveller for miles along the Yangtse
River, all along the Peiho, up to brown and muddy Tientsin, and on up
to Peking itself. China generally is not at all like the
willow-pattern plate. I do not know if I really had expected it to be
blue and white; but it was a disappointment to find it so very brown
and muddy.
II. MY FIRST TEA-SEASON.
It was dull and leaden all the six hundred miles up the great river
Yangtse; and at first it poured nearly all day and every day at
Hankow, and we shivered over fires. Nevertheless, in spite of
absolutely leaden skies and never a glimpse of sunshine, the coolies
and the twenty-years-in-China-and-don't-speak-a-word-of-the-language
men wore sun-hats, and pretended to get ill from the glare, when any
one fresh from England would certainly say it was the damp. The floods
were all the while advancing on what looked like a beleaguered city,
when we went out on the plain outside, and gazed back at the city
wall, with its dark water-line clearly marked all round close to the
top.
The country round certainly did not tempt one to go out very often on
to the rotten flag-stoned way by which one walked three or four miles
in order to reach a one-mile distance as the crow flies,
feeble-looking corn and marsh at either side, with an occasional
tandem of buffaloes groaning not in unison with the discordant
creaking of the cart they drew. Yet we plodded past the little
homesteads, each planted on its own artificial hill, faced with stones
on the side the floods come from. The very friendly people all used to
come out of their cottages, and call out, "Do rest with us awhile,"
"Come in, do, and have some tea"; but till I spoke a little more
Chinese, I did not care to repeat this often: though I rather enjoyed
the first time going in and having tea, delicious tea, brought us at
once--next a pipe, and then a bowl of water. Nothing could be
friendlier than the people; and somehow or other I used to fancy from
the first I held quite conversations with them. But what we either of
us said to each other in words it is impossible to tell; there is so
much one understands without knowing the words. So on and on we used
to plod, resisting all kindly pressure to turn in, till gradually the
reflection of the setting sun gave a red glow to the water in the
ruts, and frogs hopped in numbers across the path, and bats whirled
after mosquitoes. Then at last by an effort we summoned up will enough
to turn, and plod just exactly the same way over the selfsame stones
back to Hankow, the beleaguered city, with its avenues of over-arching
willows, and beautiful Bund half a mile long--a mile walk up and down,
therefore, as every one takes care to tell you the first day you
arrive, as if afraid lest, stricken by a sort of midsummer madness,
you should actually leave the English settlement, with its willows and
its villas, and attempt to penetrate into the Chinese town.
[Illustration: TEA-GARDEN IN SHANGHAI CHINESE CITY.
_Believed by globe-trotters to be the original of the willow-pattern
plate._]
The stories I heard about the Chinese town gave me quite a feeling of
excitement the first time I went into it. People threatened me with
horrible sights, and still more horrible smells. But I fancy those,
who talk in this way, can know very little of the East End of London,
and nothing of the South of France or Italian towns. Hankow certainly
struck me as very fairly clean, considering how crowded its streets
are, and the people at that time for the most part as wonderfully
civil. I should not care to hear the shower of abuse, that would greet
a foreigner in one of our English towns, who turned over and examined
all the articles on a stall, then went away without buying anything,
as English people do not hesitate to do there. The Kiangsi and Hunan
Guild-houses are both well worth a visit, although the former has been
in large measure burnt down, and thus stripped of those wonderful
coloured tiles about which the few, who have seen them, are still
enthusiastic. Most people have never seen them at all. As it is now,
the temple to the god of literature at Hanyang has more charms for me,
with its many curved roofs making such an harmonious, rich, dark
medley. However, of course in Hankow no one in the month of May is
thinking about architecture. "Thou art not science, but thou
_tea-chest_ art" is the riddle they were all engaged with, and they
were very sad over it. For the tea was bad; and though the Chinamen
had bound themselves under awful penalties to have no second crop, yet
of course the second crop would be there soon. I looked sadly at the
men from Hunan, sitting so truculently in their boats, with their
pigtails twice coiled round their heads, counting over beforehand the
gains they meant to take back home; for probably there would be none.
We talked tea at breakfast and tiffin and dinner, and we took it at
five and considered its quality. But that would not make the people at
home give up Indian tea, with all its tannin and nerve-poisoning
qualities. So in between-whiles we counted up how many suicides there
were last tea-season. For Chinese have a fine sense of honesty, if not
of honour; and merchants are apt to kill themselves, if they cannot
meet their obligations. "There will be more suicides this year," said
first one, then another.
Meanwhile, the pretty painted boxes streamed past the house at the
rate of eighty a minute sometimes--always noiselessly carried by
coolies in huge sun-hats, and too often through the dripping rain. And
the great gamble went on, and the men who dropped in to call looked
wearier and wearier. But that was all in 1887, which might almost be
called the last year of the great China tea trade of which Hankow had
since 1861 been the centre. There was quite a fleet of ocean steamers
there even that year to take the tea away; in 1898, barely one for
London. English people will not drink China tea. It is so delicate
that, though in itself inexpensive, it comes dear from more leaf
having to be used to produce the same strength of liquor. But it is
soothing, whilst Indian tea puts a fresh strain upon our already
overtaxed digestions.
[Illustration: PORTERS WAITING FOR WORK.]
In old days the Hankow tea trade was a great business. Tea-tasters
came out from England in crowds, arriving in May and going away in
July. They would taste two hundred different teas, not swallowing the
tea, but just savouring its flavour, and smelling it, and handling the
leaf. Then the man who could not tell the same tea again when he went
over the two hundred the second time was no tea-taster. They were pale
men for the most part, of rather finely strung susceptibilities, or
their palates would not have been so critical. And they did not care
much for games of chance, they gambled so high in tea, a fortnight's
business easily leading a man to win or lose £20,000.
Ah! the good old days of China tea and silk are gone. Are there better
days yet to come in the new China that is to take the place of old
China, which is passing away even as we talk about it?
III. INSIDE A CHINESE CITY.
One of the most exciting moments of all my life in China was when I
first found myself shut up within the walls and barred gates of
Wuchang, the provincial capital of Hupeh, one of the rowdiest
provinces of China. And of the three cities that meet together and
almost join--Hankow and Wuchang being separated by the there
three-quarter-mile wide Yangtse, and Hankow and Hanyang separated by
the boat-covered Han--Wuchang has the reputation of being the most
rowdy. It is there, of course, the Provincial Examinations are held;
and when men assemble in their thousands away from their families and
friends, they are in all countries apt to be unruly.
Probably, of all the hundreds of foreign tea-men who visited Hankow,
barely one or two had been across the river to Wuchang. But a
missionary, who was living alone there, and seemed to feel his
loneliness, asked us to go over and spend the night with him; and with
many doubts as to what kind of accommodation he could give us, and
whether we should be inconveniencing him, we accepted. I have often
been to Wuchang since then. But I remember still the thrill with
which, when I went to bed that night, I stood at the window and
listened to the strange, unfamiliar sounds from the street beyond the
compound, or garden. There was the night-watchman crying the hours,
and clacking his pieces of bamboo together to warn evil-doers to keep
off. But he did it in a way I had not yet heard. Then there were such
curious long drawn-out street cries, all unknown, and sounds of people
calling to one another, and the buzz of a great city. And I suddenly
realised, with a choking sense of emotion, that the gates were shut,
and I was within there with a whole cityful of Chinese so hostile to
foreigners, and especially to foreign women, that it had not been
thought safe to let me walk through them to the missionary's house.
Even the curtain of my sedan-chair had been drawn down, so that I
might not be seen by any one.
Wuchang has always been specially interesting to me, because it was my
first Chinese city. And it is so characteristic a one. Every Chinese
city is supposed to be placed on hills representing a serpent and a
tortoise, although the likeness has often to be helped out by a temple
on the tortoise's head, or a pagoda to connect the serpent's coils.
But at Wuchang the serpent and tortoise are very plainly visible. Then
all Chinese cities are apt to be rude. But the people at Wuchang are
so particularly rude. How often have not the gentlemen accompanying
me, when in subsequent years I have dared to walk through its streets,
had to separate themselves from me, and to walk backwards, exhorting
the oncoming crowd of roughs to propriety of behaviour! Curiously
enough, the roughest of Chinese roughs get red and uncomfortable, when
you tell them you fear they have never learnt politeness, do not
observe the rules of decorum, etc., etc. I learnt it as a patter
simply from hearing it said in my own defence, and have often raised a
blush since then by saying it myself. I doubt if the same results
would be obtained by ever so eloquent a paraphrase of the fourth
commandment down Whitechapel way. But Chinese, whether they follow
them or not, seem all to have been taught to hold in respect the dicta
of the ancients. To this day a quotation from Confucius will often
settle a moot point in weighty affairs of State. Would that it were so
among ourselves with a Christian text!
IV. SHANGHAI PUBLIC GARDENS.
To those who have just arrived off a long sea voyage, as to those who
from time to time come down from some roadless, gasless, shopless, but
smell-ful up-country sojourn, there is one bit of Shanghai that is
exceptionally refreshing and delightsome; and that is the garden by
the river. At night, when the lamps are lit and mirrored in the water
in rows and garlands of light, when the sea-breeze blows in freshly,
and friends gather in the gardens, I have even heard it asserted by
its greatest detractors, "Shanghai is as good as any other place by
night."
[Illustration: THE BUBBLING WELL.]
But it is in the mornings in winter, or in the before-dinner hours in
summer, when the band plays, that you must go there, properly to know
what the Shanghai Gardens are like. First and foremost, they are full
of flowers--flowers with colours and scents. I do not know how many
other people may be thus constituted, but there are occasions when I
would as soon meet Keats' "Belle Dame Sans Merci" "alone and palely
loitering" as wander through such unmitigated greenery as the Botanic
Gardens at Singapore offer to the passing traveller, at least in the
month of April. Kew Gardens are all too often depressing after the
same fashion; though there one can always fall back upon the
greenhouses to see
"How great Nature truly joys in red and green,
What sweet thoughts she thinks
In violets and pinks
And a thousand blushing hues made solely to be seen."
[Illustration: SOOCHOW CREEK, SHANGHAI.]
Hongkong Gardens are very fair to see, resembling those of Babylon in
being hanging gardens, gardens of terraces. But the way in which the
Shanghai Gardens are fitted in between the Bund and the Soochow
Creek, with the much-traversed Garden Bridge giving something definite
to look at, and the river girdling it all--the river with its
ever-moving panorama of swift ocean steamers and perky little
steam-launches, and yachts and junks of deeply dyed sails, and
brilliant coloured sanpans, all within a stone's-throw,--this
situation makes the Shanghai Gardens a place not easily to be matched
for passing away the after-sunshine hours. But flowers are the
Shanghai Gardens' _forte_. They should be seen when they are all
abloom with roses; or when lordly tulips dazzle the eye with their
scarlet and gold, till it is fain to seek relief among those blue and
white fairies dancing in the sunshine--sweet-scented hyacinths; or
when the chrysanthemums are in season. All these flowers are seen
against a background of glossy-leaved magnolias, with their pale
sweet-scented blossoms, and oleander-trees, and pomegranates and
acacias, all in their different seasons glorious with rose and scarlet
or feathery pink and white blossoms.
At one season there is a borderful, but full to overflowing, as those
borders almost always are, of the Japanese _Lilium auratum_, a large,
almost arrogant, white lily, with a broad band of gold down each
petal. A little while before, people went to the far garden across the
road to see the fly-devouring flower, and inhale its fetid breath as
of dead men's--not bones, certainly--and all uncleanness. Next the
water-lilies claimed their attention, and the poetic rosy lotus
flowers, one of which grew so fast, and with such precision of
rectitude, that its bud forced its way right through the overshadowing
fleshy leaf, and there expanded into a beautiful blossom at its
leisure.
The rarely visited fernery at the end of this garden well deserves
more frequent visits. There you will find that quaint _Asplenium
bulbiferum_, that drops off little plants, that happen to be growing
about its leaves like little accidents, and eventually develop into
big plants, that again do likewise. There are also fine specimens of
the Australian _Platycerium_, which you do not wonder to find called
_grande_, so solid and woolly-feeling are its great lumps of leaf.
That brown irregular mark underneath one of the abruptly broken-off
leaves is not decay, but spores of seed. This, with the name of
_Alicorne_, something like an inverted porcupine, reaching out all
round hands, some with three fingers, some with six, sometimes with
the fingers tipped underneath with seed, sometimes not, is said to
have arrived looking for all the world like a withered cabbage. Then
it sprouted and burgeoned; and now it is a thing of joy for ever, not
to be in the least dwarfed or put into the shade by Australian
tree-ferns of really treelike proportions growing close alongside.
But the fernery has nothing of the charm for me possessed by the large
conservatory. There, after so many years, I met once again the friends
of my childhood.
"The spirit culls
Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays
Through the old garden ground of boyish days."
And there, when first I saw it, were all the many varieties of fancy
geraniums, so seldom seen in England now, together with heliotropes,
and begonias, and rosellias, and cinerarias, all growing in loveliest
confusion, though not as I remember them, weighing each other down
with their prodigal luxuriance in a garden border, in far-away
Madeira, but intermixed with Chinese rockwork and ferns, and generally
massed so as to show themselves off to the greatest advantage. In
August that house is full of velvety gloxinias of richest hues, and
again mixed with waxen begonias. Outside the conservatory are two of
those very quaint Singapore cup-sponges, serving as flower-pots of
Nature's making. And near by, apparently the pride of the gardener, to
judge by its lavish supply of netting, is an apple-tree, with many
apples peeping from underneath the netting, as yet quite green! But
for all their greenness, one has been carried off by the birds
already. Hence the netting.
But it is in the garden beside the river where the pleasantest sitting
and sauntering is done. No one puts on best clothes to go there in the
morning; only people who like to go are to be met there--none from a
sense of duty. There the nurses love to congregate whilst their
children play together, and add much life and animation to the scene.
The nurses introduce a Chinese element; for otherwise Chinese, were it
even Li Hung-chang himself, are excluded from the gardens, as now from
Australia, solely because they are Chinese. This never can seem quite
right. The Japanese nurses add an additional element of
picturesqueness, with their dark-coloured, clinging _kimonos_, and
curious gait, as do also Parsee merchants with their high, hard hats.
Yet sometimes I have regretted we do not have more of the flowers of
China in Shanghai. What lovely bursts of blossom one sees at times in
the interior of China! One February I wrote from Chungking:
"Camellias of infinite variety are to be seen already. It is
surprising to notice how many different kinds there are. Perhaps the
loveliest is more like a blush-rose than a camellia--delicate coral
pink, shading off into white round the edges of the somewhat crumpled
petals. Since the Chinese seem now to devote no care to them, nor at
all to know how many varieties there are, it is puzzling to think how
they arose."
[Illustration: GUILD GARDEN AT KIANGPEI.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
Whilst on March 21st of another year, I wrote at the time:
"The thermometer is now in the sixties. Our plum-trees done flowering;
orchids coming on victoriously; tree-tulips and magnolias like big
bouquets; and camellias only slowly waning. Probably nowhere could
camellias be seen in greater luxuriance than here, where there are
endless varieties; and a blossom of a peony-camellia, loose-petalled
and very double, on being measured the other day, revealed a
circumference of fifteen and a quarter inches. Great branches of
judas-tree and pink peach blossom adorn our rooms, together with a
bright-yellow flower that grows in great profusion, and that used to
be called New Zealand flax. From all this you can fancy how
hothouselike our atmosphere feels just now."
Later in the summer the peonies are the great pride of the Chinese;
whilst the scarlet dragon-boat flower is, perhaps, the most remarkable
of all the Chinese flowers from being all scarlet together. But it is
useless to try to enumerate; for the highest authority in Kew Gardens
told me once that in no part of the world was there a more abundant
and varied flora than in the Ichang Gorges, which are also the land of
the butterfly. It is, however, a mistake, I believe, to think China is
called the flowery land from the number of its flowers, the Chinese
word translated "flowery" meaning also "varicoloured."
V. IN THE ROMANTIC EAST AT LAST!
Mr. Tee San's garden is one of the most fascinating spots in China,
with the bright autumn sunshine glinting through the pretty bits of
trellis-work on to its fantastic rocks, and zigzag bridges, and pretty
pavilions, and lighting up the truly exquisite specimens of
chrysanthemums sometimes on show there. There is the spiky little
chrysanthemum, the tiger's moustache, and huge maroon blossoms fading
off into delicate cream in the centre, and many other uncommon
varieties, each in its appropriate pot, spacious, four-square, and
creamy, apparently just made to be painted, and each placed at exactly
the right elevation by means of its light wooden stand, sometimes
raising the pot an inch or two, sometimes about eight feet, and always
so slanted, that the flowers are tilted down towards the spectator,
thus showing themselves off in their entirety. But it is not so much
worth while to go to this garden in order to see the chrysanthemum, as
to admire the infinite variety of Chinese decoration crowded into what
is really a very confined space, but which is made to appear a garden
large enough to lose oneself in. Rows of bamboo stems of soft
blue-green china relieve the monotony of the walls, with their open
air-spaces in between, as do also various graceful interlacings of
tiles. There are doors of all sorts and sizes, like a horseshoe, like
a pentagon, like a leaf cut somewhat irregularly down the middle by
the leaf stem, and with outer edge fluted like a leaf. There are, of
course, artificial mounds made out of rockwork, and grottoes, and
quaint lumps of stone, looking as if they had been masses of molten
metal suddenly hardened in their grotesqueness; also, as a matter of
course, inside the pavilions there are various specimens of that
landscape stone--dear to the heart of the Chinaman, and said to come
from Yunnan--framed and hanging on the walls. There used to be also
a magnificent peacock; a mandarin duck, with its quaint, bright,
decisive colouring; golden pheasants; a scarlet-faced monkey, and a
pale-faced; a little company of white geese, and another of white
rabbits. But to enumerate the treasures of the garden gives no idea of
the artistic skill with which it has been laid out; so that every one
who sits down in it even in the most commonplace manner, and even
those most unpicturesque of human beings, Chinese men and women,
immediately becomes an integral part of a picture.
[Illustration: PAVILION IN COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S GARDEN.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
There sit two Chinamen, with dark-purple silk outer jackets and long,
glowing blue undergowns. They sit on each side of a little square
black table, with their long pipes; behind them the sun slants across
the latticed paper window, a branch of Virginia creeper, already
yellow, pushing in through it. It needs not the addition of the
cream-coloured pot with its chrysanthemums planted well to the front
of it, as they all are, and on the usual slant. Without that bit of
autumn colouring behind them, there is already an autumn picture,--men
past their prime soothing the evening of their day in life with the
pipe, all nature attuned with its vivid fast-fleeting sunshine and its
orange-yellow leaves. In another pavilion sits one of those gorgeous
creatures who always recall the braveries of Sir Walter Scott's
descriptions, but who are hardly now to be seen out of China: his big
loose jacket, of brocaded golden satin, stiff and shimmering: his
long gown, only less brilliant, of violet satin. A gnarled and knotted
root served there as stand for a flower-pot, artificial streamlets
meandering round the pavilion. In the pavement was a stork in white,
all formed of little broken bits of tile. The lights and shades were
so entrancing, it was difficult to think of ever doing anything in
these picturesque retreats, which immediately suggest the Chinaman's
ideal--elegant leisure--and furnish most pleasant places to sit and
_meditate_, as one might say, but in reality probably idly to watch
the sunlight glorify this tint and soften that.
Without the sunshine it is a different affair. The patterns in the
walls, in the fine pebble pavement, are still as complex, the
triangles in the latter still as cunningly arranged, the doorways as
surprising. There are still the same China drums of soft blue-green
and green-blue for garden-seats, and great egg-green vessels for
rain-water, as they say "very clear." But it all looks like a theatrical
stage by daylight. Even the row of changeable roses by the water,
which is really not so clear as it might be, looks uncomfortably pink
beneath a grey rain-sky. Only the hoarfrost-resisting flower, as the
Chinese call the chrysanthemum, is undimmed, the Chinamen's coats as
gay. Whilst Chinese ladies totter as gracefully--or ungracefully--as
before, with highly painted cheeks, gay garments, long elaborate
earrings, beringed and bebraceleted with soft pure gold unalloyed.
[Illustration: STREET SCENE.]
When we were last there, a dainty-looking Chinese dinner was laid out
in one of the pavilions; and before the guests sat down, girls arrived
to make merry with music. For studying Chinese manners and customs,
there could hardly be a more convenient place. Every one seemed very
smart and very friendlily disposed towards the foreigner. Those who
care for local colour can find it in this garden quite as well as in
the China town; and, after all, when one can find local colour without
local odours, it is a thing to make note of in China. It is true to
get there one must not only drive down the Fukien Road, with its
quaint dyers' drying-sheds high up against the sky, their blue
draperies streaming from them picturesquely, then across that very
fascinating bridge choked underneath with highly polished boats, piled
with all manner of merchandise, but also, alas! through a local Covent
Garden, full of colour enough, like its prototype in London, but, like
that, not smell-less. Once arrived, however, a bewildering sense comes
over one of having left prosaic Shanghai very far away, and of having
at last arrived at a bit of the _romantic East_!
[Illustration: WHEELBARROW.]
CHAPTER I.
_ON THE UPPER YANGTSE._
Boat-travel.--Vegetation.--Trackers.--Terrace of the
Sun.--Gold Diamond Mountain.--Meng Liang's Ladder.--Great
Szechuan Road.--Steamer Voyage.--Chinese Hades.--Caves.
Of all ways of travel, surely boat-travel is the most luxurious. For
one thing, it is accounted roughing it; and that means that there is
no bother about toilets: the easiest boots and gloves, the warmest and
most comfortable of clothes, are the appropriate wear. But that seems
to be the whole of the roughing of it. For naturally each
boat-traveller takes care to start with a favourite chair and a
comfortable bed; and it is his cook's business to provide the most
_recherché_ of little repasts whenever wanted. What else is he there
for? Nor do _soufflés_ and pheasants taste any the worse because the
supply of fresh air is unlimited, and the cabin as cosy as nothing but
a perfectly well-built house, or a boat floating in water warmer than
the surrounding air, can be. The first time we went up to Chungking,
we had a sleeping-cabin and sitting-cabin, each 9 ft. 4 in. by 7 ft. 7
in., the former well warmed by a most conveniently arranged kitchen
adjoining, with a plentiful supply of warm water for our
travelling-bath. Thus our only drawback was that the wind was always
favourable; and whereas our captain had been bound over to pay us six
shillings a day for every day over the agreed-upon twenty-two between
Ichang and Chungking, we were equally bound to pay him six shillings a
day extra for every day under.
[Illustration: BOW OF TRAVELLING-BOAT.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO YANGTSE GORGES.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
My first trip up the Gorges was, however, very different. To give its
impressions in their freshness, I will quote from a letter written at
the time:
"_June 20th, 1887._
"It depends, I suppose, a good deal upon how much people like or
dislike the journey, whether it is worth while to come half round the
world, and then steam a thousand nautical miles into the interior of
China, in order to visit the Gorges of the Yangtse; but we have just
returned from a five-days' trip, and what I have seen far surpasses my
anticipations. Indeed, in all my travels, I know no country more
altogether delightful. Although it is June, one of the worst seasons
for going there, we have been able to walk about all day long, and
without getting tired too. The air felt fresh, and, oh! so fragrant
with delicious flowers. The feature of the region, of course, is the
precipices. I should guess the precipices at nothing under two
thousand feet, and perhaps not more than that sheer down, as far as I
have seen: sometimes dolomitic white limestone, which always reminds
me of dead men's bones, sometimes weathered a rich yellow-brown. The
grandeur and massiveness of the bastions, and towers of rock, and
overhanging pinnacles, and projecting isolated blocks, or pillars,
standing bolt upright in fine relief against the sky, are not
picturesque like the scenery round Méran, not exciting like some of
the Alpine scenery in Switzerland, but awe-inspiring and sublime.
"Then the vegetation is enchanting. Nearly every flower, great big
glorious butterfly, and brilliantly coloured bird is unknown to me;
and till people have walked through a country where this is the case,
they cannot imagine what a zest it adds to an expedition. But just to
tell of those I recognise will show how charming it is. Fancy bamboos
in feathery tufts, and palms, everywhere, not tall, but very graceful;
chestnut-trees in full flower; plums laden with the rosiest fruit--but
very bitter we found them; walnut-trees with huge leaves and nuts;
orange-trees; most beautiful, perhaps, of all, the tallow-tree, rather
like the lilac in leaf, but each leaf set on a very long stalk, so
that the slightest breath sets it quivering, a light bright green in
colour, each shoot tipped at the end with almost scarlet young leaves,
and the whole tree, a tall well-grown tree too, covered with yellowish
tassel-like flowers. Most lovely is the general effect. And in the
autumn, they tell me, it is even finer, taking the same brilliant
tints as the maple in Canada. I never know if I like this tree or the
soap-tree best. The latter is like an oak in general effect, but more
graceful, and grows quite big. But I am keeping the best to the last.
Fancy blue larkspurs, and yellow jasmine, and glorious coloured
oleanders, and begonias, virgin lilies, and yet taller white lilies,
and gardenias, and sunflowers, all growing _wild_, and most
luxuriantly. I was quite excited when I first saw waxen-leaved
begonias cuddling into the crevices of a rock by the wayside; and
exclaimed aloud when a turn of the path revealed a whole bank of dwarf
sunflowers, golden in the sun. These, too, are only the flowers I can
name. There are numbers more, and so fragrant! And among them all
enormous swallow-tailed butterflies, and a very pretty breed of white
goats, with dear little kids, disport themselves. Grand though the
Gorges are, one does not feel saddened or depressed by them, as I was
afraid of being. It is like seeing a whole troop of graceful loving
grandchildren climbing up some grand old man's knee.
"But the Yangtse certainly does appear a very wicked river, bristling
with rocks and whirlpools, just as its shores bristle with precipices.
We had a very light boat, and an absurdly large crew--eight men
besides the head man. And with all their exertions, they could only
get us up against the rushing, whirling current at the rate of a mile
an hour. But the river ran so fast, and the men worked so hard, and
the shores were so varied, ever opening out some new, narrow defile,
down which a torrent had cut its way--always cut quite deep--that one
had no sense at all of going slowly, but just the contrary. The men
had long bamboos with hooks at the end, and with these they would
hook on to the rocks, and claw us up against the current; for we
always kept quite close to the side, so as, as far as possible, to
keep out of the rush of the river, and profit by occasional eddies.
Then at other times they would bound on to the shore, scampering and
giving tongue like a pack of beagles let loose, and tow the boat
along, occasionally bending almost double in their efforts.
"I thought at first I would walk along the path with the trackers. Oh
the foolish English idea! At times the trackers bounded along over
loose boulders, or over ledges of rock, where the limestone strata
made a fairly smooth surface; but at others they, with their bare
feet and hands well used, had all they could do to find a footing.
During these _mauvais pas_, or when they were ferried across in a
boat, or waded through the river, those left on board would claw the
rocks, or work the _yulohs_, very long and rather unmanageable oars.
The oddest thing was the intense delight the men seemed to take in
their work. But, of course, tracking our light boat was a very
different thing from dragging a heavily laden junk. Hundreds of men
are said to be lost in these rapids every year. And it really seems
too dangerous work to put men to year in year out. Think of the
tow-line breaking! During the little time we have been away, we saw
one junk wrecked, and two drifting down-stream unmanageable, their
tow-lines having broken, and nearly all their men being ashore. And
the farthest point we got to was only fifteen miles from Ichang; so we
got back down-stream in _two hours_. We did not go farther, because
our captain said it was just then too dangerous to take our house-boat
past the three terrible whirlpools of Nantor; and, of course, half the
pleasure of the trip was in landing every now and then, and walking up
the wild, narrow glens to different points of view. One day we walked
from ten to seven to the Terrace of the Sun, where there is a small
Taoist temple on a little ledge of rock just big enough to hold it, at
the top of a mountain quite two thousand feet high, and with a sheer
precipice on one side. Another day we walked from half-past six till
half-past five to the Gold Diamond Mountain, where there is a
Buddhist temple on a slightly larger plateau, with a spring on the top
of the mountain, and a wonderful panoramic view. It is over a thousand
feet higher than the other, and to get to it you walk along a quite
narrow path with precipices on both sides. Do you realise that in
China there are no railings and no roads, nothing but narrow paths
like English field-paths? I never really believed it till I came here.
And the agriculturists are always encroaching upon even the narrow
paths there are, planting Indian corn and a few beans or something, on
the chance that the passer-by will not tread upon them.
"The people are greatly interested in seeing a European woman. The
women flock round, and beg me to take off my gloves and my hat, that
they may see how my hair is done, and the colour of my hands. Then
some old woman is sure to squeeze my feet, to see if there is really a
foot filling up all those big boots: for, of course, all the women
here have small feet--that is, they have them bandaged up; and
astonishingly well they get along upon their hoof-like feet. They are
very friendly, and bring out chairs and benches before their cottage
doors, and beg us to sit down, and offer us tea, or, if they have not
got that ready, hot water. But the children cry with terror if I touch
them or go too near; and one little boy in a school we went into
simply trembled with fear all the time I stood near him to hear him
read. Sometimes also the dogs run away without barking, they are so
afraid: a great comfort this is, for the barking of the dogs, and the
loathsome-looking pigs at each cottage, and the smells, are the great
objection to going through the often lovely-looking--from a
distance--villages. Hoang San Tung, on its terrace nearly a hundred
feet above the river, with all its curved roofs, looked really like a
flight of doves settled down there, the wings not quite folded yet;
and several of the others are very picturesque from a distance. But
the smells of Ping Shan Pa obliged us to change our anchorage, there
being no reason why we should endure them. There were fireflies there;
but not such glorious ones as at Shih Pai, where they cast long trails
of light upon the river, and were the most luminous I have ever seen.
I do hope there will be soon a steamer running to transport people
safely and easily to this delightful region. No boats were able to
come down while we were up the river; and of some machinery for the
Viceroy of Szechuan, that came up here on the previous voyage of the
steamer in which we travelled, we have heard already that two
boatloads are lost, and it is just as likely as not that the loss of
these may make the rest useless.
"Seeing these ranges of mountains, across which it would, indeed, be
difficult to make roads, and across which there certainly are none, I
better realise how completely the rich and productive province of
Szechuan--the size of France--is cut off from the rest of the world.
Yet it will be sad if steamers introduce an unappreciative crowd to
the grand solitudes of the ravines and precipices, the rocks and
rapids of the Yangtse. Now one can pick one's hands full of flowers,
without thinking one is spoiling any one else's enjoyment. Now one is
away from letters and papers, from all the 'warstle and the wear o't,'
and can enjoy the health-giving breezes and the grandeur of the
scenery quite undisturbed. It does not require to have lived
perspiring and almost clotheless through the tea-season at Hankow to
enjoy such a trip; but now I begin to realise more than I did at the
time what Hankow is, with its willow-shaded Bund, and its painted
tea-chests flying along on the shoulders of coolies, and agitated
buyers and sellers, and no 'mountain and water' beauty, as the Chinese
call the beauty of landscape, only its mirages and its sunsets."
[Illustration: TRACKERS.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
It is always pleasant to sail before a wind, and boat-travel taken
thus is the delight of travel in essence divested of all its _ennuis_,
of tiresome fellow-travellers, dust, steam, rush! Yet there is rushing
enough in the Yangtse Rapids; but rushing of such another sort! We ran
upon a rock our first day, and were not able to find a leak that night
by the flickering light of a Chinese candle. But next day a bag of
damaged rice showed clearly where it was, and a little tangle of
cotton-yarn with some tallow made it all right. After that our mast
cracked so alarmingly that we shortened sail; but that also was soon
made right, the sole of an old shoe being nailed over the crack. Old
shoes seem to have _lasting_ power. And we sailed on again before the
favourable wind that had carried us from Ichang, all through the
Yangtse Gorges, in less than a week. Was some of our good fortune
owing to the three joss-sticks burning at the stern? They also were
stuck in an old shoe, or rather straw sandal this time. Perhaps old
shoes have a meaning, like so many other things in China, not
understood by people not imbued from their cradles with the profound
truths of _Fung shui_.
Our voyage was like a dream of childhood realised, a dream inspired by
many readings of Sinbad's marvellous travels. At Ichang they were
making merry over a disappointed globe-trotter, who had been to see
the Gorges, and come back complaining they were not perpendicular!
Whether he insisted on their descending perpendicularly to their
winter water-line, or their summer water-line, not seldom sixty feet
apart, report said not. But if he had come on to the Bellows Gorge,
surely even he must have been satisfied. The great Szechuan Road, the
one _new_ road I have seen in China, is simply hewn out of the face of
the apparently perpendicular rock, so that the cliff arches over it.
There on the southern side are the square holes in the rock, memorial
of Chinese daring, which the celebrated General Meng Liang caused to
be made, so that in the night he could take his soldiers, on pieces of
wood stuck into these square holes, a rude but strong ladder, up the
face of the cliff, naturally supposed to be inaccessible, and surprise
the enemy, thereby conquering the kingdom of Shu. There also are the
caves, where men gather saltpetre at dizzy heights, climbing up to
them by paths that make one hot to look at. Farther on are the iron
pillars on one side, and opposite the holes in the rock, between
which chains were fastened so as to prevent those of the kingdom to
the west of the Gorges from coming down in their vessels to attack the
men of Hupeh, then the kingdom of Wei. And here, as we left the gorge,
we saw the temple to the memory of Liu Pei, who was there encamped,
and slain when Meng Liang made his marvellous night attack. This
borderland teems with memories, and the Chinese do not quickly forget.
In Kweichow there is still a tablet to the wife of Liu Pei, over the
well at the back of what is now the Prefect's official residence,
where she drowned herself when her husband was slain, nearly two
thousand years ago.
But the day we were there was New Year's Eve, and even our man-servant
said it was impossible for me to go into the city to see it that day;
and on the next day's festival it would be cruel to trouble our good
soldiers to escort us. For we were travelling with that great luxury,
a gunboat, that is also a lifeboat; and the soldiers, as in all this
admirably organised lifeboat service, were excellent fellows, whether
for handling an oar or for keeping back the crowd. They seemed
positively to delight in carrying the camera, or in posing for a
foreground, evidently admiring their own clothes very much, and being
very wishful to know if we could read the characters upon their
jackets. But for this gunboat, which sailed faster than our
passenger-boat, and could put us ashore anywhere, we should have been
deprived of nearly all our interesting walks; for our boat sailed on
and on even into the night. Sailing through the never-ending
Witches' Gorge, ever following _White Wings_ before, a beautifully
appointed junk, that had kept just ahead of us all day, and seeing our
first sunset since we started, soft saffron in the west, had a very
magical effect. It seemed impossible ever to go back again to one's
friends. Why not sail on for ever, since one had for once discovered
the Ideal Life?
[Illustration: POLING A BOAT UP A RAPID.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
"We knew the merry world was round,
And we might sail for evermore."
But there were other moments, and moments oft repeated, when all was
excitement and action. Wild shouts and waving of arms encouraged the
steaming trackers. The water boiled round the bows. The drum sounded.
A man sprang on to an almost impossible rock--it is climbed at least
twenty times nearly every day--and disengaged the tow-line, on which
our lives were depending. The camera was at full cock! And then a
sailor reached in front of it, and that moment was lost! But the boat
hung fire, and we tried again. At one rapid there were women
tracking--women with their hoof-like feet and loathly trousers, giving
delicate little pulls, that surely could not advance the boat much.
Then our soldiers were poling and hooking, with crimson faces and
straining arms! Now we are through that race, and flying along in the
eddy preparatory to the tug-of-war at the next rapid! The trackers are
running ahead like a pack of beagles. A side-ravine becomes visible,
with a grand gateway, irresistibly recalling Coleridge's "like cliffs
that have been rent asunder." Then we gaze at caves, squared, and with
fresh-looking ladders hanging from them, and understand they are
places of refuge for the husbandmen in the houses opposite to retire
into should danger threaten, and that it is not so very long since
they were used. Certainly, they would appear able to stand every siege
but that of hunger.
We passed rocks fluted like organ-pipes, with the stones that had done
the fluting still held captive in them; rocks fretted almost into
lacework by the action of the water; rocks weathered red, and rocks
weathered grey; and one day we saw a black mass, which we were told
was harder than steel, yet it was gnarled and gnawn in rings. After
passing that black mass, the strata sloped from east to west, just as
on the other side of the Gorges they sloped from west to east; thus,
coming up-stream, the rocks no longer seemed so menacing as before.
"But here are the far-famed singing girls of Kweichow, with reedlike
voices, and a man, very pale, with a face like Dante, for accompanist
on a pretty little viol; and the sound of merry-making increases. Our
soldiers have been cooking their pig's head nearly all day. A
mandarin's boat moored next to us has a regular witches' cauldron,
full of the cock that every one has been carrying about these last few
days, comb, legs, and all, a pig's head, and several more
uncanny-looking bits of meat. Evidently our trackers also are enjoying
a good feed outside. We have twenty lusty rogues, besides our boat's
crew. And we are all moored in a tangled mass; so that there does not
seem to be room for even one boat more to spend its New Year at
Kweichow Fu. There are joss-sticks burning at our cabin door.
Joss-sticks were burnt solemnly over our pig's head in the gorge in
the morning of that day, a cannon solemnly fired three times, and the
cook prostrated himself as he offered the burnt-offering. Now crackers
are going off all round; and every man who has a chance has asked me
if I do not think Szechuan the most beautiful country in the world.
Even the captain tried to hurry me in the morning into photographing
the entrance into the first Szechuan gorge. 'Szechuan is beautiful,'
he said. So say all the men with white handkerchiefs bound round their
brows, thus showing their Western origin."
But it was all beautiful, all wild, all grand, after we entered the
Land of Promise through the gate of the Ichang Gorge. For those who do
not love Nature in her wilder moods this was not the time of year to
travel through the Gorges. They should wait till spring has garlanded
them with flowers like a Mayfair ballroom, and perfumed the breezes
with their fragrance. There is a certain sameness about the grandeur
of the scenery when seen always under a leaden sky with a north-easter
driving us on. But for those who admire precipice piled upon
precipice, and rocks rent asunder, every season is the season for the
Gorges, where the Niukan is perhaps the loveliest; but the Ping Shu
Gorge and that of the Fearsome Pool are certainly the most solemn and
impressive; while the Witches' Gorge offers the most variety, and the
Ichang Gorge, though perhaps only because it is best known, ever seems
the friendliest, and is certainly the most fantastic.
[Illustration: IN THE NIUKAN GORGE.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
All China New Year's Day we wandered through the ruins of Liu Pei's
city. Bits of the wall remain, and the gateway under the old drum
tower; but it is a little hard to believe these date from A.D. 200,
although all the people declare they do, and our man-servant begged
that they might be photographed. We picnicked under a beautiful clump
of trees, looking down upon the grand rock mass, whose being
covered by the river is the signal for the Kweichow authorities to
forbid the passage of junks down-river as too dangerous. The days of
this grand rock mass standing in mid Yangtse must be numbered,
supported as it is on three pillars; thus there are two arches to be
seen beneath it, when the water is low enough. We wandered through a
lovely temple on the hill, commanding the most picturesque view we had
yet seen down the last Fearsome Gorge. Unlike most Chinese temples,
this, the first Szechuan temple I had seen, was really exquisitely
kept, clean, and well swept, with clean, bright windows of
many-coloured paper panes. The priests were polite, the images freshly
painted. We came down through a village, again all clean and fresh as
paint. Every one was in good clothes, of course, as it was New Year's
Day; but it was surprising to find that even the smartest women were
ready to be photographed, and not at all too frightened to look into
the camera themselves.
[Illustration: WHITE EMPEROR'S TEMPLE, LOOKING DOWN THE GORGE OF THE
FEARSOME POOL, OR BELLOWS GORGE.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
We longed to walk along the great Szechuan Road, completed as far as
the Hupeh frontier, sixty miles, at a reputed cost of £52,000, and
really a road, though, as is usual in Szechuan, it is often long
flights of steps, and several of its crossings over streams looked
doubtful. The Chinese do not make roads sufficiently often to be good
road-makers. Hupeh was to have continued this road through its gorges
to Ichang; and the great Lo, the Marquis of Carabas of these parts,
had just been up to inspect and chalk O where the road was to go. If
it were ever finished and could last, it would rival the Corniche
Road for magnificence of scenery.
But years have past since we first travelled on the Upper Yangtse, and
no steps have yet been taken to carry the road down-river; the funds
intended for this purpose are said all to have been absorbed in paying
compensation for damage done to foreigners' property in the riots of
one summer. Some day, perhaps, a railway will be cut out along the
river-channel. In the meantime, my husband has proved the long-doubted
practicability of steaming through the rapids, by himself taking a
little steamer up without any foreign assistance to help him, only
Ningpo engineers, who knew neither the Szechuan speech nor ways, and a
Szechuan pilot, who had never been on a steamer before. That voyage
will for ever rank among the most exciting experiences of my life; for
all the population along the river turned out to see the steamer, so
that the cities presented the appearance of having all their outlines
heavily underscored with a blue pencil; whilst sometimes as many as
five Chinese lifeboats and gunboats, with large pennants and burgees
flying, and occasionally firing their cannon, all wanted her to tow
them at once, since their mission was to protect her. And as the
little steamboat could at the outside go nine knots an hour, it was,
indeed, a business to get her up the rapids. In one case--the
worst--she steamed all she could, and three hundred men, harnessed to
tracking-lines, pulled all they could, till one great bamboo line
snapped. But she got up safely after seven minutes, in which one felt
as if one's hair turned white; for if she had once got her head round,
she must have been lost, and every man aboard her. A more powerful
steamer would make nothing of many of the rapids, and even that worst
one at some seasons of the year is barely noticeable.
[Illustration: NEW AND GLORIOUS RAPID.
_By Mr. Cecil Hanbury._]
The chief points of interest, after passing through the Gorges, are
Changfei's beautiful temple, a great place to spend a happy day at;
the singularly beautifully situated city of Wanhsien; Changchow, with
its graceful bamboo groves; and Fengtu, the Chinese Hades.
[Illustration: TREE MOVED 100 YARDS BY LANDSLIP THAT FORMED NEW RAPID.
_By Mr. Cecil Hanbury._]
To a Chinaman this last is the most interesting place along the river:
for the Emperor of the dead is supposed to live on the little hill
there, as the Emperor of the living does at Peking; and whenever a
Chinaman dies, all the world over, a letter ought to be written to
Fengtu announcing his death, and not dropped casually into the post,
but solemnly burnt by a Taoist priest. It is the one place Chinese
boatmen regard with awe, and they object to moving about at night near
Fengtu. Pilgrims come in great numbers to see the well that is reputed
bottomless; and every one burns a little paper and throws it in. So
that when I saw it the well appeared quite full up to the top. There
was an iron cover over it I longed to photograph; and as it was quite
dark by the well, I asked whether the soldiers accompanying me might
carry it outside into the daylight and to my surprise no objection
was made to their doing so; and when I set up the camera, a priest
said he would stand beside it with an incense-stick, as that would
look better. There is a great sword at Fengtu; but we did not learn
the legend about this. The whole hillside was covered with temples,
all crowded with pilgrims; and my husband said if I would go
photographing in Chinese places of pilgrimage, I really must not
expect him to accompany me. But I was new to China then, and
enthusiastic; so four soldiers linked their arms round me, and in that
manner I photographed.
[Illustration: IRON COVER OF BOTTOMLESS WELL.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
On another voyage we stopped at Fengtu for the night as we were
proceeding up-river. It was when the chapels and houses throughout
Szechuan were being burnt down, and missionaries flying for their
lives, though no one was killed, happily. All the people on the
foreshore rushed down to look at our boat, brandishing bamboos; and
our servants said they had to shout very loud and very energetically
that we were not missionaries in order to save our lives. The
principal official sent down additional soldiers to guard us through
the night. But it was impossible to be frightened. For that, I think,
was really the very hottest night I have lived through; even lying on
the roof of the boat it was impossible to do anything but gasp.
[Illustration: AT FENGTU.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
Beyond Fengtu are the colossal statues of the philanthropic
beancurd-seller and his wife, hewn out of the living rock, and sitting
in caves made in the rock out of which they are hewn. Beyond them,
again, comes a very pleasant country of farmsteads, and great
shade-trees, and caves in the rock-face, once inhabited, it is
believed, by the aborigines, who were there before the Chinese came.
But if so, how well and neatly they are shaped! And why did people who
could square doorways so neatly live in such uncomfortable, dark
places as caves? People all say to one another that these caves would
be very interesting subjects for study; but so far no one has studied
them.
Thus, by many windings, and past great bridges, and up more rapids, at
last we arrive at terrible, long reaches of rocks; and then at
Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan, China's westernmost,
and one of its largest and richest provinces. But Chungking deserves a
chapter to itself, especially as it is the only Chinese city within
whose walls I have lived for years. Some people call thus living
"doing a term of fortress." A Chinese city is certainly very like a
prison.