KUEI FU TO WAN HSIEN
The following morning my trackers, having no fumes of liquor to sleep
off, were astir early. There was one long and strong rapid, Lao Ma (“Old
Horse”), and a minor one, Miao Chitze “Temple Stairs”), where the water
rushes furiously over a succession of steps with a clear but very rapid
channel in the centre. Passenger boats turn out their fares there, and
it was piteous to see the women with their bound feet hobbling and
tumbling among boulders, where I, who am not a very bad climber, was
glad to get the help of two men. Of course, the fathers and husbands
gave them no assistance. The fierce cataract of Tung Yangtze, remarkable
for a vigorous attempt which was made not very many years ago to
overcome its difficulties by building a fine stone breakwater, now in
decay, and a succession of _chipas_ and eddies, intervened between Kuei
Fu and Yun-yang Hsien, or “Clouded Sun City,” on the bank of a fine
gorge, its grey walls extending far up the mountain on the slope of
which the city stands, high above the winter level of the river.
These cities on the Yangtze are captivating to the eye, and the touches
of colour given by the glazed green and yellow tiles of the curved roofs
of their many fine temples relieve the otherwise monotonous grey. The
“City of the Clouded Sun” is not lively, and has very little trade, but
it is stately and clean, and its temples are well kept and imposing,
specially the Temple of Longevity, which has a wall richly decorated in
high relief, in which fine bronze tablets are inlaid.
The glory of the city is, however, on the opposite bank—the Temple of
Chang-fei, a warrior who died fighting for his country. The whole scene
is beautiful, and it was most mortifying that the crowd which gathered
round my camera, looking in at the lens and over my shoulder under the
focussing cloth and shaking it violently, prevented me from getting a
picture of it. Nature and art have combined in a perfect
picturesqueness. On the flat vertical surface of a noble cliff rising
from the boulder-strewn shore of the Yangtze are four characters—and
what can be more decorative than Chinese characters “writ large”?—which
are translated “Ethereal bell, one thousand ages.” This bell is believed
by the people to ring of its own accord in case of a fire in the
district.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF CHANG-FEI.]
Above it, and approached by a fine broad flight of 100 stone stairs, is
a magnificent temple in perfect repair, and with its gorgeous
decorations lately restored. It has three courts, one three-storeyed and
two two-storeyed pavilions, their much-curled roofs tiled with glazed
tiles of an exquisite green. Corridors, also roofed with green tiles and
composed of elaborate and beautiful wooden fretwork with the peony for
its motive, connect the courts. On one side of the temple is a deep
narrow glen with fine trees and a waterfall, and over this a beautiful
stone bridge has been thrown from the temple door. There are some noble
specimens of the _Ficus religiosa_. There were large numbers of
visitors, and a ferry-boat is continually crossing. A lovelier place for
a religious picnic could not be found.[28]
At Yun-yang we took in a relation of the _lao-pan_, a Romanist, employed
by the French priest resident in the city as doctor to a dispensary.
According to him, there are 300 Roman Christians in Yun-yang, who are
quite free from molestation. There is no Protestant missionary there or
in the country we passed through during the previous eighteen days. On
the river bank, after Mr. Stevenson had been talking with a number of
men about Christianity, an old man said to him, “Teacher, you say what
is good, but it is not all true. You say we have never seen God. Then we
can’t have injured Him, and so don’t need His forgiveness.”
Above Yun-yang the country opens out, and the verdure and fertility are
most charming. The bright red of the soil, the fresh green of the grain
crops and sugarcane, and the brilliant yellow of the rape made a
charming picture. Every now and then a noble specimen of the _Ficus
religiosa_, with an altar and incense-burner below it, lent the contrast
of its dark green foliage, and substantial farmhouses of “Brick Noggin,”
each in a clump of bamboo, and fine temples in groves of evergreens gave
an air of prosperity to the scene. I was not surprised at the encomiums
which previous travellers have bestowed on this province.
Rape is universally grown for the oil. The people have neither butter
nor grease for cooking, and their diet would be incomplete without
abundance of some oily substance. Imported and native kerosene may take
its place as an illuminant, but for cooking purposes it will be always
grown. In such a fertile and beautiful region the absence of animal life
is curious. There is no pasturage, the roads are not made for draught,
and the cheerfulness of horses, cattle, and sheep about a farmyard is
unknown. Buff dogs, noisy and cowardly, and the hideous water buffalo,
which looks like an antediluvian survival and has a singular aversion to
foreigners, represent the domestic animals.
[Illustration: PAGODA NEAR WAN HSIEN.]
We were delayed considerably by head winds, involving much tracking and
rowing, and thumped a hole in the boat’s bottom for the second time, on
which she filled so fast that she had to be run ashore with all
despatch, and the miserable attempts at repair delayed us for some
hours, as no carpenter would work during the New Year holidays. For the
next twenty-eight hours it took four men baling night and day to keep
the water down.
At a distance of nearly 1300 miles from its mouth the Yangtze is still a
noble river, nobler yet when the summer rise covers the grand confusions
of its rocky bed. The “Gorge of the Eight Cliffs,” a singular freak of
nature, with perpendicular cliffs fluted like organ pipes, through which
the river has cut a channel, said by the boatmen to be fathomless, about
six miles long, through a bed of hard grey sandstone, detained us for a
long time, and was bitterly cold and draughty. Above in a recess in the
rock are carved three divinities in full canonicals, painted and gilded,
called “The Three Water Guardians.” It is said that the reason that no
boatmen will move in the dark is that these genii only guard the river
by day.
Tiresome rapids detained us again, and I climbed a height to look at
some queer erections, which are seen at intervals of about three miles,
on elevations along the river from Ichang to Chungking, making a goodly
show. They are white towers, with a red sun painted on the front of
each, and stand five in a row. The boatmen say that they are to mark
distances, but, according to better authorities they are _yen-tun_, or
“smoke towers,” and have served the purpose of giving alarm in unsettled
times by fires of dry combustibles within. Apparently they have not been
repaired for many years.
On Ash Wednesday, February 19th, in the afternoon, a fine, white,
nine-storeyed pagoda on a bank, and another on a high hill, announced
the approach to a city. The river was narrowed by an insignificant
gorge, then came a broad expanse of still water resembling a mountain
lake, and then Wan appeared. That was one of the unforgettable views in
China. The “Myriad City,” for position and appearance, should rank high
among the cities of the world. The burst of its beauty as we came round
an abrupt corner into the lake-like basin on which it stands, and were
confronted with a stately city piled on cliffs and heights, a wall of
rock on one side crowded with refuges and temples, with the broad river
disappearing among mountains which were dissolving away in a blue mist,
was quite overpowering.
Its situation on a sharp bend of the Yangtze, backed at a distance of
thirty miles by a range of mountains—built on cliffs, and in clusters
round temple and pagoda-crowned hills, and surrounded by precipitous,
truncated peaks of sandstone, from 700 to 1500 feet in height, rising
out of woods through which torrents flash in foam, and from amidst
garden cultivation, and surmounted by the picturesque, fortified refuges
which are a feature of the region—is superb and impressive. Wan is the
first of the prosperous cities of SZE CHUAN that I saw. It has doubled
its population and trade in twenty years, and its fine streets and
handsome shops, stately dwellings within large grounds, thriving
industries, noble charities, and the fringe of junks for over two miles
along its river shore, indicate a growing prosperity which is
characteristic of nearly every city in SZE CHUAN which I afterwards
visited.
We tied up in a crowd of large junks lying in three tiers. Hundreds of
coolies were loading and unloading them, and the noise was deafening.
Leaving the furious babel of the boatmen, who were dissatisfied with
their “wine money,” I walked the mile up to the China Inland Mission
house, partly by a flight of 150 steep stone stairs, and up back
streets, and being bareheaded and in Chinese dress, escaped a very great
crowd. No European woman had walked up through Wan before, for it and
its officials had been notoriously hostile to foreigners, and Dr.
Morrison, of the _Times_, had been ill-treated there only six months
before. I was much impressed by the good paving and cleanliness, and the
substantial stone dwellings _en route_.
Arriving at a fine Chinese gateway, with a porter’s lodge and an outer
court, along which are servants’ quarters and cow stables, we passed
into what is a truly beautiful paved inner court, one side a roofed-in
open space used as a chapel, the other a lofty and handsome Chinese
guest-room, as shown in the illustration, with an open front, and the
living-rooms of the family. A third side is the women’s guest-room, and
on the fourth are various rooms. Projecting upper storeys and balconies,
all carving and fretwork, latticed and carved window-frames with paper
panes, tall pillars, and irregular tiled roofs, make up a striking _tout
ensemble_, in the midst of which Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and three ladies,
all in Chinese dress, stood to welcome me. It was all so trim and
handsome that there was a distinct unseemliness in bringing in my shabby
travelling equipments, much the worse for two years’ hard wear, and I
hurried them into retirement as soon as possible.
[Illustration: GUEST HALL, C.I.M. WAN HSIEN.]
The house is beautiful inside, the walls, roofs, and pillars of planed,
unvarnished wood of a fine grain, all dovetailed or put together with
wooden bolts. Downstairs the large fretwork windows, opening on pivots,
are above a man’s head. All the furniture, with the exception of some
presents, is Chinese, and is at once simple and tasteful. Upstairs are a
number of low, irregular, quaint rooms. The one allotted to me was a
large one, with a great fretwork window into the court, and another with
a superb view of the city and down the river. It had access by a steep
step-ladder to an open wooden tower with a pagoda roof and seats for use
in the hot weather. This overlooks the houses of many neighbours, and is
overlooked. From it are to be seen all the refuges on the surrounding
hilltops, the circuit of the city wall, _yamens_, temples, and pagodas,
the broad brown fringe of junks, and the gleaming silver of the Great
River.
From 9 a.m. till dusk there was a continuous stream of Chinese visitors,
the men entering at one door and the women at another, and passing into
their guest-rooms, where they were separately received by Mr. Thompson
and Miss Ramsay. A Chinese is a dignified and sensitive man, and likes
to be master of the situation. He is miserable in a foreign house, with
its promiscuous oddities, and has no idea where or on what to sit, what
position to take, and to what etiquette he is to conform himself, and
has all the discomfort of a fish out of water. In a Chinese guest-room,
on the contrary, there is an ordered and rigid stateliness. A few
handsome scrolls from the classics or pictures decorate the walls. A
handsome carved black wood table stands against the wall opposite the
open front, and on both sides of it are ranged heavy black wood chairs,
the highest being next the table. Elaborate lamps hang from the roof.
No matter what the position of a Chinese is, whether he be mandarin,
merchant, shopkeeper, or writer, he is absolutely certain which chair
etiquette entitles him to take, and when tea and pipes are produced he
is as serene and comfortable as in his own house.
At that time, though missionaries had been settled at Wan for some
years, and had been able to rent this beautiful house, there was not a
Christian in the city. The ladies had only lately arrived, as it had
been thought not a safe place for them. Even a month before my visit,
when a deep well ran dry, a mob assembled outside the mission house
threatening to burn it and to kill all the “foreign devils,” for they
had tapped the well and had stolen the golden crab which was the “luck”
of the city. The mob was eventually compelled to withdraw, but the
mandarin, who only left as I was arriving, came to the house with the
serious charge that the inmates had killed children in order to get
their eyes, and that their bodies were in the tanks at the back!
Mr. Thompson took him to the back, and the tanks were probed with a long
pole, but the accusation was not disposed of by the resultlessness of
the search, for foreign magic is believed to be equal to anything. The
same official concerted the murder of the missionaries with the elders
of the city, and Mr. Davies, who was then in Wan, was severely beaten.
Compensation, however, was given him, which he bestowed on the local
charities. A new chief magistrate had just arrived, with orders to treat
the foreigners well, and all was changed. When Mr. Thompson called at
the _yamen_ the mandarin conducted him to the seat of honour, escorted
him to his chair on leaving, and returned the visit with a large retinue
the next day. Of course the Chinese everywhere take their cue from the
officials.
So it came about that for several days I was able actually to walk about
and to photograph with no worse trouble than the curiosity of the people
in masculine crowds of a thousand or more. Four months before I was told
that this would have been impossible. My camera would have been smashed,
my open chair would have produced a riot, and I should have been stoned
or severely beaten.
The streams of visitors to the beautiful guest-halls never ceased by
daylight. Miss Ramsay often received forty women at a time. All SZE
CHUAN women have bound feet, and all wear trousers very much _en
evidence_, those of the lower class women being wrapped round the ankles
and tied, those of the upper class being wide and decorated. They asked
hordes of questions about domestic and social matters from their own
grotesquely different standpoint, and wanted to hear what the “Jesus
religion” was like, and were quite unable to understand how people could
pray “unless they had a god in the room.” One day Miss Ramsay, who had
been for some years in China, explained to her guests various things
concerning our Lord’s life and teachings, and an upper class woman, who
seemed intelligent and interested, explained it in her way to the
others. As she left, Miss R. said, “You’ll not forget what I have told
you,” and she said very pleasantly, “Oh, no, I won’t; our gods are made
of mud, and yours are made of wood!”
The ignorance which many men of the literary class show is wonderful,
and it comes out freely in conversations in the guest-hall. A very grand
military mandarin asserted not only that Lin and the Black Flags had
driven the Japanese out of Formosa, but that the Straits of Formosa had
yawned wide in answer to vows and prayers addressed to the gods by Lin,
and that the navies of Russia, England, France, and Japan had perished
in a common destruction in the vortex! A picture representing this
catastrophe was for sale in Wan.[29]
They think that the Queen of England is tributary to China, that our
Minister is in Peking to pay the tribute, and that the presents which
the Queen sent to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday were the
special tribute for the occasion.
They also believed that the American commission which had lately been at
Chengtu for the purpose of assessing the damage done to the property of
Americans in the previous riots was sent to congratulate the new Viceroy
on his appointment!
Also many of the _literati_ say—and I had heard the same thing in the
north—that outside of China there are five kingdoms united under one
emperor, Jesus Christ, who rose from a peasant origin, that one is
inhabited by dog-faced people,[30] and that in another, where each woman
has two husbands, she has a hole in her chest, and that when they travel
the husbands put a pole through it and carry her! They also say that the
missionaries come and live in distant places like Wan and Paoning in
order to find out the secret of China’s greatness and the way to destroy
it by magic arts. A map of Asia hangs in the guest-hall, and Mr.
Thompson overheard some of the guests saying to each other at different
times, “Look at these ‘foreign devils’” (_yang-kwei-tze_); “they put
China small on the map to deceive their god!”
It is impossible to have patience with their ignorance because of their
overweening self-conceit. It is passable in Africa, but not in these men
with their literary degrees, and their elaborate culture “of sorts,” and
two thousand years of civilisation behind them.
Wan Hsien has a very large trade. Its shops are full of goods, native
and foreign, and the traffic from the interior, as well as by junk, is
enormous, but there are no returns, as it is not an open port. The
actual city—_i.e_., the walled city—which contains the _yamens_ and
other public buildings, is small, steep, and handsome. It has extended
itself into large suburbs five miles in extent, of which the true city
is the mere nucleus. They straggle along the river, high up on the
cliffs above it, and two miles back, where they are arrested by a rocky
barrier at a height in which is excavated and scaffolded a celebrated
“Temple of the Three Religions,” at the top of 1570 fine stairs, a great
place of pilgrimage. This back country, in which are few level acres, is
exquisitely cultivated, and is crossed in several directions by flagged
pathways, carried over ascents and descents by good stairs. These
usually lead to lovely villages, built irregularly on torrent sides,
among a great variety of useful trees.
The city is divided into two parts by a river-bed, then nearly dry, but
when I saw it in summer it contained a very respectable stream, which
serves as the public laundry. I have never seen so beautiful a bridge as
the lofty, single stone arch, with a house at the highest part, which
spans the river-bed, and which seems to spring out of the rock without
any visible abutments.
Graceful pagodas and three-storeyed pavilions guard the approaches. The
Feng Shui of Wan is considered perfect. Rich temples on heights above
the river and the handsome temple called Chung-ku-lo (Drum and Bell
Lodge), overlooking the small gorge below, with a large stage, under a
fine three-storeyed pavilion, for the performance of the religious
dramas, show that “The Three Religions” retain their hold on the people.
The wealth of vegetation is wonderful. Not a barren or arid spot is to
be seen from the water’s edge to the mountain summits which are the
limits of vision. The shiny orange foliage, the dark formal cypress, the
loquat and pomegranate, the gold of the plumed bamboo, the deep green of
sugarcane, the freshness of the advancing grain crops, and the drapery
of clematis and maidenhair on trees and rocks all delight the eyes. But
the uniqueness of the neighbourhood of Wan consists in the number of its
truncated sandstone hills, each bearing on its flat top a picturesque
walled white village and fortification, to be a city of refuge in times
of rebellion. These, rising out of a mass of greenery, with a look of
inaccessibility about them, are a silent reference to unpleasant
historic facts which distinguish Wan from other cities.
[Illustration: BRIDGE AT WAN HSIEN.]
It is not alone that junks fringe the shores, but they are very largely
built at Wan, for the passage of the rapids, of a convenient
material—the tough, formal cypress which grows on the adjacent hills.
They must be at once light and strong, and more disposed to bend than to
break. Many of their fittings have a local origin, and many rich junk
builders and junk owners live at Wan.
Foreign goods go up the river to Chungking, the westernmost treaty port,
from twelve to twenty days higher up the river, and come down again to
Wan. “The Province of the Four Streams” does not produce much cotton;
and cotton yarn from Japan and India comes in large quantities into Wan
to be woven there. In 1898 there were about 1000 handlooms. The cotton
is woven into pieces about thirty feet long and sixteen inches broad,
which take a man two days’ labour, from daylight till 9 p.m., to weave.
A weaver’s wages with food come to about 600 _cash_, at present about
1_s._ 6_d._ per week of six days. Can Lancashire compete with this in
anything but the output?