KUAN HSIEN TO SIN-WEN-PING
Before I left Kuan for Chengtu I had decided on extending my journey up
the Siao Ho, a western branch of the Min, on which the mountain town of
Li-fan Ting is situated, into the mountainous borderland which lies
between China proper and Tibet, the country of some of the reputed
aboriginal tribes which concurrent rumour said were under the rule of a
woman. At Kuan and Chengtu no information could be got regarding the
country west of Li-fan, except that Tibetans trading to Kuan said that
“everything could be got at Somo,” which appeared to be the residence of
the ruler. As there was little use in undertaking such a journey without
a more efficient interpreter than Be-dien, Mr. Horsburgh kindly
suggested that Mr. Kay, a lay member of the Church Missionary Society,
who has a considerable knowledge of colloquial Chinese, should accompany
me. I had a hazy intention if things went well of attempting to get down
to Ta-lien-lu by the Chin-chuan and Tatu river, returning to the Yangtze
by Ya-chow and Chia-ling Fu, but the season was late for this.
When I went to Chengtu I left my travelling arrangements to be made in
my absence, simply indicating what they were to be, and that they were
to be in writing. A favourite axiom of mine is the late General Gordon’s
saying, “I am my own best servant,” and as a general rule I attend to
the smallest details of a journey in advance myself, down to every
strap, buckle, and horseshoe. On this occasion the suffering following
the blow on my head and my journey to the capital had induced me to
trust to others, who, however kind, were without travelling experience;
and on returning I found that the travelling arrangement was the exact
opposite of the one I had indicated, and that, instead of the coolies
having been engaged from a hong with a written agreement, a servant had
been allowed to make up a family party on indefinite lines!
Two days of hot, heavy rain delayed the start, and gave ample
opportunity for the exercise of those innumerable acts of thoughtful
kindness which these small, isolated communities delight in showing to
strangers, and which can never be forgotten. There were two
disagreeables. Be-dien had been in a shocking sulky fit for two days,
and would not answer anyone who spoke to him; and instead of the
promised letter from the Viceroy came an indignant note from Mr. Vale,
of Chengtu, saying that at the last moment it had been refused.
On the third day the rain became a quiet downpour, tailing off at midday
into a misty drizzle which continued; and as further waiting was
undesirable, I started, in my three-bearer chair, with five porters, two
_chai-jen_, Mr. Kay, his servant, and Be-dien. As my European clothing
had fallen to pieces, I was dressed as a Chinese and wore straw shoes.
My baggage was all waterproof, and instead of oblong Japanese baskets
and bundles protected by oiled paper, I had two deep, square bamboo
baskets as better fitted for the mountains, and no loose packages but my
camera. Unfortunately, as preventing accurate observations, a year
before I had sent home the instruments lent to me by the Royal
Geographical Society; a pony had rolled on my hypsometer, and an aneroid
barometer kindly lent to me was not reliable, and I had no means of
ascertaining the amount of its unreliability before I left China.
The beautiful gorge outside the city, and the grand Prince’s Temple were
drowned in mist, out of which heavy odours of gardenia drifted. All the
vegetation, under the genial influences of heat and moisture, was in
full beauty, and there, as everywhere, vigorous plants of the Japanese
anemone bordered the road. The climbing roses were in blossom, and,
weighted with moisture, hung almost down to our heads. Rocks were matted
over with the _hymenophyllum Wilsonianum_, as thick as the fleece of a
sheep, and the hare’s-foot fern began to make its appearance along with
the familiar _polypodium vulgare_.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO GROUNDS OF CITY TEMPLE, KUAN HSIEN.]
We left Kuan by the west gate, near a very fine temple, to which the
picturesque mass of lacquered pillars and roofs in the illustration is
only the outer entrance. Passing above the divided waters of the Min,
and Li Ping’s simple contrivances for preserving the banks, which
consist far more frequently of long cylindrical baskets of bamboo
network containing stones as big as a man’s head than stone revetments,
we crossed the Min by a very fine bamboo suspension bridge, which
scarcely vibrated more under our tread than did the old Menai bridge
under a carriage.
These bamboo bridges are a feature of the Upper Min, and are remarkably
graceful, specially when thrown across at a considerable height. In the
better class there is a covered bridge-house at each side and stone
piers. Six bamboo ropes each as thick as a man’s arm are stretched very
tightly across the river by strong windlasses firmly bedded, which are
used for re-tightening the ropes as they “give.” These ropes are kept
apart by battens of wood laced vertically in and out. The plank roadway
is laid across the lower of the ropes, and follows their curve, which
owing to the use of the windlasses for tightening up is not great. These
bridges are renewed always once, and sometimes twice, a year, an
operation taking two days and under. Owing to the extreme width of the
river at the Kuan bridge, there are three or four spans with stone
piers. Usually these suspension bridges are carried right across. The
roadway is sometimes trying to the nerves, for planks tip up, or tip
down, or disappear altogether, or show remarkable vivacity when the foot
is placed upon them, and many a gaping hiatus, trying to any but the
steadiest head, reveals the foam and fury below.
The road follows the river at a height and dives into the mountains,
which are at first of sandstone, with curious strata running up at right
angles to the valley, and then of limestone. The valley is populous,
smoky, and trafficky. Lime-kilns abound, and a considerable population
is employed in working the coal seams, which occur chiefly in the
sandstone; while hundreds of coolies, carrying both coal and lime, were
moving towards Kuan, and many more were loading vessels and rafts,
which, if they escape the risks of the gorge below, can reach Lu-chow on
the Yangtze.
At the end of nine miles, turning by a short cut up a romantic tributary
of the Min, through a gorge of entrancing beauty, where forest trees and
flowering shrubs were linked by an entanglement of flowering trailers,
crossing a river by a covered bridge, we arrived at Fu-ki, where there
was a quiet, pleasant inn, one of several of the same character on this
route, where, instead of evil odours, the scent of syringa from the hill
behind entered my room. It was very quiet and peaceful. There was no
crowding or boring holes in the plaster, the river hummed monotonously
below, the mercury was under 60°, and altogether it was a delightful
change from the crowding, curiosity, noise, and blazing heat of the
Chengtu plain.
Again the next day we started in a steady downpour, which ceased at the
top of the very pretty temple-crowned pass, over four thousand feet in
altitude, of Niang-tze-ling, after which it was fine and cool. The road
drops down from the pass to the deep canyon of the Min, which bifurcates
at Weichou, and the river and mountain scenery become increasingly
stupendous, reminding me greatly of the road from Kashmir to Tibet after
it reaches the Indus. Two fine bamboo suspension bridges near the foot
of the pass, others higher up, and a number of rope bridges of Tibetan
pattern give both easy and difficult access to the other side. There was
a decided Tibetan influence in the air, which I welcomed cordially. Red
lamas passed us on pilgrimage to Omi Shan, and numbers of muleteers in
sheepskins and rough woollen garb, their animals laden with Tibetan
drugs, and, better than these, some “hairy cows” (yaks), which had not
yet lost the free air of their mountain pastures, and executed many
rampageous freaks on the narrow bridle path. Lamas and muleteers were
all frank and friendly, asked where we were going, how long we had been
on the road, enlightened us on their own movements, and cheerily wished
us a good journey. Most of the mules had one or more prayer-flags
standing up on their loads, for the Tibetans are one of the most
externally religious peoples on earth.
The Min[47] from the pass of Niang-tze-ling assumes the character which
it retains more or less to the source of the Siao Ho or lesser branch.
It is a fine, peacock-green river; then, though at low water, of
considerable volume, booming, crashing, and foaming through canyons and
gorges in a series of cataracts, hemmed in by cliffs and mountains so
precipitous as rarely to leave level ground enough for a barley patch.
The bridle track, a very good one on the whole, though there are some
shelving rock slithers, has been cut, not blasted, in the rock, at times
on steep declivities and at times on precipices, and follows the up and
down left bank of the Min ascents and descents at a height with great
fidelity. It is not broad enough for a loaded mule to pass a chair, and
the sight of a caravan in the distance always caused much agitation and
yelling, the Tibetan muleteers invariably drawing off on the first
margin they could find, and greeting us with courtesies and good wishes
as we passed them. I envied them the altitudes and freedom to which they
would return from the cramping grooviness of China.
Now and then the road is scaffolded, or steps are cut in the rock, or it
passes under an arch of rock, or a bridge carries it across a lateral
chasm down which a crystal torrent dashes, after turning two, three, or
four rude mills placed in dizzy positions one above another. It is so
severe that we only did thirteen miles in nine hours, and I saw plainly
what I had suspected from the first, that one of the scratch team of
bearers was not up to his work.
The whole of the first fortnight’s journey was along the deep, wild
gorge of the greater or lesser Min. It differs widely from ordinary
Chinese travelling, and has a strong resemblance to the wild gorges of
the Yangtze. The mountains rise from the river to a height of over 3000
feet. Ghastly snow-cones look over them, their slopes, always steep,
often break up into cliffs 400 or 500 feet high; the river has often not
a yard of margin, and hurries along, crashing and booming, a thing of
purposeless power and fury, which has never been tamed of mankind, its
sea-green colouring a thing of beauty, and its crests and stretches of
foam white as the snows which give it birth.
These mountain-sides, as far as Weichou, are completely covered with
greenery, dwarf ashes, oaks, chestnuts and beeches, big enough for use
by the charcoal-burners. Coarse grasses, thistles, yellow roses, a very
pretty yellow cistus, bryony, brambles, yellow jasmines and flowering
creepers in abundance, all dwarf, with the barberry in blossom, covered
the stony, broken hillsides. Three species of warm-scented artemisia and
fuzzy brown balls of uncurling fronds of ferns were expanding in the
crevices of the rocks, and the rocks themselves were often tinged
rose-pink with the early leaves and delicate clasping fingers of
Veitch’s _Ampelopsis_.
It was a clear escape from the crowds of China. The traffic on the road
was mostly Tibetan. There is little room for crops; an occasional patch
among the rocks near the river, and small fields, then growing rape, and
later starved barley, terraced great heights, where the mountain slope
is less steep than usual. Small as the population is, it does not grow
enough for its wants, so many of the men hunt the deer and wild boars on
the mountains and sell the carcases in Kuan in the winter, and others
trap the fur-bearing animals, which appear to be an inferior sable and
marten.
[Illustration: DOUBLE ROOFED BRIDGE.]
There are a few hamlets on the road, which subsist chiefly by supplying
the needs of travellers, but the restaurant was usually hidden away, and
made no display on the “street.” Rice is scarce and not always
attainable, and wherever we halted, instead of the appetising displays
of ready-cooked viands which tempt the coolie appetite, there was rarely
even a fire, and it was always an hour before anything was cooked. The
inns, though much better than any I had been accustomed to, and often
built of new boards, do not provide any fire in the mornings unless by
special arrangement, and till this was understood I started without tea.
Their stock of food was soon exhausted, even at the larger villages
where we halted for the night, and the descent upon them of twelve
hungry persons was manifestly unwelcome. Some of the hamlets are built
at great heights, and are accessible by rugged paths and steps cut in
the rock. The people are hardy, rough, and fairly friendly. The Chinese
are, to my thinking, men of plains and rivers and slimy paths—a
rice-eating people, associating with the water buffalo. Here they are
abruptly metamorphosed into hardy mountaineers, hunters, maize and
millet fed. Even the women, though still binding the feet, are
independent in their air and movements, and perform feats in crossing
rivers. The country is a cross between China and Tibet. However, there
are no temples, and few shrines or other signs of religion.
Fully one-third of the population is on the west side of the Min, cut
off from the high road with its business and gaieties by a furious
torrent, and in most cases too poor to construct bamboo suspension
bridges. Their strong nerves enable them to get over the difficulty. I
know of no sight in China which fascinated me so much as their rope
bridges, which we met with on the second day, and which occur sometimes
at frequent intervals, as far as Weichou, from which point I saw no more
of them.
The mountaineers stretch a plaited bamboo cable at a great height across
the gorge, tighten it as well as they can, and secure each end round a
round stone or a convenient rock. Sometimes a shed is built over the
terminus and a shrine close by. Every mountaineer provides himself with
two semi-cylinders of hard wood, often hinged, about a foot long. With
perfect _sang-froid_ he places these on the cable, and binds them
together with a rope. As if it were the most natural thing in the world,
he proceeds to suspend himself from the cylinder by ropes passed under
his knees, his waist, and the back of his neck; some dispensing with the
last.
He is then hanging under the rope, and, gripping it fast by the slide,
he gives the solid earth a shove and casts off. No matter how tightly a
long rope is strained, it must still “sag” considerably in the middle,
and down the passenger rushes at tremendous speed, head foremost, down
hill across the chasm, with an impetus which sends him a little way up
the other slope. Then, letting go the cylinder, he puts his hands on the
rope above his head, and hauls himself up hand over hand, slowly and
laboriously. When he reaches land he detaches the cylinder, packs it and
the rope into his basket, shoulders his burden—and both men and women
continually carry small sacks or bundles of wood across—bows at the
shrine, and goes his way.
[Illustration: TIBETAN ROPE BRIDGE.]
I saw a woman cross carrying a load on each side. It took her ten
minutes to ascend from the middle of the rope, which must have been
ninety feet above the torrent, to land. Her face was purple with the
effort, and her hands must have been pretty sore, for she spit upon them
several times during the crossing. Even children are trusted to these
arrangements, which need considerably more nerve than the _Jhulas_ of
the Himalayas. In some places to minimise the difficulty there are two
rope bridges, each descending from a high to a low level.
It is only occasionally at the mouth of one of the grand lateral gorges
which open on the valley that there are any trees, and then they are
very fine, specially walnuts and the exotic Zelkowa, and the _Salisburia
adiantifolia_, with a few sturdy conifers, and the villages are
surrounded by peaches, apricots, and the Japanese _loquat_ (_Eriobotrya
Japonica_).
It was a delightful day’s journey to Sin-wen-ping, and the keen mountain
air and the novelty and freedom were full of zest. Solitary grandeur,
the deafening din of the Min, the green crystal affluents which descend
upon it down glorious gorges, the precipices rising a thousand feet from
the water, the abrupt turns where progress seems blocked, and each
mountain barrier is grander and loftier than the last, and then the
majesty of the day’s journey culminates at a mountain village with a
fine suspension bridge, beyond which the road looks only a thread along
the side of a precipice.
When the bearers reached Sin-wen-ping they said they would go no
farther, for there was a “big wind” farther on, which would blow the
chair into the river, and the porters said they could not carry the
loads against it. Then it came out that Be-dien had left behind the
lanterns which I bought a few days before; so the men carried their
point of making a day of thirteen miles. Again I urged that the
agreement with them should be put in writing; but it was not done, and I
found later that it was on quite different lines from those I had laid
down. I saw grave difficulties ahead, and should have been glad to ride
and be rid of the men, but I had left my saddle in Korea.
It was very cold in the inn, only half my room being roofed, and the
mercury, which was 83° on the Chengtu Plain, was only 40°. It was
invigorating and delicious. The people, too, were very friendly, and did
not manifest their curiosity rudely. A runner arrived from the capital
with a big official envelope addressed to me, containing letters with
the Viceroy’s seal; but as they were addressed to the mandarins of Pi
Hsien where I did not halt, and Kuan Hsien which I had left, and made no
reference to the regions beyond, they did not promise to be useful. On
the _yamen_ at Chengtu refusing the promised letters, Mr. Vale
telegraphed to H.B.M.’s Consul at Chungking, and this was the result.
The letters stated to the mandarins that at Liang-shan and Peng Hsien
the mob had attempted by violence to break in my door, and that I had
been attacked with stones, all within the Viceroyalty, and the Viceroy
directed the _kuans_ to take efficient measures for my protection.
[Illustration: HAND SLIDES FOR TIBETAN ROPE BRIDGE.]