THE JOURNEY’S END
Whether Chung-king (altitude 1050 ft.) is approached from above or
below, it is a most striking city. It is surprising to find, 1500 miles
inland, a town of from 400,000 to 500,000 people, including 2500
Mohammedans, as the commercial capital of Western China, one of the
busiest cities of the empire. Its founders chose a site on which there
is no room for expansion, and its warehouses, guildhalls, hongs, shops,
and the dwellings of rich and poor, are packed upon a steep sandstone
reef or peninsula lying between the Yangtze and its great northern
tributary, the Chia-ling, and rising from 100 to 400 feet above the
winter level of these rivers. As I descended upon it down a somewhat
turbulent rapid, which half filled the boat and drowned a fowl, it
reminded me of Quebec, and made me think of the packed condition of
Edinburgh when it was yet a walled city.
[Illustration: WALL OF CHUNG-KING, WITH GATE TOWERS.]
A noble-looking, grey city it is, with towers, pavilions, and temples
rising above its massive, irregular, crenelated grey wall, with broad,
steep, and crowded flights of stone stairs, twenty feet broad, leading
up from the river to the gates, with an amphitheatre of wooded and
richly cultivated hills rising steeply 1600 feet from the water for its
background; the fleets of big junks, and craft of all descriptions,
which lie crowded along its shores and in every adjacent bay and reach,
and the life and movement on land and water, combining to form a noble
and most striking spectacle. Nor is Chung-king as a city “alone in its
glory,” for on the Yangtze, just below its junction with the Chia-ling,
which divides it from Chung-king, stands the walled city of Limin-fu,
its white houses covering a number of hills and cliffs, and at its feet
hundreds of junks. Another city, Kiang-peh, completes the trio. These
cities, with their commercial organisation owing nothing to Europe, I
think more than all others, gave me an idea of what China _is_ and
_must_ be.
[Illustration: CHUNG-KING SOLDIERS, CUSTOMS GUARD.]
Chung-king Fu has often been described in detail, and I will only give a
few impressions of it. Passing to the Taiping gate up a flight of stone
stairs, always sloppy from the passage of water carriers, and crowded
with cotton-laden coolies, I reached the house of the Commissioner of
Customs by steep streets cut in the rock. The Customs House, infinitely
picturesque, is on a small rock plateau, with only four feet of space
between it and the rock behind. The view is ideally picturesque, with
the pagoda and gardens of a Guild of Benevolence below the plateau, and
the great flood of the Yangtze, then two-thirds of a mile wide, rolling
between the city and the fine hills on the further shore. But space is
lacking. The Chinese soldiers who guard the Commissioner seemed to block
up the little that there is, and trees and trailers there and everywhere
in the hot, moist climate of Chung-king, choke up every foot of ground.
The mercury stood at 87° during my three days’ visit; there was no
sunshine for the dogs to bark at, and the moist air was absolutely
still. As compared with many or most, the “grounds” of that house are
spacious!
Chung-king was opened as a treaty port in 1891, but the China Inland
Mission rented a house there in 1877, and were followed by missionaries
of other societies, who, however, all had to fly from a severe riot nine
years later. Mr. Archibald Little settled there as a merchant eight
years before the opening—a rare instance of mercantile pluck with few
imitators, and now, besides the foreigners on the Consular and Customs’
staffs, there are other “venturers,” chiefly “transients,” and about
thirty missionaries of different societies, with mission chapels,
schools, and hospitals. The English and German steamers, which are to be
placed on the route from Ichang next year (1900), will doubtless
stimulate foreign settlement, and will bring Chung-king within the
globe-trotter’s sphere. If specially-built gunboats can “patrol” the
upper Yangtze, outbreaks of hostility to foreigners will doubtless
cease, and the quarrels will be among the foreign nationalities, each
anxious to circumvent the others in the matter of concessions.
Below the huge reef on which Chung-king stands, is a town of mat and
bamboo houses outside the wall. As the Yangtze rises some ninety feet in
summer above its winter level, and was rising fast when I arrived on
June 1st, this town had mostly disappeared, and the highest remnant was
being carried away hurriedly on men’s backs, each hour of removal giving
an added dignity to the grand, grey city, looking down on the grand,
yellow-ochre flood. In Chung-king, as in many another city of the upper
Yangtze, the harmony between man’s work and nature is yet unbroken, and
the evil day of foreign inartistic antagonisms, incongruities, and
uglinesses has not yet dawned.
This commercial capital has a great present, which we are hoping to
improve upon to our advantage.[55] It is connected by water with nearly
every considerable town in the province, and wholesale trade is by boat.
Exports bound east must pass it, and also the imports brought up to pay
for them. For foreign goods it is the sole wholesale market in SZE
CHUAN, and is so for provincial trade to a great extent, and the
province, it must be repeated, is as large as France, and vastly more
populous. To it the merchants and shopkeepers of the whole population of
from 55,000,000 to 70,000,000, which includes Tibetan tribes, Lolos, and
a few so-called “dog faces,” resort to make their purchases.
[Illustration: GALA HEAD-DRESS, “DOG-FACED” WOMAN.]
(_See also page 177._)
Mr. A. J. Little is the only British merchant resident in Chung-king.
The Chinese merchants deal directly with Shanghai through their own men.
More than half of the buyers sent down have an interest in the business.
They deal with the Chinese importers, and pay ready money in Shanghai,
but sell to the provincial merchants on long credit, the rate of
interest being 14⅖ per cent. per annum on foreign cotton goods. The
seller naturally wishes payment to be deferred, and the buyer desires to
hasten it, as he receives the same percentage as discount. Exchange
between Chung-king and Shanghai is always in favour of Chung-king, and
when the Yangtze is in its summer flood, 1000 taels in Shanghai can
often be bought in Chung-king for 880.
The intricacies of Chinese business at Chung-king are appalling.
Excessive subtlety and ingenuity characterise all the trade rules and
customs, and even the “Blackburn Commission,” aided by the experience of
Mr. Bourne, found it a work of much labour to master their
complications! It is scarcely wonderful that the average British
merchant, who knows nothing better than _Pidgun_, instead of following
in the steps of our bold “Merchant Venturers,” sticks at Shanghai.[56]
At Chung-king, more almost than elsewhere, I was impressed with the
completeness of Chinese commercial organisation. It may be too complex,
and lacking in initiative, to serve our purposes, but it serves their
own, and I heard there, as elsewhere, that the high standard of
commercial honour and probity which has been worked out, renders
dealings with Chinese merchants very satisfactory.
Eight of the other provinces are represented by guilds in this great
trading city, with their handsome guildhalls, and rigid laws of
association. There are an abundance of exchange banks (banks selling
drafts on distant places), seventeen of which are in the hands of men
from SHAN-SI, which has a speciality for banking talent, and there are
over twenty large _cash_ shops or local banks, which exchange _cash_
against silver and _vice versâ_. These banks do not make advances on
goods, but lend on personal security at from ten to twelve per cent. per
annum, and employ agents who hang about the business quarter, learning
the proceedings of customers, so as to gauge their credit. A bank would
lend as much as 200,000 taels to a merchant on personal security only.
They have very rigorous methods of ensuring the honesty of _employés_.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S LAST _WU-PAN_.]
It was with great regret that I left Chung-king on my last _wu-pan_
voyage. There were few, if any, small house-boats on the berth, and the
big ones would only go down at an enormous price, because of the
difficulty and profitlessness of the return. Foreigners of the two
services, as well as merchants, regard a _wu-pan_ as we regard a
steerage passage, and even my kind host declined to connive at my
proceedings, but Mr. Willett, of the China Inland Mission, befriended
me; the _wu-pan_ was engaged, and I left Chung-king on a sultry June
afternoon, with the mercury at 88°, and never regretted my firmness on
the subject of a boat, for I was thoroughly comfortable, could create
draughts at will, and my boatmen were quiet and most obliging, and were
ready to land me at any place where landing was practicable.
The force and volume of the river, which had then risen about forty-five
feet above its winter level, were tremendous. Its low-water width at
Chung-king, according to Blakiston, is 800 yards, but it was then about
two-thirds of a mile wide, a swirling, leaping, yellow flood, laden with
the mud with which it enriches the Great Plain. Caught in its torrent,
the _wu-pan_, with two men rowing easily, descended at great speed. When
we reached rapids, five men pulled frantically with yells which posed as
songs, to keep steerage way on her, and we went down like a flash—down
smooth hills of water, where rapids had been obliterated; down leaping
races, where they had been created; past hideous whirlpools, where to
have been sucked in would have been destruction; past temples, pagodas,
and grey cities on heights; past villages gleaming white midst dense
greenery; past hill, valley, woodland, garden cultivation, and signs of
industry and prosperity; past junks laid up for the summer in quiet
reaches, and junks with frantic crews, straining at the sweeps, chanting
wildly, bound downwards like ourselves; and still for days the Great
River hurried us remorselessly along. There was no time to take in
anything. A pagoda or city scarcely appeared before it vanished—a rapid
scarcely tossed up its angry crests ahead, before we had left it astern;
one fair dissolving view was all too rapidly exchanged for another; and
we were tying up among the many hundred junks which fringed the shore of
the “Myriad City,” which is as beautiful from above as from below,
before I realised that we were half-way thither.
But in this delirious whirl there were episodes of rest, when I landed
on green and flowery shores above the submerged boulders, or below
picturesque cities and temples, and had leisure either to enjoy detail
or to loathe it. The latter was my mental attitude when I landed with my
_chai-jen_ (rather an infliction in a small boat) at the important town
of Fu-chow, where a clear stream, about 200 yards broad, and navigable
for 200 miles, joins the turbid Yangtze. There are many queer crafts on
the branches of the Yangtze. The navigation of some of these rivers is
so intricate and dangerous, that the owners of these risky constructions
are obliged to consent to provide coffins for their crews in case of
disaster, and there are colliers built for _one_ down-river voyage,
after which they are broken up; but the queerest of all crafts are the
_Wai-pi-Ku_—the “twisting stern” junks used for the navigation of the
Fu-ling, locally known as the Kung-tan Ho, or “River of the Rapid of
Kung.” I saw one of these at Wan, and thought it was a junk which had
had a severe accident! The sight of forty or fifty large junks at
Fu-chow, each one with her high stern twisted a quarter round, so that
the stern deck is at right angles to the quarter deck, was absolutely
laughable. The stern deck is nearly perpendicular, and is climbed by
rungs. These extraordinary boats are without rudders. My boatmen said
that none but “twisted stern” junks could twist through the whirlpools
and reefs of the river. It was not very wise for me to enter Fu-chow,
and as I was followed by an immense and not over polite crowd I did not
dare to use my camera on the _Wai-pi-Ku_.
Fu-chow is perhaps the most picturesque city on the Yangtze, built on
ledges of rock, tier above tier, at the head of a reach so enclosed by
steep hills as to look like a lake. There is a fine pagoda on a height
near it, and it abounds in large temples in commanding positions. The
deep gateway in the thick wall is scarcely more than eight feet high.
The narrow street into which it leads was thronged, and even women were
carrying creels, either loaded with coal dust, or small children. I
managed to dodge the fast accumulating crowd, and get on the wall, from
which the view up the Fu-ling is magnificent. My visit, however, was
rather “a fearful joy.”
The city appears full of temples, literary monuments, and public
buildings, but it has an air of neglect and decay, and it and its
suburbs are dirty and malodorous. It is a great junk port, and at times,
though not, I think, increasingly, the Fu-ling is used for the transit
of goods both to Hankow and Canton. The latter city can be reached by
this method with only two portages(?). There are large mat and bamboo
suburbs below one part of the wall, but very little of them was left,
owing to the rapid rise of the river, which also had led to the removal
of many of the mat villages of the trackers. Fu-chow again looked
glorious from below. A tremendous whirlpool, in which, sometimes,
descending junks are caught to their destruction, is formed in summer
near the city. We went uncomfortably near its vortex.
[Illustration: “STONE PRECIOUS CASTLE,” SHI-PAO-CHAI.]
I landed also at Shih-pao-chai (“Stone Precious Castle”), a place of
pilgrimage. The south-east side of the rock (not given in the
illustration) has a nine-storeyed pavilion, resting on a very strikingly
decorated temple built against it, through which access to the summit is
gained. On the flat top there is a temple of three courts. The pavilion
building has curved and decorated roofs, and looks like a magnificent
eleven-storeyed pagoda. A large village lies at its feet. My films were
spotted with damp, and would have failed anyhow, owing to the
overpowering curiosity of the people. This rock and its talus are about
300 feet in height.
A glorious sunset and a morning of crystalline purity in a bay above the
“Wind-box Gorge”; a rapid swirl through the solemnity and grandeur of
the gorges which I ascended slowly and toilsomely six months before; the
Yeh-tan, fierce and perilous; the Hsin-tan, a mere water-slide, down
which my _wu-pan_ slipped easily; a lovely walk up the Nan-po glen, and
in fifty-six hours from Chung-king, exclusive of stoppages, the boat
emerged from the Ichang gorge upon the broad reach of eddying water, on
which the pleasant treaty port of Ichang is situated.
After receiving hospitality for a few days at the British Consulate I
left Ichang, and found the mirrors, enamel, and gilding of one of the
fine river steamers very distasteful after a thousand miles in a
_wu-pan_. Hankow, though by no means at its worst, was damp and sultry,
with a temperature over 90°, and alive with mosquitoes. Even on the
voyage down to Shanghai, which was devoid of any incident,—except that
five minutes after leaving Chin-kiang we cut the anchored steamer
_Hai-how_, tea-laden for Canton, down to the water’s edge—the damp heat
was severe, and even the breeze was hot.
It was the end of June when I reached Shanghai, to find it sweltering in
a “hot wave,” sunless and moist. My journey on the whole had been one of
extreme variety and interest, and I was truly thankful for the freedom
from any serious accident which I had enjoyed, and for the deep and
probably abiding interest in China and the Chinese which it had given
me, along with new views of the physical characteristics of the country,
and of the resourcefulness and energy of its inhabitants.