Chinese pictures

A subject of considerable interest, owing to the mystery surrounding the members of the Imperial Family. The photograph was taken from the wall of the Purple or Forbidden City, in which only the Imperial Family and their entourage have the right to dwell. The building in the centre, which is roofed with yellow tiles, is supposed to be the residence of the Emperor, but where he does actually reside remains a mystery. The entrance to the Palace is through the arches in the building on the left.

The Legation is a fine old palace, which formerly belonged to a member of the Imperial Family. The photograph shows the entrance to the first courtyard. The Legation compound is very extensive, and contains several courtyards with buildings round each. It is very highly decorated, the designs shown in this picture being elaborately wrought in lacquered work of gold and colours. This is the building recently attacked by the Chinese in their attempt to destroy all foreigners, including the members of the various European Legations who took refuge with Sir Claude Macdonald.

Student interpreters are young Englishmen who enter the College to prepare themselves for the Consular Service. At eighteen they have to pass their entrance examination. They receive given posts in connection with one of the various Chinese Consulates. All our Chinese Consuls are drawn from this College. It stands within the grounds of the Legation, which is the building shown on the right of the picture.

There are practically no carriage roads in China, so that there is virtually no carriage traffic. This rough, springless cart is the only carriage drawn by animals at the disposal of the Legation.

Made more than a thousand years ago, it must have been a gigantic work at the time of its construction. It was paved throughout with rough stone flags for about eight feet, or about half its width, and planted with cedars. It is now very much out of repair, as are most things in China, the flags disappearing now and again for long distances; but it is still the object of much official attention, and every year certain magistrates inspect it and count the cedars, every one of which is sealed with the Imperial seal. Many of the trees have died, but many still survive and are grand objects by the roadside.

A typical mode of conveyance in Manchuria, the Northern Province. The arrangement for carrying luggage is seen at the back of the cart. It is very similar to the Legation state carriage in construction, being entirely without springs. It is only possible to use such a conveyance in such a roadless country, with any security from broken bones, by adopting the precaution to pad the whole of the interior, bottom, top, and sides with thick mattresses. In the course of a journey of three miles only, Mrs. Bishop had the misfortune to be thrown into the top of the cart in an upset with such violence that her arm was broken and her head severely cut. In her case, unfortunately, the top of the cart was not padded.

Although so risky to life and limb, the mule cart is the more fashionable mode of moving from place to place in Manchuria. The poorer people ride on asses, with their belongings slung about in the manner shown in the picture.

Out in the country there are practically no roads, as we understand roads. It is necessary to cultivate every inch of available ground, and the farmer begrudges anything taken from the fields for the paths, which are but a foot or two wide. It is easy to understand that, under such conditions, the almost universal mode of passenger transit is by chairs and bearers. The narrowness of the paths is a source of trouble. When two parties of bearers approach each other, there is much shouting to induce one or other to return and make way; but when both come on, one has to get off, or be pushed off, into the swamp by the sides. When one is a foreigner his portion is invariably the swamp.

The bearers are patient, much-enduring people, who do their work thoroughly and without complaining, in the face of mud, and rain, and difficult roads. They will carry a traveller from twenty to twenty-five miles a day. When a lady occupies the chair the curtains are rigidly closed. It would be at the risk of her life to travel in an open chair. There is much etiquette connected with the getting in and out of chairs, which wise travellers never neglect. The photograph is of a lady’s chair.

There are various ways of carrying a traveller’s baggage. Sometimes it is slung in the centre of bars and carried as the traveller’s own chair is carried. More often a package is slung at each end of a bar, which is placed across the shoulders of a coolie. Constant change of shoulder is necessary, and the stopping to make this change becomes a serious matter in a journey of any length. It is trying work, and the shoulders of the coolies generally show it by the callositis produced by the constant carrying of heavy burdens. The illustration shows Mrs. Bishop’s baggage arriving after a day’s journey.

It will be seen that two coolies, by means of these bars, can carry a great weight—as much as two hundred pounds is carried between them—and they will cover with this weight twenty to twenty-five miles a day. Chair-carriers will, with the attendant luggage-carriers, cover as much as twenty-five miles, but their burdens are less heavy.

In wicker baskets lined with oiled paper of extraordinary toughness, which is much used everywhere. The oil is obtained from various “oil seeds,” the tough paper by macerating bamboo. Beneath the basket will be noticed a long cylinder. This is the coolie’s purse, in which he carries his “cash,” the small copper or brass coin of the country, which is of such small value that nine pounds weight of copper cash is only worth one English shilling.

This Chengtu Plain, with its 2,500 square miles of country and 4,000,000 population, is perhaps the best cultivated and most fertile spot in the world. It owes its fertility to the work of two engineers, who, more than two thousand years ago (250 years B.C.), designed and carried out the most perfect system of irrigation. They were Li Ping, the father, and his son, and are familiarly known to-day as the first and second gentlemen of China. The land bears four crops in the year. With all this produce and population, the traffic is enormous, and it is mainly carried on by means of wheelbarrows, which are so contrived, by placing the wheel in the centre and platforms at the side and behind it, as to enable one man to wheel five hundredweight with ease. The narrow roads of the plain are covered by an almost endless procession of these wheelbarrows, which are often preceded by one man pulling in addition to the man behind.

This is another form of the same baggage-carrier which is in use all over the Empire. It is much larger than that in use on the Plain of Chengtu, but is constructed on the same principle; by means of it one man can wheel as much as half a ton. It is a vehicle well adapted to the narrow roads of the country.

If China cannot boast of its roads, it may claim to be a country of waterways, rivers and canals forming the chief means of communication. The country being so large, travellers have to spend much time in going from place to place, and living accommodation has to be provided on the boats. It is very rough. The illustration gives a good specimen of a small boat which may be hired for a journey. The mat roof is placed over the open part at night. In the daytime this space is occupied by the rowers. In the night they roll themselves up in their wadded quilts and sleep there. In China there is no privacy, but much curiosity. No part of your boat, although you have hired it, is sacred to you; the boatmen pass in and out of what you may regard as your cabin without consideration for you. Mrs. Bishop put up curtains around her cabin to shut out prying eyes, and as far as they could the people respected her evident desire to be alone.

The oars are worked by the feet instead of the arms. The sides of this one are beautifully carved and lacquered, and protection from the sun and rain is provided by a roof of mats, the universal form of shelter and protection on the water.

The rapids on the river give rise to a considerable amount of occupation for men called Trackers, whose occupation is the dragging of boats up-stream through the wild and dangerous waters of the rapids. These men live in huts on the river banks as close to the water’s edge as possible. A group of their huts is to be seen on the left of the picture, and on the extreme left, almost too small to be visible, are four hundred trackers dragging up a boat. At the top and foot of every rapid on the Yangtze are to be found one or more Red Lifeboats, which are most efficiently and admirably manned and maintained at the cost of Benevolent Guilds—one of the many charitable guilds in the country—for the purpose of assisting the crews of boats which get into difficulties. Boats are frequently wrecked in their passage, and the Red Lifeboat has saved the lives of many foreigners in the accidents attendant upon their passage of the Rapids.

The Min River, called also the Fu, is a western tributary of the Upper Yangtze, but a great river in itself. Of the boat’s four sails the lowest is of bamboo, and is let down at night to protect the boatman and his family. The feature of the boat is its high prow, for protection against the rocks and rushing water.

Illustrating the enormous traffic on the Yangtze. This fringe of boats, closely packed, extends for two miles along the river bank, and is an evidence of the great trade and prosperity of Wan Hsien.

A country of waterways must be a country of bridges, but the beauty of the bridges in China is quite a surprise to the traveller. The straight bridge of the illustration given here is built upon enormously solid piers, which are often monoliths. The roadway is constructed of single blocks thirty feet long. The balustrade, as well as the roadway, is solid stone. This is the oldest form of bridge in the country, and the bridge in the picture is one of the oldest bridges.

One enters almost every town or village, when travelling by water, under a bridge of one arch, which may be anything from fifteen to thirty feet high and of a most graceful form. These bridges are constructed of blocks of granite cut to the curve of the bridge, and a flight of steps leads to the crown of the arch. In the illustration the steps are clearly shown leading to the house at the top. A most graceful and beautiful bridge.

When a rich man or a company of rich men wish to benefit their province, it is quite a common thing for them to let their generosity take the form of the building of a bridge. This bridge was so built. It is a most beautiful structure, both in form and colour. The roof is of green tiles, the inside being lined with crimson lacquer, deeply incised in gold with the names of the donors.

The kind of bridge found on a secondary road in Sze Chuan, constructed of wood roofed in with tiles, after the manner of Switzerland, to protect it from the weather.

Quite a common form of stone bridge, in which every pier is surmounted by a dragon, the national emblem.

Its name indicates its peculiar character. It makes nine zig-zags across the water to the most celebrated tea house in Shanghai, and, perhaps, the most fashionable tea house in China. It is the resort of mandarins and people of the upper classes. Women are never seen at the tea houses. They are patronised by men only. Women, indeed, are very little seen in public at all. The absence of the female element is a marked feature in Chinese life.

China is the country of guilds. All workmen and traders have their guilds. To this rule there are but two exceptions—the water-carriers and the trackers (men who drag the boats up the rapids); these alone have no trade organisation. These guilds, or trade unions, are as complete and as effective for good or harm as anything we know in this country. They watch most jealously the interests of their craft. But the guild enters into the life of the people at every turn. The charities of the Empire, which are numerous, are conducted by guilds. There is, perhaps, little personal charity and benevolence; it is safer to leave these to the guilds. But there is scarcely a town of any size that has not its Guild of Benevolence. Soup kitchens, clothing for the living, coffins and burial for the dead, hospitals, free dispensaries, orphan and foundling homes, life-boats, and many other charities are the outcome of these Guilds of Benevolence.

A cemetery, with temple attached, for the burial, with all sacred rites, of strangers who may have died friendless. To a Chinaman the most important event in his history is his burial. We can have no idea of what decent burial means to him. He is thinking of it and arranging for it all his life, and it is not to be wondered at that so large a part of the operation of Chinese charity should connect itself with funerals. To be suitably buried is the great hope and aim of every Chinaman.

This Cemetery, with its funeral rites, is one of the operations of a Guild of Benevolence.

When a baby dies, and the parents are too poor to give it a decent burial, they drop its poor little body into one of the openings in this tower. A Guild of Benevolence charges itself with the task of clearing out the tower every two or three days, burying the bodies with all religious rites and ceremony.

The hospitals of England and China have evidently many things in common. Inside the compound of the English Presbyterian Medical Mission of Swatow, the patients buy their bottles of the vendor as they if were patients of Guy’s or St. Bartholomew’s. A similar incident is to be witnessed in Smithfield any day of the week. It may be mentioned that the hospital of this particular Medical Mission is nearly the largest in the East. In times of stress it accommodates four hundred patients, and in the proportion of its cures is one of the most successful in the world.

Perhaps because benevolence and charity are the objects of guilds, there is very little of the personal element in either. Personal kindliness and care for the sick and dying do not characterise the people of China. If a man is sick to death he is of no more use, and why should time and care be wasted on him? This coolie in the picture was one of Mrs. Bishop’s carriers, who fell sick by the way, and though he had been a companion of the other men for many days, they had no care for him when he fell sick, and Mrs. Bishop was laughed at for taking the trouble to wet a handkerchief to lay on the feverish forehead of a man who was of “no more use.”