A HAYSTACK.
Not only is there a gateway leading out of Yünnan, but also one of a quite different character leading into Kweichow, and situated at the other end of the little frontier village. It is a solid stone gateway in a stone wall. We passed along a short bit of level street at a height of 6,200 feet before we came to the wall, and then we plunged down a steep rocky path, with a wonderful view of deep valleys surrounded by abrupt and jagged mountains.
We found that day seven new varieties of roses, all very sweet-scented, also rhododendrons, azaleas and irises. At our halting-place for the night (5,300 feet) we climbed a little hill crowned with a Buddhist temple, and looked down on trees, which formed a floor of delicate white blossom as light as snowflakes, trees quite unknown to me, and no one there seemed able to give us even a Chinese name for them. It is very difficult to get information, and we had not the time for making collections.
I tried to learn about them when I came home, and found that there is in existence a large folio of manuscript of descriptions and specimens of plants collected by French fathers in this province; but as no one visits Kweichow there was no demand for such a work, and there is no hope of it being published. The collection is at the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. It was the same with other things: the mountains often had the strangest forms, and I made careful drawings of their outlines. Photos were usually out of the question, as the mountains were too close; they rose up like walls all round us, and the light was always in the wrong quarter. On my return home I went cheerfully to learned societies with confident hope of slaking my thirst for knowledge, but alas! No books on such an unknown part, the very name of course unknown. When my drawings had been duly inspected, the remark made was, “I must compliment you on your sketches, I have never seen mountains like that!” Was there a touch of irony in the remark?
Truly Kweichow is a wonderful country and beautiful in the extreme, as the late Dr. Morrison (adviser to the Chinese Government) told me when I went to get his advice before starting. “You could not have chosen a more interesting part to travel in,” he said, “nor a more beautiful one”; and he had travelled in almost every part of China. It is full of different aboriginal races of whom very little is known, its flora is remarkably rich and varied, and its geology a continual surprise.
The second day across the border we crossed a small plain from which rise a series of round low mounds, like pudding-basins, from the flat ricefields—an extraordinary contrast to the lofty, jagged mountains from which we had just descended. In the midst of it all was a curious tumbled heap of lava-like appearance, looking as if it had been ejected from the earth by some colossal earthworms. Sir Alexander Hosie says[21] that there is a parallel row of these mounds about ten miles to the south: they run east and west. In the ricefields I saw a brilliant kingfisher, hanging poised in mid-air in search of prey, while a heron stalked away at our approach.
The rain grew more and more persistent, and the roads were muddy and slippery to the last degree. Even the sure-footed Chinese kept tumbling down, and it was almost less trying to walk than to be bumped down in our chairs. As we advanced into the province the culture of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum) increased till it was as much as ninety-nine per cent. of the crops, and the appearance of the inhabitants showed only too plainly its disastrous effects. In some of the villages the children were naked, although it was still cold weather, being only the beginning of April. In the markets the goods were of the meanest and cheapest description, and the people looked abject. They rushed out to beg from us. The main industry of the district was evidently the making of coal balls. The coal lies actually on the surface, and has only to be scraped together, mixed with a little earth and water, and then dried: it burns quite well. Some of the coal is used for fertilizing the ground, being reduced to ash by being burnt in pits with stones piled on it. Lime also is used for the poppy fields. Sometimes the coal holes by the wayside are a couple of yards in diameter. The coir palm is to be seen in every village, and loquats and walnut trees are cultivated for their fruit.
We struggled along through a thick mist one day, and one after another went down like ninepins on the slippery path. One of my bearers cut his ankle, and was thankful for the doctor’s attentions. Suddenly I heard an ominous roaring sound, and looked in vain for the cause. It proved to be produced by a big stream, which disappeared into a hole in the earth; this appears to be quite a common phenomenon, and later on we saw one bubble out of the ground in the same strange fashion.
Another shape of hill attracted my attention, and as I tried to reproduce it accurately on paper it became obvious that this was one of the Chinese mountain forms with which one has been familiar from childhood in their pictures, and which one had supposed to be a work of imagination. As they always hold in their canons of art that “form” is quite subsidiary to “spirit,” I imagined that it was not inability to imitate form accurately, but a deliberate intention of ignoring it in order to express some more important truth that was the cause of their drawing, what seemed to me, such unnatural mountains. But here one discovered that these forms are natural in China, and it is after all only our ignorance that makes us so misjudge them.
There were hedges by the roadside all bursting into leaf and blossom, and I never saw such a wealth of ferns of many kinds. There was material for a whole volume on ferns alone. Lofty trees of catalpa bungei with their purple blossom, and Boehmeria nivea grew by the roadside, and rhea grass in the village gardens.
We generally started the day in a damp mist, and were happy when it cleared away, even though there was no sunshine. We scanned the hedges for roses, and felt quite aggrieved if we failed to find fresh varieties every single day. A lovely blush rose filled us with delight, but pink moss-roses were only seen on one occasion. We decided that nowhere else could a greater variety of roses be found: we counted twenty-three varieties before we left the province, and felt sure we should have found many more had we stayed longer, for they were hardly in full bloom by the end of April. One day I picked up a broken branch on the road, thrown away by some passer-by no doubt because it had no blossoms on it, but the bright green leaves were a lovely violet on the under side, and I searched in vain to find a bush of it growing, in order to see what the flowers were like.
Then, too, the birds were reminiscent of home—magpies, larks, woodpeckers, wagtails, and even the aggravating cuckoo. But there was one elusive little fellow, known to all dwellers in Kweichow, though no one could tell me his name: he had a long shrill note with a short tut-tut-tut at the end. We both watched for him daily, as he seemed to haunt our path continually, but never could we catch a sight of him, so dexterously did he hide himself. Occasionally we thought we saw him, but it was so momentary a glimpse that we were never sure; the bird we saw looked about the size and shape and colour of a linnet.
The fourth day in Kweichow we came to a splendid three-arch bridge in a fertile valley, and spent the night in a very different village from most—Kuan Tzu Yao. A number of fine new houses were in course of construction, built largely of stone; amongst others, a post office next door to our inn. The postal system in China is really wonderful, even in this backward province, and we had a most charming surprise at the first post town we entered. Our interpreter went to the post office, and was surprised at being asked if he were travelling with English ladies. On admitting this, he was asked to inform us that if we were in need of money we could draw as much as was necessary at any office we came to, by order of the postal commissioner at Kwei Yang. The reason for this delightful arrangement was that the English Commissioner at Taiyuanfu, whose advice we had asked about transmitting money, said he would write to his Chinese colleague and ask him to help us if we got into difficulties, because of the prevalent highway robberies. This gentleman was ill at the time the letter reached him, but he telegraphed to Taiyuanfu as soon as he was fit, that he would do what he could—and this was his splendid way of meeting the difficulty. No finer testimony could be wanted of the way the Chinese trust our people.
The postal system is a fine piece of organization: it reaches to the utmost bounds of the empire, and although the mails are mainly carried by runners on foot, they travel very rapidly. The stages are not long, and there is no delay when the bags are handed from one runner to the next. For instance, we were told that on this particular road, what we did in seventeen days the mails would do in four, and we did an average of eighteen miles a day. We had postal maps given us of the provinces we were going to visit. On them are marked all the postal stations, with the distances from one to another; the line of route; the various grades of offices; the limit of the district; daily or bi-daily day and night service; daily, bi-daily or tri-daily service; less frequent ones; postal connexion by boat; telegraphic connexion; rural box offices, etc. The names of the main towns are in both Chinese and English, the others only in Chinese. On the whole, letters travel wonderfully safely. The old postal system was quite hopeless, and in the interior the missionaries used to organize their own. Even Peking used to be closed to the rest of the world yearly for several months. I remember six months when we had no letters from my sister in Shansi, due to a misunderstanding at a transmitting station, and there was no telegraphic communication in those days. Now the old Chinese system has practically died out.
We had another proof of the thoughtfulness of the Chinese commissioner later. Having heard from one of the missionaries that we were going into the Miao country before coming to the capital, he sent up all our letters, a tremendous boon after being weeks without any. The postal service is under international control, having been originated in 1896 and built up by Sir Robert Hart in connexion with the customs: in each province there is a commissioner; nearly all are Europeans.
As we got further into the province the vegetation grew more and more luxuriant. The banks were carpeted with lycopodium and primula and the hedges were full of roses, white and yellow jasmine, hawthorn, clematis montana, Akebia lobata—a very curious creeper with wine-coloured blossom, both male and female. The brilliant yellow-blossomed cassia forms a most impenetrable hedge, with upstanding thorns, like nails, all along its tough stems. We tied water jars into our chairs, so as to keep the flowers fresh, and by the end of the day the chairs were perfect bowers, our men vying with one another to get us the choicest blossoms. Perhaps the most beautiful of any was the large white, sweet-scented rhododendron, the Hymenocallis. This is rare; we only found it once.
The scenery was very grand; long ranges of jagged mountains and precipitous cliffs, but the road was not in the least dangerous from that point of view. It was extremely slippery and a heavy mist lay over everything in the early hours of most days: our men kept tumbling down. The only one who seemed always steady was Yao, and he constituted himself my guardian on slippery days, holding my elbow with a relentless grip, which certainly prevented my tumbling down and gave me confidence.
At Kuan Tzu Yao we found a nice clean new inn, courtyard behind courtyard, and each raised a step or two above the last: ours was the innermost, and we felt unusually secluded. The next night our immediate neighbours were two fine water buffaloes with their calves. They are the most valuable domestic animals throughout this country, as they plough the ricefields quite happily when they are under water. These two were taken out to work in the early morning, and we were amused to see a little tatterdemalion bringing them back in a perfect fury to fetch their calves, which had been left in the shed. The buffaloes seem to be generally left in the care of boys, who manage them with much skill, and love to disport themselves on their broad backs, often lying negligently at ease along them, looking as much at home as if they were an integral part of the creature. They are sluggish animals, coming originally from the Philippines.
Leaving Tu Tien our men seemed possessed of a sudden energy, and went at a great rate, doing nearly seven miles in two hours. Sometimes we thought we were lacking in humanity to give them such heavy loads; but then again our scruples seemed foolish in the light of certain experiences. For instance, one man carried two heavy suit-cases and a chair, another two large carved window-frames and a bed, but it didn’t prevent them taking a steep bank at a run, or having a race at the end of a thirty-mile stage to see who would be in first. The Chinese coolie is really an amusing creature, and even if he is clad in rags he finds life a cheerful business. I used to try and count the patches on the coat of one of my coolies, and never made them less than forty-six between the neck and waistband, not including those on the sleeves!
Then the incidents of travel have a humorous side, even on a wet day in a dangerous neighbourhood. Instead of having our light midday meal as usual by the roadside near the village, where the men get theirs, one is obliged to have it in the chairs, placed side by side in the main street of a busy town. Our escort draws an imaginary cordon round us, and no one dares approach within two yards as long as they mount guard. It was a thrilling sight for the assembled crowd to watch the barbarians wielding knives and forks, instead of the dear, familiar chopsticks. I must say they behaved beautifully.
When I sat down to sketch a lovely river scene outside a village gateway, though many came to look on they did not jostle. These entrance gates are often quite imposing and of infinite variety. Just inside was a fine litter of pigs, with a most important-looking sow, and it was amusing to watch their antics. On a doorstep, extended at full length lay a large hairy black pig. Its face wore a beatific expression, with half-closed eyes of rapt enjoyment, while a woman vigorously groomed it with her brush.
The mountains of Kweichow give shelter to many wild animals, and even tigers, as well as leopards, are to be found, which cause great havoc in some of the villages. One story we heard throws an interesting light on the way the natives look at them. A tiger had been doing so much damage that the peasantry determined to have a battue, having tracked it to a certain hill, from which they thought it would be impossible for it to escape. They formed a cordon round the hill and gradually drove it to the top. The tiger, in search of refuge, looked into a shrine, and its pursuers saw this: they exclaimed, “It is certainly the God of the Hill”; so they turned tail and fled. Naturally, the tiger seeing this took the opportunity of attacking them in the rear, and several were badly mauled.[22]
Some of the mountains are very barren, others wonderfully cultivated, on terraces right up to the very top, and in rocky hollows only about a foot in diameter, with a mere handful of soil in them. How the scanty population can do such a vast amount of cultivation was a mystery we could never solve. One day we started from an altitude of eighteen hundred feet and climbed over a pass of forty-eight hundred, whence there was a wonderful panoramic view; our road could be seen for many miles, winding along the mountainside above a narrow valley; then diving down into it and up the opposite side. Our men said the last part of that day’s march, ten li (three miles), would be on the level, which sounded pleasant news. In point of fact we dropped nine hundred feet. A fine entrance gate led into Lang Tai Fung. Just outside the wall were the ruins of an old temple with a handsome stone carved bridge in front of it, enclosed within a wall. The inn was a good one, and the weather having suddenly turned cold we were glad of a brazier. The town seemed much more prosperous than most. There were large cotton looms, where weaving was going on in the open air, as well as in a disused temple. Handsome carved window-frames delighted me so much that I determined to have some made for the women’s institute at Taiyuanfu. They were about a yard square in size with a good deal of carving, so the sum named (twenty dollars including carriage to Anshun, about fifty-five miles distant) did not seem excessive! It took us three days to get to Anshun, and the windows arrived within the fortnight stipulated. We picked them up later, and they formed rather a large item of our luggage, requiring an extra coolie.
As we neared Anshun the road was less mountainous and the villages better built. Many of the houses are of grey stone, some built with mortar, some without. There was a fine waterfall, a hundred and sixty feet in depth, into the Rhinoceros Pool, near the town of Chen Lun, and above it a five-span bridge of noble proportions. A busy market was going on in the town; and a funeral, with the usual paper horses and servants for burning at the grave, formed an additional interest to the gay crowd. There were a number of picturesque tribeswomen, looking as usual very sulky, and not mixing with the Chinese. From afar we saw the lofty turrets of a Roman Catholic Church, so we went to see what it was like. The architecture and fittings were entirely Western, and we had no sooner entered the church than the fine-looking old French priest came forward and greeted us. He invited us into his room and we had an interesting, long talk. He had been thirty-two years in China, but only two in this district, and seemed very discouraged. I asked about the numbers of converts, and he said there were about sixteen hundred, but added dejectedly that they were not at all satisfactory. How hard it must be to go on working under such circumstances, and with no hope of return to his own country.
Generally missionaries seem a wonderfully hopeful set of people, even under very adverse circumstances, and we came to a most cheerful group at Anshunfu, where we had a few days of welcome rest in their hospitable house.
Anshun is a very pretty town, with its shady trees, its winding waterways and handsome stone balustrades along them. On a picturesque bridge were shrines, which made a subject to delight an artist’s eye: indeed it was a continual trial to me to have so little time for drawing when there was such a wealth of material. Facing the house where we stayed was a temple transformed into a government school, and it had an ornamental wall such as I had not seen elsewhere. There were panels at intervals, about three and a half feet from the ground, of various sizes, with open stucco work, looking like designs from Æsop’s fables. They lent a great charm to the garden, in which the wall seemed to be only of decorative value. Throughout China the human figure and animals are used in all sorts of architectural ways which would never occur to us. Anshun is situated in a small plain, and a fine road leads to it with pailous (memorial arches) at intervals. We walked across the fields one day and climbed a neighbouring hill, surmounted by the usual temple; from it there was a magnificent view of all the country round. A lurid thunderstorm heightened the effect. There were oleanders in full bloom in the courtyard, and the priests were polite and friendly, bringing tea to us, while we waited for the storm to clear away.
There is a hospital at Anshun built by the Arthington Fund, but as there is only one doctor attached to it, and he was away on furlough, the place was closed. As it is the only hospital for hundreds of miles, indeed there is only one other hospital in the province, for 11,300,000 people, this seemed a dreadful pity. The coming of my doctor was quite an event, especially for a lady who badly needed her advice. In the whole province there are only these two European hospitals, as far as I heard, and no Chinese ones.
We made Anshunfu our starting-point for a trip into the unfrequented mountains, where aboriginal tribes are to be found in great numbers. No census can be taken of them, and it is only by years of unremitting toil, in the face of continual danger, that missionaries have succeeded in making friends with them. Mr. Slichter, of the C.I.M., was our guide, and as soon as we left the city we struck up a pathway into the hills to the north of it. After several hours’ travelling we came to a river, which until recent years was the boundary, beyond which no foreigner was allowed to go because of the acute hostility felt by the tribes-people against all strangers. It was a rapid, swirling river, lying in a deep narrow gorge, and we were ferried across.
We climbed up a long hot ascent on the further side, and reached a Keh-lao village,[23] where a fair was going on. The contrast was extraordinary, quite as great as if we had gone from one European country into another. It was only with difficulty, and because he was known, that Mr. Slichter could persuade some one to boil water for us, and then it was only very little, whereas in any Chinese village you could get as much as you wanted. We spent about twelve hours reaching our destination—a village perched up on a steep hill-side. Seeing us from afar, a laughing group of Miao boys and girls came running down the path to greet us, looking a most picturesque group in their red, white and blue clothes.
In another chapter I shall try and give a detailed account of these people, so will for the present only say a little about the country. From the top of the crag on which the village of Ten-ten is situated there may be counted fourteen ranges stretching away into the far distance, and in such hollows as are practicable for agriculture, wheat, poppy, rice and hemp are grown. There are most curious trees, which we saw for the first time, called Rhus vernicifera, from which varnish is obtained. They are plentiful in the district, and itinerant tappers come round from time to time to hire their services to the owners, for the varnish is a valuable crop, but must be carefully handled. It is most poisonous, and people even lose their lives by handling it carelessly. We found Mrs. Slichter at Ten-ten; she had been seriously ill as the result of using a branch of the tree for a walking-stick. The varnish causes terrible pains in the head, loss of sight for several days, and an eruption of the hands rendering them useless for a time.
The first Miao church was built at Ten-ten, and would hardly be recognized as such, I fear, by the orthodox: it looked like a cross between a goods shed and a hall, with a ladder at each end leading to a couple of rooms to accommodate visitors. The only clerical detail was a pulpit, but close beside it was a cooking-stove, and in vain I protested that our meals were not to be prepared while service was going on. The people seemed to find it quite natural, and when Yao was not too concerned in his cooking he lent an interested ear to what was being said. One thing was clear, and that was that the congregation was thoroughly in earnest, and gave undivided attention to the service. It meant so much to them and especially to the women, who took part in the prayer-meeting quite simply and fervently. On the Sunday morning we were about one hundred people, who attended a baptismal service, which was performed in a dammed-up stream in the ricefields. It was extraordinarily picturesque to see the Miao in their short full-kilted skirts, trooping down the zigzag path to the spot, where twenty-five received baptism. They have names given them, as many, if not most of them, have none.
After spending a few days at Ten-ten we continued our journey northwards, but were somewhat tried by the difficulty of getting any guide. One of the tribes-people took us a certain distance across the mountains, but the path was not only steep and rough, but the lanes were so narrow and thorny that we thought our chairs would be torn to pieces, and our clothes to ribbons: the thorns and brambles overhanging the path made it difficult to get the chairs along. We found it decidedly preferable to walk, and enjoyed the glorious scenery up hill and down dale, the air laden with the scent of roses and sweetbrier, and the hill-sides carpeted with mauve-coloured orchids and primulas.
We soon lost our way, and there was no one to be seen in all the wide landscape to set us right. We wandered on for hours till we came to a tiny hamlet, where we found a pottery in full swing. With much persuasion and the promise of a good tip, we barely succeeded in coaxing a boy to show us the way to the village of I-mei, where we proposed spending the night. We set off again in more cheerful mood, but alas! for our hopes: after about two hours the lad admitted that he didn’t know the way. We wandered on down a tiny valley, watered by a charming stream, where countless wagtails and other little birds beguiled us by their chatter. As we emerged from the valley into some fields the lad suggested this must be I-mei, but when we asked some women at work in the fields they said “Oh no! it is far away.” They went on to tell us that if we succeeded in reaching it that night, we should probably find no accommodation. There was a comfortable-looking farm-house within sight, and they thought we might get put up there, so we sent to inquire. They were friendly folk, who were willing to vacate a room for us and to lodge the rest of the party somewhere; so we were quite pleased to have this new experience. I had never slept in a Chinese farm-house before, and in point of fact we did not get a great deal of sleep, as the partitions were thin and there was plenty of animal life, both large and small, to share the building, all living on the most intimate terms with the owners. A cat was very put out about it, and hurried to and fro in our room in the middle of the night. We tried to shoo her away, and then heard a reproachful voice from the other side of the partition calling gently “Mimi, Mimi!” upon which the pussy-cat quickly sidled away to her master.
Next day we were up betimes, and our host said his white-haired brother would act as our guide. These two old gentlemen still wore attenuated queues, almost the only ones we saw on the journey. We found the whole family kind and interested in their visitors. I feel sure no other Europeans had ever visited the little valley. We gave the lady a piece of soap, evidently quite a novelty to her: it seems strange to have to explain the use of such a thing. But this province has curious natural resources in the way of soap. One tree, the Sapindus mukorossi, has round fruit, which have only to be shaken in water to make it quite soapy, and the pods of the Gleditschia sinensis are to be found for sale in most of the markets: they are used in washing clothes. European firms have started the soap industry in China, and there is certainly a good opening for the trade.
We had a long climb up a lovely mountain pass, well named in Chinese “Climbing to the Heavens,” and came across magnolia and other delicious shrubs. After a stage of about fourteen miles we reached the town of Pingüan, and stayed there till next day, as it was such a pleasant, clean-looking place. Our room had varnished walls—quite a novelty—and small panes of glass among the paper ones. We had a larger crowd of interested spectators than usual, but at intervals Yao came out like a whirlwind and scattered the chaff. Our hostess brought us a bunch of camellias and peonies as an excuse for consulting the doctor about her cough!
We left Pingüan early next morning, and facing the gateway by which we went out was a typical bit of landscape—in the foreground a bridge leading to a little poppy-covered plain, out of the centre of which rose a steep rock crowned with a pagoda and a temple. At the foot of the rock were several shrines. It seemed impossible for the Chinese to miss making use of any such natural feature of the landscape for a religious purpose in past days; though now the shrines are so neglected, except under the stress of plague, famine or rapine, which incites the worshippers to devotion. The crops in this district were entirely opium poppy.
At our next halting-place, Ch’a-tien, we had to put up with miserable quarters: our tiny room looked on to the street, so that we had a large and interested audience all the time; they lined up on the window-sill across the road, a good point of vantage, while the small fry discovered quite a unique point of observation. There was a hiatus at the bottom of the woodwork of the wall about a yard long and six inches deep, so by lying with their faces flat on the ground and close to the opening they could get a fair view of our doings. The row of bright eyes and gleaming teeth was quite uncanny. Our thermometer registered 66°, so we felt it rather stuffy with every breath of air excluded.
During the day we had passed most attractive newly-built houses in lath and plaster. They had small oval windows in the gable ends with simple but effective designs in them. The contrast was very striking with the other villages in this district, where the inhabitants wore the filthiest-looking rags I have ever seen, and had a most degraded look.
At the entrance to every village is at least one little shrine, which generally has a god and goddess sitting side by side in it; but in this neighbourhood we noticed a good many shrines without images. They had inscriptions instead, such as “The only true God, from ancient to present times.” They looked very neglected as a rule, and hardly ever did we see a newly-erected one.
Our next inn at Ch’a Tsang had a highly decorated wall about eighteen feet high, facing the chief guest-rooms. There was a large parti-coloured mosaic made out of broken crockery at the top, below which were two hares rampant in stucco, supporting a shield between them; they were flanked by ornamental plants in pots. It was interesting to find so elaborate a decoration in so humble an inn, but that is one of the charming surprises on the road, even in the by-ways of China.
Ta-ting was our next important stopping-place, as word had been sent to the mission there, requesting them to summon as many tribes-people as possible to meet us. It is the centre of work among them, and there is a flourishing boys’ school and also a training school for evangelists. The whole school had turned out in our honour, and made a gay show on the hill-side, waving boughs of crimson rhododendrons, which contrasted with their bright blue gowns. They had come by a winding road two or three miles outside the city wall, headed by one of the ladies on horseback: the welcome was as picturesque as it was cordial, and they had learned an English greeting for us, which they gave in great style, as soon as we got out of our chairs. Then they turned back, and we brought up the rear of their procession in single file, passing through a fine gateway before we reached the entrance to the city.
Ta-ting is a Chinese town, although it is in the centre of a district full of tribes-people, with whom they have always been in conflict. A mission station was opened there many years ago especially for work amongst the aborigines, and at the present time is manned by four German ladies, of whom two were on furlough at the time of our visit. When the order came from the Chinese Government that all Germans were to leave the country, as China was joining the Allies, the magistrate of Ta-ting begged that these ladies be allowed to remain, as there had been so much less trouble with the tribesmen since they had come under their influence. This request was granted, and I take this opportunity of stating my firm conviction that the direct result of mission work is to bring these warring races into friendly relations with one another and with the Chinese. The Chinese despise them on account of their illiteracy and low morality, and both these objections are changed by Christian teaching.
We spent a few days very happily at Ta-ting, but it was long enough to see how isolated a life the missionaries must lead, and under most trying climatic conditions. The city lies in a hollow surrounded by mountains at an altitude of 5,100 feet, continually shrouded in mist. The sun is only visible one day in four all the year round, and then perhaps only for a few minutes. We did not see the complete outline of the mountains while we were there, and we were constantly reminded of Scotch mists, rolling up for a few moments and then obliterating everything again. This was the only place where we heard so dismal a report of the weather.
Some Chinese ladies came to call on us and brought us charming embroidered spectacle-cases and puffed rice as gifts, but practically all our time was devoted to studying the aborigines and hearing about them. They were extraordinarily friendly, and one old hunch-back, who came from a village more than thirty miles away, had brought two fine fowls as gifts to the ladies and ourselves. I presented her with a woollen jacket, as the people suffer much from the cold, and when she next came to service on a broiling August day she was still wearing it with great pride!
I should like to have spent months making studies of these people, and tried in vain to make notes of all the details possible of such interesting and various types; but the people were anxious to get back to their homes, and after one day spent almost continuously in meetings and classes, the gathering broke up. It was a great thing to be able to study them at such close quarters, and to find them willing to be sketched and photographed. About two hundred and fifty were present, so that one could get a good idea of the various tribes.
We left Ta-ting by the same gate as we entered it, and followed our former route for about fifteen miles. By dint of making rather long stages we reached Kwei Yang, the capital, on the fifth day, instead of the usual time, the sixth day. While on the journey we passed some pleasant-looking homesteads, which no doubt belonged to wealthy Chinese, as we heard that it was not at all unusual for people living in towns to have country houses as well. Later on I visited two such country houses near Swatow, and was much impressed by their air of refinement, not to mention the beautiful works of art with which they were decorated. Country life appeals strongly to the Chinese. While on this part of the journey we came to a fine five-span bridge with a gateway at each end and decorative carved stonework balustrades, but alas! it was in so ruinous a condition that it probably no longer exists. It is one of the most disappointing things in China that nothing architectural is kept in repair; yet the Chinese are such past masters in the art of restoration when forced to do it for reasons of safety or economy!
The roads were worse than ever, and incredibly slippery and muddy. On the outskirts of Lan-ni-Kou, which we reached on the second day, we saw people busily engaged picking nettles, their hands protected by thick gloves. We were glad to find an unusually good inn there, where we got a brazier and were able to dry our sopping clothes. We had walked a good deal in pelting rain, for the stage was long and arduous, up and down precipitous hills: we did sixty miles in two days. On the third we had to descend the face of a cliff by a steep stone staircase covered with slippery mud. There were long strings of pack animals heavily laden, and they jolted down in front of us, sliding and slithering in a most precarious way. The scene was magnificent—masses of roses hanging in long festoons from the rocks, and the narrow verdant plain far below, with the shining river, Ya-chih-ho, flowing through it. We did not reach it without several tumbles, and found a custom station on the bank, where a lot of mail-bags were waiting to be ferried across. There was a motto over the custom house urging every one to advance the trade of the country. The valley was full of flowering trees; catalpa, orange, azalea, iris, all added to the wealth of scent and colour. The little village on the further side of the river had particularly attractive gardens with hedges of spindle cactus, but the rain still poured down, and it was a weary climb for the next two hours.
Robbers’ Haunts.
Compensation awaited us, however, at Wei Shang, in the form of a really clean inn, where our room was like a glass case, the whole of one side being glazed, and a few panes missing, which afforded necessary ventilation. There was a slight lack of privacy, but we were in an inner courtyard and could manage to rig up some shelter from the public gaze.
As we neared the capital, things looked more prosperous, and the amount of opium-poppy cultivation decreased. The road was decidedly better and the weather improved. The immediate approach to the city is decorated with no less than twenty-seven memorial arches, many of which are put up to the memory of good mothers and widows. Kwei Yang is a city of a hundred thousand people, and most attractive both in its surroundings and in itself. We enjoyed the hospitality of the only missionaries in the station, Mr. and Mrs. Pike (Australians), of the China Inland Mission. No one realizes how delightful such hospitality is unless they have had an equally arduous journey—to find bright airy rooms, with little intimate touches to welcome you, preparations for a hot bath, freshly-made cakes, all the kindly thought above all, to make you happy and at home: this is an experience of infinite charm, and practically universal in missionary circles. It has often been taken advantage of by unsympathetic travellers, and yet happily it persists.
We were presently asked to say what our plans were, and what places we wished to visit in the neighbourhood, that everything might be arranged; and indeed everything was beautifully arranged for us in a way that could not have been done without help. Mr. Li was dispatched with our cards and a letter of thanks to Mr. Liu, the Postal Commissioner, who had so befriended us (see page 91). He proved to be a friend and supporter of the mission, and came to call on us—a man speaking excellent English who has been Commissioner for twenty-three years. He lives in English style, which, by the way, is much cheaper than Chinese. Unfortunately his wife was ill, so we could not call on her; but we made friends with her sister, a lady doctor who had come the long journey from Fukien to give her medical assistance. We saw her several times; she played the harmonium for the Sunday service in church, and in the afternoon she and her brother-in-law joined us in an excursion to the top of a hill overlooking the town, which was crowned with the usual Buddhist monastery. The view was superb: below we saw thousands of graves, taking up the whole ground-space of the hill-side. Mr. Liu told us he and a friend had once carefully examined a great number of the tombstones, but found none dating back more than eighty years. It seemed a pity that so much valuable land should be taken up by the dead so close to the city. As we walked back in the lovely evening light, kite-flying was in full swing and crowds were taking the air.
Another thing to be done was to arrange for our further journey, and Mr. Pike got a personal interview for our interpreter with the Governor, to whose yamen he has the entrée. The Governor is of the old school—does not encourage progress. When Sir John Jordan telegraphed to inquire about the opium cultivation, he replied evasively, “With me there is none”; but it is a question whether that would be accurate, even if applied only to the yamen! Mr. Liu told us that one official made $50,000 on it last year, and whereas the price of opium two years ago was six dollars per ounce, it has fallen to forty cents and will probably fall much lower owing to the bumper harvest now being reaped. The Governor agreed that we might proceed to Chen Yüen, but absolutely refused to allow us to go off the main road to visit the district where the black Miao live. Mr. Liu had already told us that his postal runners had been robbed less than a fortnight before, and two hundred bags of silk had nearly been captured from them. His escort of twenty men had been attacked by six hundred robbers, it was said, but they put up a plucky fight and reinforcements arrived in time to save the situation. The Governor said we must have an escort of thirty men, and promised they should be ready to start on Monday morning—this being Saturday.
We visited a remarkable Buddhist monastery, a little distance outside the city, where the bodies of deceased monks are always cremated. This is a most unusual practice, and there is a stone crematorium just outside the temple precincts, near to a paved cemetery. Here are handsome stone tombs of varying importance, in which the ashes are placed. We saw a monk going the round of these tombs, burning incense before each one and genuflecting with great apparent earnestness. Sometimes it was done twice, sometimes three times, according, no doubt, to the importance of the dead man; we were informed that this takes place always twice a day. The monastery was most beautifully situated amongst the trees on a hill-side. There are now eight sects of Buddhists in China, and probably cremation of monks is peculiar to one of them.
It was with regret that we left Kwei Yang, for evidently the shops were worth visiting, and we got some silk which was quite different in design and colouring from any we had seen elsewhere. Beautiful silk covers are made here for bedding, and the province is noted for its “wild” silk. In leaving the city we passed through streets full of embroidery shops; other trades were to be seen, each in their own locality, and we longed for time to make fuller acquaintance with this most attractive city. As we crossed one handsome bridge we saw another with nine arches and a prolongation across a road where the archway was much finer. There are large tanneries on the outskirts and an agricultural college, whose activities we saw in plantations further along the road. As Kweichow is particularly rich in different kinds of trees, this ought to be a most useful institution. There are many beautiful pine trees, especially the Cunninghamia; Liquidambar formosano (from which the tea chests are made); the Rhus vernicifera (already mentioned); the Boehmeria nivea (of which grass cloth is made, which is so universally used in China for hot-weather clothes and which is now largely imported to Europe and America in the shape of embroidered tablecloths and d’oyleys); the Gleditschia sinensis (the soap tree); Sapium sebiferum (the vegetable tallow tree); the Aleurites Fordii (wood-oil tree); the Sapindus mukorossi (paper mulberry); the Broussonetia; the Agle sepiaria, a kind of orange tree, with curious divided leaf, and many others.
We set off from Kwei Yang accompanied by thirty armed soldiers (some of those we had previously with us were not armed, and few had any ammunition even when they carried rifles) and three policemen under the command of a Captain, who certainly was a pattern of inefficiency and slovenliness. His dress was in keeping with this: he wore white puttees, always dirty and generally wreathed loosely round his fat calves. When it rained he wore a long macintosh, which had to be held up like a lady’s skirt in the old days. He kept no discipline, and when we neared the most dangerous part of the road he travelled in a chair, so as to be thoroughly rested before a possible attack! The men carried with them a banner with which they go into battle, and had a little military flag, which was always set up outside the inns where we halted. These soldiers were a noisy, cheerful crew, and rather spoilt the comfort of the journey, but probably saved us from having our belongings looted, if from nothing worse.
The discipline of our escort left much to be desired, and they prepared for the expected fray with the brigands by constant brushes between themselves! Having a doctor in the party must have seemed quite a fortunate thing to them. One evening Li asked her to put a few stitches in a soldier’s cut head; next came one with a sore arm by too heavy use of a stick on it. I drew the line at this, and forbade any more such cases to be brought to the doctor, remarking that next they would ask to be cured of stomach ache! In point of fact, this happened the very next morning, and our burst of laughter discouraged them from further requests for medical attendance. We heard more and more gruesome stories as we proceeded, and I found it difficult to decide whether the fear expressed was simulated or real. The soldiers begged for a pork feast at a point of great danger (?) to give them the necessary courage. As it was important to keep them in good temper with ourselves, I agreed; and great preparations went on that evening. Some chickens instead of pork having been procured at the market, the whole inn yard seemed full of flying feathers. The result was a thoroughly chicken-hearted crew next day: that is, I feel sure, in accordance with proper Chinese theory! One of the men applied to M. for treatment of a sore foot, and as it appeared probable that the swelling on the sole would develop into an abscess, she ordered him to remain behind. He appeared very disappointed and said that he had come determined to fight, even if it cost him his life. One of the soldiers, we were told, was of the utmost bravery and equal to fighting ten robbers. We were informed later on that two men had been killed on the road just after we had passed, but I had a shrewd suspicion that all these stories were told to enhance the value of the escort when it came to giving the pourboire at the end of the journey.
One most unpleasant thing happened which might well have proved a much more serious affair. The men were very careless in their behaviour when they thought there was no immediate danger, and straggled along the road at irregular distances, a fact which pleased us, as we were not so annoyed by their ceaseless chatter. They would hand their rifles to one another (they were never loaded), and often one man would carry three. Yao, our admirable cook, being a willing fellow, was carrying a rifle nearly all day. He continued to do so when he went ahead at midday, as he always did, to secure our rooms at the halting-place for the night. When we were entering the town, the Captain, who had preceded us, turned back and told us not to go any further, as he was going to the yamen to see about quarters and that all the inns were full. Li saw that something was the matter, but we decided to go on and see for ourselves. Soon we found Yao sitting weeping on a doorstep and our luggage scattered along the main street. He blurted out somewhat incoherently that he had been set upon by the soldiery of the place, because he was carrying a rifle, and accused of being a robber. In vain he asserted that he was the servant of foreigners, who were with a military escort; they beat him and kicked him. Yao reported further that our escort had taken all the rooms in the inn for themselves. We made our way there and found his story correct, and that they had left a dark little room for our use. I felt that it would never do to give in to this, and showed my indignation plainly: but as the officer was not present it was rather difficult to see what was the best plan of procedure. To leave the inn might have given them an excuse for saying they had been relieved of responsibility. I said we would look at the upper rooms, which are only used as storerooms, and happily we found a nice large loft which only needed sweeping out. We said the soldiers were to bring our things up the rickety ladder, for Yao was still in a collapsed state, and they did so with good will. He was considerably comforted by a rubbing down with Elliman, and was allowed to “coucher” (one of his few French words): I heard later that he might have lost his life for his offence in being found with a military rifle, so we had cause to congratulate ourselves that things were no worse. The soldier’s offence in being found without a rifle was an offence punishable with death. Next day Yao was fit for duty again, but a very chastened-looking object.
When we came near to the special danger zone, the escort became more careful, and our party grew daily larger till it reached at last a hundred persons, many people taking advantage of our escort. On all the points of vantage dotted along our road were beacon towers, from which danger signals are flashed in times of rebellion. I could not resist having a joke at Li’s expense when we came to a wooded ravine, where he said the robbers were certainly lurking; “Then I must sketch it,” I told him, and called a halt, to his obvious dismay. I was merciful, however, and we didn’t stop more than a few minutes, while I did an outline of the robbers’ haunt.
This escort went with us till we reached Chen Yüen, whence we travelled by boat. Although it was somewhat risky to be without one, we decided that it would be intolerable to have it in the restricted quarters of a small house-boat. Our courage was rewarded by our immunity from disaster, whereas a missionary party who took the Yangtze route in order to escape it fell into the hands of brigands. Our friends, the Pikes, at Kwei Yang had a most unfortunate experience on their last journey. Their luggage was seized and all the contents emptied on to the muddy road, and the robbers took whatever pleased their fancy; the remainder of the things were not improved by their handling, and when they reached their destination it was found that odd shoes, broken objects, and a dirty collection of clothes filled the boxes. The good temper with which they took their losses was remarkable, considering the difficulty and delay in replacing necessary things, such as shoes.
One of the most interesting places in Kweichow is the town of Chen Yüen, and I was glad we kept to the road instead of going by boat from Seh Ping, although the rapids are said to be very fine. The distant view of Chen Yüen as it first appears to the traveller through a gap between the mountains is impressive: it seems to lie in a complete cul-de-sac, lofty cliffs surrounding it on every side, with the river like a deep jade-green ribbon winding between the serried ranks of sepia-coloured roofs. Tempestuous clouds filled the sky as we approached the city, but the setting sun lighted up a lofty crag studded with temples which blocked up the end of the valley. The cliffs are so precipitous that the people have built the city wall starting from the edge of a precipice at a point some hundred feet above the city, saying that the Almighty had protected it so far, and certainly His protection was of a very different quality from that of the wall!
High up the cliffs we climbed to a temple, from which a tocsin sounds in case of fire: it is certainly a splendid point of view, commanding the whole city, which winds along the banks of the serpentine river. It seems strange to see big junks with white-winged sails so far inland, and to reflect that you can go the whole distance to Shanghai without setting foot on shore, some fifteen hundred miles. It is a much quicker way of travelling when going down stream, but terribly slow in the other direction, not infrequently a three months’ journey.
The temples at Chen Yüen contain some of the finest wood carvings I have seen in China, and are wonderfully situated up the face of a cliff, with magnificent creepers hanging down from its crags and forming a background to the zigzag stairways which lead from terrace to terrace. The situation of the temples is chosen with consummate skill, and from each balcony a new and lovely view is obtained, stretching farther and farther up the valleys. The whole of the province is composed of mountains, with the exception of three districts in the centre and north, where there are plains of a limited size. Considering that the province is sixty-seven thousand square miles in extent, this is a remarkable fact, and a large part is inhabited by the aboriginal tribes: it is extraordinary that the average population is a hundred and twenty-two to the square mile.
Our altitude varied from 1,400 to 5,700 feet, and the highest pass we crossed was 7,200; our average was about 3,200, as we usually stopped at villages hidden in the depths of the valleys, and continually crossed over mountain passes.