INN PAPER WINDOW.
We spent about three weeks in Hunan, and the weather was broken all the time. Many days it rained, and occasionally there were violent thunderstorms, so that our journey was delayed. We left the province of Kweichow on May 14, and found ten days in our little house-boat quite entertaining and recuperative, as it afforded time for rest after the strenuous journey over the highways and by-ways of that province. The river scenery was often very grand, though not equal to the Yangtze gorges. There was constant variety to occupy our attention, stopping at towns and villages, watching the other river craft, and making up arrears of correspondence. We had also been provided by Mr. Davies with a bundle of newspapers, and were glad to learn what was going on in the outer world, from which we seemed so completely shut out for the time being. It really did not matter that the papers were a few weeks old; the main thing was that we should not be so entirely ignorant of what had happened during our absence, when once more we reached home.
Mr. Davies had considerable difficulty in getting us a boat, as the boatmen were all anxious to get loads of opium for smuggling down river. There was a bumper crop, and the price of transport is heavy. Finally he succeeded in securing the boat in which he and his family had come up earlier in the season. The bargain was made for sixty-two dollars for the trip, with a bonus of two extra at the end, if we were satisfied. There were to be four rowers, but they didn’t keep to the agreement. They wanted to have military escort in addition, which we declined on account of the limited deck space in which they and the owners have to live.
The accommodation of a river-boat is small: ours consisted of three tiny compartments, of which we took two, finding that our beds occupied exactly half the space, with a well between them, and our chairs and table the remainder. The cooking was done in a sort of well in the small deck in front of us, and it was a great satisfaction to watch the way in which it was done by Yao and his meticulous cleanliness. There was no lack of water, so each vegetable was washed in clean water about five or six times. I believe the correct number of times to wash rice before cooking is ten. It was really astonishing to see the dishes Yao prepared on the handful of charcoal which was used to cook not only our meals but also those of the crew.
The scenery was very wild and beautiful, and on the whole our crew rowed well. There was an engaging little girl of three years old, who amused us not a little with her clever manipulation of the chopsticks, never dropping a grain of rice: she wore two silver bangles and two rings. Each night we moored by the bank in what was considered a safe place, for the robbers were much dreaded by the crew. Our live stock—chickens and ducks—were tethered out to graze. At one place they took on a couple of unarmed police, unknown to us, but as they would have been no use whatever had we been attacked, I ordered them to be put ashore at the next town. The robbers had burned many villages, we were told, driving off the cattle, killing some of the inhabitants, and looting all that was of value to them. All the way we passed shrines dotted along the river-bank—one hideous fat Buddha was painted on the rock—and incense was burnt continually by the owners of the boat. The quality of their zeal varied relatively to the danger incurred, so we had no need to make inquiry. At the worst part of all we had to support the courage of the crew by a pork feast, portions of which were flung into the air and caught by wicked-looking crows, which hovered screaming overhead. These crows are looked upon as evil spirits of the river needing to be propitiated.
The first important town we reached in Hunan was Yuan Chowfu, and we found there some missionaries of the China Inland Mission who had many interesting experiences to tell of revolutionary days. Hunan has always been a particularly anti-foreign province, and work has progressed slowly: it is not at all surprising that the people should be slow to understand the object of foreigners coming to settle among them, and every one mistrusts what they do not understand. It needs something to break down prejudice, and in this case the something was of a tragic nature. The missionary came home one day to find his wife lying in the veranda with a fractured skull and brain exposed to view: she had been attacked by a madman, who left her for dead. It was long before she was nursed back to a certain measure of health, with speech and memory gone. This happened two years ago, and now she is slowly regaining strength and her lost powers, and welcomed us with exquisite hospitality; despite having an attack of fever, she insisted on our staying to tea and the evening meal. Mr. and Mrs. Becker have the supreme satisfaction of finding that from the time of the accident their work has taken on a wholly different complexion; the people have rallied round them and look to them for support in troublous times. With but slight medical training Mr. Becker organized Red Cross classes, and took charge of the wounded in the mission premises. At one time the city was threatened by revolutionaries, the officials lost control, and for three days he took full command and saved the situation. He received medals and a complimentary board from the Government, acknowledging the great services he had rendered to Yuan Chow.
No less than nine times Mr. Becker has been caught by robbers, but has never had a single thing stolen by them, which certainly constitutes a record. When a pistol was put to his head, he presented a visiting card, saying, “Take this to your Chief”: it is a fine example of “a soft answer turneth away wrath.” On recognizing who he is, they have always released him without any injury. He told us that recently the robber bands have been broken up, and thought we need have no anxiety about them. We were regaled with the first strawberries of the season from their garden, which contained a promising supply of vegetables, and there were goats and kids in pens. We went away loaded with good things, and deeply impressed by the sight of these heroic workers and their colleagues.
The principal industry of the place is white wax: special ash trees grow here on which the insects live, but every year the insects necessary to produce the wax have to be brought from the neighbouring province of Szechwan. “When they reach the right stage of development they are put in paper boxes, in bamboo trays, and carried by the swiftest runners. These men only travel by night, as it is essential that the process of development should not proceed too rapidly. The boxes have to be opened every day and ventilated, and the men secure the best rooms in the inns, so that other travellers have to suffer if they are on the road at the same time” (Face of China, p. 183). There were also large numbers of paulownia trees, with their lilac flowers in full bloom: they produce a vegetable oil used for cooking and for furniture. All this district is noted for its trees, and much wood is brought down by a tributary river from the Panghai district, where it is cut down by the Black Miao tribe.
The next town where we halted was particularly attractive, surrounded by red sandstone walls and grey stone battlements. We made a complete tour on the top of the city wall, but the houses are so high that you cannot see into any of the courtyards. At one point there was a fine, picturesque group of trees overhanging the wall, otherwise the houses were built very close together, like a rabbit warren. On the battlements were a number of most comical little guns, some carefully protected from the weather by shrines built over them. They looked as if they might have come out of the ark, but were only about seventy years old, some being dated.
In the market we bought wild raspberries, which had quite a good flavour when cooked, but they were rather tart, as they were not fully ripe. We found wild strawberries by the wayside, but were told that some varieties are poisonous, and those we ate were quite tasteless.
Our next halting-place was Hong Kiang, where we arrived at 8.30 a.m., and spent a pleasant day with two missionary families, one being a doctor’s. He was rather depressed, because the town is under the control of a military governor of irascible temper. The doctor’s cook had recently been suffering from insanity and was being treated in the hospital, when he was suddenly seized and condemned to death. The doctor, on hearing of it, went instantly to the Governor to explain matters, but he pleaded in vain, and found the man had been shot while he was with the Governor. Executions are continually taking place, and so badly done that frequently the offenders linger wounded for hours after they have been shot. Often the doctor is begged to go and help, but what can he do? On occasion he has been allowed to go and bring them back to life! In one case he had taken stretchers on which to bring the sufferers back to the hospital, but they were one too few, so that he told one man he would come back for him. The man dare not wait for his return, and managed, despite being in a terrible condition, to drag himself to the hospital on foot.
Mr. Hollenwenger took us up a high hill behind the city to see the view, and it was certainly worth while, although the heat was great. The river winds round a long strip of land, and a narrow stream across it could easily be made navigable so as to save the junks having to make a detour of several miles. Another big tributary joins the river almost opposite the stream, by which quantities of wood are brought down from the hills. The valley is full of ricefields, and we saw men transplanting the rice with incredible rapidity from the small field in which it is originally raised to the larger fields where it attains maturity.
When we got back to lunch we found Dr. Witt had to go at once to an ambulance class, which the Governor had requested him to undertake in view of the troops being sent to fight in the struggle now going on between North and South. In various parts of the country we found missionaries being used by the authorities in this way. At the time that China joined the Allies during the war they told the German missionaries to leave the country, but exceptions were made in the case of many like these, whose work was felt to justify their remaining.
The next town of importance that we reached was Shen Chowfu, where there is quite a large group of American missionaries with hospitals, schools, etc., whom we had been asked to visit. Their buildings stood up conspicuously at both ends of the long river-front of the city. We were told that the hospital had been built with indemnity money paid by the Chinese Government on account of the murder of C.I.M. missionaries many years ago, but which the C.I.M. declined to accept. It is a well-known fact that such money never comes from the guilty parties, but is extorted from the people, and consequently is always a source of ill-will. We were told by some charming American ladies there, how bitter the feeling had been against them, and that for years they were guarded by soldiery and never left their houses unaccompanied by a guard. They had spacious gardens, and the missionaries’ families lived there without ever going into the streets. It seemed a strange kind of existence, and brought home to us acutely the question of mission policy. There seem to me to be two classes of American missionary ideals—roughly speaking—one of which is responsible for some of the finest work possible in China and which every one must heartily admire; such work may be seen at St. John’s University, Shanghai, and in the American Board at Peking. But there is another increasingly large class whose faith seems to be pinned on a strange trinity—money, organization, and Americanization. The first necessity for them is large and showy buildings, generally apart from the busy city life, or at least on the outskirts of the city—this may be all right in the case of boarding-schools, but for hospitals it renders them practically useless. I have seen groups of residential premises miles away from the work. The welfare of the missionaries is the foremost consideration. The means of transport are slow, so that hours must be spent every day by the workers getting to and from their work, and they live a life wholly apart from the Chinese. The work is highly organized, and they have much larger staffs than our missions provide, as they seem to have unlimited means and men. Undoubtedly we err grievously in the opposite direction: our missionaries have all far more work than they can perform. Added to that, our missionaries have about one-third of the holiday that the Americans do and less money to make the holiday a real one. Our societies are all hard hit by the question of finance, but it would be better to cut down our work rather than spoil its quality by insufficient staffing and underpay.
The third point is Americanization. A large section of missionaries so value their own culture that they believe they can do no better than try and denationalize the Chinese, or Indians, or whatever other nations they may be working amongst, and transform them into Americans. In the case of China this seems to me a most disastrous policy, and founded on serious error. The Chinese and British characteristic of reserve which we consider a quality they consider a defect, and believe that familiarity breeds not contempt but friendship. The breaking down of the reserve in the Chinese character is only too frequently a breaking down also of moral barriers—a disintegration of character, and opposed to the genius of the race. The Chinese student returning from the United States is often completely spoiled by having cast off the charming old-time manners of his own country in favour of the hail-fellow-well-met manners of young America. He cannot be accepted into a European or Chinese household on his return without taking what seems to them unwarrantable liberties, while he himself is sublimely unconscious of the effect produced. In the same way in mission schools the students are encouraged to familiarity with their teachers—as for instance in the case of mixed bathing in summer resorts. The teacher and the taught are all put on the same level, and the respect which we have been taught to consider due to age and learning, ceases to exist. “Manners maketh man,” and the difference in manners is one of the greatest bars to united work, which Christians of all denominations are trying so hard to build up in China at the present day.
To return to our brief stay at Shen Chow. It seemed an interesting place with fine large shops, and we should like to have made closer acquaintance with them. However, our boatman, who always wanted to loiter where there was nothing to be seen, showed a sudden determination that we should leave the town before sundown and reach a certain safe spot to spend the night. As we were always urging him to hurry, we felt obliged to give in, and reluctantly went on board. The Standard Oil Co. is very energetic there, and has a large advertisement, happily in Chinese characters, which are not aggressively ugly (like our Western advertisements) all along the river-front, the last thing we saw as we floated down stream.
Next day we shot the big rapid, and much incense and paper was burnt to ensure our safety. Rain fell heavily in the evening, as it had so often done during our journey. Before stopping for the night we came to a custom-house, where our boat was thoroughly searched for opium. It meant that at last we were come to a place where opium was strictly forbidden, namely into the territory under General Feng’s jurisdiction. The Customs officers, however, were most courteous, though thorough, and I believe would have taken our word with regard to our personal belongings, but I preferred that they should see we were quite willing to be examined.
At midday on the morrow we reached Changteh, and walked through wet slippery streets a long way till we came to the C.I.M. house. Mr. and Mrs. Bannan received us most cordially and invited us to be their guests, as Mr. Locke (who had invited us when we were at Shanghai) had been transferred to a school five miles down the river and was sure we should prefer to be in the city. This was much more convenient, and we found a week only far too short to see all the interesting things. We spent a couple of nights at the school with Mr. and Mrs. Locke, and took part in a Christian Endeavour meeting. This movement has proved very successful in some parts of China, especially for training the women and girls to take active part in evangelization. We went down the river in a minute motor launch, which was very handy, especially as we had to leave at an early hour to call on General Feng. I leave to another chapter an account of him and the city, which so obviously bore his impress when we were there. The level of Changteh is below the river-level sometimes to the extent of fifteen feet; then the city gates have to be sandbagged to keep the water out.
From Changteh we went by passenger boat to Changsha, and had two little cabins which we converted into one for the voyage. The whole of the roof was covered with third-class passengers and their belongings; at night they spread their bedding, and in the daytime squatted about or wandered round the very narrow gangway outside the cabins, a proceeding which left us in a darkened condition. Yao managed to prepare us savoury meals in some minute nook, having brought the necessary stores and a tiny stove on which to cook them. The day after leaving Changteh we crossed the wonderful lake of Tong Ting, a lake more than two thousand square miles in extent during the summer, and non-existent in winter. This strange and unique phenomenon is due to an overflow of the Yangtze, and in the summer there is a regular steamship service across the lake, connecting Changsha with Hankow, two hundred and twenty-two miles distant, by the river Siang and a tributary of the Yangtze. Eventually they will be connected by a railway, which is to run from Hankow to Canton, and of which the southern part is already in existence—and also a short section from Changsha to Chuchow; this is only thirty-eight miles and is mainly valuable on account of its connexion with a branch line to the Ping Siang collieries.
Changsha is an important city, the capital of Hunan. It is large and clean, the centre of considerable trade, and one of the newest treaty ports, opened in 1904. The variety of its exports is interesting: rice, tea, paper, tobacco, lacquer, cotton-cloth, hemp, paulownia oil, earthenware, timber, coal, iron and antimony. I was anxious to buy some of the beautiful grass cloth for which it is noted, and was taken by a friend to some of the big shops, but found them busily packing up all their goods, in case their shops should be looted by the approaching Southern troops. Such doings are by no means uncommon, and all Americans and Europeans seemed to take it as a matter of course. Arrangements were being made to receive terrified refugees into mission premises, and the Red Cross was extremely busy preparing for the wounded. The rumours as to the Governor fleeing varied from hour to hour, and it soon became plain that the city would be undefended. Our kind American hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Lingle, were having little Red Cross flags made to put up as signals on places of refuge, and he came in to tell us how the tailor who was making them had just appealed to him for help: a retreating soldier thought to make hay while the sun shone, and was taking possession of the sewing-machine, demanding that it should be carried away for him by the tailor’s assistant. Mr. Lingle also prevented another sewing-machine being stolen: evidently they were in great request.
No more striking proof could be seen of the progress of Christianity in China than the difference of attitude shown towards missions in time of danger and difficulty. When I first visited China a mission station was the most dangerous place to live in; now it is the place of safety par excellence, to which all the Chinese flock when they are in danger. An interesting illustration of this took place last year. In a certain district in Shensi a notorious band of robbers came to a Baptist Missionary and a Roman Catholic priest, and promised to save the town where they were working if they would procure for them six rifles. They succeeded in getting the rifles, and took them to the brigands. When they attempted to use them, the brigands found they had been tampered with, and decided to loot the town in consequence. They respected, however, their promise to the men who had brought them, evidently believing in their good faith, and said they would spare all the Christians. The problem was how to recognize them, for at once there were a large number who claimed to be Christians. The robbers decided by looking at them who was genuine and who was not. In cases of uncertainty they appealed to the missionaries, who assure us that they had proved quite accurate in their judgment. Christianity ought to mould the expression of a face.
There are many missions of various nationalities at Changsha, and all seemed extremely prosperous, most of them in large and handsome buildings. The girls’ school, of which our hostess was the head, stood in spacious grounds outside the city wall, and near it is the imposing pile of the Yale mission buildings. The mission started in 1905 when Dr. Gaze began the medical work, a hospital was opened in 1908, and the first students graduated in 1912: it is essentially a medical school, and differs from others as regards the staff in having short course men sent out from Yale University as volunteers. They are not necessarily missionaries. There are fine laboratories for research work, a large new building for science students, splendid up-to-date equipment in all branches of medical and surgical work, schools for male and female nurses, beautiful houses for the large staff of professors, library, a really beautiful chapel, lecture rooms, dormitories, playing grounds, tennis courts; in fact everything that can be desired on the most lavish scale, the greatest conceivable contrast to every other mission I have seen in China. There is a special ward for Europeans. The new Rockefeller hospital in Peking is to outshine it in beauty, I believe, but will find it difficult to equal it in all-round equipment, and of course will lack the acreage, which makes many things possible in Changsha which are impossible in Peking. “The Hunan Provincial Government has met all the local expenses of the College of Medicine and the Hospital for the last six years.” The Rockefeller Foundation has provided funds for salaries of additional medical staff, and Yale Foreign Missionary Society academic teachers and a few of the medical staff. The fees of the patients cover about half the running expenses of the hospital. “The campus of Yale in China in the north suburb is on rising ground between the railroad and the river, where its buildings are conspicuous to travellers arriving by either train or steamer” (see Yale College in China). The only drawback seems to be lack of patients.
One of the finest pieces of mission work I saw was Dr. Keller’s Bible School, which is supported by a Society in Los Angeles: it is for the training of Chinese evangelists for all missionary societies, and they divide the time of training between study and practical work. They looked a fine body of men, and have been greatly appreciated by the missionaries for whom they have worked. Application for their help is made to the school, and they do not go unasked into any district occupied by a society. When asked to conduct a mission, a band of men is sent, and their modus operandi is as follows: they make a map of the district, taking an area of about three square miles—and after a day spent in prayer the men visit systematically every house in that area and try to get on friendly terms with old and young, giving them some portion of Scripture and inviting them to an evening meeting. As soon as the people have become interested, evening classes are started respectively for men, women, boys and girls. The children are taught to sing, as they very quickly learn hymns and like to practise the new art both early and late. The special feature of their work is that they go as Friends to the people, and as their own race; and it is to Chinese only that many Chinese will listen. The character of many a village has been changed, the missionaries say, by these national messengers, where they themselves have been utterly unable to get a hearing. This is an important feature of present-day missionary enterprise, and is the link between the Past Phase of foreign evangelization and the Future Phase of home Chinese mission work. Changsha is full of foreign workers of many nationalities, but mainly American.
Dr. Keller’s work has been greatly strengthened in the eyes of the Chinese by the noble example of his mother, whose spirit has impressed them far more than any words could have done. When her son was home for his last furlough, he felt that he could not leave her alone, an old lady of eighty, recently widowed, and he decided to give up his mission work for the time being. She would not agree to this, but decided to go out with him and make her home in China for the remainder of her life. Who can gauge the sacrifice of giving up home and friends at such a time of life and going to an unknown land where men spoke an unknown tongue? She had to undergo very great hardships at first, and now after four years the solitude presses heavily on her. At first she was able to read a great deal and lived in her books; but she told us that now her sight is failing the time seems very long.
We visited a Danish mission of some size, Norwegian Y.M.C.A. workers, and a Russian lady in charge of a little blind school. She had had no word from home for the last two years, but was pluckily sticking to her task. The London Missionary Society has withdrawn from work in Hunan, but the Wesleyan Mission has a high reputation under the charge of Dr. Warren. He is one of the men who takes a special interest in the political side of Chinese life, and gave me much valuable information about the different parties. Just now the changes going on are so rapid that anything one put down would be out of date before it could be printed. The secret forces at work keeping up hostility between North and South were everywhere attributed to Japanese militarism: but it is only too obvious that the present Government is not strong or patriotic enough to deal with the situation. It is hard enough to carry on good government in so small and stable a country as our own, so need we wonder at the inability to transform the whole political and social system of the vastest country in the world.
Meanwhile the civil war is a very curious one, and happily does not cause the bloodshed one would expect, considering the forces engaged. We had some talk with our British Consul about the dangers of the road, as we wanted to go south to visit the sacred mountain of Hengshan and thence to cross fine mountain passes into the neighbouring province of Kwangshi. Mr. Giles told us that it would be hopeless to attempt it, as an English steamer had been fired on the day before in the very direction we must take. The Northern and Southern troops were in active fighting, and every day they were coming nearer to Changsha. The Governor would probably desert the city when the Southern army had driven back the Northern, and no one could say what would happen! After so discouraging a report it may seem strange that Mr. Giles said there was to be a reception at the Consulate next day, in honour of the King’s birthday, to which he invited us.
War seemed infinitely remote from the charming gathering, where all the foreign community met in the sunny garden on the river-bank. English hospitality is very delightful so far away from home, and the cordial spirit of the host and hostess lent a special attractiveness to the occasion. I was particularly pleased to meet a Chinese friend there, Miss Tseng, who invited us to visit her school next day. In Chapter VIII I have tried to give an account of this famous scion of a famous race.
With all the educational and religious and philanthropic institutions to be visited, it was most difficult to find time to see the monuments of the past, but we determined not to miss the beautiful golden-roofed temple, dedicated to Chia Yi, a great statesman of the second century B.C. It is now transformed into a school, and we saw the boys drilling; but they seemed an insignificant handful in those noble courtyards, and there were no signs of proper or even necessary equipment.
Our time at Changsha was all too short, and it ended very pleasantly with an evening spent at the Consulate. By this time many of the Chinese were in full flight, because of the coming Southerners, and the city was supposed to be set on fire by incendiaries at 8 p.m. Our steamer had retired into the middle of the river, because of the rush of passengers clamouring to be taken on board, and the captain was unable therefore to fulfil his engagement to dine at the Consulate. We were promised a fine sight of the blazing city—only happily the show did not come off—from the Consulate garden across the river. We stayed there in the delicious summer air till it was time to go on board, and found it difficult not to step on the slumbering people who covered the deck when we reached the steamer. At midnight we slipped down stream, following in the wake of the departing Governor. The Southern troops came in a few days later, but without the looting and fighting which has so often happened in similar circumstances.