Across China on Foot Part 23

Everything is so vast, so grand, so overpowering. Murmurings of the birds alone break the sense of sadness and loneliness. Away yonder full-grown pine trees, if discernible at all, are dwarfed so as to appear like long coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. For some thirty li the road runs through beautiful woods, high above the valleys and the noise of the river; and now we are running down swiftly to a point where two ranges meet, only to toil on again, slowly and wearily, up an awful gradient for two hours or more. But the labor and all its fatiguing arduousness are nothing when one gets to the top, for one beholds here one of the most magnificent mountain panoramas in all West China. Far away, just peeping prettily from the silvered edges of the bursting clouds, are the giant peaks which separate Tali-fu from Yang-pi--white giants with rugged, cruel edges pointing upwards, piercing the clouds asunder as a ship's bow pierces the billows of the deep; and then, gradually coming from out the mist, are no less than eight distinct ranges of mountains from 14,000 feet to 16,000 feet high, besides innumerable minor heights, which we have traversed with much labor during the past four days, all rich with coloring and natural grandeur seen but seldom in all the world. Switzerland could offer nothing finer, nothing more sweeping, nothing more beautiful, nothing more awe-inspiring. With the glorious grandeur of these wondrous hills, rising and falling playfully around the main ranges, the marvellous tree growth, the delicate contrasts of the formidable peaks and the dainty, cultivated valleys, and the face of Nature everywhere absolutely unmarred, Switzerland could in no way compare.

Is it then surprising that I look upon these stupendous ma.s.ses with wonder, which seem to breathe only eternity and immensity?

The air is pure as the breath of heaven, all is still and peaceful, and the fact that in the very nature of things one cannot rush through this pervading beauty of the earth, but has to plod onwards step by step along a toilsome roadway, enables the scenery to be so impressed upon one's mind as to be focussed for life in one's memory. One is held spellbound; these are the pictures never forgotten. Here I sit in a corner of the earth as old as the world itself. These mountains are as they were in the great beginning, when the Creator and Sustainer of all things pure and beautiful looked upon His handiwork and saw that it was good.

The country here seems so vast as to render Nature unconquerable by man: man is insignificant, Nature is triumphant. Railways are defied; and these mountains, running mostly at right angles, will probably never--not in our time, at least--be made unsightly by the puffing and the reeking of the modern railway engine. They present so many natural obstacles to the opening-up of the country, according to the standard we Westerners lay down, that one would hesitate to prophesy any mode of traffic here other than that of the horse caravan and human beast of burden. Nature seems to look down upon man and his earth-scouring contrivances, and a.s.sert, "Man, begone! I will have none of thee." And the mountains turn upwards to the sky in_ silent reverence to their Maker, whose work must in the main remain unchanged until eternity.

It is now 12:30, and we have fifty li to cover before reaching Ch'u-tung. We sit here to feed at a place called Siao-shui-tsing, a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, where in subsequent travel I was hung up in bitter weather and had to pa.s.s the night. The people, courteous and civil as always, show a simple trustfulness with which is a.s.sociated some little suspicion. I gave a cake to a little child, but its mother would not allow it to be eaten until she was again and again a.s.sured and rea.s.sured that it was quite fit to eat. This home life of the very poor Chinese, if indeed it may be called home life, has a listlessness about it in marked contrast to that of the West. There is little housework, no furniture more than a table and chair or two, and the simplicity of the cooking arrangements does not tend to increase the work of the housewife.

People here to-day are going about their work with a restful deliberation very trying to one in a hurry. The women, with infants tied to their backs, do not work hard but very long. A mud-house is being built near by, and between the cooking and attending to pa.s.sing travelers, two women are digging the earth and filling up the baskets, while the men are mixing the mud, filling in the oblong wooden trough, and thus building the wall. At my elbow a man--old and grizzled and dirty--is turning back roll upon roll of his wadded garments, and ridding it of as many as he can find of the insects with which it is infested. A s...o...b..ring, boss-eyed cretin chops wood at my side, and when I rise to try a snap on the women and the children they hide behind the walls. Thus my time pa.s.ses away, as I wait for the coolies who sit on a log in the open road feeding on common basins of dry rice.

After that we had to cross the face of a steep hill. We could, however, find no road, no pathway even, but could merely see the scratchings of coolies and ponies already crossed. It was an achievement not unrisky, but we managed to reach the other side without mishap. My horse, owing to the stupidity of the man who hung on to his mouth to steady himself, put his foot in a hole and dragged the fool of a fellow some twenty yards downwards in the mud. My coolies, themselves in a spot most dangerous to their own necks, stuck the outside leg deep in the mud to rest themselves, and set to a.s.siduously in blackguarding the man in their richest vein, then, extricating themselves, again continued their journey, satisfied that they had shown the proper front, and saved the face of the foreigner who could not save it for himself. Then we all went down through a narrow ravine into a lovely shady glade, all green and refreshing, with a brook gurgling sweetly at the foot and birds singing in the foliage. There was something very quaint in this cosy corner, with the hideous echoes and weird re-echoes of my men's squealing. Then we went on again from hill to hill, in a ten-inch footway, broken and washed away, so that in places it was necessary to hang on to the evergrowing gra.s.s to keep one's footing in the slopes.

One needs to have no nerves in China.

Down in the valley were a number of muleteers from Burma, cooking their rice in copper pans, whilst their ponies, most of them in horrid condition, and backs rubbed in some places to the extent of twelve inches square, grazed on the hill-sides. In most places the foot of this ravine would have been a river; here it was like a park, with pretty green sward intersected by a narrow path leading down into a lane so thick with virgin growth as to exclude the sunlight. As we entered a man came out with his p'ukai and himself on the back of a ten-hand pony; the animal shied, and his manservant got behind and laid on mighty blows with the b.u.t.t-end of a gun he was carrying. The pony ceased shying.

To Ch'u-tung was a tedious journey, rising and falling across the wooded hills, and when we arrived at some cottages by the riverside, the _fu-song_ had a rough time of it from my men for having brought us by a long road instead of by the "new" road (so called, although I do not doubt that it has been in use for many generations). Some Szech'wan coolies and myself had rice together on a low form away from the smoke, and the while listened to some tales of old, told by some half-witted, goitrous monster who seemed sadly out at elbow. The soldier meantime smelt round for a smoke. As he and my men had decided a few moments ago that each party was of a very low order of humanity, their pipes for him were not available. So he took pipe and dried leaf tobacco from this half-witted skunk, who, having wiped the stem in his eight-inch-long pants, handed it over in a manner befitting a monarch. It measured some sixty or seventy inches from stem to bowl.

From Hwan-lien-p'u to Ch'u-tung is reckoned as eighty li; it is quite one hundred and ten, and the last part of the journey, over barren, wind-swept hills, most fatiguing.

In contrast to the beauty of the morning's scenery, the country was black and bare, and a gale blew in our faces. My spirits were raised, however, by a coolie who joined us and who had a remarkable knowledge of the whole of the West of China, from Chung-king to Singai, from Mengtsz to Tachien-lu. Plied with questions, he willingly gave his answers, but he would persist in leading the way. As soon as a man endeavored to pa.s.s him, he would trot off at a wonderful speed, making no ado of the 120 pounds of China pots on his back, yelling his explanations all the time to the man behind. Yung-p'ing-hsien lay over to the right, fifteen li from Ch'u-tung, which is protected from the elements by a bell-shaped hill at the foot of a mountain lit up with gold from the sinking sun, which dipped as I trudged along the uneven zigzag road leading across the plain of peas and beans and winter crops. Four eight-inch planks, placed at various dangerous angles on three wood trestles, form the bridge across the fifty-foot stream dividing Ch'u-tung from the world on the opposite side. Across this I saw men wander with their loads, and then I led Rusty in. Whilst the stream washed his legs, I sat dangling mine until called upon to make way for another party of travelers.

Remarkable is the agility of these men. They swing along over eight inches of wood as if they were in the middle of a well-paved road.

Ch'u-tung is a Mohammedan town. There are a few Chinese only--Buddhists, Taoists and other ragtags; although when the follower of the Prophet has his pigtail attached to the inside of his hat, as it not unusual when he goes out fully dressed, there is little difference between him and the Chinese.

Pigs here are conspicuously absent. People feed on poultry and beef. I rested in this city some month or so after my first overland trip whilst my man went to convert silver into cash, a trying ordeal always. Whilst I sipped my tea and ate a couple of rice cakes, I was impressed, as I seldom have been in my wanderings, with the remarkable number of people, from the six hundred odd houses the town possesses, who during that half-hour found nothing whatever to do to benefit themselves or the community, as members of which they pa.s.sed monotonous lives, but to stare aimlessly at the resting foreigner. The report spread like wildfire, and they ran to the scene with haste, pulling on their coats, wiping food from their mouths, scratching their heads _en route_, one trouser-leg up and the other down, all anxious to get a seat near the stage. A river flows down the center of the street, and into this a sleepy fellow got tipped bodily in the crush, sat down in the water, seemingly in no hurry to move until he had finished his vigorous bullying of the man who pushed him in. Those who could not get standing room near my table went out into the street and shaded the sun from their eyes, in order that they might catch even a glimpse of the traveler who sat on in uncompromising indifference.

Several old wags were there who had witnessed the Rebellion--at the moment, had I not become callous, another might have seemed imminent--and were looked up to by the crowd as heroes of a horrid past, being listened to with rapt attention as they described what it was the crowd looked at and whence it came. Had I been a wild animal let loose from its cage, mingled curiosity and a peculiar foreboding among the people of something terrible about to happen could not have been more intense.

But I had by this time got used to their crowding, so that I could write, sleep, eat, drink, and be merry, and go through personal and private routine with no embarra.s.sment. If I turned for the purpose, I could easily stare out of face a member of the crowd whose inquisitive propensities had become annoying, but as soon as he left another filled the gap. Quite pitiful was it to see how trivial articles of foreign manufacture--such, for instance, as the cover of an ordinary tin or the fabric of one's clothing--brought a regular deluge of childish interest and inane questioning; and if I happened to make a few shorthand notes upon anything making a particular impression, a look half surprised, half amused, went from one to another like an electric current. Had I been scheming out celestial hieroglyphics their mouths could not have opened wider. As I write now I am asked by a respectable person how many ounces of silver a Johann Faber's B.B. costs. I have told him, and he has retired smiling, evidently thinking that I am romancing.

That I impress the crowd everywhere is evident. But with all their questioning, they are rarely rude; their stare is simply the stare of little children seeing a thing for the first time in their lives. It is all so hard to understand. My silver and my gold they solicit not; they merely desire to see me and to feel me. A certain faction of the crowd, however, do solicit my silver.

Lao Chang has been buying vegetables, and has brought all the vegetable gardeners and greengrocers around me. The poultry rearers are here too, and the forage dealers and the gra.s.s cutters and the basket makers, and other thrifty members of the commercial order of Ch'u-tung humankind.

When I came away the people dropped into line and strained their necks to get a parting smile. I was sped on my way with a public curiosity as if I were a penal servitor released from prison, a general home from a war, or something of that kind. And so this wonderful wonder of wonders was glad when he emerged from the labyrinthic, brain-confusing bewilderment of Chinese interior life of this town into somewhat clearer regions. I could not understand. And to the wisest man, wide as may be his vision, the Chinese mind and character remain of a depth as infinite as is its possibility of expansion. The volume of Chinese nature is one of which as yet but the alphabet is known to us.

My own men had got quite used to me, and their minds were directed more to working than to wondering. In China, as in other Asiatic countries, one's companions soon accustom themselves to one's little peculiarities of character, and what was miraculous to the crowd had by simple repet.i.tion ceased to be miraculous to them.

As I put away my notebook after writing the last sentence, I saw a mule slip, fall, roll for one hundred and fifty yards, losing its load on the down journey, and then walk up to the stream for a drink.[AZ]

We started for Shayung on February 2nd, 1910, going over a road literally uncared for, full of loose-jointed stones and sinking sand, down which ponies scrambled, while the Tibetans in charge covered themselves close in the uncured skins they wore. This was the first time I had ever seen Tibetans. They had huge ear-rings in their ears, and their antiquated topboots--much better, however, than the Yun-nan topboot--gave them a peculiar appearance as they tramped downward in the frost.

Going up with us was a Chinese, on the back of a pony not more than eleven hands high, sitting as usual with his paraphernalia lashed to the back of the animal. He laughed at me because I was not riding, whilst I tried to solve the problem of that indefinable trait of Chinese nature which leads able-bodied men with sound feet to sit on these little brutes up those terrible mountain sides. Some parts of this spur were much steeper than the roof of a house--as perpendicular as can be imagined--but still this man held on all the way. And the Chinese do it continuously, whether the pony is lame or not, at least the majority.

But the cruelty of the Chinese is probably not regarded as cruelty, certainly not in the sense of cruelty in the West. Being Chinese, with customs and laws of life such as they are, their instinct of cruelty is excusable to some degree. Not only is it with animals, however, but among themselves the Chinese have no mercy, no sympathy. In Christian England within the last century men where hanged for petty theft; but in Yun-nan--I do not know whether it is still current in other provinces--men have been known to be burnt to death for stealing maize.

A case was reported from Ch'u-tsing-fu quite recently, but it is a custom which used to be quite common. A doc.u.ment is signed by the man's relatives, a stick is brought by every villager, the man lashed to a stake, and his own people are compelled to light the fire. It seems incredible, but this horrible practice has not been entirely extirpated by the authorities, although since the Yun-nan Rebellion it has not been by any means so frequent. I have no s.p.a.ce nor inclination to deal with the ghastly tortures inflicted upon prisoners in the name of that great equivalent to justice, but the more one knows of them the more can he appreciate the common adage urging _dead men to keep out of h.e.l.l and the living out of the yamens_!

Hua-chow is thirty li from here at the head of an abominable hill, and here women, overlooking one of the worst paved roads in the Empire, were beating out corn. Then we climbed for another twenty-five li, rising from 5,900 feet to 8,200 feet, till we came to a little place called Tien-chieng-p'u. It took us three hours. Looking backwards,towards Tali-fu, I saw my 14,000 feet friends, and as we went down the other side over a splendid stone road we could see, far down below, a valley which seemed a veritable oasis, smiling and sweet. A temple here contained a battered image of the G.o.ddess of Mercy, who controls the births of children. A poor woman was depositing a few cash in front of the besmeared idol, imploring that she might be delivered of a son. How pitiable it is to see these poor creatures doing this sort of thing all over the West of China!

For two days we had been accompanied by a man who was an opium smoker and eater. Now I am not going to draw a horrible description of a shrivelled, wasted bogey in man's form, with creaking bones and shivering limbs and all the rest of it; but I must say that this man, towards the time when his craving came upon him, was a wreck in every worst sense--he crept away to the wayside and smoked, and arrived always late at night at the end of the stage. This was the effect of the drug which has been described "as harmless as milk." I do not exaggerate. In the course of Eastern journalistic experience I have written much in defence of opium, have paralleled it to the alcohol of my own country.

This was in the Straits Settlements, where the deadly effects of opium are less prominent. But no language of mine can exaggerate the evil, and if I would be honest, I cannot describe it as anything but China's most awful curse. It cannot be compared to alcohol, because its grip is more speedy and more deadly. It is more deadly than a.r.s.enic, because by a.r.s.enic the suicide dies at once, while the opium victim suffers untold agonies and horrors and dies by inches. It is all very well for the men who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through this once fair land of Yun-nan and see everywhere--not in isolated districts, but everywhere--the ravaging effects in the poverty and dwarfed const.i.tutions of the people before they advocate the continuance of the opium trade. I have seen men transformed to beasts through its use; I have seen more suicides from the effect of opium since I have been in China than from any other cause in the course of my life. As I write I have around me painfullest evidence of the crudest ravishings of opium among a people who have fallen victims to the craving. There is only one opinion to be formed if to himself one would be true. I give the following quotation from a work from the pen of one of the most fair-minded diplomatists who have ever held office in China:--

"The writer has seen an able-bodied and apparently rugged laboring Chinese tumble all in a heap upon the ground, utterly nerveless and unable to stand, because the time for his dose of opium had come, and until the craving was supplied he was no longer a man, but the merest heap of bones and flesh. In the majority of cases death is the sure result of any determined reform. The poison has rotted the whole system, and no power to resist the simplest disease remains. In many years'

residence in China the writer knew of but four men who finally abandoned the habit. (Where opium refuges have been conducted by missionaries, reports more favorable have been given concerning those who have become Christians.) Three of them lived but a few months thereafter; the fourth survived his reformation, but was a life-long invalid."[BA]

Much good work is now being done by the missionaries, and the number of those who have given up the habit has probably increased since Mr.

Holcombe wrote the above. In point of fact, helping opium victims is one of the most important branches of mission work.

_China's Past and Future_ (p. 165) by Chester Holcombe.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AY: The range of mountains which I had skirted since leaving Tali-fu.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote AZ: On my return journey into Yun-nan, I again called at Ch'u-tung, traveling not by the main road, but by a steep path intertwisting through almost impossible places, and requiring four times the amount of physical exertion. I was led over what was called a new road. It was quite impossible to horses carrying loads, and only by tremendous effort could I climb up. How my coolies managed it remains a mystery. And then, as is almost inevitable with these "new" roads and the "short" cuts, they invariably lose their way. Mine did. Hopeless was our obscurity, unspeakable our confusion. Men kept vanishing and re-appearing among the rocks, and it was very difficult to fix our position geographically. Up and up we went, in and out, twisting and turning in an endless climb. A gale blew, but at times we pulled ourselves up by the dried gra.s.s in semi-tropical heat. After several hours, standing on the very summit of this bleak and lofty mountain, I could just discern Ch'u-tung and Yung-p'ing-hsien far away down in the mists. There lay the "ta lu" also, like a piece of white ribbon stretched across black velvet--the white road on the burnt hill-sides.

We were opposite the highest peaks in the mountains beyond the plain, far towards Tengyueh--they are 12,000 feet, we were at least 10,500 feet, and as Ch'u-tung is only 5,500 feet, our hours of toil may be imagined. When we reached the top we found nothing to eat, nothing to drink (not even a mountain stream at which we could moisten our parched lips), simply two memorial stones on the graves of two dead men, who had merited such an outrageous resting-place. I donned a sweater and lay flat on the ground, exhausted. It must have been a stiff job to bring up both stones and men.

I strongly advise future travelers to keep to the main road in this district.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote BA:]

FOURTH JOURNEY

THE MEKONG VALLEY TO TENGYUEH

CHAPTER XXII.

_The Valley of the Shadow of Death_. _Stages to Tengyueh_. _The River Mekong, Bridge described_. _An awful ascent_. _On-the-spot conclusions_.

_Roads needed more than railways_. _At Shui-chai_. _A noisy domestic scene at the place where I fed_. _Disregard of the value of female life_. _Remarkable hospitality of the gentry of the city_. _Hard going_.

_Lodging at a private house on the mountains_. _Waif of the world entertains the stranger_. _From Ban-chiao to Yung-ch'ang_. _Buffaloes and journalistic ignorance_. _Excited scene at Pu-piao_. _Chinese barbers_. _A refractory coolie_. _Military interest._

The journey which I was about to undertake was the most memorable of my travels in China, with the exception of those in the unexplored Miao Lands; for I was to pa.s.s through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the dreaded Salwen Valley. I had made up my mind that I would stay here for a night to see the effects of the climate, but postponed my sojourn intead to a later period, when I stayed two days, and went up the low-lying country towards the source of the river; I am, so far as I know, the only European who has ever traveled here. Not that my journeyings will convey any great benefit upon anyone but myself, as I had no instruments for surveying or taking accurate levels, and might not have been able to use them had I had them with me. However, I came in contact with Li-su, and saw in my two marches a good deal of new life, which only acts as an incentive to see more. My plan on the present occasion was to travel onwards by the following stages:--

Length Height of Stage Above Sea

1st day--Tali-shao 65 li. 7,200 ft.

2nd day--Yung-ch'ang-fu 75 li. 5,500 ft.

5th day--Fang-ma-ch'ang 90 li. 7,300 ft.

6th day--Ta-hao-ti 120 li. 8,200 ft.

7th day--Tengyueh (Momien) 85 li. 5,370 ft.

On Friday, February 26th, 1909, I steamed up the muddy mouth of the Mekong to Saigon in Indo-China in a French mail steamer. To-day, February 3rd, 1910, I cross the same river many hundreds of miles from where it empties into the China Sea. I cross by a magnificent suspension bridge.