Across China on Foot Part 8

"Have got plenty," he exclaimed, in describing this wholesale selling of female children into slavery. "I know, I know; you wantchee makee buy.

Can do! You wantchee catch one piecee small baby, can catchee two, three tael. Wantchee one piecee very much tall, big piecee, can catch fifty dollar."

Continuing, he told me that prices were fairly high, a girl who could boast good looks and who had reached an age when her charms were naturally the strongest fetching the alarming amount of three hundred taels. This was the highest figure reached, whilst small children could be had for anything up to twenty. This wholesale disposal of young girls, although the traffic was in some quarters emphatically denied to exist--a denial, however, which was all moonshine--is one of the chief sorrows of the district. And well it might be; for thousands of children are disposed of in the course of a year for a few taels by heartless parents, who watch them being carried away, like so much merchandise, to be converted into silver, in many cases in this poverty-stricken district merely to satisfy the craving for opium of some sodden wretch of a man who calls himself a father. Time and time again, long after I myself pa.s.sed through Chao-t'ong, did I see little girls from three to ten years of age being conveyed by pack-horse to the capital, balanced in baskets on either side of the animal. This and the terrible infanticide which exists in all poor districts of China menaces the lives of all well-wishers of the entire province of Yun-nan.

In the particular district of which I speak it is not an uncommon sight to see little children being torn to pieces by dogs, the scavengers of the Empire, perhaps by the very dogs that had been their playmates from birth. I have been riding many times and found that my horse had stepped on a human skull, and near by were the bones the dogs had left as the remains of the corpse.

NOTE.--I should mention that, since the above was written, I have lived and travelled a good deal around Chao-t'ong-fu, being the only European traveller who has ever penetrated the country to the east of the main road, by which I had now come down.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote J: Anyone who contemplates a tramp across China must not get the idea that he can still continue the uses of civilization. For the most part he will have to live pretty well as a Chinese the whole time, and he will find, as I found, that it is easy to give up a thing when you know the impossibility of getting it.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote K: This was written later. I have altered my views since I have traveled from end to end of Yun-nan. The disappearance of opium, on the contrary, apart from the moral advantage to the people, has done much to place them in a better position financially. In Tali-fu I found not a single shop on the main street "to let," and the trade of the place had gone ahead considerably, and this was a city which people generally supposed would suffer most on account of the non-growth of opium.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote L: May, 1910. As a matter of fact the date makes no difference, because unfortunately the number of suicides from opium does not seem to have decreased materially in Western China since the opium crusade was started. Upon the slightest provocation a Chinese woman in Yun-nan will take her life, and it is probable that for the five cases which came to my notice through the mission house there were treble that number which did not--E.J.D.]

[Footnote M: This was written at the end of 1909 Now, in July, 1910, things are changed wonderfully. The rapidity with which China is driving out the poppy from province after province is truly remarkable. In Szech'wan, in April, 1909, I pa.s.sed through miles and miles of poppy along the main road--to-day there is none to be seen It is to be hoped that Great Britain will do her part as faithfully as China is doing hers.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE CHAO-T'ONG REBELLION OF 1910

_Digression from travel_. _How rebellions start in China_. _Famous Boxer motto_. _Way of escape shut off_. _Riots expected before West can be won into the confidence of China_. _Boxerism and students of the Government Reform Movement_. _Author's impressions formed within the danger zone_.

_More Boxerism in China than we know of_. _Causes of the Chao-t'ong Rebellion_. _Halley's Comet brings things to a climax_. _Start of the rioting_. _Arrival of the military_. _Number of the rebels_. _They hold three impregnable positions, and block the main roads_. _European ladies travel to the city in the dead of night_. _A new ch'en-tai takes the matter in hand_. _Rumors and suspense_. _Stations of the rebels_. _A night attack_. _Sixteen rebels decapitated_. _Officials alter their tactics_. _Fighting on main road_. _Superst.i.tion regarding soldiers_.

_One of the leaders captured by a headman_. _Chapel burnt down and caretaker rescued by military_. _Li the Invincible under arms_. _Huang taken prisoner_. _Two leaders killed_. _Rising among the Miao_. _Mission work at a standstill_. _Child-stealing, and the Yun-nan Railway rumor_.

_Barbaric punishment_. _Tribute to Chinese officials_. _British Consul-General_. _Resume of the position_. _An unfortunate incident_.

Despite the fact that this chapter was the last written, it has been thought wise to place it here. It deals with the Chao-t'ong Rebellion, of which the outside world, even when it was at its height, knew little, but which, so recently as a couple of months prior to the date of writing, threatened to spell extermination to the foreigners in North-East Yun-nan. And the reader, too, may welcome a digression from travel.

In spite of all that has been written in previous and subsequent chapters, and in face of the universal cry of the progress China is speedily realizing, of the stoutest optimism characteristic of the statesman and of the student of Chinese affairs, a feeling of deep gloom at intervals overcomes one in the interior--a fear of some impending trouble. There is a rumor, but one smiles at it--there are always rumors! Then there are more rumors, and a feeling of uneasiness pervades the atmosphere; a local bubble is formed, it bursts, the whole of one's trust in the sincerity of the reform of China and her people is brushed away to absolute unbelief in a few days, and it means either a sudden onrush and brutal ma.s.sacre of the foreigners, or the thing blows over after a short or long time of great strain, and ultimately things a.s.sume a normality in which the detection of the slightest ruffle in the surface of social life is hardly traceable.

Such was the Chao-t'ong Rebellion, luckily unattended by loss of life among the foreigners. It is not yet over,[N] but it is believed that the worst is past.

At the end of 1909 probably no part of the Empire seemed more peaceful.

Two months afterwards the heads of the Europeans were demanded; missionaries were guarded by armed soldiers in their homes inside the city walls, and forbidden to go outside; native Christians were brutally maltreated and threatened with death if they refused to turn traitor to their beliefs; thousands of generally law-abiding men, formed into armed bands, were defiantly setting at naught the law of the land, and the whole of the main road over which I had pa.s.sed from Sui-fu to Tong-ch'uan-fu (a distance of over four hundred miles) was blocked by infuriated mobs, who were out to kill,--their motto the famous ill-omened Boxer motto of 1900: "Exalt the dynasty; destroy the foreigner."

"Kill, kill, kill!" ran the cry for miles around the countryside, and a fearful repet.i.tion of the b.l.o.o.d.y history of ten years ago was daily feared. Providential, however, was it that no foreigner was traveling at the time in these districts, and that those who, ignorant of the troubles, desired to do so were stopped at Yun-nan-fu by the Consuls and at Sui-fu by the missionaries. It is a matter for grat.i.tude also that throughout the riots, specially safeguarded by the great Providence of G.o.d, no lives of Europeans were lost; and owing to the praiseworthy and obvious att.i.tude of the missionaries in this area in endeavoring to keep the thing as quiet as possible, and the notoriously conservative manner in which consular reports upon such matters are preserved in Governmental lockers, practically nothing has been heard of the uprising.

At times during the four slow-moving months, however, the situation became, as I shall endeavor to show, complicated in every way. The escape of the foreigners was made absolutely impossible by the fact that the whole of the roads, even those over the rough mountains leading south, were blocked successfully by the rebelling forces, and, when the deep gloom settled finally over the city, the fate of the Westerners seemed sealed and their future hopeless. All round the foreigners'

houses the people, infected with that strange, unaccountable, national hysteria, so terrible in the Chinese temperament, rose up to burn and kill. Mayhap it means little to the man who reads. Ma.s.sacres have always been common enough in China, he will say; and there are thousands of people in Europe to-day who know no more about China than what the telegrams of ma.s.sacres of European missionaries have told them. Years ago one almost expected this sort of thing; but at the present day, when China is popularly supposed to be working honestly to gain for herself an honorable place among the nations, it is surely not to be expected in the ordinary run of things in days of peace.

But we know that such visions are common to every European in Inland China, and even at the coast men talk continually of and believe that riots are going to happen in the near future. Merchant, missionary, traveler and official all agree that there is yet more trouble ahead before the West will be won into the confidence of China and _vice versa_. The people who are studying the Reform Movement of the Young China, however, and who stolidly refuse to study with it the general att.i.tude of the common people, laugh and dismiss with contempt the subject of the possibility of further outbreaks of Boxerism in the outlying parts of the Empire. But they should not laugh. The European cannot afford to laugh, and, if he be a sensible fellow, knows that he cannot afford to treat with contempt the opinions of the people who know. The more we understand the vast interior of China and the conservatism and peculiarities of character of the people of that interior, the less disposed shall we be to jest, the less disposed to ridicule, what I would characterize as the strongest and most deadly of the hidden menaces of the Celestial Empire.

One does not wish to be pessimistic, but it is foolish to close one's eyes to bare fact.

At the moment I am writing, in the middle of China, I know that I am safe enough here, but I do not disguise from myself that the wildest reports are still current within a quarter of a mile from me about me and my own kind in this peaceful city of Tong-ch'uan-fu. And it takes very little to light the fuse and to cause a terrible explosion here, in common with other places in this province. A man might be quite safe one day and lose his head the next if he did not, at times when the rebellious element is apparent, conform strictly to the general wishes and accepted customs of the people among whom he is living.

No, we cannot afford to laugh. We must seek the opinion of those people who were confined within the walls of Chao-t'ong city--the silence of their own homes broken up by the distant uproar of a frantic chorus of yells and angry disputations, sounding, as it were, their very death-knell, as if they were to form a manacled procession dragging their chains of martyrdom to their own slow doom--before we show contempt for the opinion of those who would tell the truth. There is more of Boxerism in the far-away interior parts of China than we know of.

Even as late as the middle of January of the year 1910 there was no rumor of any uprising. About this time, however, to supply a serious deficiency in the revenue caused by the dropping of the opium tax, since that drug had ceased to be grown, a general poll-tax was levied, which the people refused to pay, and at the same time they demanded that they be allowed again to grow the poppy. Among the population of Chao-t'ong-fu, or more particularly among the people around the city, especially the tribespeople, this additional tax was supposed to have been caused by the Europeans, and other wild rumors concerning the Tonkin-Yun-nan Railway (to be opened in the following April), which gained currency with remarkable rapidity, added to the unrest. It required only that brilliant phenomenon of the heavens, with its wonderful tail--none other than Halley's Comet--to bring the whole to a climax. This was altogether too much for the superst.i.tious Chinese, and he looked upon the comet as some evil omen organized and controlled by the foreigner especially for the working of his own selfish ends in the Celestial Empire; and a number believed it to be a heavenly sign for the Chinese to strike.

That the riot was being started was plain, but the first definite news the foreigners received was on February 5th, when an I-pien (one of the tribes), whose little girl attended the mission school, was captured and compelled to join the rebelling forces between T'o-ch-i (on the River of Golden Sand[O]) and Sa'i-ho, in a westerly direction from the town. A march would take place on the fifteenth of that month, the Europeans would be a.s.sa.s.sinated, their houses would be burned and looted--so ran the rumor. By this date, for two days' march in all directions from Chao-t'ong, the rebels had camped, and a motley crowd they were--Mohammendans, Chinese, I-pien, Hua Miao, and other hooligans.

Mobilization was effected by spies taking round secret cases (the _ch'uandan_) containing two pieces of coal and a feather--a simile meaning that the rebels were to burn like fire and fly like birds.

Meanwhile, military forces had been dispatched from Yun-nan-fu, the capital (twelve days away), and from Ch'u-tsing-fu (seven or eight days away), and these, to the strength of a thousand, now came to the city, and it was thought that the brigadier-general would be able to cope with the trouble now that he had so many armed troops. Soldiers patrolled the city walls (which, by the way, had to be built up so that the soldiers might be able to get decent patrol), more were stationed on the premises of the Europeans, and every defensive precaution was taken. The officials were in daily communication by telegraph with the Viceroy, and at first the riot was kept well in hand by Government authorities.

But the rebels had by this time got together no less than three thousand men, and were holding three impregnable positions on the adjacent hills, and had effectually cut off communication by the main road. Despite their numbers, they were afraid to strike, however, and lucky it was for the city that the leaders were not sufficiently trusted by their followers, many of them pressed men--men who had joined the rebelling ranks merely to save their own necks and their houses. At this time the _pen-fu_ (a sort of mayor of the city) demanded that the missionaries working among the Hua Miao, and two lady workers paying a visit to that place, should return from Shh-men-K'an (70 li away), as he could not protect them in the country. A special messenger was dispatched, demanding instant departure, and in the dead of night--a bitter wintry night, icy, dark, slippery, and cold--these ladies came under cover to the city.

They reached the mission premises without molestation.

By this time a new _ch'en-tai_ (brigadier-general) had arrived from the capital, having been sent as a man who could handle the situation successfully. He was a Liu Ta Ren, who had previously held office in the city, and whose cunning a Scotland Yard detective might envy.[P]

Rumors grew more and more serious; the mandarins went all round the countryside endeavoring to pacify the people, and the foreigners could do nothing but "sit tight" through these most trying days. The suspense of being shut up in one's house during a time of trouble of this nature, hearing every rumor which lying tongues create, and unable to get at the facts, is far worse than being in the thick of things, although this would have at once been fatal. But one needs to have lived in China during such a time to understand the awful tension which riots occasion.

The rioters were stationed as follows:--

1. Weining, in Kwei-chow, to the southeast 1,000 men

2. Kiang-ti Hill, in Yun-nan, to the south 1,000 men

3. Several places around the city, to the west as far as the River of Golden Sand 1,000 men

On March 13th a night attack was expected. Breathless, the foreigners waited in their suspense, but it pa.s.sed off without serious damage being done. On the Sunday, the missionaries, almost at their wits' end with mingled fear and excitement, occasioned by the strain which weeks of anxiety must bring to the strongest, feared whether their services would be got through in peace.

Meetings were being held all around the city, and gradually the mandarins gained small successes. Prisoners--miserable specimens of men fighting for they hardly knew what--were captured and brought to the city, and, on March 16th, sixteen human heads, thrown in one gruesome ma.s.s into a common basket, with upturned eyes gaping into the great unknown, hideous-looking and bearing still the brutish stare of hysterical craving and morbid rage, were carried by an armed squad of military to the _yamen_.

They made a ghastly picture when hung over the gate of the city to put the fear of death into the hearts of their brutal compatriots. The officials, hard-worked and themselves feeling the strain of the whole business, and incidentally fearful for the safety of their own heads, were perturbed all this time by rumors coming from Weining, the mutineers of which were alleged to be the fiercest of the three bands.

Up to now the officials had been playing a conciliating game. They had been trying vainly to pacify, but now they found that they had to prove their energies and their benevolence by acting the part of tyrants rather than of administrators of mercy, by warring rather than by peace-making, by fighting and forcing rather than by conciliating and persuading.

On Easter Tuesday, fighting took place on the main road to the north, when the _pen-fu_ and his men achieved a creditable success. The rebels almost to a man were taken, and among the prisoners was a girl who had been distributing the beans, a lovely damsel of eighteen, said to have been the fiancee of the leader of that band. Both her legs were shot through and she was considerably mutilated; but although the _pen-fu_ thought this sufficient punishment, instructions came from the capital that she must die. She was accordingly taken outside the city and beheaded. This caused some consternation among the rebels, as the death of the girl was looked upon as an omen of direct misfortune.

For a very long time she had been going around the country dropping beans into the ground outside any houses she came across, the superst.i.tion being that wherever a bean was dropped there in the very spot, perhaps at the very moment, for aught that we know, an invincible warrior would spring up. She had dropped some millions of beans, but the ranks were not swelled as a consequence.

The _ch'en-tai_ had also been out all night, and as men were captured so they were beheaded on the spot without mercy and their heads subsequently hung outside the city gates. The headman of a small village--some forty li from the city--succeeded in capturing one of the leaders, and great credit was due to him; but soon the leader was rescued again by his followers, who then brutally killed and mutilated the body of the headman, causing him to undergo the ignominy of having his tongue and his heart cut out. Fighting was going on everywhere, and by the end of March things were at their height. The fact that rain was badly needed tended only to aggravate the situation, and that l.u.s.trous comet made things worse. Day by day miserable processions brought the wounded into the city, and the last day of the month, taken by sudden fright and almost getting out of hand, the panic-stricken people raised the cry that the rebels were marching direct for the city gates. Through the capital tactics adopted by the mandarins, however, this was prevented; but, on the following day, the chapel belonging to the United Methodist Mission at an out-station was burnt to the ground and the houses of the people razed and looted. The caretaker, a faithful Hua Miao convert, was taken, stripped of his clothing, and threatened with an awful death if he did not betray the foreigners. He refused manfully to divulge any information whatsoever, and was on the point of being sacrificed, when the _ch'en-tai_ came unexpectedly upon the scene with his military. He released the Miao, captured thirty-six rebels, killed sixteen more where they stood, and carried away many of their horses and the dreaded Boxer flag around which the men rallied.

And now comes the smartest thing I heard of throughout the rebellion.

A man named Li was the most dreaded of the trio of rebel chiefs, a man of marvelous strength, and who seemed to be able to fascinate his men and get them to do anything he wished--and Liu, the _ch'en-tai_, set himself the task of capturing him. Disguising himself in the garb of a pedlar, Liu went out towards Li's camp, and met three spies on the look-out for a possible clue to the foreigners; they asked him where the _ch'en-tai_ was and all about him, declaring that if he did not tell them all he knew they would take him to Li, and that he would then lose his head. Just behind were a few of Liu's best soldiers. Strolling up quite casually as if they knew least in the world of what was going on, they made their arrest, and clapped the handcuffs on them before their captives knew it. Liu ordered that two be beheaded immediately, which was done, and the other man was kept to show where Li's camp was and where Li himself was hiding.

And in this way Li the Invincible was captured also. This was the master-stroke of the situation. Li was brought back to the city with many other prisoners and a few heads, guarded by a strong body of the military.

Almost simultaneously, Huang, one of the other rebel chiefs, was captured; and at dusk one evening Li was put to death by the slow process. Afraid that if he were taken outside the city his followers might possibly re-capture him, he was murdered outside the chief _yamen_, about ten hacks being necessary by process adopted to sever the head from the body. Only two men have been put to death inside the walls since the city of Chao-t'ong was built, over two hundred years ago.

After death had taken place, Li was served in the same way as he had served the village headman, and his heart and his tongue were taken from his body. Huang was killed in the usual way, and his head placed in a frame on the city gate.