Chapter XVIII: A Summer in Southwestern China

Not one foreigner among a thousand who come to China ever travels into the part of it we are now going to visit. Yet the least known parts of many a country are often the most interesting. It would have been better to have turned my travels about, and gone to Kansu in the summer and to the other two great western provinces of Yunnan and Szechuan south of it in the winter. But we cannot always arrange things exactly right in traveling any more than in the other affairs of life.

The usual way to Yunnanfu now is by the railway from Haiphong, chief northern port of the French colony of Indo-China. The trip takes three days, but to go in any other way would take at least that many weeks. The narrow-gauge railway, built by the French, is one of the most remarkable pieces of engineering in the world, and the scenery along the last two thirds of the way is magnificent. The trains do not run at night, so the passengers have to go to hotels. The first night is spent in the Indo-Chinese border town of Laokay and the second in the Chinese town of Amichow.

Almost as soon as we had crossed the frontier again into China the second morning, we began to climb up into rather bare mountains. The train dashed from one tunnel into another, passing over many a steel-arch bridge high above roaring mountain torrents. Sometimes the engine and the last car came so close together that the train reminded us of a kitten chasing its own tail. Once we were three hours making our way in a horseshoe curve between two towns that were only a few miles apart across a gorge. All the time beautiful mountain scenery surrounded us. At two or three points the railway is more than a mile and a half above sea-level. There is a saying that as many coolies lost their lives in building that railroad as there are ties along it.

The Chinese may not know what a picnic is, but they often eat outdoors
in such a makeshift restaurant as this. These people under the big
umbrella are having a meal just inside the city wall of Yunnanfu,
lofty capital of Yunnan Province.
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A City in the Clouds

At last we came out high above a great blue lake and descended into the capital of Yunnan Province. Though it is as far south as our Palm Beach, this place is a favorite summer resort for the French of Indo-China, because it stands six thousand feet above the ocean. Of course the older part of it is walled, but the governor who has ruled it since the revolution has cut conveniently wide openings in place of some of the old gates, and has made a few good straight streets, well paved with stone. Most of the streets are still narrow, and covered with cobblestones worn so smooth that the least rain makes them as slippery as ice.

Yunnanfu shows many queer contrasts. The new university owns some big modern buildings, including laboratories and dormitories, and an athletic field. Several of the professors were educated in Kansas. On the other hand, the street cleaning is done by ragged and almost naked prisoners, with great irons clanking on their legs. Many of the shops are so shallow that customers have to stand in the street lined up along the shop’s counter. Street-stands have rows of tin basins and towels for those who wish to bathe, and combs and brushes are for rent.

Good and Evil Dragons

One day the governor came to the dedication of a new wing of the British Mission hospital. He wore the long silk robes of the Chinese gentleman, but had on his head an ordinary stiff straw hat. This, we fancied, was the result of his Japanese training, which had given him many of his modern ideas of governing. The people of Yunnanfu are so superstitious that when a fire broke out near one of the governor’s new openings in the city wall, they said he must have angered the spirits by cutting into the wall. Claiming that this same action was to be blamed for a great drouth, they paraded through the streets carrying the rain dragon from one of the temples, and everyone threw water on it. They painted out the sun god on the city gates and painted the rain dragon in its place. They also dressed up a dog in the queerest costume they could find and led him about town, while everyone laughed loudly at him; for an old Chinese proverb says that if you laugh at a dog rain will come.

Sure enough, finally it did rain, but now so much water fell that crops were drowned out, the railroad was broken in a dozen places, and the whole city was in danger of being flooded. So the people decided that they had prayed too hard for rain, and began to pray for it to stop. They painted out the rain dragon and painted in the sun again. They closed the northern gate, because they thought wicked spirits were sending in the rain that way. Anyone living outside the north wall had to walk a long way around every time he entered the city. At last the rain stopped and the people were sure their gods had answered them.

Away on a Thousand-Mile Trip

It was during the first rains that I started on a thousand-mile trip to the capital of the next province and beyond. Both the American consul and the Chinese governor refused to let my family go with me. They said it was too dangerous. But I was allowed to go myself, if I would let the authorities send a military guard to protect me along the way.

This blind girl, whose feet were bound, was carried for a week along
the trail that we took north from Yunnanfu. Her home was two hundred
miles inland.
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The American agents of some of our big corporations doing business in China sometimes have as many as five hundred soldiers with them on a journey through Yunnan. I had visions of having to pay much more than I could afford for the trip, for while the government pays the soldiers their regular two or three dollars a month, the man they escort is expected to give each of them at least ten cents every day. Suppose you spent five hundred dimes a day for a month, how much less money would you have at the end of that time?

Fortunately for me, the governor did not think that I was a very important person. When I was ready to start only four soldiers were sent to accompany me! Every day or two along the way other soldiers would take their places. Sometimes there would be only one man, without even a gun. Those who had guns did not always have cartridges. Once a soldier’s rifle began dropping apart and he borrowed string from me to tie it together! Perhaps my guard expected to scare the bandits, if we met any, without firing a shot.

I took a horse with me on that trip, though I intended to walk a great deal. In fact I often had to walk, for in many places the trail was so bad that I could not ride. Yet I was following an ancient and important highway between two of the three great provincial capitals of western China. I had a servant, named Yang Chi-ting, who cooked very good American meals, and did any other work I needed done along the way. He walked all the time, until I was able to buy a horse for him nearly five hundred miles north. Although his wages were only five dollars a month (and he bought his own food), that was so much in Yunnan that along the way I often heard him boasting of his high wages, and the people gasped with astonishment when they found how much he got. A more faithful and harder-working servant it would be very difficult to find anywhere. By this time I had learned enough Chinese so that I could often have long talks with Yang and for weeks at a time I did not speak a word of English, unless it was to myself.

Opium Smokers

At the start I had four coolies to carry my baggage and supplies. Two were enough on the last part of the trip. The coolies all smoked opium, as do many people of Yunnan. The poppies from which opium is made grow there profusely. Every morning I had hard work getting my carriers started early, because they must smoke opium first and then eat breakfast. If they did not eat after smoking, they would fall sick along the way. When we stopped at noon they would lie down on the earth floor of some hut and smoke again, and at night they would smoke for hours. This dreadful habit finally makes wrecks of those who indulge in it. Yet those coolies could carry a hundred pounds each, over terrible mountain roads, for twenty-five or thirty miles a day.

Sometimes the trail was like a deep ditch full of stones, in which we waded and slipped and sprawled. At other times it was as steep as the roof of a church. Once we passed a caravan of more than two thousand pack-mules, carrying opium and silver money. We were three days getting past it. With it were many soldiers and rich men or officials riding in sedan-chairs, carried by poor coolies who looked like worn-out horses.

Some day perhaps there will be a railroad through that part of the world, and then all such freight and passengers will go by train. But now the Chinese toil along just as their ancestors did a thousand years ago, stopping each night in mud hovels where there is nothing but the earth floor to sleep on, unless they have brought bedding with them.

Mountain Scenes

All the Chinese women along the way had bound feet. When they had to walk in the mud they used little wooden sandals that looked like a horse’s hoofs. In this mountainous province many of the people are so poor that their clothing is nothing but rags. We saw children eating cornstalks. Yunnan grows much corn and many potatoes, though it is so far south that the potatoes at least would not grow at all if most of the province were not higher than Denver. The majority of Chinese have never heard of potatoes. Even in Yunnan they are called “foreign vegetables.” In other parts of China people will not eat potatoes if they can get anything else, and even the Yunnanese much prefer rice. But most of them cannot afford it.

Among the places we stopped at for the night were Ta Pan Chiao, which means Big Plank Bridge, and Hong Shih Ai, or Red Stone Cliff. As I have said before, though Chinese names look and sound queer to us, their mystery vanishes when we find what they mean. The same is true of the gaudy wooden signboards that stand before Chinese shops. In one large city I saw a sign that had been turned into English, and it said “Happy Heart Furniture Shop.” Most Chinese signs would be as simple as that if we could read them.

One of Many Adventures

I must mention one of the many adventures that happened to me on that Yunnan journey. It had been raining all day, and we had been slipping and sliding along the side of a high mountain, almost as steep as the wall of a house. Many streams without bridges crossed the trail; the biggest roared down a great gorge. Still, there was nothing to do but try to cross it, unless I wished to lie out on the mountain side all night. After driving my horse in, I went higher up and crossed on some rocks.

From this you can get an idea of the terrible road that we traveled
over for weeks on the overland route between Yunnanfu and Chengtu,
capitals of the great southwestern provinces of China.
]

When I reached the other side no horse was to be seen. Coolies whom I could not hear above the roar of the stream waved their arms and pointed down the gorge. I looked, and was horrified to see only the head of my poor horse, whirling around far down in the rapids. Not far beyond, the gorge fell into a deep and swift river that later joins the Yang-tze. I fancied that the carcass of my poor horse, with the saddle and the several valuable things in the saddlebags and the coat I had tied on it, would finally be washed out into the ocean at Shanghai, about a month later.

But Chinese horses are hardy, just as the coolies are. Some men ran down to the edge of the stream and managed to catch the horse by the head. Finally they got its front feet up on a rock. Without even waiting to reach solid earth again, the animal began calmly eating the grass it could reach. Perhaps if it had fallen a few hundred feet farther it would have been still more hungry. But I found later that its nerves had been badly shaken. For two days after that it trembled at every tiny stream and I had to walk all the way, though sometimes the road seemed to be almost vertical for half a day at a time.

The Chinese Make Felt Rugs

I spent the Fourth of July in a city named Tungchuan, but I did not hear a single firecracker. Not only was there not another American within several hundred miles of me, there was not even a white man of any nationality; and as it did not happen to be a Chinese holiday, no Chinese were shooting off firecrackers. (By the way, do you know that firecrackers are red because that is the Chinese color for happiness?) Tungchuan makes vessels of copper and brass. They are pounded out by hand on little anvils stuck in the ground, and turned on crude lathes run by a foot lever. You have perhaps seen a grindstone run in that way.

But the greatest industry of Tungchuan is the making of felt rugs. Chopped up sheep’s wool is rolled out into a kind of thick blanket, just as the Mongols make the felt for their movable houses. Then flour paste is daubed on it, in patterns of flowers, birds, and so forth, after which it is soaked in vats of dye. The dye colors the parts that are not covered with paste, and when that is scraped off the flowers or other designs remain white. Most of the Tungchuan rugs are bright red. Often we saw trains of pack-mules loaded with them struggling along the trail.

In Tungchuan one of the chief industries is the making of felt rugs.
The decorative designs are painted on in flour paste so as to remain
white when the rest of the rug is dyed bright red or some other
color.
]

Money for Use of Ancestors

Thousands of towns in China are noted for making one or two particular kinds of articles, which may not be made anywhere else. Other things are made in many places, nearly always by the same crude methods. False money to be burned at graves is one of these things. In almost every town, boys stand at a great wooden block driving a hollow chisel into big piles of rice-paper. Each sheet comes out looking as if it were a sheet of brass “cash,” and the pious people buy the sheets in quantities so that their ancestors will have money in the next world. We met many coolies carrying enormous loads of this coarse paper. In other towns men take bars of tin and pound them for days at a time to make sheets of tinfoil. These are folded together to look like the “shoes” of silver that are still used as money in some parts of China. Some of the “shoes,” painted yellow to represent gold, are burned by the richer people at the graves of their ancestors.

The two sides of a Chinese “cash,” issued in the reign of the Manchu
Emperor Kwang-su. Kwang-su was on the throne from 1889 to 1908,
although the Empress Dowager was the real ruler.
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