Chapter XX: Szechuan, Largest of Provinces

It was hot in Suifu at the end of July when Yang Chi-ting and I, with our horses and our baggage, reached there on a very shaky native boat. The water in the branch which we had been following for a week was so high that it snatched us in about four hours over a distance that usually takes two hard days by land. It gave us a queer feeling not to hear a sound from the river while we were traveling on it, though it had roared in our ears day and night when we were clambering along its stony shores. Two hours after we took the boat the branch joined the Yang-tze, 1700 miles above where it reaches the ocean near Shanghai. Up there the Yang-tze rushes on as if it were still dizzy from its fall down out of the mountains of Tibet—a very different stream from the broad placid river below Hankow.

We were still more than two hundred miles from the capital of the great province of Szechuan, which means “Four Rivers.” We might have taken a small steamer up another branch of the Yang-tze and perhaps have found water enough in a small branch of this big tributary to have gone on to Chengtu by another native boat. But only those with plenty of time and no end of patience should travel up small rivers in China. So we hired two new coolies for what was left of our baggage, and started off still farther to the north.

The road for the first two days was brand new. Yet it was just the same kind of road as those that have been built in southern China for many centuries, described in an earlier chapter—a very winding ridge of earth high above the flooded rice fields, covered with huge slabs of stone, and barely three feet wide. As a road of this kind gets older, the rains wash away the earth ridge under the stone slabs and sometimes leave them balanced so that a breeze will almost move them. Up in the mountains I often had my heart in my mouth for fear my horse would step on the unsupported outer edge of one of these stones where the road hung over some great cliff or steep river bank. As a matter of fact, the foolish animal three times went over a cliff, stone and all, and once with me on its back. But that horse seemed to have as many lives as a cat, and nothing ever seemed to hurt it, though it was thin as a _bay-fu_ coolie before our thousand-mile journey was over.

Szechuan is the largest and one of the most fertile of the eighteen provinces of China proper. It is nearly as large as Texas. But while our largest state has hardly five million inhabitants, Szechuan is said to have fifty-five million! Many parts of it are mountainous and its scenery is beautiful almost everywhere. Even if the hills we were traveling among now were mere knolls compared to the great mountains of Yunnan and Kweichow, they were often of such curious shapes, and the humid atmosphere made the landscape so attractive, that every mile forward was a new pleasure. Here and there over the road was a _p’ai-lou_, or memorial arch of stone, elaborately carved, and in some cases hundreds of years old. Such arches are found all over China, but there seem to be more of them in Szechuan than anywhere else.

There are thousands of old _p’ai-lou_ or memorial arches in China,
many of them of carved stone. The arch shown at the left in this
picture is the only one I ever saw being built. It and its companion
are of wood, gaily painted.
]

Queer Lodgings

Caravans of freight-coolies often crowded the Chinese inns so that I had to sleep in a temple. But the people do not object to that at all, if you give the caretaker a few cents when you leave. In fact they see nothing wrong even in letting a foreigner sit in the priest’s chair before the altar and put his feet on the table on which, during ceremonies, food is laid out for the god or spirit inside. I did not do that, but Yang Chi-ting used to serve my supper on that table, while I sat in the priest’s comfortable armchair. Sometimes he brought in a wooden tub and filled it for my bath. As the temples had no floors except the earth, a little water spilled meant only a patch of mud.

One night I slept on the high stage of a great town temple, while hundreds of people came to gaze up at me from the courtyard below as if I were a theatrical performer. Another night I slept in a church—I do not mean during services! As they have never had our feeling of reverence for religious buildings, it is not strange that Chinese Christians think it all right for a foreign traveler to use a church as a lodging. But the church was much less comfortable than a temple. A poor little mud-brick hovel with Mother Earth for floor, filled with narrow wooden benches, it was stuffy and hot, and a very noisy street was just outside. But Yang slept as soundly on two benches set together as I did in my cot covered with a mosquito-net.

Accidentally I packed the net in a different load from the cot one morning, and that night I had to sleep without it. The coolie who carried the box I had put it in fell behind and did not overtake us until next day. Such an occurrence is very rare in China. Not more than two or three times during my two years of traveling in that country did a carrier stop at night before he caught up with me, no matter how bad the road or weather, or how tired he may have been. Nor did the carriers ever steal a thing out of my baggage, though they were often alone with it for hours and knew that there were rolls of silver dollars in boxes that were sometimes not even locked.

An arched bridge that carries a temple on its shoulders. It crosses a
mountain tributary of the upper Yang-tze.
]

As I look back, the worst trick ever played upon me by a carrier in China was this one of leaving me without my mosquito-net. Not only did swarms of mosquitoes feast on me all night, so that I never once fell entirely asleep, but in the morning I found that they were the kind of mosquitoes that carry malaria. I lost no time in taking a large dose of quinine and luckily I did not fall sick. I once had malaria in South America, and I would rather be captured by bandits than have it again.

Speaking of bandits, no soldier guard was sent with me after I crossed the border of Yunnan Province. Yet Szechuan also has its brigands. Two Americans had been killed by them the summer before, and one day I met an Englishwoman who had been robbed of everything except the clothes she wore and her wedding-ring. No other white man went over the trail from Yunnanfu to Chengtu during all that year, because it was so dangerous. Possibly the reason robbers and bandits never trouble me, no matter where I travel, is that I always look too poor to be worth the bother!

Where the Chinese Obtain Salt

The day after that mosquito-y night was Sunday, and I spent most of it at a famous old city named Tzeliuching. That may sound like a terrible name, but it means nothing worse than “Salt Wells.” No one seems to know for how many centuries salt water has been taken out of the ground in that region. The wells are hundreds of feet deep and hardly a foot in diameter, though sometimes in solid rock. Yet the Chinese still use their crude, ancient tools to dig them, instead of modern drills. They use ropes made of bamboo strips, in place of steel cables, and water-buffaloes that plod round and round a great wooden drum take the place of steam or electric engines. The water is brought up in very long bamboos, with a valve in the end. Hundreds of coolies do nothing all their lives but carry water to pour into those wells so as to soak up the salt rocks. The brine is boiled down, and the salt, in big blocks like flat stones and almost black in color, is carried away in every direction. Coolies often toil along for a month with two hundred pounds of it on their backs.

On the Plain of Chengtu

One morning, a week north of the Yang-tze, we climbed up over some rock hills and came down upon the great plain of Chengtu. That rich, floor-flat region is so large that it took me six hours to reach the city it supports, and a long day of trotting later on to get to the northern edge of it. My horse could not trot on this first day, because the ditch that the Chinese call a road was deep with mud.

There were still slabs of stone laid sidewise, but here they were laid a foot or more apart, to save the cost and labor of putting them close together. Stone has to be carried a long way to the plain of Chengtu, where there is not even a pebble. Besides, horses or mules very rarely pass over that road, and the coolies who do their work can step from one stone to another.

The people of this region so seldom see a horse that they called our _s’en-kou_, which means just “animal,” as if they did not know what particular kind of animal we rode. Though our horses were very tame, almost everyone shrieked and ran away when we were seen coming. Often we had to ride through the narrow main street of a town crowded with people on a market day, and the only way to do so was to let our horses plow through the dense throngs as a boat does through water. You have never seen anything in the movies as funny as the way people would tumble over one another to get out of the way the moment they felt or heard or smelled or saw one of our “animals” close behind them.

Just to see how it felt, I rode one day in a _hwa-gan_. I found my
riding as smooth as if I had been in a Pullman car. If I wanted to
sleep, all I had to do was to stretch out, with my legs over the
poles.
]

The Chinese of this region who can afford to ride use sedan-chairs or wheelbarrows, and especially _hwa-gan_. The _hwa-gan_ consists of two bamboo poles with a seat and a foot-rest hanging from them by ropes. I once rode in one myself, just for the experience, and found it easier riding than an American railroad car, though I prefer to do my own walking. The chair-coolies of Szechuan are famous for the smoothness of their trot. If you get tired of sitting up in a _hwa-gan_ and reading or looking at the landscape, all you have to do is stretch out and hook your legs over the poles in front of you and go to sleep. The Chinese learn to do this very well.

In Old Chengtu

There was a very strict young governor at Chengtu when I reached there, and he no longer allowed wheelbarrows to come inside the city walls. As there are no rickshaws so far west, nearly everyone had to walk. That was especially hard on the ladies, for almost all except foreign ladies, and the Manchu women remaining from imperial days, had bound feet.

Every foreigner who comes to one of these far interior provincial capitals is expected to call on the governor. I had to borrow a sedan-chair from an American resident, for it would have been very bad Chinese manners to have gone to the _yamen_, or governor’s palace, on one of my horses.

The chairs for rich or important people have poles curving upward in the middle, so that the person carried is high above the common crowd; and the carriers knock out of the way anyone who does not hear their shout of warning in time to jump. The Chengtu chair-coolies jog through the crowded narrow streets at about five miles an hour, and a third man changes places with one of the other two every block or so, without the passenger’s even feeling it.

I often called on governors and other high officials in China and always found them very courteous, though occasionally one of them thought the way to shake hands was to grasp my thumb with his right hand. Some governors invited me to Chinese feasts, where I ate too much for my health. Not only is the best Chinese food very good indeed, but it is bad manners at such a feast not to eat just as much as possible. These feasts usually came at about eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon, and when I was invited to luncheon and dinner by foreigners on the same day that I went to Chinese meals I was very well fed indeed.

The governor of Chengtu invited me to the movies rather than to a feast. He took six of his wives with him, leaving the seventh at home to look after the children. The American “Wild West” film shown that evening seemed to be greatly enjoyed by the large crowd that packed the outdoor auditorium. This governor had very modern ideas. He let his wives bob their hair and ride bicycles. At the time I talked with him he was cutting seventeen wide streets through the ancient capital. Since then he has been driven out in one of China’s many civil wars, but before he went Chengtu saw its first automobile, and other modern things are to come.

The streets of Chengtu are gay in many places with bright silk threads that are being woven into cloth. The place has a mint and an arsenal and some other modern establishments; but most work is still done in family groups rather than in big factories. A pleasant feature of that huge and very interesting old city is that even the coolies have bamboo armchairs in their tea houses, instead of the narrow uncomfortable sawhorses that in most parts of the country serve the poorer people as seats.

I Climb a Sacred Mountain

My last side-trip in China was the climax of them all. I climbed a stone stairway more than two miles high, to the Golden Summit, as the Chinese call it, of the sacred mountain of Omei-shan. It is 11,000 feet above sea-level, and though August had been blazing hot down on the plain, we felt as if we were at the North Pole up among the great wooden temples above the clouds.

For those who cannot climb the 11,000 feet to the summit of the sacred
mountain of Omei-shan in western China, this kind of steed is
waiting.
]

Many thousands of pilgrims climb Omei-shan in a year, and now and then one throws himself from the top, because he expects in that way to get to heaven. From the summit I had a splendid view of the vast snow-capped mountain ranges of Tibet, that lofty land which so few white men have even entered.

If I tell you that I came down that two-mile stairway much faster than I went up, you will not be surprised; and if you have ever come down so steep a mountain you will also not be astonished that my legs ached for days afterward.

Homeward Bound!

I found I could get into a boat at the foot of Omei-shan, or under the walls of Chengtu, and go by water all the way to San Francisco or to New York. Of course, I had to change to larger and larger boats, first at Kiating, with its enormous Buddha carved in the high river bank. The next change was to a comfortable foreign steamer at Chungking, the great river port of Szechuan, on its rock shaped like an alligator’s back. This boat took me through the wonderful gorges of the Yang-tze, with their cliffs higher than our highest skyscrapers. From Ichang another steamer carried me to Hankow, where I boarded a still larger one for Shanghai. There an ocean liner was ready to carry me and my family homeward across the Pacific.

PRONUNCIATION LIST

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The pronunciation of Chinese words here indicated is as
nearly as possible that of the Chinese people themselves, rather than
the usual foreign pronunciation. Since the Chinese language has sounds
which ours does not have, and since there is less accent than “tone”—a
kind of musical inflection which it is impossible to indicate with any
symbols we have—it is in some cases impossible to give the exact
English equivalent.

In the unenviable task of Latinizing all these sounds, the Americans
and British (missionaries, for the most part) who reduced them to the
accepted spellings with our alphabet, were not always entirely
successful in expressing exact shades of sound. From the start,
certain Chinese words might well have been spelled differently in
English, to give us more nearly the real pronunciation. For example,
some of the _k’s_ might better have been _j’s_, the _j’s_ more exactly
_r’s_, the _p’s_ preferably _b’s_, etc. Thus, if the name of the
capital of China had been Latinized as “Bayjing,” foreigners would
pronounce it much more nearly in the Chinese way than they do in
saying “Peking.” As people have become accustomed to the spellings
employed in maps, encyclopedias, and geographies for generations—and,
more or less, to the pronunciations indicated in dictionaries and
other reference works, the attempt here to give more exactly the
Chinese pronunciations will doubtless provide some surprises.

The symbols of Webster’s New International Dictionary have been used.

ahong (ä’hông’)
Along (ä-lông’)
ama (ä’mä)
Amichow (ä’mē’jō)
Amoy (ä-mō’ee)
Anhwei (än’hwā)
Anking (än’jĭng’)
Annam (ăn-näm’)

bay-fu (bā’-foo’)
Bogda-Khan (bôg’dä-hän’)
Buddha (bood’ä)

cangue (kăng)
carabao (kä-rä-bä’ō)
Canton (kăn-tŏn’)
Cathay (kă-thā’)
Changchun (chäng-choon’)
Chaochowfu (jou’jō-foo’)
Chaotung (jou’toong)
Chekiang (chē’jē’äng’)
Chengtu (chĕng’tū’)
Chihli (jĕ’lē’)
Chinkiang (chĭn-jē-äng’)
Chio Hwa Shan (jī’ō’ hwä shän)
Chosen (chō-sĕn’)
Chufu (chü-fū’)
Chu-kiang (joo’jĭ-äng)
ch’ung-chiah (choong’jĭ-ä)
Chungking (chŭng’kĭng’)
Confucius (kŏn-fū’shĭ-ŭs)

Dairen (dī-rĕn’)
Dalai Lama (dä-lī’ lä’mä)

E mao ch’ien (ē mou’ chĭ-ĕn’)
E quai ch’ien (ē kwī’ chĭ-ĕn’)

Fang-gwy-lo (fäng-gwī-ō’) (Cantonese or Southern Chinese. See
Also “Yanggwei-tze.”)
Fei Lan-kuh (fā län’-kẽ’)
Fengtien (fēng’tĭ’ĕn’)
Foochow (foo-chou’)
Formosa (fôr-mō’sä)
Fukien (foo’jï-ĕn’)

Gobi (gō’bē’)

Hainan (hī’nän’)
Haiphong (hä-ē-fông’)
Hangchow (häng-chou’)
Hankow (hăn-kou’)
Han-ren (hän’rĕn)
Hanyang (hän’yäng’)
Harbin (här’bĭn’)
Hoang-ho (hō’äng’hü’)
Hochow (hō’jō’)
Hoihow (hō-ĭ-hou’)
Honam (hŭ’näm’)
Honan (hŭ’nän’)
Hong Kong (hŏng kŏng; customary English pronunciation,
although a poor equivalent of the Chinese.)
Hong Shih Ai (hông shĭr ī)
Hsi-ling (shē’lĭng’)
Hunan (hū’nän’)
Hupeh (hū-bā’)
hutung (hoo’tŭng)
hwa-gan (hwä’-gän’)
Hwa Miao (hwä mĭ’-ou’)
Hwei-hwei (hwā’-hwā’)

I-bien (ē’-byĕn)
Ichang (ẽ’chäng)
Irkutsk (ẽr’kootsk’)

Jaochow (rou’jō)
Jehol (rẽ’hẽr)

Kachek (kä-chĕk’)
Kaiyukwan (kī-yū-gwän’)
Kalgan (kăl-gän’)
k’ang (käng)
Kansu (gän’sū)
kaoliang (gou-lẽ-äng’)
Kiangsi (jē’äng’shē’)
Kiangsu (jē’äng’sū’)
Kiating (jē’ä’dĭng’)
Kingtehchen (jĭng’tẽ-jēn)
Kiukiang (jē-ū’jē-äng’)
Kiungchow (jẽ’oong’jö’)
Kokonor (kō’kō’nōr’)
Kongmoon (kông’moon’)
Koran (kō-rän’)
Korea (kō-rē’ä)
Kuling (gũ’lĭng’)
Kung (goong)
Kung-yik (koong’yĭk)
Kwangchowfu (gwäng’jō-foo’)
Kwangsi (gwäng’shē’)
Kwang-su (gwäng’-soo’)
Kwangtung (gwäng’toong’)
Kweichow (gwā’jō’)

laichee (lî’chē) or litchi (lē-chlē’)
lama (lä’mä)
Lanchow (län’jō’)
Laokay (lou-kī’)
Lao-an (lou’-än’)
Lhasa (lä’sä)
likin (lē’kĭn—foreign pron.; lē-jĭn’—Chin. pron.)
Loi (lō’ĭ)
Lolo (lō’lō)
Lu (lū)

Macao (mä-kä’ō)
Manchuli (män-choo-lē’)
Manchuria (măn-choo’rĭ-ä)
mandarin (măn’dä-rĭn)
Man-tzow (män-tzō’)
Mecca (mĕk’ä)
Mei Lan-fang (mā’ län-fäng’)
Mei-shan (mā-shän’)
Min (mĭn)
Mohammed (mō-hăm’ĕd)
Mongolia (mŏn-gō’-lĭ-ä)
Mukden (mook’-dĕn)

Nanking (nän’jĭng’)
Nanning (nän’nĭng’)
Nantai (nän-tī’)
Nosu (nô’soo)

Omei-shan (ō-mā-shän’)

Paak Wan Shan (päk wän shän)
Pagoda (pä-gō’dä)
p’ai-lou (pī-loo’)
Pei-ho (bā-hŭ’)
Peking (pē-kĭng’; Chin. pron. bā’jĭng’)
peng (pēng)
Pingliang (pĭng-lĭ-äng’)
Potala (pō-tä-lä’)
Poyang (pō-yäng’)
puk’ai (pūk’ī’)

Saikwan (sī-gwän’)
Sampan (säm’pän’)
sen-kou (sēn’kō)
Shameen (shä-mēn’)
Shanghai (shăng’hī’)
Shanhaikwan (shän’hī-gwän’)
Shansi (shän’shē)
Shantung (shän’doong)
Shaohsing (shou-shĭng’)
Shensi (shă’ăn-shē’)
Shih-men-k’an (shēr-mēn-kän’)
Sianfu (shē’än-foo’)
Siberia (sī-bē’rĭ-ä)
Si-kiang (shē’jĭ-äng)
Sinkiang (sĭn-jĭ-äng’)
Soochow (soo’chou’)
Suifu (swē-foo’)
Sunwei (sün’wā)
Sun Yat-sen (sün yät-sẽn’)
Swatow (swä’tou’)
Szechuan (ssē’chwän)
Sze Yap (sē’ yäp)

Tai-shan (tī-shän’)
Taiyuanfu (tī’yū-än-foo’)
Ta Pan Chiao (dä bän jĭ-ou’)
Tartar (tär’tär)
Tibet (tĭ-bĕt’)
Tientsin (tĭ-ĕn’tsēn’)
tsao-hai (tsou’-hī)
Tsing-hwa (tsĭng’-hwä)
Tsuchulin (tsoo-choo-lĭn’)
Tungchuan (dŭng’chwän)
Tung-ling (doong’-ling’)
Turkestan (toor-kĕ-stän’)
Tzeliuching (tsē-lĭ-ū-jĭng’)
Tzinanfu (tsē’nän-foo’)

Urga (ŭr’gä)

Wai-kuo-ren (wī’gwô-rĕn’)
Wan Li Chang Chen (wän lĭ chäng chēn)
Whangpoa (whäng’pō-ä)
Wuchang (woo’chäng’)
Wuhu (woo’hoo’)

Yalu (yä’loo)
yamen (yä’mĕn)
Yang Chi-ting (yäng jē-dĭng’)
Yang-gwei-tze (yäng-gwā’dzē) (Mandarin or Northern Chinese.
See also “Fang-gwylo.”)
Yang-tze Kiang (yäng’-tzē jē-äng’)
yao-fan-ti (you-fän’tē)
Yenping (yĕn’bĭng’)
Yunnan (yün-nän’)
Yunnanfu (yün’nän-foo’)
yurt (yoort)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRAVELS IN MANY LANDS

A series of Geographical Readers for
Intermediate Grades, written by Harry A. Franck
and published by F.A. Owen Publishing Company:

THE JAPANESE EMPIRE
CHINA
MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
_Others in preparation_

✧

Books by Mr. Franck published by The Century Company, New
York:

A Vagabond Journey Around the World
Four Months Afoot in Spain
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Zone Policeman 88
Vagabonding Down the Andes
Working North from Patagonia
Vagabonding Through Changing Germany
Roaming Through the West Indies
Glimpses of Japan and Formosa
Wandering in Northern China
Roving Through Southern China
East of Siam (French Indo-China)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.