Chapter X: Some Chinese Seaports and Commerce 205 (3)

Meanwhile the men of the Chinese Home Mission have been visiting different parts of the province, Pastor Ding Li-mei going as far as Tengyueh, on the western border of Yünnan. He not only made a careful survey of the various districts, but also preached wherever he went. He is a man of high repute, one of the most successful and widely known evangelists in the East of China. His wife had taken up kindergarten work in the capital, as that has been her special line. Another of the party, Mr. Sang, went to visit a large tin-mining district in the south, and made a survey of Ku Chin, a prosperous city. The people of the district are greatly addicted to opium-smoking, which is on the increase. The Southern Government, which is supreme in Yünnan, openly encourages opium-smoking. There is no missionary work going on in this part of the province at present; in fact, there are not a dozen mission centres in the whole of this huge province, 146,680 square miles, with an estimated population of twelve millions. No wonder that the Chinese Home Mission felt that this was the place where they were most needed; hence their decision to start work in Yünnan, hoping to extend their work to other provinces. Another of the party, Mr. Li, visited the northern part of the province, crossing the border into Szechuen. At one place he found a group of Christians, who begged him to become their pastor.

The work of the C.H.M. is gradually getting organized and has promise of a fine future; its inception was mainly due to women, and they seem destined to play an important part in it. Chinese women have initiative and great staying power. One of its chief promoters was Dr. Mary Stone,[17] an able Chinese doctor, whose reputation is known throughout the empire. In her interesting book, _Notable Women of Modern China_, Miss M. E. Burton gives a graphic sketch of Dr. Stone’s life, from the time when her father brought her as a child of eight to an American lady doctor, saying, “Here is my little girl. I want you to make a doctor of her.” She grew up to be one of the people who tackle hard jobs of every kind and who inspire others, as in the case of the Chinese Home Mission. And the success of the Mission can only be secured if others take their share in it, for “they also serve who only stand and wait.” A charming instance of this came to my notice at Amoy. A friend took me to visit an old pastor and his wife who had just celebrated their combined birthday of a hundred and fifty. They said to me, “We are too old and infirm to carry on our work, so now we have set ourselves to pray for the Mission, and every day ten of us meet together for the purpose, and we give what little we can.” I told them I was going to see the ladies at Yünnan, and they were pleased at the thought of sending a message direct. Miss Li and Miss Chen were no less pleased to receive it.

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There are in China some hundred and twenty different societies at work, but I venture to think that there is still room for many more Chinese workers, if not societies. At Yünnanfu I talked to an old and experienced missionary,[18] and he told me that he is convinced that the Chinese are best reached by their own people, and that now he confines himself almost entirely to superintendence and organization, while he has an ever-increasing number of evangelists who do all the speaking and teaching. It seems clear that the Chinese themselves feel the need of this support, seeing that the Chinese Home Mission has elected to have a foreign advisory committee. It is also essential to have foreign training centres, such as Dr. Keller’s school at Changsha (_see_ page 152). At present the training of these men is often most inadequate, owing to the difficulty and expense of sending them long distances to the schools, especially from the less accessible mission stations.

We did not spend all our time in the city, while preparing for our journey eastward. Once again the lure of the lake came irresistibly on me, and we sent our interpreter to engage a boat in advance to take us across to the celebrated shrines. It is a long day’s expedition and requires strong rowers. When we reached the spot, by ricksha, from which we were to start, the boat proved quite unsuitable: it was so heavy that it would have taken all day to get across. The only thing was to make a fresh bargain for something more suitable, and we were amused to find that it was women only who seemed to be in charge of this trade. A pleasant, hefty-looking woman undertook to do the job to our satisfaction, and we were soon gliding across the smooth waters. There were many heavily-laden boats with lovely sails and as picturesque a crowd of passengers as you could wish to see, who were crossing the lake either to or from the city. Other boats were employed in fishing. The air was most lovely and the colouring of lake and sky and mountains a dream of beauty. Our two men and two women rowed like Trojans, and in two hours we landed at the foot of fine crags on the further shore. We climbed up a steep zigzag path, often up a rock stairway, through the pine-trees. The air was filled with the scent of roses, and the birds sang; nothing disturbed the delicious stillness of the place. From time to time we reached a shrine where the devout pilgrim worships, and always found a terrace or balcony with stone balustrade on which were perched quaint carved beasts, and from which there was a glorious view across the shimmering lake. Sometimes we passed through fine carved gateways, and we found the thousand steps rather long and weary! At one shrine a young acolyte, suffering from hip disease, prepared tea for us, before we attacked the topmost stage of pilgrimage. This led by a passage cut in the face of the rock to a very lofty little shrine, where squirrels were sporting among the overhanging shrubs. We entered the dragon gate, over which was inscribed the legend “Blessing to all who come.”

A party of Chinese women had actually climbed all the way up on their tiny feet and welcomed us with charming courtesy. After they had chatted for a few moments they turned in absorbed interest to their religious duties: cash were dropped in the box, incense lighted and due obeisances and prayers offered to the god carved in the solid wall of rock.

The view from the terrace was sublime, and far below the water was dotted with white sails that looked like insects on its surface. The overhanging cliff was of great height, and there was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the narrow belt of cornland on the margin of the lake, whose further shore was lost in the midday haze. The lake is called K’un-Yang-Hai; it is forty miles long and from five to eight miles wide; no wonder the people call it the “sea”! As we came down we noticed some scribbling on one of the temples “against Japanese goods,” with a rough drawing of a man with a pistol. Everywhere this hatred is shown in one form or another.

We had much interesting talk with an Englishman in our hotel, who had been there for more than six months trying to establish trade relations with the local authorities on behalf of his firm. The mineral wealth of Yünnan is proverbially great: it has rich mines of gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, coal, zinc, tin, and also salt and petroleum wells. The ores are of good quality and easily extracted, so that Yünnan has boundless wealth, if she chooses to develop it. But the Yünnanese are thoroughly unprogressive and a lazy, lethargic people, very different from other Chinese. The officials absolutely declined to sell their raw products, and it was precisely the ore which the English firm wished to buy: it was quite useless in its manufactured form. Their envoy hoped to have completed his business in a few weeks, but months had already elapsed, and although he thought the end was in sight, it was still a matter of uncertainty. Probably a substantial bribe would have accelerated matters; but not only is bribery unworthy of our trade traditions, but in the long run injurious to trade itself. The trade relations of China are by no means easy, and all nations are bidding for special facilities.

What a pity that the world as a whole cannot be converted to the policy of Free Trade! What a clearing of the moral atmosphere it would make; and what temptations would be saved to frail human nature!

Nine days after reaching Yünnanfu we started on our journey eastward. No one who has not experienced it can imagine the thrill of delight with which we set forth in search of adventures! We said good-bye to many helpful friends, got all our papers in order, and a letter of recommendation to the Governor of Kweichow; at an early hour of the day an escort of ten white-uniformed soldiers was waiting outside, ready to accompany us. We had seventeen coolies, and looked quite an imposing procession. First came our two four-bearer chairs, then the interpreter’s three-bearer chair, the cook’s two-bearer chair (it is important to preserve the etiquette of position), and finally four coolies carrying the luggage; part of the escort led the way and part brought up the rear.

How amusing it is to see the way in which human nature asserts itself, and how many are the little comic touches of travel, which are too small to enumerate, but which lend such charm to daily life, when you have a congenial fellow traveller at your elbow! Very soon our interpreter found his mountain chair not suitable to his dignity, and told me he had decided to travel in a “paper box”: this is an accurate definition of the chair which is commonly in use, and which is so carefully enclosed that from its depths you can scarcely see anything of the scenery. When the front blind is down there is nothing to be seen, but the passenger in this chaste seclusion can indulge in philosophic meditation—or sleep. Our cook, on the other hand, found his chair an unnecessary luxury, and soon the thrifty fellow asked permission to have the money instead of the coolie hire. I willingly agreed, as he never lagged behind and was always eager to do any stray job, and to collect wild flowers for us from the fragrant rose bushes and hedgerows.

That first day from Yünnanfu we passed fields full of beans and corn and rape, not to mention opium poppy, which was to be the main crop we saw all along the way in these southern provinces.

Very soon our joy was chastened by a tremendous rainstorm, but we were glad to find that our chairs were perfectly rainproof. The top was covered with American cloth and there were blinds of the same material to let down on all sides. When we reached our inn, Yao had a room ready for us, which he had swept out. Our procedure from that time forward was to send him on ahead after lunch, and he would secure the best possible room—pretty bad at that—sweep it out, together with any movable furniture, and have clean straw mats—or as clean as were obtainable—laid down. When we arrived it took very little time to set up our camp beds, table, chairs and washstand. We had a canteen with us, so that all the food was cooked in our own pans, and Yao proved an excellent cook and foraged well on the road. We only took such necessaries as butter, jam, milk, tea, bread and biscuits with us, but Yao was clever in making bread under great difficulties when we happened to run short of it. All travellers, however, experience the generous hospitality of missionaries, who seem to consider it a commonplace to provide travellers with bread and cakes galore. We rarely failed to come to a mission station once a week, and then our provision baskets were re-stocked. We only carried two baskets of provisions, namely one coolie load, for three months’ journey, and had a good deal left at the end: some of the things were special foods in case of illness, but fortunately they were not required.

From the time we left the capital we gradually rose till we came to the pass leading into Kweichow. The very first day we came to an altitude of fifty-nine hundred feet, and this was at the foot of an imposing mountain called Tu-Du-Shan, or Lord of the Earth; all the next day we skirted round its base. This day the road was not considered dangerous, so we only had unarmed police as our escort. They were more decorative than useful, as generally was the case, but the following day we saw a ghastly spectacle, which suggested a possible need for protection—two human heads in a tree and other remains being devoured by a dog in a neighbouring field. The beauty of the road and all the loveliness of nature seemed blighted, and it was difficult to rid oneself of the painful impression. Yet my father saw the body of a criminal swinging in chains on an Essex common not a hundred years ago, and the musical world listens with enchantment to “Le Gibet” and enjoys Ravel’s realistic presentation of it. Some people love horrors: I confess it is the one thing that took the joy out of our wanderings.

We were asked by one of the missionaries before leaving Yünnan to make a slight detour on our way to visit a sick woman, as he had done what he could to relieve her, but not being a doctor he was uncertain as to treatment, and wished my niece to diagnose the case; if any medicine could be of use, he would see that she got it. Our arrival created much interest in the village, and every one would have liked to be spectators when the medical examination was made. In fact the paper windows disappeared as by magic, so we had to have a shutter put up, and a native lamp threw little light on the patient. The one noticeable fact was that although she was too ill to do any housework the place was scrupulously clean, and the husband had everything ready in the way of water for washing. The contrast between a Christian and a non-Christian house in the matter of cleanliness was really remarkable.

In several of our halting-places there were small Christian communities, though no resident missionary. They always welcomed us with great cordiality and invited us to their meetings. These are held in rooms which are usually paid for by some member of the community, which carries on the work without much help from any mission: just an occasional visit and the knowledge that the missionary will help them in any time of need. In the village of Yi-ling there was an evangelist, who came to call on us with one of his chief helpers, a grocer; this man had been most generous in furnishing the hall, and they begged us to come to meeting that evening. There was quite a large crowd present and the service was a hearty one; the people looked mostly of a low type and very unlike Chinese. They asked me to speak, and listened well. After interpreting for me, Mr. Li, our interpreter, gave an impassioned address, which revealed to me the fact that he was more keen than I had realized. His first inquiry in every place was to know if there was a Christian community.

We were more and more enchanted with the fine scenery as we rose to greater heights. White and yellow jasmine, white and yellow Banksia roses, both single and double, filled the air with their fragrance, and vivid bushes of azalea made glorious patches of colour on the steep hill-sides. At night we were about sixty-four hundred feet up, and in the daytime we climbed to considerably higher altitudes. The dangers of the road were supposed to be increasing as we neared the picturesque town of Malong, so our military escort rose to ten, further supported by two policemen not in uniform. Other travellers eagerly took advantage of their protection and we looked quite an imposing procession. The way led up very steep mountains and dived sharply down into deep valleys. Trees full of white or pale mauve blossom were numerous, and scarlet azalea made a fine contrast. The people in the villages looked hideously poor and degraded, some of them obviously imbeciles and many with large goitres: in some villages there were fifty per cent. suffering from goitre; the beggars were simply terrifying. Again we had a severe thunderstorm, which came on quite suddenly when we were lunching by the wayside, and we made ourselves as small as possible in crevices of the rock. Our poor coolies got very wet and took us at a great pace, as soon as the rain stopped, to our next halting-place—Malong. The temperature was 61°.

The night was stormy, and in the morning clouds betokened the thunderstorm which soon broke, driving us to take scanty refuge in the crevices of the hill-side. We were glad to reach a mission station early in the afternoon at Küticul, where we stayed the night. We heard much about the poverty of the district and the increasing cultivation of opium poppy. It is tragic to see this when a few years ago the land was filled with crops needed for the daily food of the people. In some parts half the crops are opium, and it demands a great deal of labour! The land has to be twice ploughed, the second time crosswise, well manured, and the seed (mixed with four times its quantity of sand) is sown three times between October and March. After the sowing the land has to be harrowed, then the young plants are hoed and weeded, generally by the women and children. I have seen the women sitting on stools to do it on account of their poor little bound feet. This weeding goes on from early spring till the poppy flowers—generally in May. The petals fall quickly and the capsule swells till it is about one and a half inches in diameter; this takes about nine to fifteen days. A special instrument has to be used to make an incision three-quarters of the way round the capsule, and this must be done with care as it must not penetrate more than a certain depth, or the juice will flow inward instead of outward. The incision is generally made after the middle of the day, on account of the heat, and the juice must be collected next morning, being scraped off with a knife and put in a poppy leaf. It is said that the knife has to be moistened with saliva after every alternate poppy, to prevent the juice from sticking to it! As soon as the poppy leaf is filled with juice, another leaf is put over it and it is laid aside in the shade to dry. This takes several days; the opium in each varies from two ounces to two pounds, according to the district where it is grown. Sometimes the juice is collected twice, or even three times, though no second incision of the capsule is required. It makes one tired to think of the labour required, especially at the time of collecting the juice, which is necessarily limited, despite the three sowings.[19]

Opium is said to have been introduced into China in the seventeenth century, and the first Imperial edict forbidding the use of it was in 1729. The Portuguese were mainly employed in the trade in those early days. Fresh edicts against it failed to prevent its being smuggled in, as at the present day, though they became increasingly severe, till the death penalty was inflicted. The last edict under the Imperial rule was in 1906, but the dowager empress herself enjoyed her opium pipe, so she ordained that people over sixty were not to come under the scope of the act!

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The great Chang Chih-Tung is very emphatic in his denunciation of the drug. “A hundred years ago the curse came upon us, more blasting and deadly in its effects than the Great Flood or the scourge of the Fierce Beasts, for the water assuaged after nine years, and the ravages of the man-eaters were confined to one place. Opium has spread with frightful rapidity and heartrending results through the provinces. Millions upon millions have been struck down by the plague. To-day it is running like wild-fire. In its swift deadly course it is spreading devastation everywhere, wrecking the minds and eating away the strength and wealth of its victims. The ruin of the mind is the most woeful of its many deleterious effects. The poison enfeebles the will, saps the strength of the body, renders the consumer incapable of performing his regular duties, and unfit for travel from one place to another. It consumes his substance and reduces the miserable wretch to poverty, barrenness and senility. Unless something is soon done to arrest this awful scourge in its devastating march, the Chinese people will be transformed into satyrs and devils!”[20] Many thoughtful Chinese are apprehensive that opium will finally extirpate the race. This is a severe indictment, but there are plenty of leading men who will endorse it.

The Republican Government determined to stamp out the evil, and none but the Chinese could have accomplished so great a reform so rapidly: in many of the northern provinces there is no poppy grown. But the Southern Government has not followed suit. No doubt the question of revenue prevents it; for opium is one of the most lucrative crops as regards taxation. Naturally there are times of great scarcity, and then it is quite common for the people to sell their children for food. A missionary told us of one child being sold for one and a half dollars (about three shillings): this was a boy of three years old. We saw two nice little girls on the road being taken to be sold as slaves.

After leaving Küticul we found our coolies very troublesome, and had to have recourse to the magistrate on two occasions, with a good result. One day the men firmly refused to go more than an absurdly short stage, and deposited us in the middle of a village. Our head man stormed and raged, not another step would they budge. Finally we made a compromise: we stayed there on the understanding that they would do a hundred and five li next day, about thirty-two miles. The magistrate later in the day had an interview with Li and the head coolie, and emphasized the fact that the agreement had got to be carried out, and the escort was instructed to come early.

The spell worked! We started about six o’clock on a lovely misty morning, the dew lying heavy on the grass, and our men walked with a will for some hours. But like the mist, their zeal evaporated: after lunch they said they must each have a dollar to go on. Li was in despair at seeing his remonstrances unheeded. I sent him off to the magistrate. He counselled giving them ten cents each, and ordered them to start: there was nothing to be done save agree to it, as the head coolie had disappeared, evidently feeling unable to cope with the situation. The men grumbled, but set off, and by a quarter past six we reached Ping-yi, a stiff twelve hours’ journey. We felt a little sorry for the luggage coolies and wondered if the loads were not rather heavy, but as they raced at the end of the stage to see who would be in first, we felt our pity was misplaced. We stayed in mission premises where a kind old caretaker was most solicitous for our welfare. Yao could hardly be persuaded not to prepare our evening meal, but we decided to prepare it for ourselves and sent him off to the inn with Li.

This was our last night in Yünnan, and we had a wonderful moonlight view over the valley, which, combined with a hard bed, led me to spend much of the night beside the window, writing letters. It was an unwonted pleasure to sleep upstairs and to have a view.

Next day in our escort we had a most friendly young policeman, who was keen to help us pick flowers after assiduously dealing with our luggage. We crossed several fine bridges and counted seven varieties of roses, five varieties of azaleas, iris, Japanese anemones, etc., etc. By midday we had climbed up to the dividing line between the provinces of Yünnan and Kweichow: it was marked by a most dilapidated archway leading into a little village. The usual tutelary stone lions are on either side the pailou, but those facing into Yünnan have dust and fishy scales carved on their backs, while those facing into Kweichow have only scales. What is the meaning of this symbolism? Dust stands for wind and scales for water, and truly Yünnan has not only rain but also wind in full measure, while as for Kweichow, we no sooner crossed the threshold than the sun disappeared and down came the rain.

One day we asked a Kweichow man who had attached himself uninvited to our company, when we might hope to see the sunshine! He took a long time to answer the question, and appeared to have been giving Li an exhaustive discourse on the nature of sunshine. However, the summary of the discourse was that under the old Imperial regime things were fixed, and you could count upon them—but under a Republic you could be sure of nothing!

_Chapter IV_

_The Province of Kweichow_

“Methinks there’s a genius
Roams in the mountains.
...
But dark is the forest
Where now is my dwelling,
Never the light of day
Reaches its shadow.
Thither a perilous
Pathway meanders.
Lonely I stand
On the lonelier hill-top,
Cloudland beneath me
And cloudland around me.
Softly the wind bloweth,
Softly the rain falls,
Joy like a mist blots
The thoughts of my home out.”

—(Ch’ü Yüan: Fourth Century B.C.)
Translated by Cranmer Byng.

_Chapter IV_

_The Province of Kweichow_

Not only is there a gateway leading out of Yünnan, but also one of a quite different character leading into Kweichow, and situated at the other end of the little frontier village. It is a solid stone gateway in a stone wall. We passed along a short bit of level street at a height of 6,200 feet before we came to the wall, and then we plunged down a steep rocky path, with a wonderful view of deep valleys surrounded by abrupt and jagged mountains.

We found that day seven new varieties of roses, all very sweet-scented, also rhododendrons, azaleas and irises. At our halting-place for the night (5,300 feet) we climbed a little hill crowned with a Buddhist temple, and looked down on trees, which formed a floor of delicate white blossom as light as snowflakes, trees quite unknown to me, and no one there seemed able to give us even a Chinese name for them. It is very difficult to get information, and we had not the time for making collections.

I tried to learn about them when I came home, and found that there is in existence a large folio of manuscript of descriptions and specimens of plants collected by French fathers in this province; but as no one visits Kweichow there was no demand for such a work, and there is no hope of it being published. The collection is at the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. It was the same with other things: the mountains often had the strangest forms, and I made careful drawings of their outlines. Photos were usually out of the question, as the mountains were too close; they rose up like walls all round us, and the light was always in the wrong quarter. On my return home I went cheerfully to learned societies with confident hope of slaking my thirst for knowledge, but alas! No books on _such_ an unknown part, the very name of course unknown. When my drawings had been duly inspected, the remark made was, “I must compliment you on your sketches, I have never seen mountains like that!” Was there a touch of irony in the remark?

Truly Kweichow is a wonderful country and beautiful in the extreme, as the late Dr. Morrison (adviser to the Chinese Government) told me when I went to get his advice before starting. “You could not have chosen a more interesting part to travel in,” he said, “nor a more beautiful one”; and he had travelled in almost every part of China. It is full of different aboriginal races of whom very little is known, its flora is remarkably rich and varied, and its geology a continual surprise.

The second day across the border we crossed a small plain from which rise a series of round low mounds, like pudding-basins, from the flat ricefields—an extraordinary contrast to the lofty, jagged mountains from which we had just descended. In the midst of it all was a curious tumbled heap of lava-like appearance, looking as if it had been ejected from the earth by some colossal earthworms. Sir Alexander Hosie says[21] that there is a parallel row of these mounds about ten miles to the south: they run east and west. In the ricefields I saw a brilliant kingfisher, hanging poised in mid-air in search of prey, while a heron stalked away at our approach.

The rain grew more and more persistent, and the roads were muddy and slippery to the last degree. Even the sure-footed Chinese kept tumbling down, and it was almost less trying to walk than to be bumped down in our chairs. As we advanced into the province the culture of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum) increased till it was as much as ninety-nine per cent. of the crops, and the appearance of the inhabitants showed only too plainly its disastrous effects. In some of the villages the children were naked, although it was still cold weather, being only the beginning of April. In the markets the goods were of the meanest and cheapest description, and the people looked abject. They rushed out to beg from us. The main industry of the district was evidently the making of coal balls. The coal lies actually on the surface, and has only to be scraped together, mixed with a little earth and water, and then dried: it burns quite well. Some of the coal is used for fertilizing the ground, being reduced to ash by being burnt in pits with stones piled on it. Lime also is used for the poppy fields. Sometimes the coal holes by the wayside are a couple of yards in diameter. The coir palm is to be seen in every village, and loquats and walnut trees are cultivated for their fruit.

We struggled along through a thick mist one day, and one after another went down like ninepins on the slippery path. One of my bearers cut his ankle, and was thankful for the doctor’s attentions. Suddenly I heard an ominous roaring sound, and looked in vain for the cause. It proved to be produced by a big stream, which disappeared into a hole in the earth; this appears to be quite a common phenomenon, and later on we saw one bubble out of the ground in the same strange fashion.

Another shape of hill attracted my attention, and as I tried to reproduce it accurately on paper it became obvious that this was one of the Chinese mountain forms with which one has been familiar from childhood in their pictures, and which one had supposed to be a work of imagination. As they always hold in their canons of art that “form” is quite subsidiary to “spirit,” I imagined that it was not inability to imitate form accurately, but a deliberate intention of ignoring it in order to express some more important truth that was the cause of their drawing, what seemed to me, such unnatural mountains. But here one discovered that these forms _are_ natural in China, and it is after all only our ignorance that makes us so misjudge them.

There were hedges by the roadside all bursting into leaf and blossom, and I never saw such a wealth of ferns of many kinds. There was material for a whole volume on ferns alone. Lofty trees of catalpa bungei with their purple blossom, and Boehmeria nivea grew by the roadside, and rhea grass in the village gardens.

We generally started the day in a damp mist, and were happy when it cleared away, even though there was no sunshine. We scanned the hedges for roses, and felt quite aggrieved if we failed to find fresh varieties every single day. A lovely blush rose filled us with delight, but pink moss-roses were only seen on one occasion. We decided that nowhere else could a greater variety of roses be found: we counted twenty-three varieties before we left the province, and felt sure we should have found many more had we stayed longer, for they were hardly in full bloom by the end of April. One day I picked up a broken branch on the road, thrown away by some passer-by no doubt because it had no blossoms on it, but the bright green leaves were a lovely violet on the under side, and I searched in vain to find a bush of it growing, in order to see what the flowers were like.

Then, too, the birds were reminiscent of home—magpies, larks, woodpeckers, wagtails, and even the aggravating cuckoo. But there was one elusive little fellow, known to all dwellers in Kweichow, though no one could tell me his name: he had a long shrill note with a short tut-tut-tut at the end. We both watched for him daily, as he seemed to haunt our path continually, but never could we catch a sight of him, so dexterously did he hide himself. Occasionally we thought we saw him, but it was so momentary a glimpse that we were never sure; the bird we saw looked about the size and shape and colour of a linnet.

The fourth day in Kweichow we came to a splendid three-arch bridge in a fertile valley, and spent the night in a very different village from most—Kuan Tzu Yao. A number of fine new houses were in course of construction, built largely of stone; amongst others, a post office next door to our inn. The postal system in China is really wonderful, even in this backward province, and we had a most charming surprise at the first post town we entered. Our interpreter went to the post office, and was surprised at being asked if he were travelling with English ladies. On admitting this, he was asked to inform us that if we were in need of money we could draw as much as was necessary at any office we came to, by order of the postal commissioner at Kwei Yang. The reason for this delightful arrangement was that the English Commissioner at Taiyuanfu, whose advice we had asked about transmitting money, said he would write to his Chinese colleague and ask him to help us if we got into difficulties, because of the prevalent highway robberies. This gentleman was ill at the time the letter reached him, but he telegraphed to Taiyuanfu as soon as he was fit, that he would do what he could—and this was his splendid way of meeting the difficulty. No finer testimony could be wanted of the way the Chinese trust our people.

The postal system is a fine piece of organization: it reaches to the utmost bounds of the empire, and although the mails are mainly carried by runners on foot, they travel very rapidly. The stages are not long, and there is no delay when the bags are handed from one runner to the next. For instance, we were told that on this particular road, what we did in seventeen days the mails would do in four, and we did an average of eighteen miles a day. We had postal maps given us of the provinces we were going to visit. On them are marked all the postal stations, with the distances from one to another; the line of route; the various grades of offices; the limit of the district; daily or bi-daily day and night service; daily, bi-daily or tri-daily service; less frequent ones; postal connexion by boat; telegraphic connexion; rural box offices, etc. The names of the main towns are in both Chinese and English, the others only in Chinese. On the whole, letters travel wonderfully safely. The old postal system was quite hopeless, and in the interior the missionaries used to organize their own. Even Peking used to be closed to the rest of the world yearly for several months. I remember six months when we had no letters from my sister in Shansi, due to a misunderstanding at a transmitting station, and there was no telegraphic communication in those days. Now the old Chinese system has practically died out.

We had another proof of the thoughtfulness of the Chinese commissioner later. Having heard from one of the missionaries that we were going into the Miao country before coming to the capital, he sent up all our letters, a tremendous boon after being weeks without any. The postal service is under international control, having been originated in 1896 and built up by Sir Robert Hart in connexion with the customs: in each province there is a commissioner; nearly all are Europeans.

As we got further into the province the vegetation grew more and more luxuriant. The banks were carpeted with lycopodium and primula and the hedges were full of roses, white and yellow jasmine, hawthorn, clematis montana, Akebia lobata—a very curious creeper with wine-coloured blossom, both male and female. The brilliant yellow-blossomed cassia forms a most impenetrable hedge, with upstanding thorns, like nails, all along its tough stems. We tied water jars into our chairs, so as to keep the flowers fresh, and by the end of the day the chairs were perfect bowers, our men vying with one another to get us the choicest blossoms. Perhaps the most beautiful of any was the large white, sweet-scented rhododendron, the Hymenocallis. This is rare; we only found it once.

The scenery was very grand; long ranges of jagged mountains and precipitous cliffs, but the road was not in the least dangerous from that point of view. It was extremely slippery and a heavy mist lay over everything in the early hours of most days: our men kept tumbling down. The only one who seemed always steady was Yao, and he constituted himself my guardian on slippery days, holding my elbow with a relentless grip, which certainly prevented my tumbling down and gave me confidence.

At Kuan Tzu Yao we found a nice clean new inn, courtyard behind courtyard, and each raised a step or two above the last: ours was the innermost, and we felt unusually secluded. The next night our immediate neighbours were two fine water buffaloes with their calves. They are the most valuable domestic animals throughout this country, as they plough the ricefields quite happily when they are under water. These two were taken out to work in the early morning, and we were amused to see a little tatterdemalion bringing them back in a perfect fury to fetch their calves, which had been left in the shed. The buffaloes seem to be generally left in the care of boys, who manage them with much skill, and love to disport themselves on their broad backs, often lying negligently at ease along them, looking as much at home as if they were an integral part of the creature. They are sluggish animals, coming originally from the Philippines.

Leaving Tu Tien our men seemed possessed of a sudden energy, and went at a great rate, doing nearly seven miles in two hours. Sometimes we thought we were lacking in humanity to give them such heavy loads; but then again our scruples seemed foolish in the light of certain experiences. For instance, one man carried two heavy suit-cases and a chair, another two large carved window-frames and a bed, but it didn’t prevent them taking a steep bank at a run, or having a race at the end of a thirty-mile stage to see who would be in first. The Chinese coolie is really an amusing creature, and even if he is clad in rags he finds life a cheerful business. I used to try and count the patches on the coat of one of my coolies, and never made them less than forty-six between the neck and waistband, not including those on the sleeves!

Then the incidents of travel have a humorous side, even on a wet day in a dangerous neighbourhood. Instead of having our light midday meal as usual by the roadside near the village, where the men get theirs, one is obliged to have it in the chairs, placed side by side in the main street of a busy town. Our escort draws an imaginary cordon round us, and no one dares approach within two yards as long as they mount guard. It was a thrilling sight for the assembled crowd to watch the barbarians wielding knives and forks, instead of the dear, familiar chopsticks. I must say they behaved beautifully.

When I sat down to sketch a lovely river scene outside a village gateway, though many came to look on they did not jostle. These entrance gates are often quite imposing and of infinite variety. Just inside was a fine litter of pigs, with a most important-looking sow, and it was amusing to watch their antics. On a doorstep, extended at full length lay a large hairy black pig. Its face wore a beatific expression, with half-closed eyes of rapt enjoyment, while a woman vigorously groomed it with her brush.

The mountains of Kweichow give shelter to many wild animals, and even tigers, as well as leopards, are to be found, which cause great havoc in some of the villages. One story we heard throws an interesting light on the way the natives look at them. A tiger had been doing so much damage that the peasantry determined to have a battue, having tracked it to a certain hill, from which they thought it would be impossible for it to escape. They formed a cordon round the hill and gradually drove it to the top. The tiger, in search of refuge, looked into a shrine, and its pursuers saw this: they exclaimed, “It is certainly the God of the Hill”; so they turned tail and fled. Naturally, the tiger seeing this took the opportunity of attacking them in the rear, and several were badly mauled.[22]

Some of the mountains are very barren, others wonderfully cultivated, on terraces right up to the very top, and in rocky hollows only about a foot in diameter, with a mere handful of soil in them. How the scanty population can do such a vast amount of cultivation was a mystery we could never solve. One day we started from an altitude of eighteen hundred feet and climbed over a pass of forty-eight hundred, whence there was a wonderful panoramic view; our road could be seen for many miles, winding along the mountainside above a narrow valley; then diving down into it and up the opposite side. Our men said the last part of that day’s march, ten li (three miles), would be on the level, which sounded pleasant news. In point of fact we dropped nine hundred feet. A fine entrance gate led into Lang Tai Fung. Just outside the wall were the ruins of an old temple with a handsome stone carved bridge in front of it, enclosed within a wall. The inn was a good one, and the weather having suddenly turned cold we were glad of a brazier. The town seemed much more prosperous than most. There were large cotton looms, where weaving was going on in the open air, as well as in a disused temple. Handsome carved window-frames delighted me so much that I determined to have some made for the women’s institute at Taiyuanfu. They were about a yard square in size with a good deal of carving, so the sum named (twenty dollars including carriage to Anshun, about fifty-five miles distant) did not seem excessive! It took us three days to get to Anshun, and the windows arrived within the fortnight stipulated. We picked them up later, and they formed rather a large item of our luggage, requiring an extra coolie.

As we neared Anshun the road was less mountainous and the villages better built. Many of the houses are of grey stone, some built with mortar, some without. There was a fine waterfall, a hundred and sixty feet in depth, into the Rhinoceros Pool, near the town of Chen Lun, and above it a five-span bridge of noble proportions. A busy market was going on in the town; and a funeral, with the usual paper horses and servants for burning at the grave, formed an additional interest to the gay crowd. There were a number of picturesque tribeswomen, looking as usual very sulky, and not mixing with the Chinese. From afar we saw the lofty turrets of a Roman Catholic Church, so we went to see what it was like. The architecture and fittings were entirely Western, and we had no sooner entered the church than the fine-looking old French priest came forward and greeted us. He invited us into his room and we had an interesting, long talk. He had been thirty-two years in China, but only two in this district, and seemed very discouraged. I asked about the numbers of converts, and he said there were about sixteen hundred, but added dejectedly that they were not at all satisfactory. How hard it must be to go on working under such circumstances, and with no hope of return to his own country.

“Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.”

Generally missionaries seem a wonderfully hopeful set of people, even under very adverse circumstances, and we came to a most cheerful group at Anshunfu, where we had a few days of welcome rest in their hospitable house.

Anshun is a very pretty town, with its shady trees, its winding waterways and handsome stone balustrades along them. On a picturesque bridge were shrines, which made a subject to delight an artist’s eye: indeed it was a continual trial to me to have so little time for drawing when there was such a wealth of material. Facing the house where we stayed was a temple transformed into a government school, and it had an ornamental wall such as I had not seen elsewhere. There were panels at intervals, about three and a half feet from the ground, of various sizes, with open stucco work, looking like designs from Æsop’s fables. They lent a great charm to the garden, in which the wall seemed to be only of decorative value. Throughout China the human figure and animals are used in all sorts of architectural ways which would never occur to us. Anshun is situated in a small plain, and a fine road leads to it with pailous (memorial arches) at intervals. We walked across the fields one day and climbed a neighbouring hill, surmounted by the usual temple; from it there was a magnificent view of all the country round. A lurid thunderstorm heightened the effect. There were oleanders in full bloom in the courtyard, and the priests were polite and friendly, bringing tea to us, while we waited for the storm to clear away.

“Lonely I stand
On the loneliest hill top.”

_Page 98_]

There is a hospital at Anshun built by the Arthington Fund, but as there is only one doctor attached to it, and he was away on furlough, the place was closed. As it is the only hospital for hundreds of miles, indeed there is only one other hospital in the province, for 11,300,000 people, this seemed a dreadful pity. The coming of my doctor was quite an event, especially for a lady who badly needed her advice. In the whole province there are only these two European hospitals, as far as I heard, and no Chinese ones.

We made Anshunfu our starting-point for a trip into the unfrequented mountains, where aboriginal tribes are to be found in great numbers. No census can be taken of them, and it is only by years of unremitting toil, in the face of continual danger, that missionaries have succeeded in making friends with them. Mr. Slichter, of the C.I.M., was our guide, and as soon as we left the city we struck up a pathway into the hills to the north of it. After several hours’ travelling we came to a river, which until recent years was the boundary, beyond which no foreigner was allowed to go because of the acute hostility felt by the tribes-people against all strangers. It was a rapid, swirling river, lying in a deep narrow gorge, and we were ferried across.

We climbed up a long hot ascent on the further side, and reached a Keh-lao village,[23] where a fair was going on. The contrast was extraordinary, quite as great as if we had gone from one European country into another. It was only with difficulty, and because he was known, that Mr. Slichter could persuade some one to boil water for us, and then it was only very little, whereas in any Chinese village you could get as much as you wanted. We spent about twelve hours reaching our destination—a village perched up on a steep hill-side. Seeing us from afar, a laughing group of Miao boys and girls came running down the path to greet us, looking a most picturesque group in their red, white and blue clothes.

In another chapter I shall try and give a detailed account of these people, so will for the present only say a little about the country. From the top of the crag on which the village of Ten-ten is situated there may be counted fourteen ranges stretching away into the far distance, and in such hollows as are practicable for agriculture, wheat, poppy, rice and hemp are grown. There are most curious trees, which we saw for the first time, called Rhus vernicifera, from which varnish is obtained. They are plentiful in the district, and itinerant tappers come round from time to time to hire their services to the owners, for the varnish is a valuable crop, but must be carefully handled. It is most poisonous, and people even lose their lives by handling it carelessly. We found Mrs. Slichter at Ten-ten; she had been seriously ill as the result of using a branch of the tree for a walking-stick. The varnish causes terrible pains in the head, loss of sight for several days, and an eruption of the hands rendering them useless for a time.

The first Miao church was built at Ten-ten, and would hardly be recognized as such, I fear, by the orthodox: it looked like a cross between a goods shed and a hall, with a ladder at each end leading to a couple of rooms to accommodate visitors. The only clerical detail was a pulpit, but close beside it was a cooking-stove, and in vain I protested that our meals were not to be prepared while service was going on. The people seemed to find it quite natural, and when Yao was not too concerned in his cooking he lent an interested ear to what was being said. One thing was clear, and that was that the congregation was thoroughly in earnest, and gave undivided attention to the service. It meant so much to them and especially to the women, who took part in the prayer-meeting quite simply and fervently. On the Sunday morning we were about one hundred people, who attended a baptismal service, which was performed in a dammed-up stream in the ricefields. It was extraordinarily picturesque to see the Miao in their short full-kilted skirts, trooping down the zigzag path to the spot, where twenty-five received baptism. They have names given them, as many, if not most of them, have none.