Chapter V: Part I: Old China and its People (3)

As we approached Chining-chou, the country became almost perfectly flat, a vast prairie. It was carefully cultivated everywhere, the kao-liang and poppy predominating. The soil was apparently rich, and the landscape was relieved from monotony by the green of the cultivated fields and the foliage of the village trees. Dominating all is the rather imposing walled city of Chining-chou. The high, strong wall, the handsome gates and towers, the trees bordering the little stream and the crowded streets looked quite metropolitan. With its imme- diate suburbs built Chinese fashion close to the wall, Chining- chou has 150,000 inhabitants. It is a business city with a considerable trade, the produce of a wide adjacent region being brought to it for shipment, as it is on the Grand Canal which gives easy and cheap facilities for exporting and importing freight. There is, moreover, no loss in exchange as the danger of shipping bullion silver makes the Chining business men eager to accept drafts for use in paying for the goods they buy in Shanghai. Consequently there is a better price for silver here than anywhere else in Shantung. The main street is narrow, shaded by matting laid on kao-liang stalks and lined with busy shops. Along the Grand Canal, there is a veritable ``Vanity Fair'' filled with clothing booths and deafening with the cries of itinerant vendors.

But the loneliness of the missionary in Chining-chou is great, for he is far from congenial companionship. The tragedies of life are particularly heavy at such an isolated post. Mr. Laughlin showed me the house where his wife's body lay for a month after her death in May, 1899. Then, with his nine-year old daughter, he took the body in a house-boat down the Grand Canal to Chin-kiang, a journey of sixteen days. What a heart-breaking journey it must have been as the clumsy boat crept slowly along the sluggish canal and the silent stars looked down on the lonely husband beside the coffin of his beloved wife. Yet he bravely returned to Chining-chou and while I travelled on, he remained with only Dr. Lyon for a companion. I was sorry to part with them for we had shared many long-to-be-remembered experiences, while at that time there was believed to be no small risk in remaining at such an isolated post. But Dr. Johnson and I had to go, and so early on the morning of June 17, we bade the brave fellows an affectionate good-bye and left them in that far interior city, standing at the East Gate till we were out of sight.

Fortunately, the day was fine for rain would have made the flat, black soil almost impassible. But as it was, we had a comfortable, dustless ride of sixty li to Yen-chou-fu, a city of unusually massive walls, whose 60,000 people are reputed to be the most fiercely anti-foreign in Shantung. Comparatively few foreigners had been seen in this region and many of them had been mobbed. The Roman Catholic priests, who are the only missionaries here, have repeatedly been attacked, while an English traveller was also savagely assaulted by these turbulent conservatives. But the Roman Catholics with characteristic determination fought it out, the German consul coming from Peking to support them, and at the time of my visit, they were building a splendid church, the money like that for the Chining-chou cathedral, coming from the indemnity for the murder of the two priests in 1897, which was in this diocese. Though great crowds stared silently at us, no disrespect was shown. On the contrary, we found that by order of the district magistrate an inn had been specially prepared for us, with a plentiful supply of rugs and cushions and screens, while a few minutes after our arrival, the magistrate sent with his compliments a feast of twenty-five dishes. Another stage of nine miles brought us at four o'clock to the famous holy city of China, Ku-fu, the home and the grave of Confucius.

Leaving our shendzas at an inn, we mounted the cavalry horses of our escort and hurried to the celebrated temple which stands on the site of Confucius' house. But to our keen disappointment, the massive gates were closed. The keeper, in response to our knocks, peered through a crevice, and explained that it was the great feast of the fifth day of the fifth month, that the Duke was offering sacrifices, and that no one, not even officials, could enter till the sacrifices were completed. ``When will that be?'' we queried. ``They will continue all night and all day to-morrow,'' was the reply. We urged the shortness of our stay and solemnly promised to keep out of the Duke's way. The keeper's eyes watered as he imagined a present, but he replied that he did not dare let us in as his orders were strict and disobedience might cost him his position if not his life. So we sorrowfully turned away, and pushing through the dense throng which had swiftly assembled at the sight of a foreigner, we rode through the city and along the far- famed Spirit Road to the Most Holy Grove in which lies the body of Confucius. It is three li, about a mile, from the city gate. The road is shaded by ancient cedars and is called the Spirit Road because the spirit of Confucius is believed to walk back and forth upon it by night.

The famous cemetery is in three parts. The outer is said to be fifteen miles in circumference and is the burial-place of all who bear the honoured name of Confucius. Within, there is a smaller enclosure of about ten acres, which is the family burial place of the dukes who are lineal descendants of Confucius, mighty men who rank with the proudest governors of provinces. Within this second enclosure, is the Most Holy Cemetery itself, a plot of about two acres, shaded like the others by fine old cedars and cypresses. Here are only three graves, marked by huge mounds under which lie the dust of Confucius, his son and his grandson. That of the Sage, we estimated to be twenty-five feet high and 250 feet in circumference. In front of it is a stone monument about fifteen feet high, four feet wide and sixteen inches thick. Lying prone before that is another stone of nearly the same size supported by a heavy stone pedestal. There is no name, but on the upright monument are Chinese characters which Dr. Charles Johnson, my travelling companion, translated: ``The Acme of Perfection and Learning- Promoting King,'' or more freely--``The Most Illustrious Sage and Princely Teacher.''

Uncut grass and weeds grew rankly upon the mounds and all over the cemetery, giving everything an unkempt appearance. One species is said to grow nowhere else in China and to have such magical power in interpreting truth that if a leaf is laid upon an abstruse passage of Confucius, the meaning will immediately become clear. There are several small buildings in the enclosure, but dust and decay reign in all, for there is no merit in repairing a building that some one else has erected. As with his house, the Chinese will spend money freely to build a temple, but after that he does nothing. So even in the most sacred places, arches and walls and columns are usually crumbling, grounds are dirty and pavement stones out of place.

A feeling of awe came over me as I remembered that, with the possible exception of Buddha, the man whose dust lay before me had probably influenced more human beings than any other man whom the world has seen. Even Christ Himself has thus far not been known to so many people as Confucius, nor has any nation in which Christ is known so thoroughly accepted His teachings as China has accepted those of Confucius. Dr. Legge indeed declares that ``after long study of his character and opinions, I am unable to regard him as a great man,'' while Dr. Gibson ``seeks in vain in his recorded life and words for the secret of his power,'' and can only conjecture in explanation that ``he is for all time the typical Chinaman; but his greatness lies in his displaying the type on a grand scale, not in creating it.'' But it is difficult even for the non-Chinese mind to look at such a man with unbiassed eyes. Surely we need not begrudge the meed of greatness to one who has moulded so many hundreds of millions of human beings for 2,400 years and who is more influential at the end of that period than at its beginning. Grant that ``he is for all time the typical Chinaman.'' Could a small man have incarnated ``for all time'' the spirit of one-third of the human race? All over China the evidences of Confucius' power can be seen. Temples rise on every hand. Ancestral tablets adorn every house. The writings of the sage are diligently studied by the whole population. When, centuries ago, a jealous Emperor ruthlessly burned the Confucian books, patient scholars reproduced them, and to prevent a recurrence of such iconoclastic fury, the Great Confucian Temple and the Hall of Classics in Peking were erected and the books were inscribed on long rows of stone monuments so that they could never be destroyed again. As a token of the present attitude of the Imperial family, the Emperor once in a decade proceeds in solemn state to this temple and enthroned there expounds a passage of the sacred writings. For more than two millenniums, the boys of the most numerous people in the world have committed to memory the Confucian primer which declares that ``affection between father and son, concord between husband and wife, kindness on the part of the elder brother and deference on the part of the younger, order between seniors and juniors, sincerity between friends and associates, respect on the part of the ruler and loyalty on that of the minister--these are the ten righteous courses equally binding on all men;'' that ``the five regular constituents of our moral nature are benevolence, righteousness, propriety, knowledge, and truth;'' and that ``the five blessings are long life wealth, tranquillity, desire for virtue and a natural death.''

Surely these are noble principles. That their influence has been beneficial in many respects, it would be folly to deny. They have lifted the Chinese above the level of many other Asiatic nations by creating a more stable social order, by inculcating respect for parents and rulers, and by so honouring the mother that woman has a higher position in China than in most other non-Christian lands.

And yet Confucianism has been and is the most formidable obstacle to the regeneration of China. While it teaches some great truths, it ignores others that are vital. It has lifted the Chinese above the level of barbarism only to fix them almost immovably upon a plane considerably lower than Christianity. It has developed such a smug satisfaction with existing conditions that millions are well-nigh impervious to the influences of the modern world. It has debased respect for parents into a blind worship of ancestors so that a dead father, who may have been an ignorant and vicious man, takes the place of the living and righteous God. It has fostered not only premature marriages but concubinage in the anxiety to have sons who will care for parents in age and minister to them after death. It makes the child virtually a slave to the caprice or passion of the parent. It leads to a reverence for the past that makes change a disrespect to the dead, so that all progress is made exceedingly difficult and society becomes fossilized. ``Whatever is is right'' and ``custom'' is sacred. Man is led so to centralize his thought on his own family that he becomes selfish and provincial in spirit and conduct, with no outlook beyond his own narrow sphere. Expenditures which the poor can ill- afford are remorselessly exacted for the maintenance of ancestral worship so that the living are often impoverished for the sake of the dead. $151,752,000 annually, ancestral worship is said to cost--a heavy drain upon a people the majority of whom spend their lives in the most abject poverty, while the development of true patriotism and a strong and well-governed State has been effectively prevented by making the individual solicitous only for his own family and callously indifferent to the welfare of his country. Confucianism therefore is China's weakness as well as China's strength, the foe of all progress, the stagnation of all life.

Confucianism, too, halts on the threshold of life's profoundest problems. It has only dead maxims for the hour of deepest need. It gives no vision of a future beyond the grave. It is virtually an agnostic code of morals with some racial variations. Wu Ting Fang, formerly Chinese Minister to the United States, frankly declares that ``Confucianism is not a religion in the practical sense of the word,'' and that ``Confucius would be called an agnostic in these days.'' To ``the Venerable Teacher'' himself, philosophy opened no door of hope. Asked about this one day by a troubled inquirer, he dismissed the question with the characteristic aphorism-- ``Imperfectly acquainted with life, how can we know death?'' And there the myriad millions of Confucianists have dully stood ever since, their faces towards the dead past, the future a darkness out of which no voice comes.

But just because their illustrious guide took them to the verge of the dark unknown and left them there, other teachers came in to occupy the region left so invitingly open. Less rational than Confucius, their success showed anew that the human mind cannot rest in a spiritual vacuum and that if faith does not enter, superstition will. Taoism and Buddhism proceeded to people the air and the future with strange and awful shapes. Popular Chinese belief as to the future is gruesomely illustrated in the Temple of Horrors in Canton with its formidable collection of wooden figures illustrating the various modes of punishment--sawing, decapitation, boiling in oil, covering with a hot bell, etc. At funerals, bits of perforated paper are freely scattered about in the hope that the inquisitive spirits will stop to examine them and thus give the body a chance to pass. In any Chinese cemetery, one may see little tables in front of the graves covered with tea, sweetmeats and sheets of gilt and silver paper, so that if a spirit is hungry, thirsty or in need of funds, it can get drink, food or money from the gold or silver mines (paper).

In the Temple for Sickness, in Canton, where multitudes of sufferers pray to the gods for healing, we saw an old woman kneeling before a statue of Buddha, holding aloft two blocks of wood and then throwing them to the floor. If the flat side of one and the oval side of the other were uppermost, the omen was good, but if the same sides were up, it was bad. Others shook a box of numbered sticks till one popped out and then a paper bearing the corresponding number gave the issue of the disease. The stones of the court were worn by many feet and the pathos of the place was pitiful.

Theoretically, ``Confucianism is a system of morals, Taoism a deification of nature and Buddhism a system of metaphysics. But in practice all three have undergone many modifications.

With every age the character of Taoism has changed. The philosophy of its founder is now only an antiquarian curiosity. Modern Taoism is of such a motley character as almost to defy any attempt to educe a well-ordered system from its chaos.''[16] As for Buddhism, its founder would not recognize it, if he could visit China to-day. The lines:--

``Ten Buddhist nuns, and nine are bad; The odd one left is doubtless mad----''

are suggestive of the depth to which the religion of Guatama has fallen.

[16] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 62, 72.

Indeed, it would be a mistake to suppose that the Chinese people are divided into three religious bodies as, for example, Americans are divided into Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews. Each individual Chinese is at the same time a Confucian, a Buddhist and a Taoist, observing the ceremonies of all three faiths as circumstances may require, a Confucian when he worships his ancestors, a Buddhist when he implores the aid of the Goddess of Mercy, and a Taoist when he seeks to propitiate the omnipresent fung-shuy (spirits of wind and water), and he has no more thought of inconsistency than an American who is at the same time a Methodist, a Republican and a Mason. Dr. S. H. Chester says that when he was in Shanghai, he saw a Taoist priest conducting Confucian worship in a Buddhist temple. Even if inconsistency were proved to the Chinese, he would not be in the least disturbed for he cares nothing for such considerations. ``Hence it is that the Chinese religion of to-day has become an inextricable blending of the three systems.''[17] ``The ancient simplicity of the state religion has been so far corrupted as to combine in one ritual gods, ghosts, flags and cannon. It has become at once essentially polytheistic and pantheistic.''[18]

[17] Gibson, ``Mission Methods and Mission Policy in South China.''

[18] Williams, ``Middle Kingdom.''

The result is that the average Chinese lives a life of terror under the sway of imaginary demons. He erects a rectangular pillar in front of his door so that the dreaded spirits cannot enter his house without making an impossible turn. He gives his tiled roof an upward slant at each of the eaves so that any spirit attempting to descend will be shunted off into space. Nor is this superstition confined to the lower classes. The haughty, foreign-travelled Li Hung Chang abjectly grovelled on the bank of the Yellow River to propitiate an alleged demon that was believed to be the cause of a disastrous flood, and as late as June 4, 1903, the North-China Daily News published the following imperial decree:

``Owing to the continued drought, in spite of our prayers for rain, we hereby command Chen Pih, Governor of Peking, to proceed to the Dragon temple at Kanshan-hsien, Chih-li Province, and bring from thence to Peking an iron tablet possessing rain-producing virtues, which we will place up for adoration and thereby bring forth the much-desired rain.''

And so the followers of the most ``rational'' of teachers are among the most superstitious people in the world. In attempting to clear the mind of error, the great agnostic simply left it ``empty, swept and garnished for seven other spirits worse than the first.''

As in the deepening twilight we thoughtfully left the last resting-place of the mighty dead, a platoon of thirty Chinese soldiers approached, drew their swords, dropped upon one knee and shouted. The movement was so unexpected and the shout so startlingly strident that my horse shied in terror and I had visions of immediate massacre. But having learned that politeness is current coin the world over, as soon as I could control my prancing horse, I raised my hat and bowed. Whereupon the soldiers rose, wheeled into line and marched ahead of us to our inn in the city. Dr. Johnson explained that the words shouted in unison were: ``May the Great Man have Peace,'' and that the platoon was an escort of honour from the yamen of the district magistrate!

On the way, we stopped to visit the temple of Yen, the favorite disciple whose early death left Confucius disconsolate. The grounds are spacious. There is a remarkably fine tree, tall, graceful and with silvery white bark. A huge stone turtle was reverently kissed by one of our escort, who fondly believed that he who kissed the turtle's mouth would never be ill. But as usual in China, the temple itself, though originally it must have been beautiful, is now crumbling in decay.

It was late when we returned, and as we were about to retire, wearied with the toils of the day, the district magistrate called with an imposing retinue and cordially inquired whether we had seen all that we wished to see. When we replied that we had been unable to enter the great temple, he graciously said that he would have pleasure in informing the Duke, who would be sure to arrange for our visit. The result was a message at two o'clock in the morning to the effect that we might visit the temple at daylight in the interval between the cessation of the sacrifices of the night and their resumption at seven o'clock in the morning. Accordingly we rose at three o'clock, and after a hurried breakfast by candle-light, we proceeded to the temple. About a hundred Chinese were awaiting us, among them two men in official dress. We did not deem it courteous to ask who or what they were, but we supposed them to be from the magistrate's yamen, and as they were evidently familiar with the temple, we gladly complied with their cordial invitation to follow them.

I wish I had power to describe adequately all we saw in that vast enclosure of about thirty acres, with its stately trees, its paved avenues, its massive monuments, and, above all, its imposing temple and scores of related buildings. One was the Lieh Kew Kwei Chang Tien, the Temple of the Wall of the Many Countries. Here are 120 tablets, each about sixteen by twenty-two inches, and in the centre three larger ones measuring two feet in width by four and a-half feet in height. In front of these is a stone three and a-half feet by four and a-half, and bearing the inscription: ``Tribute from the Ten Thousand Countries of the World.'' The Chinese solemnly believe that in these tablets all the nations of the earth have acknowledged the preeminence of Confucius.

Then we visited three gloomy buildings where the animals for sacrifice are killed--one for cattle, one for sheep and one for pigs. Beyond them, we entered temples to the wife of Confucius, to his parents and to the ``Five Generations of Ancestors,'' though the last-mentioned contains tablets to nine generations instead of five. On every side are scores of monuments, erected by or in honour of famous kings, some of them by the monarchs of dynasties which flourished before the Christian era.

Most notable of all is the great temple of the sage himself, standing well back on a spacious stone-paved terrace, around which runs a handsome marble balustrade. The eye is at once arrested by the twenty-eight noble marble pillars, ten in front, ten in the rear and four at each end. The ten in front are round and elaborately carved, as magnificent a series of columns as I ever saw. The others are smooth, octagonal pillars, but traced with various designs in black.

Within, there are twelve other columns about four feet in diameter and twenty-five feet high, each cut from a single tree and beautifully polished. Naturally, the central object of interest is a figure of Confucius of heroic size but impossible features. In front is the tablet with costly lacquered ornaments and pedestals, and an altar on which were a bullock and two pigs, each carefully scraped and dressed and lying with heads towards the statue and tablet. In several other temples, notably in the one to the Five Generations of Ancestors, other animals were lying, some evidently offered the day before and others awaiting the worship of the day now beginning. Altogether I counted nineteen sacrificial animals--one bullock, eight sheep and ten pigs. The great temple is of noble proportions, with an overhanging roof of enormous size but constructed on such graceful lines as to be exquisitely beautiful. But within dust reigns, while without as usual the grass and weeds grow unchecked.

Last of all we visited the library, though the name is a misnomer, for there are no books in it and our courteous guides said there never had been. We ascended the narrow stairs leading from the vast, empty, dusty room on the lower floor through an equally empty second story to the third and topmost story, which is the home of hundreds of doves. Going out on the narrow balustrade under the eaves in the gray dawn of the morning, I looked upon the gorgeous gilded roof of the temple near by and then down upon the many ancient buildings, the darkly solemn pines, the massive monuments resting on ponderous stone turtles, and the group of Chinese standing among the shadows and with faces turned curiously upward. Suddenly a dove flew over my head and then the sun rose slowly and majestically above the sombre tree-tops, throwing splendid floods of light upon us who stood aloft. But the Chinese below were in the sombre shades of a night that for them had not yet fully ended. I would fain believe that the physical was a parable of the spiritual. All the maxims of the Acme of Perfection and Learning-Promoting King have not brought the Chinese out of moral twilight. After all these centuries of ceaseless toil, they still remain amid the mists and shadows. But their faces are beginning to turn towards the light of a day whose sun already touches the mountain-tops. Some even now are in that ``marvellous light,'' and it cannot be long before shining hosts of God shall pour down the mountain-sides, chasing on noiseless feet and across wide plains the swiftly retreating night ``until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.''

At the outer gate, we bade good-bye to the dignified officials who had so hospitably conducted us through this venerable and historic place and who had taken such kindly pains to explain its ancient relics and customs. Who were they? we secretly wondered. Imagine our feelings when the lieutenant in command of our escort afterwards informed us that they were the guardian of the temple and the Duke himself!

Leaving the city of the mighty dead, we journeyed through a lovely region guarded by distant mountains. At the walled city of Si-sui, sixty li distant, soldiers met us and apparently the whole population lined the streets as we rode to our inn, where the yamen secretary was awaiting us with a feast. This inn, too, had been specially cleaned, and there were cushions, red cloths for the seats, and a screen for the door. In the afternoon, the country became rougher. But while the soil was thinner, the scenery was finer, an undulating region traversed by a shining river and bounded by mountains which gradually drew nearer. One hundred and ten li from Ku-fu, we stopped for the night at Pien-kiao, a small city with an unusually poor inn but a magnificent spring. It gushed up over an area twenty-five feet square and with such volume that the stream ran away like a mill-race. The Emperor Kien Lung built a retaining wall about the spring and a temple and summer- house adjoining. The wall is as solid as ever, but only a few crumbling pillars and fragments remain of the temple and pavilion. The Emperor affirmed that he was told in a vision that if he would build a stone boat, the waters of the spring would float it to Nanking whither he wished to go. So he built the boat of heavy cut stone, with a twelve-foot beam and a length of fifty-five feet. It is still there with the prow five feet above the ground, but the rest of the boat has sunk almost to the level of the earth about it. Is the old Emperor's idea any more absurd to us than our iron boats would have been to him?

The sun struggled long with heavy mists the following morning and the air was so cool that I had to wrap myself in a blanket in the shendza. By eight, the sun gained the victory and we had another breezy, perfect June day. But the road was stony and trying beyond anything we had yet seen. The villages were evidently poorer, as might be expected on such a rocky soil. The people stared silently and did not so often return my smiles. Whether they were sullen or simply boorish and unaccustomed to foreigners I could only conjecture. Few white men had been seen there.

A hard day's journey of 140 li through a rocky region brought us to Fei-hsien. Rain was falling the next morning and the Chinese muleteers do not like to travel in rain. But the prospect was for a steady pour and as we were in a wretched inn and only ninety li from Ichou-fu, we wanted to go on. A present of 600 small cash for each muleteer (twenty cents) overcame all scruples. Just as I had comfortably ensconced myself in my shendza with an oilcloth on top and a rubber blanket in front, I saw a centipede on my leg, but I managed to slay him before he bit me. By nine, the rain ceased and though the clouds still threatened, we had a cool and comfortable ride through hundreds of fields of peanuts, indigo and millet to I-tang, where we stopped for tiffin at a squalid inn kept by a tall, dilapidated looking Chinese, who rejoiced in the name of Confucius. He was really a descendant of the sage and was very proud of the fact that his bones were in due time to rest in the sacred cemetery at Ku-fu.

By 5:40 P. M. we reached Ichou-fu, where the solitary Rev. W. W. Faris was glad to see another white man. A stay of several days was marked by many pleasant incidents. There was much of interest for a visitor to see. The mission work at Ichou-fu, Presbyterian, includes two hospitals, one for men and one for women, a chapel and separate day schools for boys and girls. The church has about a hundred members and in the outstations there are ten other organized churches besides ten unorganized congregations. All these churches and congregations provide their own chapels and pay their own running expenses. Here also the officials were most courteous. The Prefect, who promptly called with a retinue of fifty soldiers and attendants, was a masterful looking man who conversed with intelligence on a wide variety of topics. The day before our departure, we gave a feast to the leading men of the city in return for their many courtesies. Every invitation was accepted and thirty-five guests were present. They remained till late and were apparently highly pleased.

Late in the evening, a youth who had painfully walked 180 li, came to Dr. Johnson's dispensary and presented the following note of introduction:

``Our office a servant who getting a yellow sick, which suffered a few year and cured for nothing. he trusted me to beg you to save his sick and I now ordered him to going before you to beg you remedy facely. With many thanks to you, ``Yours sincerely, ``V. T. GEE.''

Having done all that was possible in so short a time to ``save his sick,'' we resumed our journey, thirty Chinese Christians accompanying us to the River I, a li from the city. The atmosphere was gloriously clear and on the second day out, crossing some high ridges, we had superb views of wide cultivated valleys, and of Ku-chou, a famous city that is said to contain more literary graduates than any other city of its size in the province.

Then followed a more level country with interminable fields of kao-liang and many orchards of walnuts, pears and cherries, while low mountains rose in the background. Men and horses were tired after our long and hard journey, and the mules' backs were becoming very sore. But the end drew near and the fifth day from Ichow-fu we reached Yueh-kou, the border of the German hinterland. The German line is near Kiaochou, but the rule is that Chinese soldiers must not come beyond this point, 100 li from the line, and that German soldiers shall not cross it going the other way except on the line of the railroad. Here therefore our escort had to leave us, as Chinese and Germans have agreed that any armed men crossing the line may be fired on, and even if there should be no casualty, both the German and Chinese authorities might justly have protested if Americans violated the compact. I suggested going on without an escort to our proposed night stop thirty li further. But my more experienced companions thought it dangerous to spend the night alone at an inn within this belt, as the villagers near the line were as bitter against foreigners as any in the province, the German brusqueness and ruthlessness having greatly exasperated them.

So we spent the night at Yueh-kou. No one interfered with us the next day and by getting an early start, we covered ninety long li to Kiao-chou by noon. After five weeks in a mule litter, it seemed wonderful to make 138 li in three hours in a railway car. By 6:50 P. M., we reached Tsing-tau, having, the missionaries said, succeeded in ``hustling the East to a remarkable degree.'' My note-book reads--``A bath, clean clothes, a hot supper and a good night's sleep removed the last vestige of weariness.''

VII

SOME EXPERIENCES OF A TRAVELLER--FEASTS, INNS AND SOLDIERS

THE hardships of interior travelling were less than I had supposed. It is true that there were many experiences which, if enumerated, would make a formidable list. But each as it arose appeared insignificant. As a whole, the trip was as enjoyable as any vacation tour. The weather was as a rule fine. The sun was often hot in the middle of the day, but cool breezes usually tempered the heat of the afternoon, while the nights required the protection of blankets. There was some rain at times, but not enough to impede seriously our progress. It was altogether the most perfect May and June weather I have ever seen. Nor was it exceptional, according to Dr. Charles Johnson who has spent many years in North China. But of course I saw Shantung at its most favourable period. July and August are wet and hot, while the winters are clear and cold.

I found a trunk an unmitigated nuisance. Though it was made to order for a pack-mule, no pack-mules could be hired in that harvest season, and the trunk was too heavy for one side of a donkey, even after transferring all practicable articles to the shendza. So it had to be put in a cart, and as a cart cannot keep up with a shendza, I was often separated from my trunk for days at a time. Besides, a couple valises would have held all necessary clothing anyway. I took a light folding cot and a bag held a thin mattress, small pillow, sheets and two light blankets, so that I had a very comfortable bed under the always necessary mosquito net.

We also took a supply of tinned food to which we could usually add by purchase en route chickens and eggs, while occasionally in the proper season, we could secure string-beans, onions, cucumbers, apricots, peanuts, walnuts and radishes. So we fared well. The native food cannot be wisely depended upon by a foreigner. He cannot maintain his strength, as the poorer Chinese do, on a diet of rice and unleavened bread, while the food of the well-to-do classes, when it can be had, is apt to be so greasy and peculiar as to incite his digestive apparatus to revolt. Indeed, a Chinese feast is one of his most serious experiences. Most heartily, indeed, did I appreciate the kindly motives of the magistrates who invited me to these feasts, for their purpose was as generously hospitable as the purpose of any American who invites a visitor to dinner. But the Chinese bill-of-fare includes dishes that are rather trying to a Christian palate, and good form requires the guest to taste at least each dish, for if he fails to do so, he makes his host ``lose face''--a serious breach of etiquette in China. For example, here is the menu of a typical Chinese feast to which I was invited, the dishes being served in the order given, sweets coming first and soup towards the last in this land of topsy-turveydom:

1. Small cakes (five kinds), sliced pears, candied peanuts, raw water-chestnuts, cooked water-chestnuts, hard-boiled ducks' eggs (cut into small pieces), candied walnuts, honied walnuts, shredded chicken, apricot seeds, sliced pickled plums, sliced dried smoked ham (cut into tiny pieces), shredded sea moss, watermelon seeds, shrimps, bamboo sprouts, jellied haws. All the above dishes were cold. Then followed hot:

2. Shrimps served in the shell with vinegar, sea-slugs with shredded chicken, bits of sweetened pork and shredded dough --the pork and sea-slugs being cooked and served in fragrant oil.

3. Bamboo sprouts, stewed chicken kidneys.

4. Spring chicken cooked crisp in oil.

5. Stewed sea-slugs with ginger root and bean curd, stewed fungus with reed roots and ginger tops (all hot).

6. Tarts with candied jelly, sugar dumplings with dates.

7. Hot pudding made of ``the eight precious vegetables,'' consisting of dates, watermelon seeds, chopped walnuts, chopped chestnuts, preserved oranges, lotus seeds, and two kinds of rice, all mixed and served in syrup--a delicious dish.

8. Shelled shrimps with roots of reeds and bits of hard- boiled eggs, all in one bowl with fragrant oil, biscuits coated with sweet seeds.

9. Glutinous rice in little layers with browned sugar between, minced pork dumplings, steamed biscuits.

10. Omelette with sea-slugs and bamboo sprouts, all in oil, bits of chicken stewed in oil, pork with small dumplings of flour and starch.

11. Stewed pigs' kidneys, shrimps stewed in oil, date pie.

12. Vermicelli and egg soup.

13. Stewed pork balls, reed roots, bits of hard-boiled yolks of eggs, all in oil.

14. Birds' nest soup.

The appetite being pretty well sated by this time, the following delicacies were served to taper off with:

15. Chicken boiled in oil, pork swimming in a great bowl of its own fat, stewed fish stomachs, egg soup.

16. Steamed biscuit.

Tea was served from the beginning and throughout the feast. It was made on the table by pouring hot water into a small pot half full of tea leaves, the pot being refilled as needed. The tea was served without cream or sugar, and was mild and delicious. Rice whiskey in tiny cups is usually served at feasts, though it was often omitted from the feasts given to us. The Chinese assert that the alcohol is necessary ``to cut the grease.'' There is certainly enough grease to cut.

The guests sit at small round tables, each accommodating about four. There are, of course, no plates or knives or forks though small china spoons are used for the soups. All the food is cut into small pieces before being brought to the table, so that no further cutting is supposed to be necessary. Each article of food is brought on in a single dish, which is placed in the centre of the table, and then each guest helps himself out of the common dish with his chop-sticks, the same chop- sticks being used during the entire meal. It is considered a mark of distinguished courtesy for the host to fish around in the dish with his own chop-sticks for a choice morsel and place it in front of the guest. With profound emotion, at almost every feast that I attended in China, I saw my considerate hosts take the chop-sticks which had made many trips to their own mouths, stir around in the central dish for a particularly fine titbit and deposit it on the table before me. And of course, not to be outdone in politeness, I ate these dainty morsels with smiles of gratified pride. As each of the Chinese at the table deemed himself my host, and as the Chinese are extremely polite and attentive to their guests, the table soon became wet and greasy from the pieces of pork, slugs and chicken placed upon it as well as from the drippings from the chop-sticks in their constant trips from the serving bowls.

However, two small brass bowls, fitting together, are placed beside each guest, who is expected to sip a little water from the upper one, rinse his mouth with it and expectorate it into the lower one. The emotion of the foreign visitor is intensified when he learns that it is counted polite to make all the noise possible by smacking the lips as a sign that the food is delicious, sucking the tea or soup noisily from the spoon to show that it is hot, and belching to show that it is enjoyed. Often, a dignified official would let his tea stand until it was cold, but when he took it up, he would suck it with a loud noise as if it were scalding hot, as he was too polite to act as if it were cold.

But the American or European, who inwardly groans at a Chinese repast and who felicitates himself on the alleged superior methods of his own race, may well consider how his own customs impress a Celestial. A Chinese gentleman who was making a tour of Europe and America wrote to a relative in China as follows:

``You cannot civilize these foreign devils. They are beyond redemption. They will live for weeks and months without touching a mouthful of rice, but they eat the flesh of bullocks and sheep in enormous quantities. That is why they smell so badly; they smell like sheep themselves. Every day they take a bath to rid themselves of their disagreeable odours but they do not succeed. Nor do they eat their meat cooked in small pieces. It is carried into the room in large chunks, often half raw, and they cut and slash and tear it apart. They eat with knives and prongs. It makes a civilized being perfectly nervous. One fancies himself in the presence of sword-swallowers. They even sit down at the same table with women, and the latter are served first, reversing the order of nature.''

So I humbly adapted myself as best I could to Chinese customs and learned to like many of the natives' dishes, though to the last, there were some that I merely nibbled to ``save the face'' of mine host. Some of the dishes were really excellent and as a rule all were well-cooked, although the oil in which much of the food was steeped made it rather greasy. My digestive apparatus is pretty good, but it would take a copper- lined stomach to partake without disaster of a typical Chinese feast. But for that matter so it would to eat a traditional New England dinner of boiled salt pork, corned beef, cabbage, turnips, onions and potatoes, followed by a desert of mince pie and plum pudding and all washed down by copious draughts of hard cider.

Chinese inns do not impoverish even the economical traveller. Our bill for our tiffin stop was usually 100 small cash, a little more than three cents, for our entire party of about a score of men and animals. For the night, the common charge was 700 cash, twenty-three cents. Travellers are expected to provide their own food and bedding and to pay a small extra sum for the rice and fodder used by their servants and mules, but even then the cost appears ridiculously small to a foreigner. Still, the most thoroughly seasoned traveller can hardly consider a Chinese inn a comfortable residence. It is simply a rough, one-story building enclosing an open courtyard. The rooms are destitute of furniture except occasionally a rude table. The floor is the beaten earth, foul with the use of scores and perhaps hundreds of years. The windows are covered with oiled paper which admits only a dim light and no air at all. The walls are begrimed with smoke and covered with cobwebs. Across the end of the room is the inevitable kang--a brick platform under which the cooking fire is built and on which the traveller squats by day and sleeps by night. The unhappy white man who has not been prudent enough to bring a cot with him feels as if he were sleeping on a hot stove with ``the lid off.''

The inns between Ichou-fu and Chining-chou were the poorest I saw, and if a man has stopped in one of them, he has been fairly initiated into the discomforts of travelling in China. But wherever one goes, the heat and smoke and bad air, together with the vermin which literally swarms on the kang and floor and walls, combine to make a night in a Chinese inn an experience that is not easily forgotten. However, the foreign traveller soon learns, perforce, to be less fastidious than at home and I found myself hungry enough to eat heartily and tired enough to sleep soundly in spite of the dirt and bugs. But the heat and bad air as the summer advanced were not so easily mastered, and so I began to sleep in the open courtyard, finding chattering Chinese and squealing mules less objectionable than the foul-smelling, vermin-infested inns, since outside I had at least plenty of cool, fresh air.

There is no privacy in a Chinese inn. The doors, when there are any, are innocent of locks and keys, while the Chinese guests as well as the innkeeper's family and the people of the neighbourhood have an inquisitiveness that is not in the least tempered by bashfulness. But nothing was ever stolen, though some of our supplies must have been attractive to many of the poverty stricken men who crowded about us. On one occasion, an inn-employee, who was sent to exchange a bank-note for cash, did not return. There was much excited jabbering, but Mr. Laughlin firmly though kindly held the innkeeper responsible and that worthy admitted that he knew who had taken the money and refunded it. So all was peace. The innkeeper was probably in collusion with the thief. This was our only trouble of the kind, though we slept night after night in the public inns with all our goods lying about wholly unprotected. Occasionally, especially in the larger towns, there was a night watchman. But he was a noisy nuisance. To convince his employers that he was awake, he frequently clapped together two pieces of wood. All night long that strident clack, clack, clack, resounded every few seconds. It is an odd custom, for of course it advertises to thieves the location of the watchman. But there is much in China that is odd to an American.

On a tour in Asia, the foreigner who does not wish to be ill will exercise reasonable care. It looks smart to take insufficient sleep, snatch a hurried meal out of a tin can, drink unboiled water and walk or ride in the sun without a pith hat or an umbrella. Some foreigners who ought to know better are careless about these things and good-naturedly chaff one who is more particular. But while one should not be unnecessarily fussy, yet if he is courageous enough to be sensible, he will not only preserve his health, but be physically benefited by his tour, while the heedless man will probably be floored by dysentery or even if he escapes that scourge will reach his destination so worn out that he must take days or perhaps weeks to recuperate. I was not ill a day, made what Dr. Bergen called ``the record tour of Shantung,'' and came out in splendid health and spirits just because I had nerve enough to insist on taking reasonable time for eating and sleeping, boiling my drinking water, and buying the fresh vegetables and fruit with which the country abounded. From this view-point, Dr. Charles F. Johnson, who escorted me from Chining-chou to Tsing-tau, was a model. With no loss of time, with but trifling additional expense and with comparatively little extra trouble, he had an appetizing table, while water bottles and fruit tins were always cooled in buckets of well water so that they were grateful to a dusty, thirsty throat. It is not difficult to make oneself fairly comfortable in travelling even when nearly all modern conveniences are wanting and it pays to take the necessary trouble.

Throughout the tour, we were watched in a way that was suggestive. When United States Consul Fowler first told me that Governor Yuan Shih Kai would send a military escort with me, I said that I was not proud, that I did not care to go through Shantung with the pomp and panoply of war, that I was on a peaceful, conciliatory errand, and preferred to travel with only my missionary companions. But he replied that while the province was then quiet, no one could tell what an hour might bring forth, that in the tension that existed even a local and sporadic attack on a foreigner might be a signal for a new outbreak, that the Governor was trying to keep the people in hand, and that as he was held responsible for consequences he must be allowed to have his own men in charge of a foreign party that purposed to journey so far into the interior. So, of course, I yielded.

When I lifted up my eyes and looked on the escort at Kiao- chou, I felt that my fears of pomp and panoply had been groundless, for the ``escort'' consisted of two disreputable- looking coolies who had apparently been picked up on the street and who were armed with antiquated flint-locks that were more dangerous to their bearers than to an enemy. I am sure that these ``guards'' would have been the first to run at the slightest sign of danger. We did not see them again till we reached Kaomi, where we gave them a present and sent them back, glad to be rid of them. We afterwards learned that they were only the retainers of the local Kiao-chou yamen to see us to the border of the hinterland, which Governor Yuan's troops were not permitted to cross.

But the men who met us at the border were soldiers of another type--powerful looking cavalrymen on excellent horses. Remembering the stories we had heard regarding the murder of foreigners by Chinese troops who had been sent ostensibly to guard them, we were relieved to find that there were only three of them, and as there were three of us, we felt safe, for we believed that in an emergency we could whip them. When on leaving Wei-hsien the number increased to five and then to six, we became dubious. But we concluded that as we were active, stalwart men, we might in a pinch manage twice our number of Chinese soldiers or, if worst came to worst, as we were unencumbered by women, children or luggage, we could sprint, on the old maxim,

``He that fights and runs away Will live to fight another day.''

But when a little later, the force grew to eleven and then to fifteen, we were hopelessly out-classed, especially as they were well-mounted and armed not only with swords but with modern magazine rifles.

The result, however, proved that our fears were groundless, for the men were good soldiers, intelligent, respectful, well- drilled, and thoroughly disciplined. They treated us with strict military etiquette, standing at attention and saluting in the most approved military fashion whenever they spoke to us or we to them. I was not accustomed to travelling in such state. Our three shendzas meant six mules and three muleteers, one for each shendza. Our cook and ``boy'' each had a donkey, and a pack-mule was necessary for our food supplies. So including the men and horses of the escort, we usually had nineteen men and twenty animals and a part of the time we had even a larger number. We therefore made quite a procession, and attracted considerable attention. I suspect, however, that some of those shrewd Chinese were not deceived as to my humble station at home for one man asked the missionary who accompanied me whether I travelled with an escort in America!