Chapter XVIII: From Wan Hsien to San Tsan-Pu

Finding that it was impossible for any European to accompany me, I decided to venture on the journey of 300 miles to Paoning Fu alone, and to buy my own experience. The land journey developed into one of about 1200 miles, and was accomplished with one serious mishap and one great disappointment. It was interesting throughout, and taught me much of the ways of the people, and the scenery alone would have repaid me for the hardships, which were many. My greatest difficulty consisted in having to disinter all information about the route and the industries and customs of the people, through the medium of two languages, out of the capacities of persons who neither observed nor thought accurately, nor were accustomed to impart what they knew: who were used to telling lies, and to whom I could furnish no reasons for telling the truth, while they might have several for deceiving me on some points. This digging into obtuseness and cunning is the hardest part of a traveller’s day. So far as I could make out before or since my journey, no British traveller or missionary has published an account of the country between Wan Hsien, on the Yangtze, and Kuan Hsien, north of the Chengtu Plain, nor can I find among the very valuable consular reports, to which I cannot too often express my debt, one which has done for this region of Central SZE CHUAN what Mr. Litton, of the consular service at Chungking, has lately done so admirably for Northern SZE CHUAN. Consequently on the greater part of my four months’ journey I had nothing by which to estimate the value of the facts which I supposed myself to have obtained.[35]

The longer one travels the fewer preparations one makes, and the smaller is one’s kit. I got nothing at Wan except a large sheet doubly oiled with boiled linseed oil, and some additional curry powder, kindly furnished by my kind hosts from boxes of tinned eatables, sauces, arrowroot, and invalid comforts, which had just arrived, and the like of which were annually delivered, carriage free, at the door of every China Inland missionary, however remote, sent by the late Mr. Morton, of Aberdeen, a thoughtful gift, of great value to the recipients. The reader may be amused to learn the singular monotony of my diet. I had a cup of tea made from “tabloids,” and a plate of boiled flour, every morning before starting, tea on arriving, and for 146 days, at seven, curried fowl or eggs with rice. I got another Chinese cotton costume and some straw shoes, and for any other needs trusted to supplying them on the way.

My servant had made himself persistently disagreeable from the beginning, and though a superior, fairly educated, and handsome man, he seemed helpless, useless, lazy, unwilling, and objectionable all round. The impression of my hosts and myself was that he wished to annoy me into sending him back from Wan, and Mr. Thompson thought that he would make my journey very difficult and unpleasant; but the choice lay between giving it up on the threshold and taking him, and I chose the latter.

As the guest of a European, all the difficulties of arranging, bargaining, and paying are lifted off one and put upon a teacher or servant who is used to them, and after much chaffering a bargain was concluded by which three chair-bearers and four coolies were to take me and my baggage to Paoning Fu in nineteen days, a halt on Sundays being paid for at the rate of 25,000 _cash_. These men were not dealt with directly, but were engaged by contract with the manager of a transport _hong_, who is responsible for their good conduct and honesty. I may say at once that they behaved admirably; made the journey in two days less than the stipulated time; trudged cheerfully through rain and mud; never shirked their work; and were always sober, cheery, and obliging. I never met with other than the same behaviour on all the occasions when my coolies or boatmen were engaged from a _hong_.

My light, comfortable bamboo chair had a well under the seat which contained my camera, and, including its sixteen pounds weight, carried forty pounds of luggage in addition to myself. It had bamboo poles fourteen feet long, and a footboard suspended by ropes. Rigid laws of etiquette govern the getting out and in. An open chair in SZE CHUAN, being a novelty, is an abomination, and accounts for much of the rudeness which I received. For some time past the provincial authorities have insisted on all travellers, missionaries included, being attended by two or more “_yamen_ runners,” (_chai-jen_) or soldiers, who are changed at every prefecture, where they deliver up the official letter which they carry. They were never of any use, and except once, whether soldiers or civilians, always ran away at the first symptoms of a disturbance, but neither were they any nuisance, and they were always apparently satisfied with the trifle I gave them.

These _yamen_ runners are attached in great numbers to every magistracy, in large cities to the number of 1000 or more. They are “the great unpaid,” but manage to pick up a living, lawsuits being their great harvest, and the serving of writs one of their great occupations. They squeeze litigants, and are about as much detested by the people as bailiffs were by the men of Clare and Kerry.

Thus equipped and wearing Chinese dress, which certainly blunts the edge of curiosity and greatly diminishes the intolerable feminine picking and feeling of one’s garments when they are of foreign material and make, I left the shelter and refinement of the hospitable mission house for a solitary plunge into the interior, Be-dien on foot, as sullen and disobliging as could be.

Mr. Thompson kindly accompanied me for the first day’s journey to see that things worked smoothly, and we left early on a fine February morning, the air as soft and mild as that of an English April, passing through the very good-looking town and into the pretty open country on a good, flagged road, which was carried up and down hill by stone stairs.

During most of the day we met a continuous stream of baggage coolies, each carrying a bamboo over his shoulder with a burden depending from either end, shifted frequently from one shoulder to the other. Those coming in—and the inward traffic did not slacken for some days—carried from 80 to 140 pounds each of opium, tobacco, indigo, or paper; and those going out were loaded with cotton yarn, piece goods, and salt, all carefully packed in oiled paper made from macerated bamboo, which is very tough and durable. These men, carrying the maximum load mentioned, walk about thirteen miles a day, and chair and luggage coolies about twenty-five. Occasionally I made thirty miles in a day, as my men were carrying only seventy pounds each.

(_From a Chinese Drawing._)

The coolies choose their own place for breakfast and the midday halt of one hour. The first day, even with Mr. Thompson to make things smooth for me, I wondered if I could endure it, and I never took kindly to it. The halting-place is a shed projecting over the road in a town or village street, black and grimy, with a clay floor, and rough tables and benches, receding into a dim twilight; a rough cooking apparatus and some coarse glazed pottery are the furnishings. On each table a bunch of malodorous chopsticks occupies a bamboo receptacle. An earthen bowl with water and a dirty rag are placed outside for the use of travellers, who frequently also rinse their mouths with hot water. One or more exceptionally dirty men are the waiters. Bowls of rice and rice water or weak tea are produced with praiseworthy rapidity, and the coolies shovel the food into their mouths with the air of famished men, and hold out their bowls for more. My chair that day and always was set down in front of the eating-house. I went inside and had some lunch, but the dirt, discomfort, and general odiousness were so great that I did not inflict the penance on myself a second time.

People intending to be kind sometimes take pork, rice, or fish out of a common bowl and put it into yours, and to ensure cleanliness draw the chopsticks with which they perform the transference through their lips, giving them an energetic suck!

SZE CHUAN is famous for the number and splendour of what are usually called “widows’ arches,” though they are also erected to pious sons or patriotic mandarins, specially military mandarins. At times the approach to a city is indicated, not only by pagodas, but by passing under several of these, and occasionally even a rambling, squalid village is entered by passing under an exceptionally handsome one, as was the case on my first day’s journey. I attempted to photograph it, and the _chai-jen_ made the crowd stand to right and left by a series of vigorous pushes, shouting the whole time, “In the name of the mandarin.”[36] But the people had too much curiosity to be anything but mobile.

These arches, or _pai-fangs_, are put up frequently in glorification of widows who have remained faithful to the memory of their husbands, and who have devoted themselves to the comfort and interests of their parents-in-law and to good works. Through various channels the neighbourhood presents the virtues of the meritorious person to the Throne, and the Emperor’s consent to the erection is obtained. The whole affair lends some _éclat_ to the town or village. Many of these arches are extremely beautiful. Chinese carving in stone has much merit, even in such an intractable material as granite. The depth and sharpness of the cutting and the undercutting are remarkable, and the absolute _realism_. I never saw a bit of sculpture which showed a trace of imagination. The superb friezes which constantly decorate the superstructure of these arches represent in a most masterly fashion mandarins’ processions, mandarins administering justice, rich men’s banquets, interiors of rich men’s dwellings, and many other scenes of official and stately life, all rendered with photographic accuracy, and with a wonderful power of catching the expressions of the various faces. It is impossible not to admire the skill of the artists, and at the same time to wish for a trace of ideality in their art. In some places a superb arch enriched with marvels of sculpture straddles across a road which is nothing better than a disgraceful quagmire or a stone causeway in which some of the blocks are tilted up on end, while others have disappeared in the mud. The incongruity does not seem to afflict anyone.

But I must return from this digression on bad roads to the road on which I travelled on that and two or three subsequent days, which has the reputation of being one of the finest in China. It was built fifty-four years ago, and is in splendid repair. It was to lead from Wan Hsien to Chengtu Fu, but I failed to learn whether it fulfils its promise. It is never less than six feet wide, paved with transverse stone slabs, carried through the rice-fields on stone causeways, and over the bridges and up and down the innumerable hills by flights of stone stairs on fairly easy gradients, with stone railings and balustrades wherever there is any necessity for them. Streams are crossed by handsome stone bridges, with sharp lofty arches, and the whole is a fine engineering work.

My journey began auspiciously with a dreamily fine day, which developed into a red and gold sunset of crystalline clearness and beauty. The scenery is entrancing. The valleys are deep and narrow, and each is threaded by a mountain torrent. The hills are truncated cones, each one crowned by a highly picturesque fortified village of refuge, and there were glimpses of distant mountain forms painted on the pale sky in deeper blue. Everything suggested peace and plenty. The cultivation is surprising, and its carefulness has extirpated most of the indigenous plants. It is carried up on terraces to the foot of the cliffs which support the refuges; it renders prolific strips on ledges only eighteen inches wide. Except on the road itself, there was not a vacant space on that day’s journey on which a man could lie down.

The first crops, on soil which in that climate produces three and four annually, were in the ground: broad beans with a black and purple blossom with a white lip; rape for oil then in blossom grown on a large scale; opium encroaching on the rice lands, barley and wheat; various root crops, and peas in bud, though it was only February 24th. Even the tops of the narrow dykes separating the rice-fields were planted with single rows of beans.

My coolies stopped several times for a drink and smoke, but did twenty-seven miles. Chair travelling is, I think, the easiest method of locomotion by land. My one objection to it is the constant shifting of the short bamboo carrying pole on which the long poles hang, from one shoulder of each bearer to the other. It has to be done simultaneously, involves a stoppage, occurs every hundred yards and under, and always gives the impression that the shoulder which is relieved is in unbearable pain. Chair-bearing is a trade by itself, and bearers have to be brought up to it. It is essential to keep step absolutely, and to be harmonious in all movements. Of my three bearers the strongest went behind. Two were opium smokers, and the third a vegetarian, who abstained from opium, tobacco, and _samshu_, and was on his way to be rich! There was ceaseless traffic, and as we penetrated further into the country, in addition to the goods before mentioned, the loads consisted of baskets of oil, bean cake, and coal and ironstone, showing that the sources of supply of the latter were not far off. About every half-mile the road passes under a roof with food booths on each side. There were many travellers in shabby closed chairs with short poles, hurried along by two men at a shambling trot. There are so many temples that the air is seldom free from the odour of incense. We met two dragon processions, consisting each of 100 men, and the undulating tail of the dragon was fifty feet long.

Towards evening the hills became more mountainous, and were wooded with cypress and pine, and it was very lovely in the gold and violet light. We halted for the night at the large village of San-tsan-pu, where, though I had travelled for seven months in China, I had my first experience of a Chinese inn, and I did not like it, specially as I regarded it as the type of four or five coming months of similar quarters. I am not ashamed to say that a cowardly inclination to abbreviate my journey tempted me the whole evening. The SZE CHUAN inns have a good reputation; but I was not making the regular stages, and at all events they are inferior on that route, the one which gave me such a shock being one of the best. They are worse than the Persian ordinary _caravanserai_, or the Kurdistan _khan_, or even the Korean hostelry. I felt that I had degenerated into a sybarite, and must summon up all my pluck, and many a hearty meal and ten hours’ sleep I afterwards came to enjoy in dens which at first seemed foul and hopeless.

In the best inns there is a room known as the mandarin’s room, which can be had by paying for it, with a high roof, a boarded floor, a window, and a solemn-looking table and chairs; but these very rarely came my way. My introduction to the amenities of Chinese travelling was on this wise, and, as Mr. Thompson was with me, I was much better off than usual. I was carried through the open “restaurant,” fitted with rough benches and tables, into a roughly paved yard behind it, where, in the midst of abominations, was the inn well. Several rough doors round this yard gave admission into as many rooms without windows, several of which were already full. My chair was set down, and, after extricating myself from it according to the rules of etiquette, I was attempting to see it unpacked, when I was overborne by a shouting crowd of men and boys, which surged in after me, and I had to retire hastily into my room.

It was long and narrow, and boarded off from others by partitions with remarkably open chinks, to which many pairs of sloping eyes were diligently applied; but I was able to baffle curiosity by tacking up cambric curtains brought for the purpose. The roof was high at one side and low at the other, and fortunately the wall did not come up to within two feet of it, though the air admitted could not by any euphemism be called “fresh.” The floor was a damp and irregular one of mud, partly over a cesspool, and with a strong tendency to puddles. On the other side of the outer boarding was the pigsty, which was well-occupied, judging from the many voices, bass and treble. There were two rough bedsteads, on which were mats covered with old straw, on which coolies lay down wadded quilts, and sleep four or more on a bed. It is needless to say that these beds are literally swarming with vermin of the worst sorts.

The walls were black and slimy with the dirt and damp of many years; the paper with which the rafters had once been covered was hanging from them in tatters, and when the candle was lit beetles, “slaters,” cockroaches, and other abominable things crawled on the walls and dropped from the rafters, one pink, fleshy thing dropping upon, and putting out, the candle!

I had arranged my plan of operations after my Korean experience, but sullen, disobliging, and apparently stupid Be-dien left me very much to carry it out myself. Between two of the bedsteads there was just space enough for my camp bed and chair without touching them. The oiled sheet was spread on the floor, and my “furniture” upon it, and two small oiled sheets were used for covering the beds, and on these my luggage, food, and etceteras were deposited. The tripod of my camera served for a candle stand, and on it I hung my clothes and boots at night, out of the way of rats. With these arrangements I successfully defied the legions of vermin which infest Korean and Chinese inns, and have not a solitary tale to tell of broken rest and general misery. With absolute security from vermin, all else can be cheerfully endured.

A meal of curry, rice, and tea was not despicable, though I was conscious that my equipments and general manner of living were rougher than they had ever been before, and that I had reached “bed-rock,” to quote a telling bit of American slang.

The inn, which was very full of travellers, quieted down before eight, when the slighter noises, such as pigs grunting, rats or mice gnawing, crickets chirping, beetles moving in straw, and other insect disturbances, made themselves very audible, and informed me that I was surrounded by a world of busy and predatory life, loving darkness; but while I thought upon it and on the solitary plunge into China which was to be made on the morrow I fell asleep, and never woke till Be-dien came to my door at seven the next morning with the information that there was no fire, and that he could not get me any breakfast! That was the first of five months of nights of solid sleep from 8 p.m. onwards. I only allowed myself half a candle per day, and after my journal letter was written there was no object for sitting up.