Chapter XX: San-Tsan-Pu to Liang-Shan Hsien

The first two days passed uneventfully. I was set down to be stared at seven times a day, but the village people were inoffensive. We passed through rich and cultivated country, with many noble farmhouses with six or eight irregular roofs, handsome, roofed, entrance gates, deep eaves, and many gables of black beams and white plaster, as in Cheshire. Next pine-clothed hills appeared, and then the grand pass of Shen-kia-chao (2900 feet) lifted us above habitation and cultivation into a solitary mountain region of rock, scrub, torrents, and waterfalls. The road ascends the pass by 1140 steps on the edge of a precipice, which is fenced the whole way by granite uprights two feet high, carrying long granite rails eight inches square. Two chairs can pass along the whole length. The pass is grand and savage. There were brigands on the road, and it was patrolled by soldiers, small bodies of whom I met in their stagey uniforms, armed with lances with long pennons and short bows and arrows. These bows need a strong man’s strength to string them, and bow-and-arrow drill is a great military exercise. The price of rice had risen considerably, _cash_ was scarce, and as in some parts even of this prosperous province men do little more than keep body and soul together by their labour, even a slight rise means starvation and death, and it is fierce, cruel want which turns men into robbers in China, many of the stouter spirits preferring to prey on their neighbours in this fashion to depending on their charity. At one point on the pass where there were some trees, three criminals were hanging in cages with their feet not quite touching the ground. The _chai-jen_ said that they were to be starved to death. Not far off were two human heads which looked as if they had been there for some time, hanging in two cages, with a ghastly look of inquisitive intelligence on their faces.

All had been robbers. Chinese justice is retributive, and takes little account of human life. We met a number of chained prisoners on their way to Wan, all with that peculiarly degraded and brutish look which a lavish growth of unkempt hair on the usually smoothly shaven head of a Chinese invariably produces. It was impossible not to pity these poor fellows, specially as they were most likely driven to their crimes by hunger, remembering as I did, and that vividly, the judgment-seat of the Naam-hoi magistrate at Canton, with a row of shivering prisoners kneeling on pounded glass on the stone floor in front of it, with their foreheads an inch from the ground. At this time China, with its crowds, its poverty, its risks of absolute famine from droughts or floods, its untellable horrors, its filth, its brutality, its venality, its grasping, clutching, and pitiless greed, and its political and religious hopelessness, sat upon me like a nightmare. There are other and better aspects which dawn on the traveller more slowly, and there is even a certain lovableness about the people. I only put down what were my impressions at the time.

From the rugged summit of the Shen-kia-chao pass we dropped down into cultivated land, and at a large village I put up at an inn where I had a mandarin’s room, very shabby and ruinous, and with a leaky roof, which compelled me to shift my bed several times in the night, but as it had a window-frame from which all the paper had been torn off, it was airy, and with a bunch of incense sticks I overpowered the evil smells. The next morning there was a great row before I left, about _cash_ as usual, accusations of theft being freely bandied about. I was in my chair in the yard when it began, and soon a crowd of men were brandishing their arms (I don’t think the Chinese possess fists) in my face, shouting and yelling with a noise and apparent fury not to be imagined by anyone who has not seen an excited Chinese mob. They yelled into my ears and struck my chair with their tools to attract my attention, but I continued to sit facing them, never moving a muscle, as I was quite innocent of the cause of the quarrel, and at last they subsided and let me depart. I doubt much whether this and many similar ebullitions would have occurred if I had had a European man with me.

It was a pleasant region through which we passed in the grey mist, of small rice-fields step above step in every little valley, the broadest steps at the bottom, of large, handsome farmhouses, large stone tombs in the hillsides, fine temples, wayside shrines, and _pai-lows_ or _pai-fangs_. These erections are finer and more numerous in SZE CHUAN than I have seen them elsewhere in China. Some villages on that day’s journey were approached under six stone portals, remarkable for their dignity and artistic perfection. Von Richthofen remarks upon some of the SZE CHUAN _pai-fangs_ as being “masterpieces of Chinese art.” I learned that some of them commemorate, as in Korea, the administrative virtues of local officials, but the genuine value of the tribute is dubious.

I have no hard and fast theory regarding these portals. They would be an interesting subject for investigation. It is quite possible that the Chinese _pai-fang_ is an accretion on such primitive structures as the triliths of Stonehenge, the _coran_ of India—still, according to Fergusson, used in its ancient timber form at Hindu marriages—the _torii_ of Japan, still mostly of wood, and the slighter but nearly similar structure which marks the entrance to royal property in Korea. It is probable that the simpler forms in China are the most ancient, and that superb decoration of many examples belongs to the later centuries. I cannot see any reason for connecting the _pai-fang_ with the introduction of Buddhism into China. The _torii_ in Japan, the simplest existing form of the structure, is connected with Shinto, which existed centuries before Buddhism travelled to Japan from Korea.

I always objected to halt at a city, but arriving at that of Liang-shan Hsien late on the afternoon of the third day from Wan, it was necessary to change the _chai-jen_ and get my passport copied. An imposing city it is, on a height, approached by a steep flight of stairs with a sharp turn under a deep picturesque gateway in a fine wall, about which are many picturesque and fantastic buildings. The gateway is almost a tunnel, and admits into a street fully a mile and a half long, and not more than ten feet wide, with shops, inns, brokers, temples with highly decorated fronts, and Government buildings “of sorts” along its whole length.

I had scarcely time to take it in when men began to pour into the roadway from every quarter, hooting, and some ran ahead—always a bad sign. I proposed to walk, but the chairmen said it was not safe. The open chair, however, was equally an abomination. The crowd became dense and noisy; there was much hooting and yelling. I recognised many cries of _Yang kwei-tze!_ (foreign devil) and “_Child-eater!_” swelling into a roar; the narrow street became almost impassable; my chair was struck repeatedly with sticks; mud and unsavoury missiles were thrown with excellent aim; a well-dressed man, bolder or more cowardly than the rest, hit me a smart whack across my chest, which left a weal; others from behind hit me across the shoulders; the howling was infernal: it was an angry Chinese mob.[37] There was nothing for it but to sit up stolidly, and not to appear hurt, frightened, or annoyed, though I was all three.

Unluckily the bearers were shoved to one side, and stumbling over some wicker oil casks (empty, however), knocked them over, when there was a scrimmage, in which they were nearly knocked down. One runner dived into an inn doorway, which the innkeeper closed in a fury, saying he would not admit a foreigner; but he shut the door on the chair, and I got out on the inside, the bearers and porters squeezing in after me, one chair-pole being broken in the crush. I was hurried to the top of a large inn yard and shoved into a room, or rather a dark shed. The innkeeper tried, I was told, to shut and bar the street-door, but it was burst open, and the whole of the planking torn down. The mob surged in 1500 or 2000 strong, led by some _literati_, as I could see through the chinks.

There was then a riot in earnest; the men had armed themselves with pieces of the doorway, and were hammering at the door and wooden front of my room, surging against the door to break it down, howling and yelling. _Yang-kwei-tze!_ had been abandoned as too mild, and the yells, as I learned afterwards, were such as “Beat her!” “Kill her!” “Burn her!” The last they tried to carry into effect. My den had a second wooden wall to another street, and the mob on that side succeeded in breaking a splinter out, through which they inserted some lighted matches, which fell on some straw and lighted it. It was damp, and I easily trod it out, and dragged a board over the hole. The place was all but pitch-dark, and was full of casks, boards, and chunks of wood. The door was secured by strong wooden bars. I sat down on something in front of the door with my revolver, intending to fire at the men’s legs if they got in, tried the bars every now and then, looked through the chinks, felt the position serious—darkness, no possibility of escaping, nothing of humanity to appeal to, no help, and a mob as pitiless as fiends. Indeed, the phrase, “hell let loose,” applied to the howls and their inspiration.

They brought joists up wherewith to break in the door, and at every rush—and the rushes were made with a fiendish yell—I expected it to give way. At last the upper bar yielded, and the upper part of the door caved in a little. They doubled their efforts, and the door in another minute would have fallen in, when the joists were thrown down, and in the midst of a sudden silence there was the rush, like a swirl of autumn leaves, of many feet, and in a few minutes the yard was clear, and soldiers, who remained for the night, took up positions there. One of my men, after the riot had lasted for an hour, had run to the _yamen_ with the news that the people were “murdering a foreigner,” and the mandarin sent soldiers with orders for the tumult to cease, which he might have sent two hours before, as it can hardly be supposed that he did not know of it.

The innkeeper, on seeing my special passport, was uneasy and apologetic, but his inn was crowded, he had no better room to give me, and I was too tired and shaken to seek another. I was half inclined to return to Wan, but, in fact, though there was much clamour and hooting in several places, I was only actually attacked once again, and am very glad that I persevered with my journey.

Knowing that my safety was assured, I examined what seemed as if it might have been a death-trap, and found it was a lumber-room, black and ruinous, with a garret above, of the floor of which little remained but the joists. My floor was in big holes, with heaps and much rubbish of wood and plaster, and became sloppy in the night from leakage from the roof. There was just clear space enough for my camp bed. It was very cold and draughty, and after my candle was lighted rows of sloping eyes were perseveringly applied to the chinks on the street side, and two pairs to those on the other side. I should like to have done their owners some harmless mischief!

The host’s wife came in to see me, and speaking apologetically of the riot, she said, “If a foreign woman went to your country, you’d kill her, wouldn’t you?” I have since quite understood what I have heard: that several foreign ladies have become “queer” and even insane as the result of frights received in riots, and that the wife of one British consul actually died as the result. Consul-General Jamieson truly says that no one who has heard the howling of an angry Chinese mob can ever forget it.

The next morning opened in blessed quiet. There was hardly the usual crowd in the inn yard. Carpenters were busy repairing the demolished doorway. A new pole had been attached to my chair by the innkeeper. There were many soldiers in the street, through which I was carried in the rain without my hat. Not a remark was made. Hardly a head was turned. It was so perfectly quiet and orderly that after a time the _fu-tou_ suggested that I might put on my hat! The events of the day before would have appeared a hideous dream but that my shoulders were very sore and aching, and that two of the coolies who had been beaten for serving a foreigner bore some ugly traces of it. My nerves were somewhat shaken, and for some weeks I never entered the low-browed gate of a city without more or less apprehension.

Liang-shan is an ancient and striking city. In the long, narrow main street, the houses turn deep-eaved gables, with great horned projections, to the roadway. There are many fine temples with their fronts profusely and elaborately decorated with dragons, divinities, and arabesques in coloured porcelain relief, or in deeply and admirably carved grey plaster, the effect of the latter closely resembling stone. The city manufactures paper from the _Brousonetia papyrifera_, both fine and coarse, printed cottons, figured silks, and large quantities of the imitation houses, horses, men, furniture, trunks, etc., which are burned to an extravagant extent at burials.