Chapter XXI: Liang-Shan Hsien to Hsia-Shan-Po

It was a relief to get out into the open country, though for some time I felt shaken by the two hours’ tension of the day before. The drizzle in which I started soon developed into heavy rain, which lasted for nine hours, turning every rivulet into a tawny torrent. It was a very interesting journey even in the downpour. Liang-shan is on the western slope of one among a cluster of ranges, the steep eastern side of which I climbed the day before, and after passing through the town the road dips down into a rolling plain, extending widely in every direction, at that time a great inundated swamp of rice-fields of every size and shape, threaded by a narrow stone road, and abounding in small islands, frequently walled round, on which the large farmhouses stand, screened by bamboo and cypress groves, or temples, ofttimes red, with magnificent trees and priests’ dwellings surrounding them.

A background of tall pines, cypresses, and bamboo threw into striking relief a temple of unusual appearance, with a fine canopy roof of glazed green tiles, the front rising from the water, the rest of the “island” enclosed by a wall of imperial red. I reached it by wading a hundred yards in very chilly water, and found a plain, square, open building of red sandstone, surrounded by a broad, stone platform. In the centre are two fine palms, in stone vases, and a severe _pai-fang_, on the north platform a plain stone altar, and a tablet with an incised inscription, and behind this a wall with incised inscriptions divided by pilasters; all is severely handsome and absolutely plain. It is a temple of Confucius, and the simplicity of the few which I was able to enter contrasts boldly with the crowded and grotesque monstrosities of the Buddhist and Taoist temples. Truly the “Great Teacher” was one of the greatest of men, for he has cast into a mould of iron for two thousand years the thought, social order, literature, government, and education of 400,000,000 of our race.

Passing Sar-pu, a village composed almost entirely of fine temples, and through Chin-tai, where the temples are of great size, and the carved stone front of one of them of great beauty, under many highly decorated _pai-fangs_, and past some Chinese Chatsworths and Eatons, and large “brick noggin” farmhouses, we re-entered hills and afterwards mountains, crossing the beautiful pass of Fuh-ri-gan by a fine stone staircase of over 5000 broad, easy steps, with a handsome kerbstone, all in perfect repair! These stairs begin at the bridge and inn of Shan-rang-sar, more Tyrolese than Chinese in aspect. Indeed, every day I dropped some preconceived ideas of what Chinese scenery and buildings must be like, and I hope that my readers will drop theirs, if they are of willow plate origin, before they have finished this volume.

I had now entered on the fringe of one of the richest coal regions in the world, seams of coal, practically inexhaustible, apparently underlying the whole surface of Central SZE CHUAN. Limestone mountains and cliffs, and caverned limestone with an infinite variety of ferns, had suggested the probable neighbourhood of coal, and in these mountains it is to be encountered everywhere. It crops out even in the redundant vegetation by the roadside, and near the mountain hamlets the children, with small baskets, hack it daily with rough knives, for cooking purposes. It appears in lumps along the beds of streams, in the sides of the tanks in which bamboo is macerated for paper, and in the mountain-sides, where small collieries, with most primitive “workings,” exist.

My attention was several times attracted by sheds among the trees, and by men and boys crawling out of holes in the cliff side with baskets, the black contents of which they deposited in these. Also, occasionally scrambling up to a black orifice in the limestone, I came upon a “gallery,” four feet high, down which Lilliputian wagons, holding about one hundredweight each, descend from “workings” within along a tramway only twelve inches wide. From some holes boys crept out with small creels, holding not more than twenty-five pounds, roped on their backs, and little room to spare above them. All these “workings” between Liang-shan and Wen-kia-cha, sixty _li_,[38] were at a considerable height above the torrent, which dashed down what was frequently only a ravine, and all that could be seen were small borings just large enough to admit a man crawling, or, in some cases, the small trollies before mentioned.

In that mountain region, in which I gathered from many symptoms that the people are specially superstitious, the coal seams are only worked on a level, not downwards, for fear of grazing the Dragon’s back and making him shake the earth, but they cannot say whether it is a universal dragon, the curves of whose tremendous spine are omnipresent, or a provincial or a local dragon! On the plain from which I had ascended fuel is scarce and dear, and strings of coolies, each carrying two hundredweight, supply it with coal from these mountains. Lump coal, burning with but little smoke or ash, is worth 2_s._ 6_d._ per ton at the “pit’s mouth,” and is retailed at from 4_s._ to 5_s._ per ton, according to distance, in the low country. Later I saw many collieries worked with some skill and with a very large “output.”

Though it rained heavily all day, the atmosphere was fairly clear. That pass of Fuh-ri-gan is as beautiful as the finest parts of Japan, which it much resembles—lonely, romantic, shut in by high-peaked, fantastic mountains, forest-clothed to their summits, and cleft by deep ravines, with tumbling torrents, fern and lycopodium-fringed. In the forest there were six varieties of coniferæ, oaks, chestnuts, walnuts, the _Cunninghames Sinensis_ (?), a tree of great beauty and much utility, the fine evergreen _Hoangho_ (_Ficus infectoria_), the _Xylosma japonica_, with laurel-like leafage, and many others, including a leafless tree which was a mass of pink blossoms. Of evergreen shrubs and trailers I counted thirty-seven near the roadside!

But the speciality of these passes is the bamboo. There are high hills forested to their summits with different varieties, a singular and beautiful sight, with an infinite variety of colour. There are the golden-plumed bamboo, with its golden stems and the golden light under its golden plumes, the plumed dark green and the plumed light green, full-plumed things of perfect beauty, as tall as forest trees of average height. There is also a feathery bamboo with branches pointing upwards, a creation of exquisite grace, light and delicate, with its stem as straight as an arrow, and attaining a height of fully seventy feet, all forming a dense but not an entangled mass. At one point, 1400 straight, broad “altar stairs, slope through darkness up to God,” a majestic sight, for from either side the great green and golden plumed bamboos droop gracefully to meet each other, and the staircase mounts upward in a golden twilight. Altogether that pass is a glory of trees, ferns, and trailers, mostly sub-tropical, and is noisy with the clash of torrents, though silent as to bird-life. During the whole day the only birds I saw were some blue jays.

But not sub-tropical was the raw, damp, penetrating wind, which blew half a gale at the top of the pass, and pretty miserable was the inn in the fertile, green, malarious hole to which we made an abrupt descent of 1500 feet. My stout “regulation” waterproof, which had withstood the storm and stress of many Asiatic journeys, had given way; the waterproof covers of most of the baggage, torn by rough usage, let the water through; and my cushions were soaked. I had only six inches to spare on either side of my stretcher in the absolutely dark and noxious hole in which I slept. The candle-wicks were wet, spluttered, and went out, and I had to eat in the darkness rendered visible by the inn lamp.

But in such country places the people are quiet and harmless, and I sat for a long time in the open public space, where the black rafters dripped black slime. The attempt at a fire was in the centre of the clay floor, over which a big black pot hung from the roof. My drowned coolies huddled up in their wadded quilts, and I in a blanket, and two wretched, ragged, hatless, shoeless, half-clad _chai-jen_, were all trying to light the end of a green sapling with some damp straw. It was truly deplorable, squalor without picturesqueness, and failing to get warm, I went shivering to bed.

The following morning was dry and fair, with a little feeble sunshine. Crossing the Sai-pei-tu Pass, at a height of 1720 feet, on which, as on the Fuh-ri-gan, there were several collieries, all respectful to the dragon’s back, we passed through very interesting country all day, at times fascinating from its novelty.

Cities of refuge crowded on nearly inaccessible rocks can be seen miles away, one a special marvel, built anywhere and everywhere on an isolated rock, resembling Mont St. Michel, another with a striking temple of enormous size for its centre, with monastic buildings, fortifications, “brick noggin” houses, clinging as they can to the rock, piled one on another round it, the whole surrounded by an embattled wall following the contour of the rock. They are second in picturesqueness only to the lama-serais of Tibet.

As the country became more open, besides these fortified refuges on rocky heights, which suggest possible peril, while the frequency with which solitary houses occur tells of complete security, there are great solitary temples with porcelain fronts in rich colouring, mandarins and landowners’ houses rivalling some of our renowned English homes in size and stateliness, distilleries, paper and flour mills; and every town and large village has its special industry—silk weaving, straw plaiting, hat making, dressing hides, iron or brass work, pottery and china, chair-making and bamboo furniture generally, indigo dyeing, carving and gilding idols, making the red paper enormously used for religious and festive purposes, and the imitation gold and silver coins and “shoes” burned as offerings to ancestors, etc.

The weather became so grim that of the large mansions, splendid from a distance, I was only able to get a very poor photograph of one. The mandarin proprietor with many attendants came out to the high road, and asked me to “take” his family. I said I could not, for I could not finish the portraits in such weather in less than three or four days; and then he asked me to be his guest for those days, and he would give me a large room. I did not wish to pose as an itinerant photographer, and had grave doubts as to what my reception might really be in the women’s quarters, and I dreaded the stifling curiosity succeeded by the stagnation of dulness, so I excused myself.

The stone bridges on the road are very fine, with piers terminating in bold carvings, frequently of dragons, but occasionally comically realistic, such as a man carrying an oil basket, a man yawning, a dog with his head between his legs, a woman combing a girl’s hair, and the like. Three and four arches with a bold spring are frequent; the parapets are decorated; and though the road may be only six feet wide, on the roadways of some of the bridges three carriages can drive abreast. There are other and older bridges in which the piers are heavy uprights of stone supporting stone flags occasionally twenty-five and even thirty feet long. The new, arched bridges, of which the province may well be proud, are sometimes built by subscription, but are often the public-spirited gift of a local magnate, whose name and good deed are recorded in stone. The wooden bridges, which I found always in good repair, are like those of Switzerland, and, like them, have substantial roofs frequently double and occasionally treble-tiered, often covered with glazed ridge and furrow tiles. Some of these roofs are lined with highly polished carnation-red lacquer, in which the names of the donors, with complimentary sentences, are deeply incised in gold. In some bridges the row of pillars supporting the roof is also lacquered and polished. There are several bridges which I crossed in SZE CHUAN of from eight to twelve lofty stone arches each, which for stability, beauty, span, height, and spring of the arches might compare, and scarcely unfavourably, with some of our finest English structures. In China I never once had, as in Persia, Korea, and Kashmir, to ford a stream because the bridge was either ruinous or too shaky to venture upon.

The industries of the towns and villages produce a large amount of traffic on the roads. Strings of coolies going at a dog trot, carrying paper, salt, tobacco, dyed cottons, hats, and rush piths for lamps, passed us incessantly, but no beasts of burden, and only one saddle pony, which tripped rapidly down one of the longest flights of stairs with ease and agility. The woods are silent; the call of the handsome pheasant to his dowdy mate was the only bird note I heard. There is a great paucity of such animals as make our farmyards cheerful. I did not see horses or mules anywhere between Wan Hsien and Paoning Fu, or sheep. Fowls, geese, and ducks there were in abundance, a few cats, and many old dogs, the young ones having been mostly eaten early in the month.

The water buffalo ploughs, harrows the rice swamps, turns the grain and oil mills, and does many other useful turns. I never saw him used as a beast of burden. It is hard to become reconciled to the appearance of the great “water ox,” with his mostly hairless, blackish-grey skin, in places with a pinkish hue, and his flat head, carried level with his uncouth, unwieldy body, his flat nose and curved flat horns, looking altogether like a survival from antediluvian days. Buffaloes are uncertain in their tempers, though usually very docile, and, like their owners, are liable to frenzies of fury when frightened.

On this route it was amusing to see very small children leading them out to feed on the grass which grows on the edges of the rice dykes, the children clambering on their backs and sitting there while they fed because there was no other dry land to sit on. They are extremely sensitive to the bites of insects, and, for this and other reasons, spend much of their leisure time lying in muddy pools which are dug for their benefit. A group of their grotesque, flat heads appearing above the water is truly comical. They are credited with a great aversion to what the Chinese call the “odour” of Europeans, and I have seen a herd of them “go for” a foreigner in such an unmistakably vindictive fashion that he took to his heels. The buffalo cow gives a small quantity of very rich milk with a peculiar flavour. The beef obtainable in SZE CHUAN is mostly buffalo, and is often the flesh of an animal which has rendered man many years of service.

On that day’s journey the heralds of the short and glorious procession of the flowers appeared: plum, peach, and cherry blossom; violets grew in shady places; a clematis lighted up the margins of woods with pendent clusters of bright yellow bloom; pink and white fumitories made the roadside hedges gay; and there were a few others.

The dampness was incredible, and as I had then made nearly two degrees north from Wan Hsien, the temperature had fallen, and the mercury hung at about 44°. I never knew so damp an atmosphere even in Japan. Ferns, mosses, trailers, and all the beauteous vegetation which revels in damp abounded. The leafage of the root crops was lush and succulent. There is no winter, and though only the last of February, the opium crop, which over much of the day’s journey was the principal crop, with maize sown between the rows, was eight inches high, and its lower leaves, which are used as food by the people and taste like spinach, were served to me that night for the first time as a vegetable. Travelling all day in such a damp, chilly atmosphere in wet clothes was a little trying. It is impossible to dry anything in the small, poor country inns.

We passed through the town of Yun-i, with a street half a mile long, in which every house is given up to the making or staining of red and yellow paper, which is enormously used, especially at the New Year, which was just over. Everyone nearly was more or less smeared with these brilliant colours, and the stream outside the town was as red as blood. Hundreds of coolies were travelling both north and south with bales of this paper.

I had various qualms as I passed through the low, dark gateway, specially when I saw men running ahead to collect a crowd, calling in at the shops and houses “A foreigner!” or “A foreign devil!” but though the crowd completely filled the street and was noisy, it was neither hostile nor a mob. One cause of the trouble at Liang-shan was that the _chai-jen_, instead of keeping with me, went off to the _yamen_. After that I insisted that one of them, when we reached a town or large village, should walk in front of my chair. At Yun-i a runner went before me striding fiercely, a ragged, scrofulous, shoeless, hatless, wretched little fellow, but as he carried the mandarin’s letter, when the people crowded and progress was impeded, he waved his arms and pushed them right and left, shouting the Chinese equivalent of “In the _kuan’s_ name.”

One great feature of that day’s journey was coal. Coal cropped up everywhere, and any cutting revealed a seam of coal. Over a hundredweight—100 catties—sold for forty _cash_ (about five farthings), picked lumps burning with a clear flame. Miners earn twenty _cash_ per 100 catties, and can get 600 in a day. There is iron in the neighbourhood. From one hill I saw a considerable smoke, and the _chai-jen_ said it proceeded from large smelting works, but I only give this as hearsay. I observed that many articles which I had elsewhere seen made of wood are in this region made of iron, and that iron is liberally used on household and agricultural implements. In the peasants’ houses coal is burned in a hole in the middle of the floor, and the smoke finds its way out anywhere, as it used to do in Highland hovels.

After a very varied day’s journey the damp cold became so paralysing, and the mist so thick, that I halted earlier than usual at the small mountain hamlet of Hsai-shan-po, where the wayside inn was new, indeed not finished, and consisted only of a central shed with a fire of bituminous coal burning with heavy smoke in a hole in the middle of the floor, and a room on either side, one occupied by the host, a “decent man,” and his well-behaved family. The partitions are lath and plaster, the walls beginning a foot from the ground and ending two feet from the roof, allowing the entrance of some light, much draught, many hens, a few young pigs, and great clouds of smoke.