Chapter III: Hangchow10

A journey of 150 miles to visit friends in the ancient city of Hangchow required no other preparations than the hire of a boat and the engaging of a servant, who I was compelled to dismiss a few days later for gross dishonesty. 2755 steam launches, owned and run by Chinese, towing 7889 passenger boats, carrying 605 foreign and 125,000 native passengers, entered and cleared in 1897 between Hangchow, Shanghai, and Soochow.

Every evening one of these launches, towing a long string of native boats, leaves the Soochow creek below the British Consulate for the new treaty ports, opened as such only in 1896. My small bamboo-roofed boat, in which I could just stand upright, much decorated in the tawdry style of Chinese fourth-class fancy, and through which irremediable draughts coursed friskily, was the contemptible final joint of a tail of nine quaint and picturesque passage junks and family house-boats, a varnished procession of high-sterned, two-storeyed, many-windowed arks, squirming and snaking along at the stern of a noisy, asthmatic tow-boat. There were red flags flying, gongs crashing out dissonance, crackers exploding, poles with clothes drying on them pushed out of windows, incense sticks smouldering, and reports of firearms; and with this cheerful din, the usual accompaniment of Chinese movement, we started in the red twilight.

I paid six dollars for my boat with three men, and five dollars fifty cents for towage, about 23_s._

All day long the life on the two-storeyed open-sterned boat in front of mine was exposed to view. It was occupied by three generations, nine souls in all, under the rule of a grandmother. They rose early, lighted the fire and their incense sticks, kotowed to an idol in a gilded shrine, offered him a small bowl of rice, and cooked and ate their morning meal. The smell of their cooking drifted for much of the day into my boat, and “broth of abominable things was in their vessels.” The man sat in the bow smoking and making shoes. The grandmother lived below in blissful idleness and authority. The wife, a comely, healthy, broad-shouldered woman, with bound feet, worked and smoked all day, and contrived to steer the boat as she stooped over the fire or the wash-tub by holding its heavy tiller under her arm or chin or pressing her knee against it. Four young children lived a quiet life on a broad high shelf, from which they were lifted down for meals. A girl of thirteen helped her mother slightly. Cooking, washing, mending, eating, and watching my occupation with far less interest than I watched theirs, filled up their day. Evening brought fresh kotowing and burning of incense sticks, the opium lamp was lighted, the man passed into elysium, and they wrapped themselves in their wadded quilts and slept till sunrise.

I learned their habits and knew their few “plenishings,” and perhaps, as they stared persistently at me, they were wondering how much I earned a day by writing and sewing, a question of much speculative interest to the Chinese.

The country looked inviting in the first flush of early spring, although, like our own fens, it is a dead level. Houses, villages, mulberry plantations, temples, groves, large farmhouses, shrines, and _Pai fangs_ succeeded each other rapidly. Great lilac clusters of wistaria bloom hung over the water from every tree, the beans were in blossom, and the greenery was young and fresh. At times our curiously twisting procession passed through ancient water-streets of large cities, with the inevitable picturesqueness given by deep eaves, overhanging rooms and balconies, steep flights of stone stairs, and rows of armed junks full of soldiers or river police in brilliant, stagey uniforms. Several times we were delayed for an hour or more by the difficulty of getting through the crowded river streets _en route_.

I have since learned by experience that China is a land of surprising bridges, but at that time it amazed me that we entered nearly every city under a fine arch, from fifteen to thirty feet in height, formed of blocks of granite cut to the curve of the bridge, the roadway attaining the summit by thirty-nine steps on each side. Or there are straight bridges, the piers being monoliths thirteen feet high, and the roadway massive blocks of stone thirty feet long.

Part of the route is along the Grand Canal, that stupendous work, wonderful even in its dilapidation, which connects Hangchow with Tientsin. This part of it, which connects Imperial Hangchow with the flourishing port of Chinkiang on the Yangtze, was cut in 625 A.D., but never mapped till the work was undertaken by our own War Office in 1865.

If the “nine thousand barks conveying tribute to the emperor,” as described by an ancient writer, no longer crowd its waters, I can testify that at the points where I touched it, such as Chinkiang, the laden fleets were so vast as to leave only a narrow lane of water available for traffic, and that on arriving at Tientsin from Tungchow my boat took two days and a half to make its way through the closely-jammed mass of cargo and passage boats at the terminus.

The neighbourhood of the Grand Canal, which suffered terribly in the Taiping Rebellion, has recovered itself, and is again yielding its great harvests of rice and silk, the inexhaustible fertility of the Great Plain having effaced every trace of destruction. If the Grand Canal since the dilapidation caused by the outbreak of the Yellow River in 1851 is far less valuable for through traffic than it was, it is still of immense importance as an artery for the commerce of the great provinces through which it passes. Lu Yew, a much-travelled mandarin of the twelfth century, the translated account of whose journey from Shanjin near Ning Po to Kueichow on the Upper Yangtze is a fascinating bit of literature, writes that at the sluice gates “the concourse of vessels was packed together like the teeth of a comb,” and so it is still in certain places. The bridges which span this canal are among the most striking and beautiful in all China—single arches, sometimes 220 feet in span and 30 feet in height, piles of massive masonry, with massive decorations wherever any deviation has been permitted from the ordinary stately simplicity.

Seven centuries ago Lu Yew commented on the remarkable industry of the population of this region, and noted that “both banks near the villages are covered with waterwheels pumping up the water, women and children alike exerting all their efforts, cattle in some cases being also at work.” The heredity of industry is still manifest. Not an idler was to be seen along river or canal. Every agricultural operation of the season was being carried on vigorously, even children of seven years old were carrying agricultural burdens on their shoulders. Women with robust infants strapped on their backs had their hands busy with the distaff, while working the waterwheels with their feet; and all along the waterways fishermen were busy with their great bamboo plunge nets. Lu Yew mentions the women as employed with both waterwheel and distaff in the twelfth century.

On the morning of the second day from Shanghai the steam launch cast off her tail at the mouth of a narrow canal overarched with trees, up which my boat moved silently as far as a “lock,” by which we mounted into a broad waterway leading direct into Hangchow, encircling it on three sides and connected with other navigable canals, spanned by picturesque stone bridges, and giving easy access to most parts of the interior of the city.

That which I have called a “lock,” properly a _pah_ or “haulover,” is an ingenious contrivance by which the difficulty of “negotiating” different levels in the same boat is skilfully adjusted. The illustration shows the principle and the mode of applying it in Chekiang, but various methods are adopted. The essential parts of the contrivance, as shown here, are a smooth stone slide, from the higher to the lower level, the middle of which is thickly coated with moist mud, two stout and tall uprights, two rude wooden windlasses, and stout bamboo ropes with strong iron hooks. In ascending, the boat is wound up to the higher level by a number of men at the windlasses, and in going down she is drawn to the verge and tipped over, descending with great velocity by her own impetus, the restraining rope at her stern scarcely moderating the violence of the plunge with which she takes a header into the water below, when everything not securely fastened breaks adrift, and a lather of foaming water surges round the surprised passenger’s feet. A few _cash_ are charged for the transfer.

I thought the canal entrance to Hangchow grand, although below the high blank walls of large private residences the grassy slopes are the resort of unpleasantly active pigs searching, and not vainly, for offal. The gunboats, or police junks, with their striped blue and white canopies and brilliant crews, and the lofty bridges are pleasing to the eye. At one of the latter Dr. Main, for eighteen years a C.M.S. missionary doctor in Hangchow, met me, and I was carried through a populous and dirty quarter, through a door in a high wall, and under a trellis from which hundreds of lilac wistaria clusters were hanging, into a large enclosure, partly lawns and partly rose borders, with an old-fashioned English house on one side, and on the other two the fine two-storeyed buildings of two of the crack hospitals of the East, with their outgrowths of leper hospitals for men and women, a home for leper children, and an opium refuge. It was a bewildering change from the crowds, dirt, and sordid bustle of the lower parts of a Chinese city to broad, smooth, shaven lawns, English trees and flowers, English buildings with their taste and completeness, and the refined quiet of an English home.

This most ancient city, situated on the left bank of the shallow Ch’ien T’ang river, of which a magnificent description is given by Marco Polo under the name of Kinsai, though it has not fully recovered from the destruction wrought by the Taiping troops, is still handsome and dignified, and to my thinking, with its lovely environs, is the most attractive of the big Chinese cities.

It is certainly one of the most important, as the capital of the rich and populous province of Chekiang, the centre of a great silk-producing district, and of the manufacture of the best silks, the sole source of the silk fabrics supplied to the Imperial Household, the southern terminus of the Grand Canal, and a great centre of Chinese culture and literature. It possesses the Ting Library, the finest private library in China, appropriately housed in buildings adjoining the “palace” of the Ting family. The arrangements for the storage and classification of books are admirable, and a very gentlemanly and intelligent son of the enlightened possessor is the enthusiastic and capable librarian. The treasures of this library are open freely to anyone who introduces himself by a card from an official. The collection of zoological and botanical books, superbly illustrated in the best style of Chinese wood engraving, is in itself a noble possession. Every part of a plant is figured, and the illustrations are almost photographically accurate, leading one to hope that the letterpress accompanying them has equal scientific merit!

Hangchow is also important as a “residential” city, the chosen home of many retired merchants and mandarins. The homes, frequently palaces, of men of leisure and local patriotism adorn its streets, but their stately proportions and sumptuous decorations are concealed from vulgar view by high whitewashed walls, in which heavily-barred and massive gates give access to the interiors. The mansion of the Ting family, in which I took “afternoon tea,” with its lofty reception-rooms, piazzas, and courts, must cover two acres of ground. It is stately, but not comfortable, and the richly-carved blackwood chairs with panels of clouded grey marble for backs and seats, and table centres of the same, seem only fitted for the noon of a midsummer’s day. Besides the dwellings of the “leisured class” there are those of high officials, bankers, and wealthy tea and silk merchants, many of them extremely magnificent, the cost of one built by a wealthy banker being estimated at £100,000.

I wrote of dirt and sordid bustle. This is chiefly by the waterside, and is not surprising in a city of three-quarters of a million of inhabitants. The “west-end” streets are, however, broad, light, well flagged, and incredibly clean for China. Hangchow impresses one with a general sense of well-being. I did not see one beggar. The people are well clothed and fed, and I understood that except during epidemics there is no abject poverty. It is the grand centre for the trade of a hundred cities, and much of the tea and silk sold in Shanghai and Ningpo passes through it.

Everything in the city and neighbourhood suggests silk. In all the adjacent country the mulberry tree is omnipresent, planted in every possible place along the creeks, on the ridges separating the fields, in plantations, acres in extent, and near villages, in nurseries each containing several thousand shoots, in expectation of a greatly increased demand for this staple product. There are 7000 handlooms for the weaving of silk in Hangchow, employing about 28,000 people, and 360 of these looms under the inspection of an Imperial Commissioner work exclusively for the Imperial Household.

Some of the silk shops rival that of Laou Kai Fook at Shanghai. In them are rich self-coloured silks in deep rich colourings and the most delicate shades, brocaded washing silks in various shades of indigo dyeing, and delicate mauves and French greys, which become more lustrous every time they are washed, heavy and very broad satins, plain and brocaded, and, what I admire more than all, heavy figured silks in colourings and shades unknown to us sold for Chinese masculine dress, and brocaded with symbolical bats, bees, spiders, stags’ heads, dragons for mandarins’ robes, and the highly decorative characters representing happiness and longevity. These quaint and beautiful fabrics are not exported to Europe, and are not shown to Europeans unless they ask for them. Fans exported to all parts of the empire are another great industry, and provide constant work for many thousand people. Elaborate furniture, silk and gold embroidering, and tinselled paper money for burning, to supply the dead with the means of comfortable existence, are also largely manufactured in this thriving capital.

The situation of Hangchow is beautiful, separated only by a belt of clean sand from the bright waters of the Ch’ien T’ang river. The south-western portion is built on a hill, from which broad gleams of the sea are visible; and to the west, just outside the walls, is the Si Hu [Western Lake], famous throughout China, a lovely sheet of water, surrounded by attractive country houses, temples, and shrines, studded with wooded islands connected by ancient and noble causeways, the islands themselves crowned with decorative pavilions, some of which are Imperial, and are surrounded by the perfection of Chinese gardening, as in the case of the beautiful Imperial Library, with its ferneries, rockeries, quaint ponds, and flowering shrubs. This lovely lake, with its deep, wooded bays and inlets, its forest-clothed hills and ravines, its gay gondolas and pleasure boats, and its ideally perfect shores, which I saw over and over again in the glorious beauty of a Chinese spring, mirrors also in its silver waters a picturesque range of hills, bare and breezy, close to the city, on which stands, in an imposing position, a very ancient pagoda, while the lower hill-slopes are clothed with coniferous trees, bamboo, plum, peach, cherry, camphor, azalea, clematis, roses, honeysuckle, and maple. Near the lake is a deep, long dell, the cliffs of which are recessed for stone images, and which contains several famous temples, one the temple of the “Five Hundred Disciples,” who, larger than life-size, adorn its spacious corridors. The temples and shrines of this beautiful glen are visited daily by crowds from Hangchow, and have such a reputation for sanctity and efficacy as to attract 100,000 pilgrims annually. The dell is guarded by two colossal figures, under canopies, the gods of Wind and Thunder, very fine specimens of vigorous wood carving, and by an antique pagoda.

Hangchow is also famous for the phenomenon of the “Hangchow bore,” seen at its best at the change of the monsoon, when an enormous mass of tidal water, suddenly confronted by the current of the river, uplifts its foaming crest to a height of from fifteen to twenty feet, and with a thunderous roar and fearful force rages down the narrow waterway as fast as a horse can gallop, affording a welcome distraction to the sightseers of Shanghai.

Hangchow is enclosed by a wall faced with hewn stone, about thirteen miles in circumference, from thirty to forty feet high, from twenty to thirty feet broad, and pierced by ten large gateways with massive gates. The houses are mainly two-storeyed. The business streets blaze with colour; the principal street is five miles long. The population, estimated at 700,000, cruelly diminished during the Taiping Rebellion, is rapidly increasing. The officials, merchants, and common people are unusually friendly to foreigners, who, before the recent opening of the port, were all missionaries. The cry “Foreign devil!” is never heard. Mr. Sundius, our consular officer, considers that these very satisfactory relations are due to the greater prosperity of the people, in consequence of the increased foreign demand for silk, and to the success of the exertions of the missionaries to win their respect and esteem.

The new general and Japanese settlements are in an excellent position on the Grand Canal, four miles from the city wall. They are nearly a mile in length by half a mile in depth, and have a fine road and a bund sixty feet wide, hereafter to be turfed. The Japanese, who opened the port with their swords, have not been in any hurry to occupy it. It will be interesting to see how far foreigners will take advantage of the opening, and settle in this, one of the friendliest and most attractive of the Chinese cities. There is a well-known Chinese proverb, “Above is heaven, below are Hangchow and Suchow.”