Chapter I: Foreword

There is no particular plan to this book. I found my interest turning toward the Far East, and as I am not one of those fortunate persons who can scamper through a country in a few weeks and know all about it, I set out on a leisurely jaunt to wherever new clues to interest led me. It merely happened that this will-o’-the-wisp drew me on through everything that was once China, north of about the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude. The man who spends a year or two in China and then attacks the problem of telling all he saw, heard, felt, or smelled there is like the small boy who was ordered by the teacher to write on two neat pages all about his visit to the museum. It simply can’t be done. Hence I have merely set down in the following pages, in the same leisurely wandering way as I have traveled, the things that most interested me, often things that others seem to have missed, or considered unimportant, in the hope that some of them may also interest others. Impressions are unlike statistics, however, in that they cannot be corrected to a fraction, and I decline to be held responsible for the exact truth of every presumption I have recorded. If I have fallen into the common error of generalizing, I hereby apologize, for I know well that details in local customs differ even between neighboring villages in China. What I say can at most be true of the north, for as yet I know nothing of southern China. On the other hand, there may be much repetition of customs and the like, but that goes to show how unchanging is life among the masses in China even as a republic.

Lafcadio Hearn said that the longer he remained in the East the less he knew of what was going on in the Oriental mind. An “old China hand” has put the same thing in more popular language: “You can easily tell how long a man has been in China by how much he doesn’t know about it. If he knows almost everything, he has just recently arrived; if he is in doubt, he has been here a few years; if he admits that he really knows nothing whatever about the Chinese people or their probable future, you may take it for granted that he has been out a very long time.”

But as I have said before, the “old-timer” will seldom sit down to tell even what he has seen, and in many cases he has long since lost his way through the woods because of the trees. Or he may have other and more important things to do. Hence it is up to those of us who have nothing else on hand to pick up and preserve such crumbs of information as we can; for surely to know as much of the truth about our foreign neighbors as possible is important, above all in this new age. In our own land there are many very false ideas about China; false ideas that in some cases are due to deliberate Chinese propaganda abroad. While I was out in the far interior I received a clipping outlining the remarks of a Chinese lecturing through our Middle West, and his résumé left the impression that bound feet and opium had all but completely disappeared from China, and that in the matter of schools and the like the “republic” is making enormous strides. No sooner did the Lincheng affair attract the world’s attention than American papers began to run yarns, visibly inspired, about the marvelous advances which the Chinese have recently accomplished. Such men as Alfred Sze are often mistaken in the United States as samples of China. Unfortunately they are nothing of the kind; in fact, they are too often hopelessly out of touch with their native land. There has been progress in China, but nothing like the amount of it which we have been coaxed or lulled into believing, and some of it is of a kind that raises serious doubts as to its direction. For all the telephones, airplanes, and foreign clothes in the coast cities, the great mass of the Chinese have been affected barely at all by this urge toward modernity and Westernism—if that is synonymous with progress. As some one has just put it, “the Chinese still wear the pigtail on their minds, though they have largely cut it off their heads.” How great must be the misinformation at home which causes our late President to say that all China really needs is more loans, thereby making himself, and by extension his nation, the laughing-stock of any one with the rudiments of intelligence who has spent an hour studying the situation on the spot. England is a little better informed on the subject than we, because she is less idealistic, more likely to look facts in the face instead of trying to make facts fit preconceived notions of essential human perfection. China may need more credits, but any fool knows that you should stop the hole in the bottom of a tub before you pour more water into it. At times, too, it is laughable to think of us children among nations worrying about this one, thousands of years old, which has so often “come back,” and may still be ambling her own way long after we have again disappeared from the face of the earth.

Though it is impossible to leave out the omnipresent entirely, I have said comparatively little about politics. My own interest in what we lump together under that word reaches only so far as it affects the every-day life of the people, of the mudsill of society, toward which, no doubt by some queer quirk in my make-up, I find my attention habitually focusing. I have tried, therefore, to show in some detail their lives, slowly changing perhaps yet little changed, and to let others conclude whether “politics” has done all that it should for them. Besides, the Far East swarms with writers on politics, men who have been out here for years or decades and have given their attention almost entirely to that popular subject; and even these disagree like doctors. Some of us, I know, are frankly tired of politics, at least for a space, important as they are; moreover, political changes are so rapid, especially in the “never changing” East, that it is impossible to keep abreast of the times in anything less than a daily newspaper.

At home there are numbers of young men, five or ten years out of college, who can tell you just what is the matter with the world, and exactly how to remedy it. I am more or less ready to agree with them that the world is going to the dogs. What of it? You have only to step outdoors on any clear night to see that there are hundreds of other worlds, which may be arranging their lives in a more intelligent manner. The most striking thing about these young political and sociological geniuses sitting in their suburban gardens or their city flats is that while they can toss off a recipe guaranteed to cure our own sick world overnight, if only some one can get it down its throat, they seldom seem to have influence enough in their own cozy little corner of it to drive out one grafting ward-heeler. In other words, if you must know what is to be the future of China, I regret that I have not been vouchsafed the gift of prophecy and cannot tell you.

In the minor matter of Chinese words and names, I have deliberately not tried to follow the usual Romanization, but rather to cause the reader to pronounce them as nearly like what they are on the spot as is possible with our mere twenty-six letters. Of course I could not follow this rule entirely or I must have called the capital of China “Bay-jing,” have spoken of the evacuation of “Shahn-doong,” and so on; so that in the case of names already more or less familiar to the West I have used the most modern and most widely accepted forms, as they have survived on the ground. At that I cannot imagine what ailed the men who Romanized the Chinese language, but that is another story.

HARRY A. FRANCK.

Kuling, China, August 16, 1923.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I IN THE LAND WE CALL KOREA 3

II SOME KOREAN SCENES AND CUSTOMS 23

III JAPANESE AND MISSIONARIES IN KOREA 36

IV OFF THE BEATEN TRACK IN CHO-SEN 53

V UP AND DOWN MANCHURIA 71

VI THROUGH RUSSIANIZED CHINA 82

VII SPEEDING ACROSS THE GOBI 108

VIII IN “RED” MONGOLIA 124

IX HOLY URGA 135

X EVERY ONE HIS OWN DIPLOMAT 160

XI AT HOME UNDER THE TARTAR WALL 174

XII JOGGING ABOUT PEKING 195

XIII A JOURNEY TO JEHOL 230

XIV A JAUNT INTO PEACEFUL SHANSI 252

XV RAMBLES IN THE PROVINCE OF CONFUCIUS 265

XVI ITINERATING IN SHANTUNG 288

XVII EASTWARD TO TSINGTAO 308

XVIII IN BANDIT-RIDDEN HONAN 330

XIX WESTWARD THROUGH LOESS CAÑONS 349

XX ON TO SIAN-FU 366

XXI ONWARD THROUGH SHENSI 387

XXII CHINA’S FAR WEST 405

XXIII WHERE THE FISH WAGGED HIS TAIL 423

XXIV IN MOHAMMEDAN CHINA 447

XXV TRAILING THE YELLOW RIVER HOMEWARD 468

XXVI COMPLETING THE CIRCLE 485

ILLUSTRATIONS

A constant stream of pilgrims, largely blue-clad coolies
on foot, passed up and down the sacred stairway _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Map of the author’s route 12

Our first view of Seoul, in which the former Temple of
Heaven is now a smoking-room in a Japanese hotel
garden 16

The interior of a Korean house 16

Close-up of a Korean “jicky-coon,” or street porter 17

At the first suggestion of rain the Korean pulls out a
little oiled-paper umbrella that fits over his
precious horsehair hat 17

Some of the figures, in the gaudiest of colors,
surrounding the Golden Buddha in a Korean temple 32

The famous “White Buddha,” carved, and painted in white,
on a great boulder in the outskirts of Seoul 32

One day, descending the hills toward Seoul, we heard a
great jangling hubbub, and found two sorceresses in
full swing in a native house, where people come to
have their children “cured” 33

The _yang-ban_, or loafing upper class of Korea, go in
for archery, which is about fitted to their
temperament, speed, and initiative 33

The Korean method of ironing, the rhythmic _rat-a-tat_
of which may be heard day and night almost anywhere in
the peninsula 40

Winding thread before one of the many little
machine-knit stocking factories in Ping Yang 40

The graves of Korea cover hundreds of her hillsides with
their green mounds, usually unmarked, but carefully
tended by the superstitious descendants 41

A chicken peddler in Seoul 48

A full load 48

The plowman homeward wends his weary way—in Korean
fashion, always carrying the plow and driving his
unburdened ox or bull before him. One of the most
common sights of Korea 49

The biblical “watch-tower in a cucumber patch” is in
evidence all over Korea in the summer, when crops
begin to ripen. Whole families often sleep in them
during this season, when they spring up all over the
country, and often afford the only cool breeze 49

A village blacksmith of Korea. Note the bellows-pumper
in his high hat at the rear 64

The interior of a native Korean school of the old
type,—dark, dirty, swarming with flies, and loud with
a constant chorus 64

In Kongo-san, the “Diamond Mountains” of eastern Korea 65

The monastery kitchen of Yu-jom-sa, typical of Korean
cooking 65

One of the monks of Yu-jom-sa 68

This great cliff-carved Buddha, fifty feet high and
thirty broad, was done by Chinese artists centuries
ago. Note my carrier, a full-sized man, squatting at
the lower left-hand corner 68

The carved Buddhas of Sam-pul-gam, at the entrance to
the gorge of the Inner Kongo, were chiseled by a
famous Korean monk five hundred years ago 69

The camera can at best give only a suggestion of the
sheer white rock walls of Shin Man-mul-cho, perhaps
the most marvelous bit of scenery in the Far East 69

Two ladies in the station waiting-room of Antung, just
across the Yalu from Korea, proudly comparing the
relative inadequacy of their crippled feet 76

The Japanese have made Dairen, southern terminus of
Manchuria and once the Russian Dalny, one of the most
modern cities of the Far East 76

A ruined gallery in the famous North Fort of the
Russians at Port Arthur. Hundreds of such war
memorials are preserved by the Japanese on the sites
of their first victory over the white race 77

The empty Manchu throne of Mukden 77

The Russian so loves a uniform, even after the land it
represents has gone to pot, that even school-boys in
Vladivostok usually wear them,—red bands, khaki, black
trousers, purple epaulets 80

A Manchu woman in her national head-dress, bargaining
with a street vender of Mukden for a cup of tea 80

A common sight in Harbin,—a Russian refugee, in this
case a blind boy, begging in the street of passing
Chinese 81

A Russian in Harbin—evidently not a Bolshevik or he
would be living in affluence in Russia 81

The grain of the _kaoliang_, one of the most important
crops of North China. It grows from ten to fifteen
feet high and makes the finest of hiding-places for
bandits 96

A daily sight in Vladivostok,—a group of youths
suspected of opinions contrary to those of the
Government, rounded up and trotted off to prison 96

A refugee Russian priest, of whom there were many in
Harbin 97

Types of this kind swarm along the Chinese Eastern
Railway of Manchuria, many of them volunteers in the
Chinese army or railway police 97

One of the Russian churches in Harbin, a creamy gray,
with green domes and golden crosses, with much gaudy
trimming 100

A policeman of Vladivostok, where shaving is looked down
upon 100

Two former officers in the czar’s army, now bootblacks
in the “thieves” market of Harbin—when they catch any
one who can afford to be blacked 101

Scores of booths in Harbin, Manchuli, and Vladivostok,
selling second-hand hardware of every description,
suggest why the factories and trains of Bolshevik
Russia have difficulty in running 101

The human freight horses of Tientsin, who toil ten or
more hours a day for twenty coppers, about six cents
in our money 108

Part of the pass above Kalgan is so steep that no
automobile can climb to the great Mongolian plateau
unassisted 108

Some of the camel caravans we passed on the Gobi seemed
endless. This one had thirty dozen loaded camels and
more than a dozen outriders 109

But cattle caravans also cross the Gobi, drawing
home-made two-wheeled carts, often with a flag,
sometimes the Stars and Stripes, flying at the head 109

The Mongol would not be himself without his horse,
though to us this would usually seem only a pony 112

Mongol authorities examining our papers, which Vilner is
showing, at Ude. Robes blue, purple, dull red, etc.
Biggest Chinaman on left 113

A group of Mongols and stray Chinese watching our
arrival at the first _yamen_ of Urga 113

The frontier post of Ude, fifty miles beyond the
uninhabited frontier between Inner and Outer Mongolia,
where Mongol authorities examine passports and very
often turn travelers back 128

Chinese travelers on their way to Urga. It is
unbelievable how many muffled Chinamen and their
multifarious junk one “Dodge” will carry 128

The Mongol of the Gobi lives in a _yourt_ made of heavy
felt over a light wooden framework, which can be taken
down and packed in less than an hour when the spirit
of the nomad strikes him 129

Mongol women make the felt used as houses, mainly by
pouring water on sheep’s wool 129

The upper town of Urga, entirely inhabited by lamas, has
the temple of Ganden, containing a colossal standing
Buddha, rising high above all else. It is in Tibetan
style and much of its superstructure is covered with
pure gold 144

Red lamas leaving the “school” in which hundreds of them
squat tightly together all day long, droning through
their litany. They are of all ages, equally filthy and
heavily booted. Over the gateway of the typical Urga
palisade is a text in Tibetan, and the cylinders at
the upper corners are covered with gleaming gold 144

High class lamas, in their brilliant red or yellow
robes, great ribbons streaming from their strange
hats, are constantly riding in and out of Urga. Note
the bent-knee style of horsemanship 145

A high lama dignitary on his travels, free from the gaze
of the curious, and escorted by mounted lamas of the
middle class 145

A youthful lama turning one of the myriad
prayer-cylinders of Urga. Many written prayers are
pasted inside, and each turn is equivalent to saying
all of them 152

The market in front of Hansen’s house. The structure on
the extreme left is not what it looks like, for they
have no such in Urga, but it houses a prayer-cylinder 152

Women, whose crippled feet make going to the shops
difficult, do much of their shopping from the
two-boxes-on-a-pole type of merchant, constant
processions of whom tramp the highways of China 153

An itinerant blacksmith-shop, with the box-bellows
worked by a stick handle widely used by craftsmen and
cooks in China 153

Pious Mongol men and women worshiping before the
residence of the “Living Buddha” of Urga, some by
throwing themselves down scores of times on the
prostrating-boards placed for that purpose, one by
making many circuits of the place, now and again
measuring his length on the ground 160

The Mongols of Urga disposed of their dead by throwing
the bodies out on the hillsides, where they are
quickly devoured by the savage black dogs that roam
everywhere 160

Mongol women in full war-paint 161

Though it was still only September, our return from Urga
was not unlike a polar expedition 161

Our home in Peking was close under the great East Wall
of the Tartar City 176

The indispensable staff of Peking housekeeping consists
of (left to right) ama, rickshaw-man, “boy,” coolie,
and cook 176

A chat with neighbors on the way to the daily stroll on
the wall 177

Street venders were constantly crying their wares in our
quarter 177

At Chinese New Year the streets of Peking were gay with
all manner of things for sale, such as these
brilliantly colored paintings of native artists 192

A rich man died in our street, and among other things
burned at his grave, so that he would have them in
after-life, were this “automobile” and two
“chauffeurs” 192

A neighbor who gave his birds a daily airing 193

Just above us on the Tartar Wall were the ancient
astronomical instruments looted by the Germans in 1900
and recently returned, in accordance with a clause in
the Treaty of Versailles 193

Preparing for a devil dance at the lama temple in Peking 208

The devil dancers are usually Chinese street urchins
hired for the occasion by the languid Mongol lamas of
Peking 208

The street sprinklers of Peking work in pairs, with a
bucket and a wooden dipper. This is the principal
street of the Chinese City “outside Ch’ien-men” 209

The Forbidden City is for the most part no longer that,
but open in more than half its extent to the
ticket-buying public 209

In the vast compound of the Altar of Heaven 224

Mei Lan-fang, most famous of Chinese actors, who, like
his father and grandfather before him, plays only
female parts 224

Over the wall from our house boats plied on the moat
separating us from the Chinese City 225

Just outside the Tartar Wall of Peking the night soil of
the city, brought in wheelbarrows, is dried for use as
fertilizer 225

For three thousands miles the Great Wall clambers over
the mountains between China and Mongolia 240

One of the mammoth stone figures flanking the road to
the Ming Tombs of North China, each of a single piece
of granite 240

Another glimpse of the Great Wall 241

The twin pagodas of Taiyüan, capital of Shansi Province 241

The three _p’ai-lous_ of Hsi Ling, the Western Tombs 248

In Shansi four men often work at as many windlasses over
a single well to irrigate the fields 249

Prisoners grinding grain in the “model prison” of
Taiyüan 249

A few of the 508 Buddhas in one of the lama temples of
Jehol 256

The youngest, but most important—since she has borne him
a son—of the wives of a Manchu chief of one of the
tomb-tending towns of Tung Ling 256

Interior of the notorious Empress Dowager’s tomb at Tung
Ling, with her cloth-covered chair of state and colors
to dazzle the stoutest eye 257

The Potalá of Jehol, said to be a copy, even in details,
of that of Lhasa. The windows are false and the great
building at the top is merely a roofless one enclosing
the chief temple 257

Behind Tung Ling the great forest reserve which once
“protected” the tombs from the evil spirits that
always come from the north was recently opened to
settlers, and frontier conditions long since forgotten
in the rest of China prevail 260

Much of the plowing in the newly opened tract is done in
this primitive fashion 260

The face of the mammoth Buddha of Jehol, forty-three
feet high and with forty-two hands. It fills a
four-story building, and is the largest in China
proper, being identical, according to the lamas, with
those of Urga and Lhasa 261

A Chinese inn, with its heated _k’ang_, may not be the
last word in comfort, but it is many degrees in
advance of the earth floors of Indian huts along the
Andes 261

The upper half of the ascent of Tai-shan is by a stone
stairway which ends at the “South Gate of Heaven,”
here seen in the upper right-hand corner 268

One of the countless beggar women who squat in the
center of the stairway to Tai-shan, expecting every
pilgrim to drop at least a “cash” into each basket 268

Wash-day in the moat outside the city wall of Tzinan,
capital of Shantung 269

A traveler by chair nearing the top of Tai-shan, most
sacred of the five holy peaks of China 269

A priest of the Temple of Confucius 272

The grave of Confucius is noted for its simplicity 272

The sanctum of the Temple of Confucius, with the statue
and spirit—tablet of the sage, before which millions
of Chinese burn joss-sticks annually 273

Making two Chinese elders of a Shantung village over
into Presbyterians 288

Messrs. Kung and Meng, two of the many descendants of
Confucius in Shantung flanking one of those of Mencius 288

Some of the worst cases still out of bed in the American
leper-home of Tenghsien, Shantung, were still full of
laughter 289

Off on an “itinerating” trip with an American missionary
in Shantung, by a conveyance long in vogue there.
Behind, one of the towers by which messages were sent,
by smoke or fire, to all corners of the old Celestial
Empire 289

On the way home I changed places with one of our three
wheelbarrow coolies, and found that the contrivance
did not run so hard as I might otherwise have believed 304

The men who use the roads of China make no protest at
their being dug up every spring and turned into fields 304

Sons are a great asset to the wheelbarrowing coolies of
Shantung 305

A private carriage, Shantung style 320

Shackled prisoners of Lao-an making hair-nets for the
American market 320

School-girls in the American mission school at Weihsien,
Shantung 321

The governor’s mansion at Tsingtao, among hills
carefully reforested by the Germans, followed by the
Japanese, has now been returned to the Chinese after a
quarter of a century of foreign rule 321

Chinese farming methods include a stone roller, drawn by
man, boy, or beast, to break up the clods of dry earth 336

Kaifeng, capital of Honan Province, has among its
population some two hundred Chinese Jews, descendants
of immigrants of centuries ago 336

A cave-built blacksmith and carpenter-shop in
Kwanyintang where the Lunghai railway ends at present
in favor of more laborious means of transportation 337

An illustrated lecture in China takes place outdoors in
a village street, two men pushing brightly colored
pictures along a two-row panel while they chant some
ancient story 337

In the Protestant Mission compound of Honanfu the
missionaries had tied up this thief to stew in the sun
for a few days, rather than turn him over to the
authorities, who would have lopped off his head 344

Over a city gate in western Honan two crated heads of
bandits were festering in the sun and feeding swarms
of flies 344

A village in the loess country, which breaks up into
fantastic formations as the stoneless soil is worn
away by the rains and blown away by the winds 345

I take my turn at leading our procession of mule litters
and let my companions swallow its dust for a while 352

The road down into Shensi. Once through the great
arch-gate that marks the provincial boundary, the road
sinks down into the loess again, and beggars line the
way into Tungkwan 352

Hwa-shan, one of the five sacred mountains of China 353

An example of Chinese military transportation 353

Coal is plentiful and cheap in Shensi, and comes to
market in Sian-fu in wheelbarrows, there to await
purchasers 360

The holy of holies of the principal Sian-fu mosque has a
simplicity in striking contrast to the demon-crowded
interiors of purely Chinese temples 360

Our carts crossing a branch of the Yellow River fifty
_li_ west of the Shensi capital 361

Women and girls do much of the grinding of grain with
the familiar stone roller of China, in spite of their
bound feet 361

An old tablet in the compound of the chief mosque at
Sian-fu, purely Chinese in form, except that the base
has lost its likeness to a turtle and the writing is
in Arabic 368

This famous old portrait of Confucius, cut on black
stone, in Sian-fu is said to be the most authentic one
in existence 368

A large town of cave-dwellers in the loess country, and
the terraced fields which support it 369

Samson and Delilah. This blind boy, grinding grain all
day long, marches round and round his stone mill with
the same high lifted feet and bobbing head of the late
Caruso in the opera of that name 369

The East Gate of Sian-fu, by which we entered the
capital of Shensi, rises like an apartment-house above
the flat horizon 384

All manner of aids to the man behind the wheelbarrow are
used in his long journey in bringing wheat to market,
some of them not very economical 384

The Western Gate of Sian-fu, through which we continued
our journey to Kansu 385

A “Hwei-Hwei,” or Chinese Mohammedan, keeper of an
outdoor restaurant 385

In the Mohammedan section of Sian-fu there are men who,
but for their Chinese garb and habits, might pass for
Turks in Damascus or Constantinople 400

Our chief cartman eating dinner in his favorite posture,
and holding in one hand the string of “cash,” one
thousand strong and worth about an American quarter,
which served him as money 400

A bit of cliff-dwelling town in the loess country, where
any other color than a yellowish brown is extremely
rare 401

A corner of a wayside village, topped by a temple 401

The Chinese coolie gets his hair dressed about once a
month by the itinerant barber. This one is just in the
act of adding a switch. Note the wooden comb at the
back of the head 408

An old countryman having dinner at an outdoor restaurant
in town on market day has his own way of using chairs
or benches 408

A Chinese soldier and his mount, not to mention his
worldly possessions 409

Mongol women on a joy-ride 409

Two blind minstrels entertaining a village by
singsonging interminable national ballads and legends,
to which they keep time by beating together resonant
sticks of hard wood 416

The boys and girls of western China are “toughened” by
wearing nothing below the waist and only one ragged
garment above it, even in midwinter 416

The “fast mail” of interior China is carried by a pair
of coolies, in relays of about twenty miles each, made
at a jog-trot with about eighty pounds of mail apiece.
They travel night and day and get five or six American
dollars a month 417

A bit of the main street of Taing-Ning, showing the
damage wrought by the earthquake of two years before
to the “devil screen” in front of the local
magistrate’s _yamen_ 417

This begging old ragamuffin is a Taoist priest 436

A local magistrate sent this squad of “soldiers” to
escort us through the earthquake district, though
whether for fear of bandits, out of mere respect for
our high rank, or because the “soldiers” needed a few
coppers which he could not give them himself, was not
clear 436

Where the “mountain walked” and overwhelmed the old
tree-lined highway. In places this was covered
hundreds of feet deep for miles, in others it had been
carried bodily, trees and all, a quarter-mile or more
away 437

In the earthquake district of western China whole
terraced mountain-sides came down and covered whole
villages. In the foreground is a typical Kansu farm 437

Kansu earlaps are very gaily embroidered in colored
designs of birds, flowers, and the like. Pipes are
smaller than their “ivory” mouthpieces 444

It is a common sight in some parts of Kansu to see men
knitting, and still more so to meet little girls whose
feet are already beginning to be bound 444

The village scholar displays his wisdom by reading where
all can see him—through spectacles of pure plate-glass 445

A Kirghiz in the streets of Lanchow, where many races of
Central Asia meet 445

An _ahong_, or Chinese Mohammedan mullah of Lanchow 448

Mohammedan school-girls, whose garments were a riot of
color 448

A glimpse of Lanchow, capital of China’s westernmost
province, from across the Yellow River 449

Looking down the valley of Lanchow, across several
groups of temples at the base of the hills, to the
four forts built against another Mohammedan rebellion 449

A Kansu vista near Lanchow, where the hills are no
longer terraced, but where towns are numerous and much
alike 464

This method of grinding up red peppers and the like is
wide-spread in China. Both trough and wheel are of
solid iron 464

Oil is floated down the Yellow River to Lanchow in whole
ox-hides that quiver at a touch as if they were alive 465

The Yellow River at Lanchow, with a water-wheel and the
American bridge which is the only one that crosses it
in the west 465

The Chinese protect their boys from evil spirits (the
girls do not matter) by having a chain and padlock put
about their necks at some religious ceremony, which
deceives the spirits into believing that they belong
to the temple. Earlaps embroidered in gay colors are
widely used in Kansu in winter 480

Many of the faces seen in Western China hardly seem
Chinese 480

A dead man on the way to his ancestral home for burial,
a trip that may last for weeks. Over the heavy
unpainted wooden coffin were brown bags of fodder for
the animals, surmounted by the inevitable rooster 481

Our party on the return from Lanchow,—the major and
myself flanked by our “boys” and cook respectively,
these in turn by the two cart-drivers, with our
alleged _mafu_, or groom for our riding animals, at
the right 481

A typical farm hamlet of the Yellow River valley in the
far west where some of the farm-yards are surrounded
by mud walls so mighty that they look like great
armories 496

The usual kitchen and heating-plant of a Chinese inn,
and the kind on which our cook competed with hungry
coolies in preparing our dinners 496

The midwinter third-class coach in which I returned to
Peking 497

No wonder I was mistaken for a Bolshevik and caused
family tears when I turned up in Peking from the west 497

The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. Edwin S. Mills of Peking, China, for the use of the pictures of Urga.

WANDERING IN
NORTHERN CHINA