Chinese Mettle

A Temple of Healing.

CHINESE METTLE

Written and Illustrated by E. G. KEMP, F.R.S.G.S.

Author of “The Face of China,” “The Face of Manchuria, Korea
and Russian Turkestan,” “Wanderings in Chinese Turkestan,”
“Reminiscences of a Sister” illustrated....

“Travaile, in the younger Sort is a Part of Education; in the Elder, a Part of Experience.... When a Travailer returneth home, let him not leave the countries, where he hath travailed, altogether behind him.... Let it appeare that he doth not change his country manners for those of Forraigne Parts; But onely pricke in some Flowers of that he hath Learned abroad, into the Customs of his own Country.”—Bacon’s Essays.

Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.
Toronto London New York
St Paul’s House Warwick Square E.C.4

Printed in 1921

DEDICATED
TO
MY CHINESE FRIENDS

Prologue

Books of a descriptive nature, especially on a foreign country, are most difficult to write. Under ordinary circumstances, writers of such books, due to the differences of historical setting and social background, may find it hard to free themselves from prejudice. When the visit is confined to a section of the country, their views are liable to be provincial. On the other hand, hasty travelling, however large an area they may cover, makes their impressions superficial.

It is well said that modern travellers see nothing but the interior of trains and hotels. This is gradually becoming true along the eastern coast of China. To-day one who confines his visit to Shanghai or Tientsin can not be said to have seen China, for it is not there that one sees the real Chinese life. Civilization means more than mechanical improvements. Herein lies the value of Miss Kemp’s book. She has wisely neglected the “show window” by putting seaports at the end. By acquainting the public with the wealth and beauty of the interior—places seldom traversed by sojourners,—she reveals to the readers the vitality and potential energy, both natural and cultural, of a great nation. Throughout the book the authoress combines the sincerity of description with the picturesqueness of details.

Equally instructive is the authoress’ description of Chinese society and some of the prominent Chinese men and women. Great changes are going on in China. Nothing could afford more interest and knowledge to the friends of China than to witness the shifting scenes of the young Republic. The general tendency is undoubtedly towards stability and progress, evolving order out of derangement resulting from so immense a change as absolute monarchy to a modern democracy. The authoress has well illustrated by facts the advance which China has made in education, industry, commerce, etc.

It is a common conviction nowadays that “the future of the world depends largely on what happens in China during the next few decades.” To know China, and to know her intimately, is the first step towards a better international understanding and the assurance of future peace in the Far East. The present volume serves as an admirable guide.

Since the days of Marco Polo scores of books describing China, both good and poor, have been written. As an intimate friend and careful observer of China, Miss Kemp’s new production together with her previous works are certainly to be classified among the best ones. From cover to cover, this volume contains facts and experiences that are entertaining, informative, and valuable.

SAO-KE ALFRED SZE.

Chinese Legation, Washington, D.C.

October 24, 1921.

Contents

Illustrations

Chinese Mettle
Introduction

“Why do you go on journeys to such impossible places?” is a question which I am continually asked. “Can it possibly be for pleasure? How can any one like,” and here the eyebrows are raised and a shade of disgust, politely veiled, is visible, “to stop in awful inns and visit cities full of dirt and smells? What is your real reason for travelling in the interior of China?”

Strange as it may seem to the comfort-loving Britisher, Pleasure is the main lure to China, and a sort of basilisk fascination which is quite irresistible. Naturally, there are other reasons also—this time it was to take a young doctor niece to see what the Chinese Empire was like (we passed through thirteen out of the eighteen provinces) before she settled down to work in her own hospital. Besides this, in the interests of geography and a better understanding of the Chinese people by our own people it seems worth while for an artist to try and show what China is like at the present time. That is the reason for writing this book. I frankly own that I hate writing, but am consumed with a desire that people should know what is now going on in China. My rooted conviction is that the future of the world depends largely on what happens in China during the next decade. This is the decisive hour. An American deplored to a Chinaman the troublous condition of the country, and received a reply to the following effect: “You must have patience with us, we are only a nine-year-old Government, and, if my memory does not deceive me, the United States did not get their constitution for thirteen years.”

The amazing fact is that an empire that has outlived every other world-empire of antiquity is now completely changing its whole government and institutions in a time of world-wide disintegration, and is steadily moving forward, despite internecine warfare.

What is more remarkable still is the changing mettle of the race. Its temperamental characteristics seem to be undergoing as great a change as the social fabric. China has an inward force that is stronger than appears: her faults are so glaring that they have obscured this fact completely. She has been wise enough—unlike all other countries—to entrust certain branches of her administration to foreigners until she is capable of taking over control; these branches are the Customs, the Salt Gabelle and the Post and Telegraph Service; and she has been admirably served by them, despite some flaws in the administration. The vital need of to-day is for honest, incorruptible, educated Chinese who will save their country from their worst enemies—the self-seeking, ambitious, unscrupulous Chinese, who play off one party against another and, through fear of foreign foe as well as home treachery, are dragging China to the verge of the precipice.

To the Chinese themselves, therefore, this book is very specially addressed, and I search for winged words to summon them to their great task to act as true patriots and to devote every energy and talent they possess to building up a new and more glorious empire than the Celestial Empire of the past.

The conditions of China are changing not merely from day to day, but from hour to hour, so that my book must seem strangely paradoxical. The mutable jostles the immutable, and—as in life itself—all sorts of things get mixed up together. There are no watertight compartments in nature, and I have taken the liberty of making my book as miscellaneous as the page of a dictionary. It tells of great personalities, of great movements, of wild tribes, of nature and of human nature, of politics, commerce, religion and education, and scores of other things.

The account of the Miao and I-chia tribes opens up a question of considerable importance in the new China, for there are unaccounted tribes throughout the whole of Western China, not to mention those in other parts, such as the Hakka tribe, whose picturesque boats ply on the Han Kiang (= river) on which Chao Chowfu is situated.

The task has been a heavy one, because the worthy treatment of such a vast and complex subject is far beyond my powers, but in past days readers have always treated my books so far more generously than they deserved, that I take courage and send forth this fledgling of my pen and brush.

London, 1921.

Chapter I
The Long Road

“Travel abroad for one year is more profitable than study at home for five years.... Mencius remarks that a man can learn foreign things best abroad; but much more benefit can be derived from travel by older and experienced men than by the young.”—Chang Chih Tung.

Chapter I
The Long Road

OUR FELLOW TRAVELLERS.

The journey through thirteen provinces of China brought us into contact with such an amazing variety of people that it is no easy task to describe clearly what we saw. I propose to give first of all a brief account of the journey as a whole, and then deal with the more important and less-known provinces somewhat in detail. The one salient fact which emerges from the welter of experiences is that the mettle of the Chinese people is changing, even to the remotest bound of the empire. What it will eventually become, the wisest man cannot foretell, but it is amazingly interesting to watch the changes taking place, and I hope that the sympathetic interest of my readers will be quickened by the record.

The journey in China itself lasted six months. We reached Shanghai February 1, via the United States, and at once went by rail to Taiyuanfu, the capital of Shansi. Visitors to China nowadays can get on fairly comfortably without any knowledge of the language, if they keep to the beaten track. The railway runs from Shanghai up to Peking, and only two changes have to be made during the journey of two days and a night; the first is at the Pukow ferry, a very easy matter and well arranged. The train goes down to the Yangtze at Chen Kiang, and the steam tug takes you across in about ten minutes. At the other side we got into a more comfortable train where we had secured sleeping places; in all the long-distance trains there are restaurant cars, where you can get fairly good meals at reasonable prices.

The next afternoon we reached Tientsin at 4.40, and had to change into a crowded train to Peking; there is always, I believe, a sort of free fight to get in at all, and the weakest go to the wall, except in the case of children, for the Chinese are very fond of children, and never fail to make room for them. Peking is reached by 8 p.m. After leaving the train we passed through two great old gateways, linking Past and Present, to another railway station close at hand, and had only sufficient time to get our luggage through the customs, and to start at 9.30 on the Peking-Hankow line for the junction at Shihchiah Chwang. It is not pleasant to do cross-country travelling in any country at night, and to reach a place at 4.20 a.m. on a cold February morning where you have to change stations would be far too difficult a matter for foreigners were it not for mission friends. They never seem to think anything of such trifles as spending nights looking after helpless travellers. We soon got all our goods and chattels out, and handed them over to a Chinese, whom our friend had engaged to look after them till the train left at 7 a.m. for Taiyuanfu. Meanwhile he escorted us to a clean inn, and comforted us with tea and cake and bedding till it was time to start. The bright cold dawn saw us off once more at 6 o’clock, rather enjoying a walk to the station; there we got into quite a comfortable train, and our friend travelled with us back to his own station, the first up the line. All day we passed through fascinating scenery, often following the course of a river, where turbine water-wheels in groups were busy grinding corn.

The line was only begun in 1903 by a French company, but the Chinese have bought it up, and it ought to be increasingly valuable, chiefly for the transport of coal, in which product Shansi is specially rich. How well I remember in the old days seeing the long files of donkeys, each laden with basketfuls of coal, slowly wending their way across the plains and over the hills; whereas now the railway taps some of the chief coal-mines in the Pingtau district. The seams are from eleven to thirty feet in thickness and quite near the surface, and the coal is of excellent quality. The length of the line is only one hundred and fifty-five miles, and we did it in nine hours, whereas on my first journey we were more than nine days travelling up by mule litter and on horseback!

The railway station at Taiyuanfu is outside the great city wall, and we saw as we approached it fine new barracks—Governor Yen has had a macadamized road built to reach one of his barracks, leading through a gate which has been closed over three hundred years. The account of this wonderful man and all his varied activities is set down in Chapter II. The penalty of greatness is seen in the fact that in this famine year refugees from all the surrounding provinces poured by thousands and thousands into Shansi. Relief work was rapidly organized, but it meant a heavy strain on the resources of every one.

After spending ten days with our friends, we went back to Peking, starting in a heavy downfall of snow, which made the Chinese rejoice; it is considered a sign of great prosperity before the approaching New Year. There is so little rain in Shansi and irrigation is so difficult that a good fall of snow is essential for the crops. We found it extremely chilly, however, waiting for three hours at the junction in the middle of the night, without any shelter. The Hankow train was delayed; when it did arrive it was full of Chinese soldiers and others who occupied all the carriages, though we had bespoken sleeping-places in advance. We had to spend the rest of the night in the corridor—a cold and weary time. In the morning a Chinaman came out of a sleeping-carriage and took pity on us, giving us his coupé; but it is a great mistake that the railways are so badly managed, and the military are allowed to monopolize them free of charge whenever they please. Later on in the year they were for some weeks entirely closed to civilian traffic.

At Peking I had the pleasure of being welcomed by the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Society, with which I have been connected ever since it was started. Its object is to cement the friendship between our peoples by putting Chinese and other students when they come to England into touch with congenial English people, and showing them the courtesy and helpfulness they need on arrival in a strange land. It is greatly to be wished that more Chinese of both sexes should come and study in England, and see what is best in our civilization. So many go to America in comparison with those who come here; yet not a few Chinese students have told me that they felt it would be better for them had it been the reverse, because our ideals are nearer to Chinese ones, and our desire for self-realization is so keen. A denationalized Chinaman is a poor product, but a Chinaman who has got his own Chinese culture and adds to it the best we can give of Western knowledge and culture, can, when he returns home, be a tremendous power in the moulding of the new China. He has a reverence for all the great past of his own country, and will strive to preserve its beauty, together with all that is good and great in its literature, art and customs. Wherever I travelled in China this fact was brought home to me. So much that is of historic and artistic value is being ruthlessly swept away, and the tragedy of it is that it is so unnecessary. For instance, in Canton, the most historic Yamen[1] was pointed out to me on a wide new thoroughfare, but its façade had completely lost its dignity and character by the guardian lions having been swept away. There was more than room enough for them, but their value had been ignored. I wanted to see the wonderful old water-clock, the triumph of ancient Chinese science, but was informed it had been taken away in the grand new improvements, and would be set up in a garden. “But do they know how to set it up again so that it will go?” I asked. “Probably not,” said my Chinese guide complacently. So it is with countless treasures in China to-day.

It will cost more money perhaps to send students to England than to the United States, but there are plenty of wealthy men, and still more of women, who are willing to make sacrifices to give their sons and daughters the best possible education, if they realize that they will really get it by coming over here. If only those who come have either friends to look after them, or apply to the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Society, there will not be the disappointment which some have experienced in past times. In Shanghai I was told that students returning with diplomas from England had no difficulty in finding satisfactory posts at once, and are in greater demand than those from America.

France has now entered the lists, and there are some two thousand students in France, most of whom are studying textile manufactures. They have been sent over by the Government, the cost being defrayed by the French remission of the remainder of the Boxer indemnity, and half the cost of the journey is paid by France.

In order to accommodate so many students, the French have had to make special provision, and I met a party of students who originally came to study in England, but were obliged to go to France because they could find no room in English colleges. This is a most deplorable state of affairs.

A French professor, whom I met on the journey out, was welcomed in Peking by old students who attended his lectures at the Sorbonne, and he told me afterwards of the extraordinary warmth of their reception and recognition of indebtedness for his teaching. When he left they told him that they were sending him a tribute of gratitude; some months later he received a very costly cloisonné vase, made expressly for him and bearing an inscription, with the names of the donors incorporated in the design. The professor, when he showed me the vase and its case, was evidently deeply impressed by this unique experience in a long teaching career.

Peking is a most fascinating city, and the new and old jostle one another strangely. Some writers tell you the old has quite vanished, but they are entirely wrong: even the old camel caravans—than which nothing can be more picturesque—may be seen wending their leisurely way beneath its ancient walls, to the clanking music of their bells. The city dates back to two hundred years B.C., and it has been the real capital of the Empire since the thirteenth century A.D. It consists of two cities, called the Outer and the Inner City; they lie side by side—one square and one rectangular. Each city is surrounded by its own wall: that of the Inner being thirty-seven feet high, fifty-two feet wide at the top, and it is thirteen miles in extent. The other city wall is not so lofty. Sixteen great gateways lead into this marvellous city, where within another wall is the old Imperial City. The legation hotels, post offices (there are six foreign post offices), shops and banks, etc., and also a native business quarter, are all in the Inner city, which is becoming very cosmopolitan, and is increasing rapidly. The numerous Government buildings are all in the Inner city—Council of State, Foreign Office, Finance, Home, Communications, Navy, War, Judiciary, Education, Agriculture and Commerce Departments.

Peking is now becoming a great centre of Western learning, and the Rockefeller Institution aims at becoming the main School of Medicine and Scientific Research in China. Its beautiful roofs, in the old Chinese style, have been built regardless of cost: two million gold dollars will not cover the initial expense of this place, and money has been poured out like water to secure not only the best equipment, but also the best brains.

Fine modern roads are being made, and automobiles are (for the wealthy) taking the place of the old slow-going cart and sedan chair; but economy will prevent these and the ricksha from going out of fashion.

The beginnings of industrial life are to be seen in the Government Industrial Factory, where there are five hundred apprentices; the Private Industrial Factory, the Match Factory, the Electric Company (which supplies the city with electric light), and the Tobacco Manufacturing Company—but Peking has never been an industrial centre, nor is it suited to become one.

Peking was so cold and snowy that we were glad to go south after a couple of days, and broke our journey at Tsinanfu. What changes have taken place since first I knew it only twelve years ago! Then it was smarting under German occupation; now it is under a still heavier yoke, and every one says “would we were under the Germans rather than the Japanese!” The latter seem to be far more grasping, and have no lack of funds for securing the things which they do not dare to seize by force. Commerce is one of their main objects, and they are pushing it with feverish zeal, so as to establish themselves securely as traders while they hold undisputed possession. It is sad to think that the militarist party in Japan has at the present time such complete control of her destinies, and that the finest part of the nation, while utterly condemning their policy, is incapable of influencing it. More than once I heard from reliable sources that this party considers that nothing less than foreign force can break the militarism of Japan. Wherever we went, even to the remotest parts of the empire, there is a growing hatred of Japan, and it almost seems as if this were the most potent factor in strengthening and unifying China. In one sense it may be looked on as a blessing in disguise! It certainly is calling out all the hitherto latent patriotism of young China.

The approach by railway to Tsinan suggests a busy manufacturing town; tall chimneys, Chamber of Commerce, big post offices, banks, public buildings, wide well-paved roads, with big houses and gardens, form large suburbs outside the city wall. It is a strange contrast to the old-world city, with its narrow picturesque streets and the lovely lake where wild birds haunt the sedgy islands—

“Here long ago ...

When to the lake’s sun-dimpled marge the bright procession wends,

The languid lilies raise their heads as though to greet their friends.”

—Wang Ch’ang Ling—circa A.D. 750.

Oh, there is a charm in China found nowhere else! You pass out of thronged streets into calm poetic retreats where the turmoil of life is hushed; for a brief spell life stands still.

But one turns back into the city, with its teeming inhabitants. A very up-to-date city it is, with its schools, hospitals, museums, arsenal, barracks, and soldiers’ institute,[2] etc., etc. Its commercial interests are increasing by leaps and bounds, now that it is linked by the railways with Peking and Tientsin on the north, with Nanking and Shanghai on the south, and with Chingtao and the sea on the east. But what interested us most of all was the Shantung Christian University, with its School of Medicine, one of the most important schools in China. It is emphatically a union college, being supported by nine different missions, British, Canadian and American. The teaching staff is approximately twenty-six, and the students about one hundred, with some forty-five in the pre-medical department of the School of Arts and Science. Already more than one hundred graduates are practising in Mission, Government and Civil employment.

The training is of a high order, each member of the faculty a specialist in his own department: the teaching is in Mandarin Chinese, but all the students learn English, largely on account of having access to English textbooks. The large well-appointed hospital may not be so imposing in appearance as some of the American institutions, but it is second to none in the work done within its walls. The approximate annual cost of the medical school is Mex. $225,000 (£25,000). It is of paramount importance that all British educational work in China to-day should be impeccable in quality, but the problem is where to find the necessary men and money.

Far more than five million dollars have been spent in building and equipping mission hospitals in China,[3] and it is high time that native men of means should take up the work, either by supporting such institutions as the above, or by undertaking similar ones. The Government of China is only beginning this herculean task, but in many respects it is better that private initiative should be active in hospital work, because the human touch is of infinite value where suffering humanity is concerned.

An interesting extension work has recently become part of the university, namely the Institute, and has proved a great draw to people of all classes. It was originally started by the British Baptist Mission at Tsingchoufu in 1887; it is a sort of glorified museum for the special purpose of making known Western ideas on all the varied sides of life, and promoting a spirit of brotherhood. You go into an airy, well-lighted hall and are confronted with glass cases containing models such as are not to be found elsewhere, and as interesting as they are novel. For instance, there is a large wooded surface with a heavy shower of rain (in the shape of fine glass rods) falling on it, while alongside are barren rocky slopes, bespeaking the land where no rain falls. Who could possibly look at this exhibit without asking the meaning, especially when there is some one at hand eager to talk about afforestation? Incidentally, it may be mentioned that the Government is beginning to take up this subject in all parts of China, and sorely needs the intelligent interest and co-operation of the people in order to ensure success.

A thrilling new exhibit is the work of the Red Cross during the war, containing two hundred separate models, starting with the firing-line and ending with the convalescent wards of the hospital. Little model figures engaged in all sorts of war-work are a source of continual delight to the spectators, who throng the hall every day of the week. “What are they doing to that dog?” says an inquisitive woman. No words can paint her astonishment when she hears that it is a wounded war-dog being carefully bandaged. Lectures on Red Cross work have been listened to with deepest interest, while demonstrations in bandaging were given by nurses attached to the University hospital. An audience of three hundred girls heard what other girls have been doing in the war. Then, too, Boy Scouts learn what part they can play in national service. The History of Hygiene is well illustrated, and the greengrocer and butcher see what happens when a luscious melon or beefsteak is visited by flies. Much has already been done by these striking models to awaken a wholesome fear in the minds of the people. During epidemics most valuable advice has been promulgated from the Institute both by lectures and literature. All the admirable models are made in the workshop of the Institute, under the clever superintendence of Mr. Whitewright, its head and founder. There are models of hospitals, churches, cemeteries, museums, streets of England, which act as texts for explanation.

On the walls are diagrams and comparative tables of statistics, illustrating a great variety of subjects, and specially calculated to awaken the attention of the Chinese to relative conditions between their country and others. That it has more than fulfilled its object is obvious by the effect it has had not only on society in general but also in the special interest it has aroused in the Chinese educational authorities. Their representatives have repeatedly come to see the Institute and to study its methods, and from it educational work of considerable importance has radiated far and wide.

There is a separate department for students of Government colleges, and they have their own reading-room, recreation-room and classroom. This department shows fifteen thousand attendances in the year. An important part of the work of the Institute is the encouragement of friendly relations between the staff and all sections of the community. Visits are arranged for parties of officers, merchants, police, Mohammedans, etc., when receptions are held specially interesting to these people, followed by lectures and cinematograph shows.

This is truly a wide-minded piece of missionary enterprise. The catholic spirit, which thus shows Christianity animating every part of human life, is a fine corrective to some of the narrow sectarian missions which still abound. Millions of people have visited the Institute, and more workers are needed to carry forward this splendid religious and educational venture.

I heard interesting details at Tsinanfu about the returned coolies from the Great War. There was a reading-room for them, and it was amusing to see the recruiting placards by which they had been attracted to the ranks. When first the idea of coolie labour was started in Shantung the British consuls were directed to arrange for recruiting, but they drew a blank. What did the Chinese coolie know of the value of a consul’s promises: he had no personal knowledge of him, and the proposition was an entirely novel one. So the missionary was set to tackle the problem, and he had to explain the scheme and show how the coolie’s family would profit by having a regular and sure source of income during his absence. The tide was turned: as many recruits were forthcoming as were needed, indeed far more. Germany spread a malicious propaganda, that the Chinese were placed in the firing-line to protect our troops. Our Government countered with cinema shows in which the people could recognize their men working in France. A time of dearth emphasized the value of their new income. Men returning from France told their experiences, and most significant of all was the universal expression of willingness to repeat the service in case of need.

I have said so much elsewhere about the city of Tsinanfu[4] that I shall pass on to our next stopping-place—Shanghai. We stayed at the Missionary Home, up the North Szechuen Road, a boarding-house with very moderate prices, which is the rendezvous for missionaries from all parts of the empire. It was most useful to us to be in touch with them, and we revised our itinerary in consequence, and were able to do many interesting things which we should otherwise not have done. Not only missionaries frequent it, but others also, for it is very helpful to any travellers going off the beaten track to be in such a centre of information. For people not knowing the language all needful help is provided in meeting steamers and trains, for which the most moderate charge is made.

Shanghai is the strangest medley of incongruities, but extraordinarily interesting, because it has become the common meeting-ground of all nationalities and the natural centre for great movements. It is the most accessible spot for conferences, being linked by its railways and waterways with all parts of the empire, so that it may almost be considered geographically as the heart of China; but it would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as the skin, or surface, whereby all the interior is related to the outer world. Less than eighty years ago it was merely an insignificant Chinese town, but in 1842 the Chinese Government made it an open port; a British concession was granted—to be followed by French and American ones. Soon the British concession was internationalized, and in course of time became so popular among the Chinese that to-day far more than half the Chinese population of Shanghai is found in it, and of course this far exceeds the foreign population. Its government is rather remarkable; the municipal council is composed of nine foreigners of several nationalities, who are responsible for the self-government of the community. In their hands is the exclusive police control (how dignified the Sikh police are and how picturesque!), the drainage, lighting, roadmaking, sanitation, taxation, control of markets, etc. Each nationality has its own judicial court, and there is the Mixed Court for the settlement of cases between Chinese and foreigners. This extra-territoriality has long been a source of soreness with the Chinese, and has acted as a spur to the reforms now going on in their judicial system. The French alone have continued to keep to a settlement of their own, which is run on similar lines.

Shanghai has naturally become the base of all sorts of experiments, and has a special value to the empire on that account. It is an object-lesson in self-government of no small value. Round it have sprung up mills of all sorts, and shipbuilding on foreign lines, and of course its shipping links it with every part of the globe. In another chapter I shall refer to its value as an educational centre.

An interesting experiment has been successfully made (by an entirely Chinese firm) of our western methods in social welfare (so new to us also) for dealing with employees. The Commercial Press was founded in 1896 to meet the rapidly growing demand for handbooks in Chinese on all sorts of subjects of western knowledge. It grew so rapidly that its branches are to be found in all the large cities of the empire, while its publications reach to the remotest towns. But to me one of its chief interests is to be found in the relations between its officials and staff, which consists of over one thousand persons. In the fine central building the fourth floor has a large dining-room, where three hundred of the employees have their meals, and there is a roof garden for their benefit. The workpeople are well paid, they receive bonuses according to their services, and are entitled to pensions on retirement: when employees die their necessitous families receive pay. There is a savings department which pays nine per cent. interest. There are school and hospital facilities for employees and their families, and they can join Y.M.C.A. and other institutions at a cheapened rate. Special arrangements are made for women at the time of childbirth, and a sum of money is given them at the beginning and end of the time they are absent from work on that account. Babies being nursed are allowed to be brought in to be fed by the mother during work hours. The hours of work are limited to nine per day, and there is a garden in which the workers can spend their leisure time.

Another institution in Shanghai which greatly interested me was a Cantonese Baptist Institutional Church, which I attended one Sunday morning. It was extremely attractive, not only in its setting, but most of all in its human qualities. I arrived while Sunday school was still going on, and saw boys and girls of all ages in classrooms, and scattered about in the big hall. The teachers were, with one or two exceptions, Chinese, and looked thoroughly competent for their tasks. “They are the best workers I have ever met,” said Miss Lyne, my guide. The sight of a stranger was quite a matter of indifference to both teachers and taught, and had no effect on their concentrated attention. An American lady took me all over the building, which seemed admirably suited to its purpose. Upstairs was a large bright room—the chapel—electric lighted, and with a baptistery which was the gift of one of the members in memory of his wife. In the kindergarten the sweetest babes had been making tulips. The hall below is used for a gymnasium, games and other purposes. Religious plays are very popular, and my guide said that although she came prepared to disapprove of them, she had been converted by seeing how they seemed to make the Bible so much more real to the people. A very interesting detail of the place was the excellent bathrooms and sanitary arrangements, hot and cold water laid on, the whole supplied by a thoroughly up-to-date Scotch firm. This section was entirely due to the wish of the young people, who had raised the funds ($300) for it themselves. The building was in a nice garden, with tennis courts and other facilities for games.

The most interesting part of the morning was the service, despite the fact that I do not understand Chinese. The men sat on one side and the women on the other, but there was no partition, and men and girls respectively took up the collection on their own side of the hall. A Chinaman conducted the service, and the singing was hearty and reverent, without any starchiness. After the sermon, candidates for baptism were brought forward, each one by his or her sponsor, for the Church’s approval before admission to the rite; they had been already examined and under training for some two years. Some of the candidates were quite young, others grown up: the pastor’s son and another boy were about eleven years old. They were asked a variety of practical questions by the pastor, but when it came to his own son, he said, “Will some one else ask little brother’s son?” and this was accordingly done. After this the Church members voted as to whether they should receive baptism. I asked if the vote was ever adverse, and was told it was not infrequently the case, although they were not recommended for baptism till they were considered ready.

There are so many Cantonese in Shanghai that missionaries find it necessary to have special work amongst them: they are like a different race, with a different language.

There are all sorts of interesting things to be seen in Shanghai, but it takes time, and the only other place of special interest we saw was the old native city, just the same picturesque, dirty, crowded spot that it was hundreds of years ago, surrounded by its three-and-a-half-mile wall, of which the gates are still shut at night. The old willow-pattern tea-house I was glad to see is still intact, also the garden from which the lovers fled who were turned into doves. It is not safe to venture into the old city unaccompanied, and the beggars are truly awful.

From Shanghai I visited the neighbouring province of Chekiang, which is considered one of the most beautiful by many people. The capital, Hangchowfu, can be reached both by water and by rail, and I much regret that I only went by rail, as an economy of time: it was a mistake, for by all accounts the waterway is most lovely. The journey takes three or four hours by rail and eighteen by boat. As one passes through mulberry groves and wide-stretching rice fields, one sees most picturesque groups of buildings, standing up on slightly raised ground, like oases in the flat land, and lofty sails move slowly across the landscape. In the soft glow of evening light it was perfectly enchanting. We passed near two walled cities, but the railway lines as a rule do not break through such walls, and it is in many ways more convenient to have the station outside the cities. I could not but regret that this rule had been broken in the case of Hangchow, where the railway station was an ugly, though imposing, modern building, erected close to the breach in the wall through which the line enters the city.

On leaving the station by a wide new thoroughfare, you see numbers of European-looking shops, full of up-to-date European wares, for Hangchow is a large and wealthy manufacturing city, in the centre of an important agricultural district. Learning and Industry have flourished here from the earliest times, and now it has a population estimated at 35,000. I was thankful to get away from the modern town to a good old-fashioned Chinese quarter, where I shared the ever-generous hospitality of Dr. and Mrs. Main. Their hospitals are a sight worth seeing—although in certain respects they would challenge criticism; that is because they grew into being nearly forty years ago and were built up under every kind of difficulty by the untiring zeal of one man, and his hall-mark is seen in every part of them. The Chinese are an industrious people and put our own to shame, but even to them this object-lesson of what can be achieved by one individual is perhaps as valuable as the actual good done to the thousands who have found healing and comfort in these hospitals. There are no less than twenty-two departments of work, of which I shall only enumerate a few of the most important.

Directly after breakfast on the day after my arrival I started on a tour of inspection, and saw over the men’s and the women’s general hospitals, where a cheerful activity reigned. There is a family likeness about mission hospitals, so I shall say nothing further about them; but what amused and fascinated me was my visit to the maternity hospital, which is a thoroughly attractive place. Already five little new-comers into this sad world were lying in a row, all tidy and washed, and one was lifting up a loud remonstrance at her fate; another was only an hour old. Sometimes you may see as many as fifteen, and I hope they do not get mixed up. There were no less than a hundred and seventy-seven in-patients during the year. These maternity hospitals are an unspeakable boon to the country, the more so because they are training schools for midwives. How badly these are needed can only be known by dwellers in the East. The Chinese make admirable nurses, especially the women, and many hospitals who in deference to custom have been in the habit of having men to nurse their own sex, are now giving it up in favour of women, because they are found more reliable and conscientious. This I was told when I deprecated the change.

Next we visited the Lock Hospital, and then the Medical School, where fifty or sixty students are admitted annually. Numbers of well-trained men have passed through this school, but it is hampered by lack of funds, and the premises and gardens are quite inadequate for the number. Girls, too, I saw hard at work in the classrooms. One most interesting part of the work was the series of workshops, in which disabled patients are employed on all sorts of trades connected with the needs of the hospitals. No doubt it is not only a boon to the workers, but a great economy for the hospital, especially in these dear times. It is astonishing to see the metal work done there, not to speak of the carpentering, matting and brushmaking. All wooden cases coming to the place are rapidly transformed into useful pieces of furniture, and everything seems to be capable of being transformed into something useful.

In the afternoon in pouring rain we set off in rickshas to visit another series of hospitals for lepers, incurables, and isolation cases. It was a long drive to the lonely hill-side overlooking the city, where these pleasant homes are situated, for they are indeed homes, as attractive and comfortable as they can be made for lifelong sufferers. It needs something stronger than humanitarianism to tackle such a work, and the spirit of a Father Damien is needed to make it a success. Well may the poor patient say:

“My body, which my dungeon is.”

But they seemed wonderfully content, and eagerly welcomed the doctor’s visit. The expenses of these homes were only 2,788 dollars for the year. In cases of epidemics it is a special boon to have an isolation hospital outside the city, and the Home for Incurables needs no weak words of mine to commend it. All these buildings are newer than the hospitals in the city, and built on very hygienic principles.

From the hospitals we drove to the lovely lake-side, where we had tea in a charming house recently built by Dr. Main for the doctors. The lake-side was glorious, with great beds of water-lilies just coming into blossom. What a staff is required for work like the above described! and what an opportunity for men of noble ambitions! The staff is mainly Chinese, but Englishmen are greatly needed as well, and are sadly lacking. The Church Missionary Society is responsible for this important piece of work.

Close to this house is another new and charming one built for convalescent Chinese ladies, and it stands in a pretty little garden. It was empty at the time I was there, but had been used for the Conference of the China Continuation Committee. It will be interesting to see whether the ladies make use of it; it is in the nature of an experiment, being the only one I saw in China. But Chinese ideas are so rapidly changing and the position of women is so different from what it was even ten years ago, that they will welcome the possibility of such a home for convalescence. The rooms devoted to women, even in big houses, are often miserable, and this experiment may promote a better state of affairs.

On the other side of the West Lake is the latest creation of Dr. Main, which was opened next day. It is a rest-house for Chinese workers, and ought to be valuable in connexion with so large a mission work. The funds have all been raised by Dr. Main.

Next day I got a glimpse of the old world before leaving Hangchow. I was escorted up a steep hill to visit a group of temples and to get a view over the wonderful West Lake. Magnificent old trees cast their welcome shade on the buildings, and a curious serpentine stone pathway which had a symbolical meaning leads up the hill. On the top is a group of stones of curious shapes, which are said to represent the twelve requisites of agriculture, but it required a great deal of imagination to trace the resemblance. The air was scented with wild roses, and the view from the top of the ridge was superb—on one side lay the shimmering lake, with its delicate tracery of raised pathways and bridges leading across certain parts of it, and a fine old red sandstone pagoda; on the other side the busy city and the river leading to the sea. It is an ideal spot for artists, and there is the West Lake Hotel on the margin of the lake, where it is quite pleasant to stay if you are not too exacting.

Hangchow is the starting-place for that wonder of the world, the Grand Canal, which stretches nine hundred miles, and part of which was built nearly five hundred years B.C., with solid stone walls. It is spanned in places by beautiful bridges, sometimes a single arch and sometimes several. The bridges of China are very varied and most beautiful; in no other part of the world have such remarkable blocks of stone been used in their construction, and it is impossible to understand how some of them were placed in their present position. The heavy floods in Fukien prevented my visiting the most celebrated one near Chuan Chow, called Lo-yung-kio; it is three thousand six hundred feet in length and fifteen feet wide. Some of the granite monoliths stretching from one abutment to another actually measure as much as sixty feet in length, so we were told by an English captain who had measured them. As there are only twenty abutments, it is obvious they must be very wide apart. In all such bridges that I have seen, the spaces between the abutments vary in size. Even small bridges, like one on the West Lake near Hangchow, are often quite interesting because of their architectural qualities, the artist’s touch being very marked. The Chinese never seem to grudge labour in the beautifying of things great or small, important or unimportant, which gives one great joy in using the common things of daily life. It is as if the workman worked for sheer creative joy and regardless of recompense. If a man, for instance, engraves a line drawing in the hinge of a door, where it will practically be always out of sight, what motive can he have save the creative faculty?

Hangchow is situated at the mouth of the Tsientang-kiang, a most important waterway for the trade from Kiang-si, which comes down on peculiar junks, sixty feet long and ten feet wide.

There is a remarkable tide bore at the river’s mouth; at full tide there is a column of water six feet high which rushes furiously in from the sea, and which is a source of great danger to shipping. This is a sight well worth seeing.

From Shanghai we went down the coast by the steamer Sinkiang to Hong Kong, only putting into Amoy on the way, and enjoying a few hours ashore with friends. They urged us to come and stay with them, an invitation which I gladly accepted later on. The sea was kind to us most of the way, and we accomplished the journey in four days, reaching Hong Kong at 8 a.m. Here we found the housing problem as acute as at home, and were thankful to be taken in at a delightful house for ladies, called the Helena May Institute. It was the greatest boon to me not only then, but when I returned in July to join the ship for England. The house is beautifully situated and strongly to be recommended to ladies travelling alone.

We were delayed some ten days waiting for a boat to Haiphong, as coasting steamers seem peculiarly uncertain in their sailings.

The journey to Haiphong took three nights and two days. When we finally started we found that no Hong Kong money (Hong Kong has a coinage of its own, being British, and admits no other) would be accepted in Indo-China, and that we must re-bank there before starting inland. Haiphong is a most dull and unprogressive little French town: an intelligent young Frenchman at the custom-house told us that red tape rules everything and makes progress impossible.

We were obliged to stay there two days, the bank not being open on Sunday. The train only runs by day up to Yünnanfu, and starts at a very early hour: the carriages are primitive in the extreme and badly arranged. There is only one corridor coach for first-, second- and third-class passengers, the first-class being in the middle and the passengers for the others passing to and fro through the carriage all the time. Besides this one coach there were a number of seatless luggage vans, in which were herded large numbers of fourth-class passengers, with their belongings. Their legs might frequently be seen dangling out of the unglazed windows. The line was opened in 1910, and is about 150 miles in length.

The scenery was fascinating and varied during our three days’ journey to Yünnanfu. At first it was sub-tropical, passing through forests with great tree-ferns and bamboos, or ricefields where water-buffaloes toiled. Lovely rose bushes and brilliant canna were the chief flowers visible, and tall trees full of crimson blossom. From seven in the morning till 8.30 p.m. we travelled slowly towards the Chinese frontier, and spent the night at Laokay, in a not too bad little French hotel. There was food served on the train, but we mostly relied on our own provisions. The frontier town was quite attractive, at the junction of two rivers; we were supposed to have our luggage examined, but both French and Chinese let us off, and I had time to sketch from the dividing bridge while our less lucky interpreter, Mr. Li,[5] underwent searching examination. It is most difficult for any Chinese to get passports for going through French territory, and you can never foresee what difficulties the officials will put in the way, even when everything is en règle. Li was taken off to the police station and put through an elaborate interrogatory. We had been rather anxious about our own passports, as Sir John Jordan was not able to authorize our having them from Peking, on account of the political division between North and South. He very kindly arranged that the British Consul at Canton (if he considered it safe for us to prosecute our journey) should supply us with them, and we experienced a great sense of relief on finding them awaiting us at Hong Kong. As an illustration of the strictness of French rule, no one is allowed to take more than two dollars out of Indo-China in their coinage; at Haiphong we had obtained Chinese dollars suitable for the province of Yünnan.

One of the most serious questions for China to-day is that of finance, and I was told by a reliable business man that the unification of the coinage would have been settled long ago, but for the fierce opposition of the banking community, who make unheard-of profits by the present system. It is extremely tiresome and injurious to trade, and adds greatly to the difficulty of travelling.

As soon as we had crossed the frontier the scenery changed and became grander. The railway passes through malarious districts, and its construction was impeded (at one time even entirely suspended) on account of the number of deaths which took place among the workmen. It is a narrow-gauge single line, and there are so frequently obstructions and accidents that the train only runs by daylight; it takes therefore three days to accomplish the journey; but it is so interesting that one is glad to go slowly. The stations on the line are few, and the only important town is Mongtsze, a big trading centre. The province is considered one of great natural wealth and beauty, and I was glad to be in it once more, having already traversed it from north-east to west (a distance of over a thousand miles) on foot or carried in a chair. On the second day we passed through glorious wooded gorges, gradually rising to a height of two thousand seven hundred feet. The hill-sides were terraced up to the very summits in places, and despite the sparse population the land was well cultivated wherever possible. We reached the town of Amichow soon after five o’clock, and found a decent little French hotel. Strolling out to watch the glorious sunset, we came to a barracks, where men were drilling in orthodox German style and singing a monotonous sort of chant.

Next morning when we came to pay our seven-dollar bill with the Yünnanese notes we had bought at Haiphong, we had an unusual experience with regard to the exchange, for we found that it only meant three Yünnanese dollars. While I attended to this, my niece went ahead to secure the window seats, for you see very little otherwise. There were other travellers who had secured them the previous day, and we knew the scenery would be magnificent. The line is really a remarkable one, running in and out of the rock, crossing rivers far below, and wholly unlike the tame railway lines at home. One part was singularly beautiful as we emerged from a tunnel at a high level; we saw a lovely jade-coloured lake spread below us, melting away into the far distance. As we approached the capital, Yünnanfu, we left the mountains behind and passed through well-cultivated lowlands, already clad in shining green, or reflecting the blue sky in watery ricefields. We were not sorry, however, to say good-bye to the railway for many weeks to come. Friends had arranged for us to stay at a comfortable French hotel, the Terminus, outside the city wall and with a fine view across the fields to distant hills.

We eagerly inquired as to the prospects of being allowed to go eastwards, and were informed that the robbers were most aggressive and had taken prisoners three missionaries, besides securing much loot from other quarters. I confess my spirits sank low that night, despite our having got a much-longed-for mail, and it was with some misgivings we set off to the British Consulate next morning. The postal commissioner, a portly Frenchman, had told us that he didn’t consider it at all dangerous to go eastward, but it was true that he had ceased to send money orders, owing to the number of robbers! He could transmit no money for us, but promised to see what could be done in the matter through merchants.

We found that the British Consul, Mr. Otterwell, remembered me as an old traveller. I had been his guest at Tengyueh twelve years before, though he was at the time absent in the district. He was quite encouraging, and promised at once to have our passports visé-ed and a military escort obtained for the following week. Our further doings in Yünnan Province are chronicled in Chapter III. Suffice it to say that from Yünnanfu we set off in carrying-chairs, and travelled north-eastward into the province of Kweichow—a wild and beautiful mountainous country, far from railways and steamboats and all the busy bustle of the West. There we were to make friends with strange aboriginal tribes in their native haunts and to see unadulterated China once more.

Kweichow (the Land of Demons) surpassed our most sanguine hopes. It was far more beautiful and interesting than we had been told, and not nearly so difficult to travel in as I had been led to expect. We had provided ourselves with tinned meats, as we were told that we could expect to get no meat or chickens or vegetables in so poor a province, whereas we found all these things in abundance, and every mission station to which we came most hospitable in supplying us with bread and cakes. It is true we only came to five stations in the next seven weeks, that is in crossing the whole province. There is no road in any part of it—sixty thousand square miles, roughly speaking—suitable for wheeled traffic; so no wonder it must be considered as one of the most backward parts of China, and has rarely been visited by travellers. To carry a load of rice for a hundred miles more than doubles its cost.

A Chinese Ritz.

[Page 40]

From Yünnanfu we took the ordinary route via Malong, Kütsingfu, and the Yünnan Pass into Kweichow Province. It has been admirably and fully described in Sir A. Hosie’s latest book On the Trail of the Opium Poppy, so it is unnecessary for me to do it, and I shall merely describe the things which struck us as of special interest.

The journey from Yünnanfu to Anshun took us seventeen days—a distance altogether of about three hundred miles.[6] From Anshunfu we struck north, through much wilder and less-frequented country, in order to visit the haunts of aboriginal tribes, and made a wide detour, returning to the main road near Kwei Yang, the capital. We greatly wished to visit other tribes in the eastern part of the province, but that was absolutely vetoed by the governor, and we were obliged to follow the high road through Ping-yüe and Huang Ping Chow to Chen Yüen. Here we took to the waterway, from which we did not once swerve till we reached Shanghai. The first part of the journey, up the Yüen Kiang, is a distance of four hundred and forty-six miles, and one may go down it in five days, if it is in flood, with a fair chance of getting drowned! We took ten days, but a good deal of time was spent at places on the way. Coming up stream the journey is long and tedious: it may extend to months instead of days. The natural superstition of the Chinese is displayed on such a journey by the lavish use of crackers[7] and incense to ward off evil spirits. These superstitions will die hard: nothing less vital than genuine Christianity can displace them.

We entered Hunan on May 14, having spent forty-two days in Kweichow Province. The frontier is indicated by two elaborate archways, as we saw on entering the province from Yünnan. Although Hunan is within fifteen days’ reach of Shanghai, it has so far no facilities for travel better than by water. It is true there is a short railway line on its western border, but we were not encouraged to try it, and in summer there is always a good steamship line from the capital Changsha to Hankow—a distance of two hundred and twenty miles. The railway is part of the projected line from Hankow to Canton, and will be of great trade value when it is completed, as there is no good route to connect this part of the country with the south. We intended going from Changsha into Kwangsi Province on account of the beautiful scenery, but unfortunately that was impossible owing to the fighting going on between the troops of the north and the south exactly in the region where our road lay. It might be supposed that we could have taken an alternative route through so vast a country, but such is not the case. If you leave the great high road (and what a misnomer that is!) there is no way except by devious paths through endless mountain ranges, where no accommodation and little food would be obtainable. In a province of 83,398 square miles there appear to be only two main roads running from north to south, and three from east to west; yet it has a population of over twenty-one millions. The two main roads running from north to south are near the eastern and western borders, and all the central part of the province has none. We crossed the province entirely by water, first in a house-boat as far as Changteh, thence in a miserable little native steamer across the Tong Ting Lake to Changsha; from Changsha up the Siang-kiang,[8] across the Tong Ting on to the Yangtze, which bounds the province on the north.

We had no choice, therefore, of leaving Hunan except by going to Hankow, and we found good accommodation on a British steamer, the Sinkiang. There are six good lines between Changsha and Hankow—two British, a Japanese, and several Chinese steamship companies, whose ships run in the summer; owing to the extraordinary subsidence of the lake in winter (see Chapter VI) it has to be discontinued then for several months. The journey from Changsha to Hankow takes about thirty-two hours: at Hankow we transhipped for Shanghai on a most comfortable steamer (with nice beds), the Nganking, belonging to Messrs. Butterfield & Swire. It is quite easy for travellers knowing no Chinese to penetrate by this route into the very centre of China. I am so often asked about the possibilities of doing this that I can only recommend this as a wholly charming and easy way of getting about and much to be preferred to railway travelling.

Hankow itself is a big bustling cosmopolitan town, with a rapidly increasing volume of commerce. It is a link between old and new, and has no less than thirty-six associations, called “hangs,” for different kinds of goods. It has its foreign concessions like the seaports, and the important trading companies have their own floating wharves, where the big ocean liners moor, six hundred miles away from the coast. There are said to be 25,000 junks engaged here in river traffic, and they connect Hankow with all the central and western provinces, often travelling as much as a hundred miles a day.

Hankow is a great centre of educational and missionary activity, and many European nationalities are engaged in it. The great viceroy, Chang Chih Tung, ardently promoted education here when he was in office. He said in his book, China’s Only Hope (p. 61), “In order to render China powerful, and at the same time preserve our own institutions, it is absolutely necessary that we should utilize Western knowledge. But unless Chinese learning is made the basis of education and a Chinese direction is given to thought, the strong will become anarchists, and the weak slaves.” It is most deplorable that this is ignored by so many Chinese of the present day.[9] He urged that old Buddhist and Taoist temples, falling into decay, be transformed into schools, and he estimated that seven out of ten, with their property, might well be devoted to this purpose. This is quite in accordance with what is now being done, especially in Northern China. He argued that the temples are national property, and should be used for the common good.

Hankow is wonderfully situated as the internal trade centre of China, being the meeting-point of its main railways as well as waterways (when the former shall have been completed), linking up north, south, east and west. There are three cities in the angles formed by the junction of the Yangtze and the Han rivers—Hanyang, Hankow and Wu-chang; the last was far the most important in the past, and is the capital of Hupeh, but now Hankow rivals Shanghai in commercial importance, and is rapidly growing. The three cities have a joint native population of 1,150,000, of which Hankow has 800,000, and as its native quarter was completely destroyed by fire during the civil war in 1911, the fine old monuments of the past were destroyed with it. Its whole interest is modern.

Between Hankow and Shanghai are several important cities which must be most interesting to visit, several of them being treaty ports with foreign concessions, such as Chin-kiang and Wu-hu; the steamers stop at least fourteen times on the way. It is delightful to spend the days sitting in comfortable chairs on deck, watching all the varied life on the river, hearing the “honk-honk” of the wild geese soaring overhead, or watching the wedges of ducks crossing the river on strong wing to the big marshes, or lakes, into which it pours its overflow.

From time to time the steamer draws to the riverside and loads or unloads its cargo. One of the most interesting stopping-places is Nanking; indeed, it is said to be one of the most interesting in China, and is only about two hundred miles from Shanghai. It has an hotel kept by an Englishman. We greatly enjoyed the river scenery of the Yangtze: there are so many picturesque monuments in this lower part on the numerous islands and along its banks; although it has not the wild charm of the gorges, it is well worth making the trip. Now there is a steam service all the way up to Chunking, so that travellers can easily do one of the most beautiful journeys in the world at reasonable cost, in reasonable comfort and in reasonable time, going about a thousand miles up the finest of the great rivers of the world.[10]

On reaching Shanghai I had to part with my travelling companion and start the journey home alone, but as events proved my steamer was delayed, and I had several weeks in which to visit the coastal provinces of Chekiang, Fukien and Kwantung, and to study the student movement, as described in the concluding chapters of this book.

Chapter II
The Model Governor—Yen Hsi-Shan

“Who is the true and who is the false statesman?

“The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; who first organizes and then administers the government of his own country; and having made a nation, seeks to reconcile the national interest with those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow together in his mind; while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although obliged to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His thoughts are fixed not on power, or riches, or extension of territory, but on an ideal state, in which all the citizens have an equal chance of health and life, and the highest education is within the reach of all, and the moral and intellectual qualities of every individual are freely developed, and ‘the idea of good’ is the animating principle of the whole. Not the attainment of freedom alone, or of order alone, but how to unite freedom with order is the problem which he has to solve.

“The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a task which will call forth all his powers.”—Benjamin Jowett.

Chapter II[11]
The Model Governor—Yen Hsi-Shan

The province of Shansi boasts having the best governor in the Chinese Empire, and he has accomplished in the last ten years a remarkable change in the entire province—a province which is considerably larger than Great Britain. The city of Taiyuanfu is perhaps the most striking evidence of this change. The whole place is unrecognizable since the days when I first knew it in 1893. The streets are wide and well kept; at night they are lighted by electricity, and an efficient police force keeps order and regulates the traffic, whereas in old days the crowd used to fight their quarrels out in their own sweet way. The horrible pariah dogs which infested the streets without let or hindrance have entirely disappeared; for a dog, licence has now to be obtained, and any unlicensed dogs are promptly destroyed. The Governor Yen Hsi-Shan is the promoter of education in all its manifold aspects; though not a Christian, he realizes that there must be a radical change in morals, as well as in education, if China is to become a strong nation, capable of taking her place among the Great Powers.

To this end he has formed an organization called the “Wash the Heart Society,” which strongly reminds one of the Mission of John the Baptist, although he does not recognize the fact that repentance is only the first step on the upward path. A large hall has been built in a nice open part of the city, close to the city wall, but, alas! not in Chinese style. The Governor is unfortunately under the influence of a Teuton, who is the worst possible adviser in matters of architecture, as well as other things. The hall is a deplorable mixture of every conceivable style of Western art; it holds 3,000 people and services are held there every Sunday morning, each lasting one hour, and each for the benefit of a separate class of people—merchants, military, students. So far there seems to be no provision for women, but perhaps that will come later. The population is bidden to come and reflect on its evil ways and to seek amendment of life. A special feature of the service is a time of silence for self-examination. This Society was started in the province of Shansi, but I found its halls in other parts of the Empire as well, and it is a hopeful sign of the times. The approach to the hall is by a good macadamized road, and near by is a tea-house beside the tiny lake—the Haizabien—and a bandstand where the élite of the city gather on summer evenings to listen to sweet music and sip countless cups of tea.

Yen Hsi Shan, Statesman.

[Page 49]

Big houses are being built by wealthy Chinese in this neighbourhood, and there are large Government schools for girls as well as boys. Facing the entrance to a girls’ school, which is housed in a disused temple, we saw a list pasted up on a wall, giving the names of successful girl students in a recent Government examination. What an amazing contrast to the old days, when no Government schools for girls were in existence; they only came into being since the downfall of the old regime in 1907, but the Chinese Ministry of Education, which based its present system on that of Japan, is recognizing the importance of women’s education and is encouraging it by this official recognition of success in examinations.

It is not sufficient only to give the women schools, but it is imperative to supply them also with scope for wider culture and congenial activities when they leave school. To this end a kind of club, or institute, is to be started at once on ground opposite the Governor’s hall, and it is in response to the ladies’ own request: they have long been saying, “The men have their Y.M.C.A., why cannot we have such a place?” and although the mission ladies have done their best to meet the need, obviously no private house can be adequate, not to mention the fact that Chinese ladies have too much self-respect to be willing to be always guests of ladies with limited incomes, to whom they can make but scant return. It is hoped that the new hall will do much to forward the woman’s movement in Taiyuanfu; there will be social gatherings, lectures on hygiene (for illustration of which there is to be a complete installation of sanitary fittings), a child-welfare department, invalid cooking, lessons on nursing, and many other classes connected with women’s welfare. There is room for a garden and tennis courts in order that recreation and physical culture may be encouraged and the place made attractive to girls as well as women. The Governor is promoting this last matter indirectly, by putting a fine on foot-binding, which is unfortunately still extremely prevalent. The movement that took place some years ago in favour of a natural foot seems to have died down, and everywhere there is foot-binding in full swing. The queue has practically disappeared from China during the last few years, and men wear their hair mostly rather short, while some go in for a clean shave. I find this quite attractive when the skull is well-shaped, and if the man is in immaculate summer garb, the effect of cleanliness is wonderful. If the women of China were less conservative, and would make an equally clean sweep of foot-binding, it would make an immense difference to their health.

The Governor has encouraged physical culture not only indirectly but directly as well, for he even went so far as to ride in a bicycle race once in Shansi, and in 1918 public sports took place at Taiyuanfu, which Sir John Jordan honoured by his presence, having taken the tiresome nineteen hours’ journey from Peking for the purpose.[12] A disused temple acted as the grand-stand and an angle of the city wall was converted into the arena, the tiers of seats being hewn in the base of the wall. Quite a fine sports ground was prepared under the superintendence of one of the missionaries, whose advice in practical matters is continually sought by the Governor. The only matter for regret on this occasion was the deplorable weather, for even sunny Shansi has moments when a dusty fit of temper obscures its lustre.

One of the Governor’s most valuable new institutions is a farm for cattle-breeding. It is just outside the city and has been successfully started by an American and his wife. The main object is to improve the breed of horses, cows, sheep, etc., and for this purpose stock is being imported from the United States, whose Government has recently supplied the necessary transport for horses, when this difficulty of shipment arose with regard to animals already purchased; a large number of sheep have already been imported from Australia. Shansi is a suitable province for this experiment and missionaries have already proved there the excellent results of cross-breeding cows, obtaining supplies of milk of improved quality, as well as largely-increased quantity. In a recent book on China, highly recommended to me, an American writer states that there is only one milk-giving cow in the Empire, and that tinned milk supplies the rest, but evidently the traveller had not travelled far!

Another of the Governor’s institutions is a College of Agriculture and Forestry in connexion with which there are many mulberry trees being planted for the promotion of sericulture. This has never been pursued with success in Shansi; hitherto only the commoner kinds of silk have been produced, but it is considered a patriotic deed to promote it, and the most exquisite and costly silk is now being made in a disused temple, by Yen’s order. Perhaps the almost religious way in which it was regarded in bygone times, when the Empress herself took a ceremonial part in the rearing of silkworms 3,000 years ago, has caused this revival of schools of sericulture. I visited one in the South, and after seeing all the processes was invited to take a handful of worms away as a memento! Governor Yen has sent 100 students to France to study textiles. Afforestation is nowhere more needed than in Shansi, and it is to be hoped that the Government will push this side of the work of the college. We found such a college had been started in remote Kweichow also, cut off from most of the new movements in China. Plantations had been made in various parts, but they will need to be carefully guarded, as the poverty of the inhabitants lead them to destroy ruthlessly every twig they can for firewood; where there used to be large forests nothing now remains of them. The genius of the Chinese race for agriculture is so remarkable that one may well expect great results from these colleges: the vast population has been able in the past to produce food more or less according to its needs, but when there is a dearth of rain, or other cause producing bad harvests, there is at once terrible scarcity, and the application of Western knowledge and agricultural implements ought to be of considerable value.

There are in some parts such as Chekiang as many as four harvests per annum, and no sooner is one reaped than the land is prepared for the next. The introduction of new trees, vegetables, etc., would add greatly to the wealth of the country, and with its unrivalled climate and soil there is every reason to promote the multiplication of agricultural colleges.

One of the most noticeable changes in Taiyuanfu is the complete absence of the beggar of hideous mien, who dogs the steps of strangers in every other city in China, and who seems to be the most immovable feature of life in the East. He was an integral part, one had been taught to believe, of the social fabric, and as hallowed as the very temple itself; yet Taiyuanfu has the glory of having solved this difficult problem. All the male beggars have been collected into the splendid old temple of Heaven and Hell to be taught a trade, so as to be able to earn a living, and they are not dismissed until they are capable of doing so. They seemed quite a jolly crew, and were hard at work in various buildings, though others of these were closed for the New Year. The most interesting part of the institution was the town band which has been formed out of the younger part of the beggar population. They were summoned to play for our amusement, and they ended by playing for their own. The performance was most creditable, especially considering that the band was only seven months old; if there was some defect in tune, there was an excellent sense of rhythm, which I have found lacking in many bands of long standing at home; and it was really fascinating to see the gusto with which they all played. The band has already taken part in various town functions, and is making itself useful. The music is, of course, Western, as are the instruments. Chinese musical instruments do not give enough sound, as a rule, for large gatherings.

The rules of the workhouse seem good, and the inmates can earn money (five dollars per month) so as to have something in hand when they leave. The women’s department is in another part of the city and we had not time to visit it. It is very noticeable how the temples are being everywhere used for such useful purposes, for the housing question is here, as at home, a serious problem. No doubt it would be good from a practical point of view that these buildings should be replaced by new ones, built for the purpose, but the loss of beauty would be incalculable. The temple of Heaven and Hell has glorious turquoise-blue roofs and handsome tiles and large medallions of green pottery on the walls. It is the most beautiful of all the temples, in my opinion, though the Imperial Temple, where the Dowager Empress stayed on her historic flight to Sianfu, is also very fine. This is now used as a school for the teaching of the new script, which is a simplified form of the Chinese character. It was devised in 1918 by the Ministry of Education in order to make literacy easier for the population. The ordinary Chinese boy takes three or four years longer than the Western boy to learn to read. When the old system of education was abolished in 1907 a new one had to be devised, but it is an extremely difficult thing to carry out such a reform throughout so vast an empire. Governor Yen Hsi-Shan is an ardent promoter of the scheme, and he has established the school for the express purpose of promoting it. Every household in Taiyuanfu is required to send at least one member to study the script; in order to make it easier, there are a few characters, with their equivalent in the old script, put up outside many of the shops, so that people may learn it as they go about their business. Not only so, but all over the city may be seen notice boards with the two scripts in parallel columns, and these boards have generally some one studying them, not infrequently with notebook in hand. Many of the schools are teaching it, but it is difficult to add this to an already well-filled time-table. It may be of interest to know that it is “a phonetic system containing thirty-nine symbols (divided into three denominations, viz. twenty-four initials, three medials and twelve finals).”—North China Daily News.

This is one part of an important movement for the unification of the language, the importance of which can only be fully realized by those who have travelled widely in China. Not only every province varies from every other province, but also every district from every other district. There are sixty-four dialects in Fukien alone. The unification of the Empire would be greatly promoted by the unification of the language, and this has been frankly recognized by the Ministry of Education, which has issued a notice to that effect:

“We recognize that because of the difference between our classical and spoken language, education in the schools makes slow progress, and the keen edge of the spirit of union both between individuals and in society at large has thereby been blunted. Moreover, if we do not take prompt steps to make the written and the spoken language the same quickly, any plans for developing our civilization will surely fail.

“This Ministry of Education has for several years made positive advances in promoting such a National Language. All educationists, moreover, throughout the country are in favour of a change by which the teaching of the national spoken language shall take the place of the classical language. Inasmuch, therefore, as all desire to promote education in the National Language, we deem it wise not to delay longer in the matter.

“We therefore now order that from the autumn of this current year, beginning in the primary schools for the first and second years, all shall be taught the National Spoken Language, rather than the National Classical Language. Thus the spoken and written languages will become one. This Ministry requests all officials to take notice and act accordingly.”

It is not sufficient, as we all know, merely to issue such an order. Governor Yen has taken various practical ways of enforcing it. Posters with large script characters have been widely set up, exhorting the people to study the script, and a daily paper is issued in it. He has had 2,500,000 copies printed of a simple script primer, and has published at a nominal price, and in vast numbers, various educational books, such as What the People Ought to Know,[13] New Criminal Laws of the Republic, and Handbook for Village Leaders. The last-named is of special importance in view of the fact that by his order reading- and lecture-rooms have been established in all the cities and large villages of the province, where lectures and talks are given from time to time on various subjects of interest to the people. A regular educational campaign may be said to have been inaugurated by Yen. On every post and wall in the remotest villages may be seen maxims inculcating honesty, diligence, industry, patriotism and military preparedness.

Temple of Heaven and Hell, Workhouse.

[Page 53]

An important new book which Governor Yen has recently published, is called What Every Family Ought to Know, and is a description of what he conceives to be a good home and the happiness which results from it. “If we desire to have a good home, virtue is of first importance,” he says, but alas! he gives no clue as to how it is to be achieved.

The chief rules for family life are, (i) Friendliness, (ii) Magnanimity, (iii) Dignity, (iv) Rectitude, (v) Diligence, (vi) Economy, (vii) Cleanliness, (viii) Quietness. He makes the Head of the House responsible, as setting the example, and exhorts him to repentance (if he falls short) before God and his ancestors. The whole book is eminently practical, and he recommends what would be a startling change of immemorial custom, that the son should not marry until he is grown up and able to support a wife in a home of his own—namely, not under his father’s roof. This is an innovation which is beginning to be seen elsewhere, as the result of foreign intercourse.

As a writer, Governor Yen is concise and practical: he has completely broken away from the old Chinese classical style. His last work is written, like all his books, in simple mandarin instead of in beautiful classical mandarin, so that every one may be able to understand it. This is the more noteworthy, because the additional cost entailed was $5,400 per leaf; he states this fact in the preface of What the People Ought to Know.

His one object appears to be the uplift of the people in every way, and he believes in God and in righteousness. As an index of his view of life it may be interesting to quote a few of the forty Family Maxims which form the concluding chapter of his above-named book.

“Unjust wealth brings calamity.”

“Vitiated air kills more people than prison.”

“To be cruel to one’s own is to be worse than a beast.”

“Of people who lack a sense of responsibility—the fewer the better.”

“If your conscience tells you a thing is wrong, it is wrong: don’t do it.”

“The experience of the uneducated is much to be preferred to the inexperience of the educated.”

“The wise are self-reliant, the stupid apply to others.”

“There is no greater calamity than to give reins to one’s desires, and no greater evil than self-deception.”

Governor Yen, it will be seen, from his words as well as from his deeds, is a clear-sighted, independent thinker, and he believes in religious liberty. His reforms deal with a wide range of things—opium-smoking, narcotics, polygamy, infanticide, early marriages, early burial, gambling, training and morals of the troops, compulsory free education for boys, the introduction of uniform weights and measures, alteration in legal affairs. All these and other matters have within the last five years occupied his thoughts and been practically dealt with—no small achievement, especially when the insecurity of his position and lack of trained men to carry out his projects is taken into consideration.

As will be readily understood, all these enterprises cost money, and taxation is never looked on kindly by the taxed, so there is some discontent among the people of Shansi, and the Central Government, instead of showing satisfaction at the prosperity and good government of the province, which is in striking contrast to that of so many others, has taken the opportunity of threatening to impose a Civil Governor in Shansi—that means a heavy squeeze, and in consequence, the stoppage of many of the Governor’s schemes. He is continually threatened by those who would like to see him out of the way, and is consequently rarely seen, and then strongly guarded.

The system of having military governors is extremely bad, but in the case of an exceptional man like Yen it has worked well, and the Government saved its “face” by uniting the civil and military governorship in his one person. At the present time the Government has ordered the military governor of Shensi to retire in favour of another Tuchun. He refuses to do so, and his various military friends are all hurrying to the rescue. It is estimated that there are one and a half million soldiers in China, largely unpaid, so that they are glad of any excuse to loot and pillage. Feng Yu Hsiang has been sent up to Shensi by the Government to compel the Tuchun to leave, and has carried out the work with brilliant success. He has in vain been demanding money to pay his troops, while turbulent, unscrupulous generals have been receiving large sums to prevent them from committing excesses.

The Tuchuns have been encouraging opium-growing in order to get funds, and now there is hardly a province where it is not done more or less openly. Governor Yen has set his face against it, but smuggling goes on all the time, mainly from Japan, and morphia is also becoming increasingly popular. No wonder Young China is clamouring for the suppression of the Tuchuns and disarmament: there can be no peace in China till this is done.

One of the most interesting places in the city is the model gaol, which was planned and carried out by Mr. Hsü, who studied in Japan and has progressive views. It covers a considerable space of ground and is entirely one-storied; it is in the shape of a wheel, with many spokes radiating from the centre. The entrance is charming, as unlike as it is possible to imagine to any English prison. Within the gates is a lovely garden, for Chinese are first-rate gardeners, and the prisoners raise all the vegetables necessary for the inmates, and a grand show of flowers to boot. An avenue of trees leads to the offices, and when we were there in February we saw beautiful little trees of prunus in full bloom on the office table! All the prisoners have to work at useful trades, and if it were not for their fetters it would be difficult to imagine one was in a prison at all. The workshops were bright and airy; every one looked well cared for and not unhappy. A feature of the workrooms was the boards on which all tools were hung up when not in use, each tool being numbered and outlined on the board, so that it should be hung on its own peg. Every kind of trade was in full swing, and the work is so well executed that there is never any lack of orders. Certainly one would be only too glad to have things made under such good conditions.

The sleeping accommodation was excellent: the cells and beds of remarkable cleanliness and comfort; no one could object to them. The bath-house was of some interest. All the inmates have to undergo a weekly bath on Sundays, in batches of ten at a time, and their clothes are also kept thoroughly clean. The kitchen looked most attractive, and the rice and soup, which form the staple of their food, compared favourably with what one sees in the inns. The prisoners, too, are allowed as much as they like at their two daily meals. Throughout the Army there are no more than two meals a day. The place of punishment looked uncommonly like a theatre stage, and one cannot but hope that soon all executions will take place within the prison precincts instead of in public; but as Europe has not yet learnt to do this, one cannot be surprised that China has not.

After inspecting the Delco Engine, which provides light for the whole place, we went to visit the women’s prison, which is within the same enclosure as the men’s, though separated by a wall. It was very much smaller in extent but equally well kept, and even, I must add, attractive. The matron was a pleasant-faced, comely woman, and her own room quite a picture. The white-curtained bed, pretty coverlet, vase of flowers, and various little treasures suggested a home, and as she took us round, it was easy to see that she was happy in her work. We passed through the dining-room, where the tables were spread with clean cloths, and bowls and chopsticks were ready for the forthcoming meal. The prisoners were only about thirty in number, and were busy making mattresses and clothing, knitting and crocheting. It was suggested that they should sing a hymn, which they did with evident pleasure, and some of them talked with the missionary, who comes to see them once a week. The matron is not a Christian, but finds the singing and reading does them so much good that she has taken to learning and to teaching them herself. The missionaries were originally invited by the master to come and speak to the prisoners, and it is now a regular custom. One woman who is in for murder has become quite a changed character, and her term has been shortened in consequence of her good behaviour. Some were in for opium-smoking, which is here a punishable offence, while in other parts of the empire it is frankly encouraged.

The prisoners are allowed to have a visitor once a month, but no complaints are allowed to be made. Visits are stopped if this happens. The prisoners can earn money—if they work sufficiently well—which is placed to their credit for payment when their sentence is up.

The prison system was appalling in China previous to 1912, but it was then decided that it must be radically changed. It was reckoned that it would take seven years completely to re-model it in the twenty-two provinces. I have only seen one other of these new prisons at Tientsin, and it was not nearly so attractive as the Taiyuanfu one, but still worthy of imitation in many European countries. It had a sort of chapel in which moral addresses were given, but, it is only in the one at Changteh—under General Feng’s jurisdiction[14]—that a chapel was to be found where missionaries had regular services, each mission being responsible for a month at a time, in rotation. The Chinese Government has no small task still before it, for it is estimated that a sum of at least $24,000,000 will be required to provide the new gaols, besides which the Government scheme provides reformatories, Prisoners’ Protection and Aid Societies.

So much is said at present in the European Press about the disorders and misgovernment in China, that it is only fair to let people know that a steady tide of reform is flowing on at the same time, which will render possible a great forward movement when once there is a settled government. Not only are there new gaols, but new barracks, and a large military hospital of which the M.O. is a fine capable Chinaman, trained in the Mission Hospital; he is always ready to lend a hand there still when needed. I was interested to see him doing so one day when the young Chinaman in charge had a serious operation to perform, and if comparison were to be made between that and some European ones I have seen, it would not be in favour of the latter. The mission-trained Chinese are the only men capable of carrying out many of the reforms now taking place in China, owing to the dearth of trained Chinese. The Governor has sent nine students, selected by competitive examination, to study medicine at the Tsinanfu Christian university,[15] and 100 to France to study textiles.

One of the latest reforms of Governor Yen is particularly interesting: it is the power to make his will known in any part of the 70,000 square miles (or thereabouts) of Shansi within twenty-four hours. Considering that the railway line only runs up to Taiyuanfu—seventy miles or less through the province, and that the telegraph wires coincide with it—this is a truly amazing achievement. It is managed by means of telephone and of fast runners.

The mineral wealth of Shansi is phenomenal, and Baron v. Richthoven estimated that its coal would supply the whole world for several thousand years. Anthracite and iron are found in large quantities, besides other minerals. Given, therefore, a stable government and a progressive Governor like Yen, the province of Shansi is capable of becoming a most important place, in fact, of world-wide importance.

The difficulty of transport is one of the main drawbacks at present, and the loess formation is not only a bar to this, but also to irrigation of Taiyuanfu, owing to the curious ravines, sometimes as much as a hundred feet deep, through which traffic often passes, and the sides of which may at any time give way, burying the luckless travellers beneath them. The Governor has sent to England to buy 100 second-hand Government transport lorries, and no doubt he has plans for overcoming the difficulties, if only he is left in peace to develop them. He was formally proclaimed “Model Tuchun” by the Chinese Government in 1918, and although he is not yet forty, has proved himself one of China’s ablest governors.

Chapter III
The Province of Yünnan

“International life—a product of science, industry and economic relations—is hardly yet born; yet it is daily becoming a more and more comprehensive reality, including within its sphere items whose numbers and importance are steadily increasing. Nor is this common life merely international. Might not one say that it is also inter-ethnic, in the sense of embracing the most diverse races, not only in Europe, but also in America, Asia and Africa? Over the whole globe we are witnessing the spread and propagation of ideas that are also forces—motor ideas, which are everywhere identical and are drawing very different minds in the same directions.”—Alfred Fouillée.

Chapter III
The Province of Yünnan

CHAIR COOLIES.

Yünnanfu, the capital of the province, is a most fascinating place and situated in a most lovely district. I visited it thirteen years ago, before the coming of the French and their railway, and found it very interesting to study the changes which have taken place. These are important, but not so deep-reaching as in other cities, and I asked myself what the reason was.

There has grown up quite a foreign suburb round the station, and there are French hotels, in one of which we stayed—the Terminus. There are plenty of shops there, full of the cheaper kind of European goods; but beyond this small area French influence does not seem to extend. It seems out of harmony with the Chinese psychology, and all that we heard about their relations was disappointing. The railway has been useful for trade purposes, but has not promoted a good understanding between the races. The management of it leaves much to be desired in every way, and there is constant friction between the French and the Chinese.

It is extremely desirable that France should be represented in China by a different quality of people from those at present in Yünnan: the bulk of them entirely ignore the French traditions of courtesy and treat the Chinese as a lower and subservient race; almost they look upon them as if they had been conquered. It is a tragedy that Westerners should invade any areas against the will of the people, and still further increase the ill-will by their lack of manners in daily intercourse. Of course it is not only French people who do this, but Europeans of every kind, and the day of reckoning will surely come.

We went to see our missionary friends, who had entertained us on our last visit, and found their premises were overflowing with guests, as all the missionaries working in the district to the north and west had been called in by the officials on account of the activity of the brigands. In fact we met no less than three who had been prisoners in their hands. Two of these had made their escape, with hairbreadth adventures, and gave us most interesting accounts of these people. We also heard a lecture by one who had been seven weeks in the hands of the brigands, and from him we gathered a vivid picture of their life; always pursued, and fleeing day and night from the soldiers sent out against them. It made us feel much sympathy for that particular band.

Many brigands are disbanded soldiers who have taken to the life as a last resource. Their pay was rarely forthcoming, and they have been not infrequently disbanded with no means of earning a living. The captain of this band is a modern Robin Hood, with certain chivalrous ideals and strict in enforcing discipline. He treated his prisoner with consideration, allowed him to ride his beast while he himself walked. Mr. S. had to endure the same hardships as the robbers, but no more; the hardships were, however, too great a strain on his health, which speedily gave way, and he was very seriously ill by the time he was rescued, as the result of urgent remonstrances of his American Consul.

His robber guards treated him with genuine kindness and lent him their wraps at night to keep him warm. The chief was very anxious that Mr. S. should mediate with the Governor of Yünnan on his behalf, and promised that he and his men would settle down to a peaceful life, if they might have a free pardon for their past misdeeds. They had got a considerable amount of loot shortly before, which may have influenced them in this. He also offered to make Mr. S. his chaplain, with a salary of a thousand dollars a month and six months’ salary deposited in advance in a bank in Yünnanfu! He promised that all his men should become Christians: some of them certainly were in sympathy with Christianity. But Mr. S. knew that it was impossible to succeed in obtaining any favourable terms for the robbers, and declined to attempt it. A French abbé, at great personal risk, got permission to visit the sick man and was the greatest comfort to him, but the abbé told me that he never expected to be allowed to go away. What the reason of the robbers was for leaving the abbé at liberty is decidedly obscure.

Mrs. S. had begged the robbers to take her prisoner with her husband, but they refused, as in the case of another missionary’s wife. This was a great encouragement to us, as we were women; but when I told it to our young interpreter, he asked tragically, “But what about me?” and was by no means reassured when I pointed out that he was neither a man of substance nor of political importance, and so need have no fear.

The captain of the robbers was extremely particular with regard to the treatment of women and girls by his men. They were strictly forbidden to molest them. On one occasion, Mr. S. told us, the parents of a girl came to complain that a smart young fellow had taken her from their home the night before. After inquiry into the matter and finding that the accusation was just, the captain had the culprit taken eighty yards up the road and shot, all the band being witnesses and obliged to pass the dead body as they left the village where this happened. I quote this story because we so often heard ghastly stories about the ferocity of brigands that justice seems to demand that something be said in their defence. If there were a better Government, brigandage might soon be put down, as may be seen by the fact that it has entirely ceased in the province of Shansi, under Yen Hsi Shan’s wise rule.

We stayed for ten days at Yünnan and saw many interesting things while the preparations for our journey went on apace. As soon as we had got permission for it we ordered chairs, which had to be made, and looked out for a cook. By means of the Y.M.C.A. we got an admirable one, called Yao. The Y.M.C.A. is run by Americans and is mainly educational in character at Yünnan: they have a charming Chinese house for their premises, but look forward to the day when funds will be sufficient to have an American one!

One of the most important pieces of work done by foreigners is the C.M.S.[16] Medical Mission, and they are building a fine new hospital besides having a beautiful native house in the city. Dr. Bradley told us of the successful work done in curing opium smokers, who wished to break themselves of the habit. A wealthy young official had presented complimentary tablets in gratitude for his cure. The work was rather in abeyance pending the completion of the hospital.

There is also a fine, well-managed French hospital for Europeans, but it is not in the railway suburb, as it was built a great many years ago, before the railway was built, in the days when the French were first getting a footing in the province.

But the most interesting thing to us of all the things we saw was the Chinese Home Mission—a Society formed in 1919, by which the Chinese take up the evangelization of China as their own special duty. This is as it should be. The time has come when the burden of responsibility should begin to be taken up by the Chinese Christians, because it is of paramount importance that Christian mission work should cease to be looked on as a foreign institution. The Chinese Church of the future is beginning to take shape, and must grow in accordance with national needs. It is to be the outcome of the honest hard spiritual work of many sections of the Christian Church, but the copy of none. It is of happy augury that in this particular section seven members of the party represented the Presbyterians, Methodists, and American Board; while twelve different societies are represented on their advisory board. They have not so far formulated any creed, but have gone out rather as pioneers to learn the needs of the people and the way in which they can best work. They will then report to those who sent them. Not only are Christians of all churches supporting the movement financially, but also non-Christians show a great interest in it. The chief of the Governor’s staff in Yünnan wrote most cordially, welcoming their coming and promising to help them in any way he could. The missionaries have all done the same, and they are now working most happily alongside one another. We went to call on the two ladies of the C.H.M. settled in the city, the others of the party being unfortunately some distance away in robber-ridden areas of the country. Miss Li Ching Chien and Miss Chen Yu Ling have a girls’ school in a charming old temple building, and we found about thirty girls there, some having a lesson in the classics, others doing needlework. They are drawn from the exclusive upper-class families, whose doors are rigorously closed against the foreigner. They are glad to have their daughters instructed in Western knowledge, even if it does include Christian doctrine. The teachers told them in the opening ceremony that the main object of the school was to promote Christianity. They did not speak much English, but we took our interpreter, who was pleased to find he knew one of them in Peking, when she was working in the North China Union College for Women. They told us how they now visit in more than a hundred houses, owing to their school work, and are allowed to talk freely of the message, which is their chief aim. On Sundays they hold a service in their house and a Chinese pastor preaches: to this service men come as well as women and girls.

Meanwhile the men of the Chinese Home Mission have been visiting different parts of the province, Pastor Ding Li-mei going as far as Tengyueh, on the western border of Yünnan. He not only made a careful survey of the various districts, but also preached wherever he went. He is a man of high repute, one of the most successful and widely known evangelists in the East of China. His wife had taken up kindergarten work in the capital, as that has been her special line. Another of the party, Mr. Sang, went to visit a large tin-mining district in the south, and made a survey of Ku Chin, a prosperous city. The people of the district are greatly addicted to opium-smoking, which is on the increase. The Southern Government, which is supreme in Yünnan, openly encourages opium-smoking. There is no missionary work going on in this part of the province at present; in fact, there are not a dozen mission centres in the whole of this huge province, 146,680 square miles, with an estimated population of twelve millions. No wonder that the Chinese Home Mission felt that this was the place where they were most needed; hence their decision to start work in Yünnan, hoping to extend their work to other provinces. Another of the party, Mr. Li, visited the northern part of the province, crossing the border into Szechuen. At one place he found a group of Christians, who begged him to become their pastor.

The work of the C.H.M. is gradually getting organized and has promise of a fine future; its inception was mainly due to women, and they seem destined to play an important part in it. Chinese women have initiative and great staying power. One of its chief promoters was Dr. Mary Stone,[17] an able Chinese doctor, whose reputation is known throughout the empire. In her interesting book, Notable Women of Modern China, Miss M. E. Burton gives a graphic sketch of Dr. Stone’s life, from the time when her father brought her as a child of eight to an American lady doctor, saying, “Here is my little girl. I want you to make a doctor of her.” She grew up to be one of the people who tackle hard jobs of every kind and who inspire others, as in the case of the Chinese Home Mission. And the success of the Mission can only be secured if others take their share in it, for “they also serve who only stand and wait.” A charming instance of this came to my notice at Amoy. A friend took me to visit an old pastor and his wife who had just celebrated their combined birthday of a hundred and fifty. They said to me, “We are too old and infirm to carry on our work, so now we have set ourselves to pray for the Mission, and every day ten of us meet together for the purpose, and we give what little we can.” I told them I was going to see the ladies at Yünnan, and they were pleased at the thought of sending a message direct. Miss Li and Miss Chen were no less pleased to receive it.

The Pilgrim Way, Yünnanfu Lake.

[Page 74]

In Cloudland.

[Page 74]

There are in China some hundred and twenty different societies at work, but I venture to think that there is still room for many more Chinese workers, if not societies. At Yünnanfu I talked to an old and experienced missionary,[18] and he told me that he is convinced that the Chinese are best reached by their own people, and that now he confines himself almost entirely to superintendence and organization, while he has an ever-increasing number of evangelists who do all the speaking and teaching. It seems clear that the Chinese themselves feel the need of this support, seeing that the Chinese Home Mission has elected to have a foreign advisory committee. It is also essential to have foreign training centres, such as Dr. Keller’s school at Changsha (see page 152). At present the training of these men is often most inadequate, owing to the difficulty and expense of sending them long distances to the schools, especially from the less accessible mission stations.

We did not spend all our time in the city, while preparing for our journey eastward. Once again the lure of the lake came irresistibly on me, and we sent our interpreter to engage a boat in advance to take us across to the celebrated shrines. It is a long day’s expedition and requires strong rowers. When we reached the spot, by ricksha, from which we were to start, the boat proved quite unsuitable: it was so heavy that it would have taken all day to get across. The only thing was to make a fresh bargain for something more suitable, and we were amused to find that it was women only who seemed to be in charge of this trade. A pleasant, hefty-looking woman undertook to do the job to our satisfaction, and we were soon gliding across the smooth waters. There were many heavily-laden boats with lovely sails and as picturesque a crowd of passengers as you could wish to see, who were crossing the lake either to or from the city. Other boats were employed in fishing. The air was most lovely and the colouring of lake and sky and mountains a dream of beauty. Our two men and two women rowed like Trojans, and in two hours we landed at the foot of fine crags on the further shore. We climbed up a steep zigzag path, often up a rock stairway, through the pine-trees. The air was filled with the scent of roses, and the birds sang; nothing disturbed the delicious stillness of the place. From time to time we reached a shrine where the devout pilgrim worships, and always found a terrace or balcony with stone balustrade on which were perched quaint carved beasts, and from which there was a glorious view across the shimmering lake. Sometimes we passed through fine carved gateways, and we found the thousand steps rather long and weary! At one shrine a young acolyte, suffering from hip disease, prepared tea for us, before we attacked the topmost stage of pilgrimage. This led by a passage cut in the face of the rock to a very lofty little shrine, where squirrels were sporting among the overhanging shrubs. We entered the dragon gate, over which was inscribed the legend “Blessing to all who come.”

A party of Chinese women had actually climbed all the way up on their tiny feet and welcomed us with charming courtesy. After they had chatted for a few moments they turned in absorbed interest to their religious duties: cash were dropped in the box, incense lighted and due obeisances and prayers offered to the god carved in the solid wall of rock.

The view from the terrace was sublime, and far below the water was dotted with white sails that looked like insects on its surface. The overhanging cliff was of great height, and there was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the narrow belt of cornland on the margin of the lake, whose further shore was lost in the midday haze. The lake is called K’un-Yang-Hai; it is forty miles long and from five to eight miles wide; no wonder the people call it the “sea”! As we came down we noticed some scribbling on one of the temples “against Japanese goods,” with a rough drawing of a man with a pistol. Everywhere this hatred is shown in one form or another.

We had much interesting talk with an Englishman in our hotel, who had been there for more than six months trying to establish trade relations with the local authorities on behalf of his firm. The mineral wealth of Yünnan is proverbially great: it has rich mines of gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, coal, zinc, tin, and also salt and petroleum wells. The ores are of good quality and easily extracted, so that Yünnan has boundless wealth, if she chooses to develop it. But the Yünnanese are thoroughly unprogressive and a lazy, lethargic people, very different from other Chinese. The officials absolutely declined to sell their raw products, and it was precisely the ore which the English firm wished to buy: it was quite useless in its manufactured form. Their envoy hoped to have completed his business in a few weeks, but months had already elapsed, and although he thought the end was in sight, it was still a matter of uncertainty. Probably a substantial bribe would have accelerated matters; but not only is bribery unworthy of our trade traditions, but in the long run injurious to trade itself. The trade relations of China are by no means easy, and all nations are bidding for special facilities.

What a pity that the world as a whole cannot be converted to the policy of Free Trade! What a clearing of the moral atmosphere it would make; and what temptations would be saved to frail human nature!

Nine days after reaching Yünnanfu we started on our journey eastward. No one who has not experienced it can imagine the thrill of delight with which we set forth in search of adventures! We said good-bye to many helpful friends, got all our papers in order, and a letter of recommendation to the Governor of Kweichow; at an early hour of the day an escort of ten white-uniformed soldiers was waiting outside, ready to accompany us. We had seventeen coolies, and looked quite an imposing procession. First came our two four-bearer chairs, then the interpreter’s three-bearer chair, the cook’s two-bearer chair (it is important to preserve the etiquette of position), and finally four coolies carrying the luggage; part of the escort led the way and part brought up the rear.

How amusing it is to see the way in which human nature asserts itself, and how many are the little comic touches of travel, which are too small to enumerate, but which lend such charm to daily life, when you have a congenial fellow traveller at your elbow! Very soon our interpreter found his mountain chair not suitable to his dignity, and told me he had decided to travel in a “paper box”: this is an accurate definition of the chair which is commonly in use, and which is so carefully enclosed that from its depths you can scarcely see anything of the scenery. When the front blind is down there is nothing to be seen, but the passenger in this chaste seclusion can indulge in philosophic meditation—or sleep. Our cook, on the other hand, found his chair an unnecessary luxury, and soon the thrifty fellow asked permission to have the money instead of the coolie hire. I willingly agreed, as he never lagged behind and was always eager to do any stray job, and to collect wild flowers for us from the fragrant rose bushes and hedgerows.

That first day from Yünnanfu we passed fields full of beans and corn and rape, not to mention opium poppy, which was to be the main crop we saw all along the way in these southern provinces.

Very soon our joy was chastened by a tremendous rainstorm, but we were glad to find that our chairs were perfectly rainproof. The top was covered with American cloth and there were blinds of the same material to let down on all sides. When we reached our inn, Yao had a room ready for us, which he had swept out. Our procedure from that time forward was to send him on ahead after lunch, and he would secure the best possible room—pretty bad at that—sweep it out, together with any movable furniture, and have clean straw mats—or as clean as were obtainable—laid down. When we arrived it took very little time to set up our camp beds, table, chairs and washstand. We had a canteen with us, so that all the food was cooked in our own pans, and Yao proved an excellent cook and foraged well on the road. We only took such necessaries as butter, jam, milk, tea, bread and biscuits with us, but Yao was clever in making bread under great difficulties when we happened to run short of it. All travellers, however, experience the generous hospitality of missionaries, who seem to consider it a commonplace to provide travellers with bread and cakes galore. We rarely failed to come to a mission station once a week, and then our provision baskets were re-stocked. We only carried two baskets of provisions, namely one coolie load, for three months’ journey, and had a good deal left at the end: some of the things were special foods in case of illness, but fortunately they were not required.

From the time we left the capital we gradually rose till we came to the pass leading into Kweichow. The very first day we came to an altitude of fifty-nine hundred feet, and this was at the foot of an imposing mountain called Tu-Du-Shan, or Lord of the Earth; all the next day we skirted round its base. This day the road was not considered dangerous, so we only had unarmed police as our escort. They were more decorative than useful, as generally was the case, but the following day we saw a ghastly spectacle, which suggested a possible need for protection—two human heads in a tree and other remains being devoured by a dog in a neighbouring field. The beauty of the road and all the loveliness of nature seemed blighted, and it was difficult to rid oneself of the painful impression. Yet my father saw the body of a criminal swinging in chains on an Essex common not a hundred years ago, and the musical world listens with enchantment to “Le Gibet” and enjoys Ravel’s realistic presentation of it. Some people love horrors: I confess it is the one thing that took the joy out of our wanderings.

We were asked by one of the missionaries before leaving Yünnan to make a slight detour on our way to visit a sick woman, as he had done what he could to relieve her, but not being a doctor he was uncertain as to treatment, and wished my niece to diagnose the case; if any medicine could be of use, he would see that she got it. Our arrival created much interest in the village, and every one would have liked to be spectators when the medical examination was made. In fact the paper windows disappeared as by magic, so we had to have a shutter put up, and a native lamp threw little light on the patient. The one noticeable fact was that although she was too ill to do any housework the place was scrupulously clean, and the husband had everything ready in the way of water for washing. The contrast between a Christian and a non-Christian house in the matter of cleanliness was really remarkable.

In several of our halting-places there were small Christian communities, though no resident missionary. They always welcomed us with great cordiality and invited us to their meetings. These are held in rooms which are usually paid for by some member of the community, which carries on the work without much help from any mission: just an occasional visit and the knowledge that the missionary will help them in any time of need. In the village of Yi-ling there was an evangelist, who came to call on us with one of his chief helpers, a grocer; this man had been most generous in furnishing the hall, and they begged us to come to meeting that evening. There was quite a large crowd present and the service was a hearty one; the people looked mostly of a low type and very unlike Chinese. They asked me to speak, and listened well. After interpreting for me, Mr. Li, our interpreter, gave an impassioned address, which revealed to me the fact that he was more keen than I had realized. His first inquiry in every place was to know if there was a Christian community.

We were more and more enchanted with the fine scenery as we rose to greater heights. White and yellow jasmine, white and yellow Banksia roses, both single and double, filled the air with their fragrance, and vivid bushes of azalea made glorious patches of colour on the steep hill-sides. At night we were about sixty-four hundred feet up, and in the daytime we climbed to considerably higher altitudes. The dangers of the road were supposed to be increasing as we neared the picturesque town of Malong, so our military escort rose to ten, further supported by two policemen not in uniform. Other travellers eagerly took advantage of their protection and we looked quite an imposing procession. The way led up very steep mountains and dived sharply down into deep valleys. Trees full of white or pale mauve blossom were numerous, and scarlet azalea made a fine contrast. The people in the villages looked hideously poor and degraded, some of them obviously imbeciles and many with large goitres: in some villages there were fifty per cent. suffering from goitre; the beggars were simply terrifying. Again we had a severe thunderstorm, which came on quite suddenly when we were lunching by the wayside, and we made ourselves as small as possible in crevices of the rock. Our poor coolies got very wet and took us at a great pace, as soon as the rain stopped, to our next halting-place—Malong. The temperature was 61°.

The night was stormy, and in the morning clouds betokened the thunderstorm which soon broke, driving us to take scanty refuge in the crevices of the hill-side. We were glad to reach a mission station early in the afternoon at Küticul, where we stayed the night. We heard much about the poverty of the district and the increasing cultivation of opium poppy. It is tragic to see this when a few years ago the land was filled with crops needed for the daily food of the people. In some parts half the crops are opium, and it demands a great deal of labour! The land has to be twice ploughed, the second time crosswise, well manured, and the seed (mixed with four times its quantity of sand) is sown three times between October and March. After the sowing the land has to be harrowed, then the young plants are hoed and weeded, generally by the women and children. I have seen the women sitting on stools to do it on account of their poor little bound feet. This weeding goes on from early spring till the poppy flowers—generally in May. The petals fall quickly and the capsule swells till it is about one and a half inches in diameter; this takes about nine to fifteen days. A special instrument has to be used to make an incision three-quarters of the way round the capsule, and this must be done with care as it must not penetrate more than a certain depth, or the juice will flow inward instead of outward. The incision is generally made after the middle of the day, on account of the heat, and the juice must be collected next morning, being scraped off with a knife and put in a poppy leaf. It is said that the knife has to be moistened with saliva after every alternate poppy, to prevent the juice from sticking to it! As soon as the poppy leaf is filled with juice, another leaf is put over it and it is laid aside in the shade to dry. This takes several days; the opium in each varies from two ounces to two pounds, according to the district where it is grown. Sometimes the juice is collected twice, or even three times, though no second incision of the capsule is required. It makes one tired to think of the labour required, especially at the time of collecting the juice, which is necessarily limited, despite the three sowings.[19]

Opium is said to have been introduced into China in the seventeenth century, and the first Imperial edict forbidding the use of it was in 1729. The Portuguese were mainly employed in the trade in those early days. Fresh edicts against it failed to prevent its being smuggled in, as at the present day, though they became increasingly severe, till the death penalty was inflicted. The last edict under the Imperial rule was in 1906, but the dowager empress herself enjoyed her opium pipe, so she ordained that people over sixty were not to come under the scope of the act!

The Gate of the Elements.

[Page 84]

The great Chang Chih-Tung is very emphatic in his denunciation of the drug. “A hundred years ago the curse came upon us, more blasting and deadly in its effects than the Great Flood or the scourge of the Fierce Beasts, for the water assuaged after nine years, and the ravages of the man-eaters were confined to one place. Opium has spread with frightful rapidity and heartrending results through the provinces. Millions upon millions have been struck down by the plague. To-day it is running like wild-fire. In its swift deadly course it is spreading devastation everywhere, wrecking the minds and eating away the strength and wealth of its victims. The ruin of the mind is the most woeful of its many deleterious effects. The poison enfeebles the will, saps the strength of the body, renders the consumer incapable of performing his regular duties, and unfit for travel from one place to another. It consumes his substance and reduces the miserable wretch to poverty, barrenness and senility. Unless something is soon done to arrest this awful scourge in its devastating march, the Chinese people will be transformed into satyrs and devils!”[20] Many thoughtful Chinese are apprehensive that opium will finally extirpate the race. This is a severe indictment, but there are plenty of leading men who will endorse it.

The Republican Government determined to stamp out the evil, and none but the Chinese could have accomplished so great a reform so rapidly: in many of the northern provinces there is no poppy grown. But the Southern Government has not followed suit. No doubt the question of revenue prevents it; for opium is one of the most lucrative crops as regards taxation. Naturally there are times of great scarcity, and then it is quite common for the people to sell their children for food. A missionary told us of one child being sold for one and a half dollars (about three shillings): this was a boy of three years old. We saw two nice little girls on the road being taken to be sold as slaves.

After leaving Küticul we found our coolies very troublesome, and had to have recourse to the magistrate on two occasions, with a good result. One day the men firmly refused to go more than an absurdly short stage, and deposited us in the middle of a village. Our head man stormed and raged, not another step would they budge. Finally we made a compromise: we stayed there on the understanding that they would do a hundred and five li next day, about thirty-two miles. The magistrate later in the day had an interview with Li and the head coolie, and emphasized the fact that the agreement had got to be carried out, and the escort was instructed to come early.

The spell worked! We started about six o’clock on a lovely misty morning, the dew lying heavy on the grass, and our men walked with a will for some hours. But like the mist, their zeal evaporated: after lunch they said they must each have a dollar to go on. Li was in despair at seeing his remonstrances unheeded. I sent him off to the magistrate. He counselled giving them ten cents each, and ordered them to start: there was nothing to be done save agree to it, as the head coolie had disappeared, evidently feeling unable to cope with the situation. The men grumbled, but set off, and by a quarter past six we reached Ping-yi, a stiff twelve hours’ journey. We felt a little sorry for the luggage coolies and wondered if the loads were not rather heavy, but as they raced at the end of the stage to see who would be in first, we felt our pity was misplaced. We stayed in mission premises where a kind old caretaker was most solicitous for our welfare. Yao could hardly be persuaded not to prepare our evening meal, but we decided to prepare it for ourselves and sent him off to the inn with Li.

This was our last night in Yünnan, and we had a wonderful moonlight view over the valley, which, combined with a hard bed, led me to spend much of the night beside the window, writing letters. It was an unwonted pleasure to sleep upstairs and to have a view.

Next day in our escort we had a most friendly young policeman, who was keen to help us pick flowers after assiduously dealing with our luggage. We crossed several fine bridges and counted seven varieties of roses, five varieties of azaleas, iris, Japanese anemones, etc., etc. By midday we had climbed up to the dividing line between the provinces of Yünnan and Kweichow: it was marked by a most dilapidated archway leading into a little village. The usual tutelary stone lions are on either side the pailou, but those facing into Yünnan have dust and fishy scales carved on their backs, while those facing into Kweichow have only scales. What is the meaning of this symbolism? Dust stands for wind and scales for water, and truly Yünnan has not only rain but also wind in full measure, while as for Kweichow, we no sooner crossed the threshold than the sun disappeared and down came the rain.

One day we asked a Kweichow man who had attached himself uninvited to our company, when we might hope to see the sunshine! He took a long time to answer the question, and appeared to have been giving Li an exhaustive discourse on the nature of sunshine. However, the summary of the discourse was that under the old Imperial regime things were fixed, and you could count upon them—but under a Republic you could be sure of nothing!

Chapter IV
The Province of Kweichow

“Methinks there’s a genius

Roams in the mountains.

...

But dark is the forest

Where now is my dwelling,

Never the light of day

Reaches its shadow.

Thither a perilous

Pathway meanders.

Lonely I stand

On the lonelier hill-top,

Cloudland beneath me

And cloudland around me.

Softly the wind bloweth,

Softly the rain falls,

Joy like a mist blots

The thoughts of my home out.”

—(Ch’ü Yüan: Fourth Century B.C.)

Translated by Cranmer Byng.

Chapter IV
The Province of Kweichow

A HAYSTACK.

Not only is there a gateway leading out of Yünnan, but also one of a quite different character leading into Kweichow, and situated at the other end of the little frontier village. It is a solid stone gateway in a stone wall. We passed along a short bit of level street at a height of 6,200 feet before we came to the wall, and then we plunged down a steep rocky path, with a wonderful view of deep valleys surrounded by abrupt and jagged mountains.

We found that day seven new varieties of roses, all very sweet-scented, also rhododendrons, azaleas and irises. At our halting-place for the night (5,300 feet) we climbed a little hill crowned with a Buddhist temple, and looked down on trees, which formed a floor of delicate white blossom as light as snowflakes, trees quite unknown to me, and no one there seemed able to give us even a Chinese name for them. It is very difficult to get information, and we had not the time for making collections.

I tried to learn about them when I came home, and found that there is in existence a large folio of manuscript of descriptions and specimens of plants collected by French fathers in this province; but as no one visits Kweichow there was no demand for such a work, and there is no hope of it being published. The collection is at the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens. It was the same with other things: the mountains often had the strangest forms, and I made careful drawings of their outlines. Photos were usually out of the question, as the mountains were too close; they rose up like walls all round us, and the light was always in the wrong quarter. On my return home I went cheerfully to learned societies with confident hope of slaking my thirst for knowledge, but alas! No books on such an unknown part, the very name of course unknown. When my drawings had been duly inspected, the remark made was, “I must compliment you on your sketches, I have never seen mountains like that!” Was there a touch of irony in the remark?

Truly Kweichow is a wonderful country and beautiful in the extreme, as the late Dr. Morrison (adviser to the Chinese Government) told me when I went to get his advice before starting. “You could not have chosen a more interesting part to travel in,” he said, “nor a more beautiful one”; and he had travelled in almost every part of China. It is full of different aboriginal races of whom very little is known, its flora is remarkably rich and varied, and its geology a continual surprise.

The second day across the border we crossed a small plain from which rise a series of round low mounds, like pudding-basins, from the flat ricefields—an extraordinary contrast to the lofty, jagged mountains from which we had just descended. In the midst of it all was a curious tumbled heap of lava-like appearance, looking as if it had been ejected from the earth by some colossal earthworms. Sir Alexander Hosie says[21] that there is a parallel row of these mounds about ten miles to the south: they run east and west. In the ricefields I saw a brilliant kingfisher, hanging poised in mid-air in search of prey, while a heron stalked away at our approach.

The rain grew more and more persistent, and the roads were muddy and slippery to the last degree. Even the sure-footed Chinese kept tumbling down, and it was almost less trying to walk than to be bumped down in our chairs. As we advanced into the province the culture of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum) increased till it was as much as ninety-nine per cent. of the crops, and the appearance of the inhabitants showed only too plainly its disastrous effects. In some of the villages the children were naked, although it was still cold weather, being only the beginning of April. In the markets the goods were of the meanest and cheapest description, and the people looked abject. They rushed out to beg from us. The main industry of the district was evidently the making of coal balls. The coal lies actually on the surface, and has only to be scraped together, mixed with a little earth and water, and then dried: it burns quite well. Some of the coal is used for fertilizing the ground, being reduced to ash by being burnt in pits with stones piled on it. Lime also is used for the poppy fields. Sometimes the coal holes by the wayside are a couple of yards in diameter. The coir palm is to be seen in every village, and loquats and walnut trees are cultivated for their fruit.

We struggled along through a thick mist one day, and one after another went down like ninepins on the slippery path. One of my bearers cut his ankle, and was thankful for the doctor’s attentions. Suddenly I heard an ominous roaring sound, and looked in vain for the cause. It proved to be produced by a big stream, which disappeared into a hole in the earth; this appears to be quite a common phenomenon, and later on we saw one bubble out of the ground in the same strange fashion.

Another shape of hill attracted my attention, and as I tried to reproduce it accurately on paper it became obvious that this was one of the Chinese mountain forms with which one has been familiar from childhood in their pictures, and which one had supposed to be a work of imagination. As they always hold in their canons of art that “form” is quite subsidiary to “spirit,” I imagined that it was not inability to imitate form accurately, but a deliberate intention of ignoring it in order to express some more important truth that was the cause of their drawing, what seemed to me, such unnatural mountains. But here one discovered that these forms are natural in China, and it is after all only our ignorance that makes us so misjudge them.

There were hedges by the roadside all bursting into leaf and blossom, and I never saw such a wealth of ferns of many kinds. There was material for a whole volume on ferns alone. Lofty trees of catalpa bungei with their purple blossom, and Boehmeria nivea grew by the roadside, and rhea grass in the village gardens.

We generally started the day in a damp mist, and were happy when it cleared away, even though there was no sunshine. We scanned the hedges for roses, and felt quite aggrieved if we failed to find fresh varieties every single day. A lovely blush rose filled us with delight, but pink moss-roses were only seen on one occasion. We decided that nowhere else could a greater variety of roses be found: we counted twenty-three varieties before we left the province, and felt sure we should have found many more had we stayed longer, for they were hardly in full bloom by the end of April. One day I picked up a broken branch on the road, thrown away by some passer-by no doubt because it had no blossoms on it, but the bright green leaves were a lovely violet on the under side, and I searched in vain to find a bush of it growing, in order to see what the flowers were like.

Then, too, the birds were reminiscent of home—magpies, larks, woodpeckers, wagtails, and even the aggravating cuckoo. But there was one elusive little fellow, known to all dwellers in Kweichow, though no one could tell me his name: he had a long shrill note with a short tut-tut-tut at the end. We both watched for him daily, as he seemed to haunt our path continually, but never could we catch a sight of him, so dexterously did he hide himself. Occasionally we thought we saw him, but it was so momentary a glimpse that we were never sure; the bird we saw looked about the size and shape and colour of a linnet.

The fourth day in Kweichow we came to a splendid three-arch bridge in a fertile valley, and spent the night in a very different village from most—Kuan Tzu Yao. A number of fine new houses were in course of construction, built largely of stone; amongst others, a post office next door to our inn. The postal system in China is really wonderful, even in this backward province, and we had a most charming surprise at the first post town we entered. Our interpreter went to the post office, and was surprised at being asked if he were travelling with English ladies. On admitting this, he was asked to inform us that if we were in need of money we could draw as much as was necessary at any office we came to, by order of the postal commissioner at Kwei Yang. The reason for this delightful arrangement was that the English Commissioner at Taiyuanfu, whose advice we had asked about transmitting money, said he would write to his Chinese colleague and ask him to help us if we got into difficulties, because of the prevalent highway robberies. This gentleman was ill at the time the letter reached him, but he telegraphed to Taiyuanfu as soon as he was fit, that he would do what he could—and this was his splendid way of meeting the difficulty. No finer testimony could be wanted of the way the Chinese trust our people.

The postal system is a fine piece of organization: it reaches to the utmost bounds of the empire, and although the mails are mainly carried by runners on foot, they travel very rapidly. The stages are not long, and there is no delay when the bags are handed from one runner to the next. For instance, we were told that on this particular road, what we did in seventeen days the mails would do in four, and we did an average of eighteen miles a day. We had postal maps given us of the provinces we were going to visit. On them are marked all the postal stations, with the distances from one to another; the line of route; the various grades of offices; the limit of the district; daily or bi-daily day and night service; daily, bi-daily or tri-daily service; less frequent ones; postal connexion by boat; telegraphic connexion; rural box offices, etc. The names of the main towns are in both Chinese and English, the others only in Chinese. On the whole, letters travel wonderfully safely. The old postal system was quite hopeless, and in the interior the missionaries used to organize their own. Even Peking used to be closed to the rest of the world yearly for several months. I remember six months when we had no letters from my sister in Shansi, due to a misunderstanding at a transmitting station, and there was no telegraphic communication in those days. Now the old Chinese system has practically died out.

We had another proof of the thoughtfulness of the Chinese commissioner later. Having heard from one of the missionaries that we were going into the Miao country before coming to the capital, he sent up all our letters, a tremendous boon after being weeks without any. The postal service is under international control, having been originated in 1896 and built up by Sir Robert Hart in connexion with the customs: in each province there is a commissioner; nearly all are Europeans.

As we got further into the province the vegetation grew more and more luxuriant. The banks were carpeted with lycopodium and primula and the hedges were full of roses, white and yellow jasmine, hawthorn, clematis montana, Akebia lobata—a very curious creeper with wine-coloured blossom, both male and female. The brilliant yellow-blossomed cassia forms a most impenetrable hedge, with upstanding thorns, like nails, all along its tough stems. We tied water jars into our chairs, so as to keep the flowers fresh, and by the end of the day the chairs were perfect bowers, our men vying with one another to get us the choicest blossoms. Perhaps the most beautiful of any was the large white, sweet-scented rhododendron, the Hymenocallis. This is rare; we only found it once.

The scenery was very grand; long ranges of jagged mountains and precipitous cliffs, but the road was not in the least dangerous from that point of view. It was extremely slippery and a heavy mist lay over everything in the early hours of most days: our men kept tumbling down. The only one who seemed always steady was Yao, and he constituted himself my guardian on slippery days, holding my elbow with a relentless grip, which certainly prevented my tumbling down and gave me confidence.

At Kuan Tzu Yao we found a nice clean new inn, courtyard behind courtyard, and each raised a step or two above the last: ours was the innermost, and we felt unusually secluded. The next night our immediate neighbours were two fine water buffaloes with their calves. They are the most valuable domestic animals throughout this country, as they plough the ricefields quite happily when they are under water. These two were taken out to work in the early morning, and we were amused to see a little tatterdemalion bringing them back in a perfect fury to fetch their calves, which had been left in the shed. The buffaloes seem to be generally left in the care of boys, who manage them with much skill, and love to disport themselves on their broad backs, often lying negligently at ease along them, looking as much at home as if they were an integral part of the creature. They are sluggish animals, coming originally from the Philippines.

Leaving Tu Tien our men seemed possessed of a sudden energy, and went at a great rate, doing nearly seven miles in two hours. Sometimes we thought we were lacking in humanity to give them such heavy loads; but then again our scruples seemed foolish in the light of certain experiences. For instance, one man carried two heavy suit-cases and a chair, another two large carved window-frames and a bed, but it didn’t prevent them taking a steep bank at a run, or having a race at the end of a thirty-mile stage to see who would be in first. The Chinese coolie is really an amusing creature, and even if he is clad in rags he finds life a cheerful business. I used to try and count the patches on the coat of one of my coolies, and never made them less than forty-six between the neck and waistband, not including those on the sleeves!

Then the incidents of travel have a humorous side, even on a wet day in a dangerous neighbourhood. Instead of having our light midday meal as usual by the roadside near the village, where the men get theirs, one is obliged to have it in the chairs, placed side by side in the main street of a busy town. Our escort draws an imaginary cordon round us, and no one dares approach within two yards as long as they mount guard. It was a thrilling sight for the assembled crowd to watch the barbarians wielding knives and forks, instead of the dear, familiar chopsticks. I must say they behaved beautifully.

When I sat down to sketch a lovely river scene outside a village gateway, though many came to look on they did not jostle. These entrance gates are often quite imposing and of infinite variety. Just inside was a fine litter of pigs, with a most important-looking sow, and it was amusing to watch their antics. On a doorstep, extended at full length lay a large hairy black pig. Its face wore a beatific expression, with half-closed eyes of rapt enjoyment, while a woman vigorously groomed it with her brush.

The mountains of Kweichow give shelter to many wild animals, and even tigers, as well as leopards, are to be found, which cause great havoc in some of the villages. One story we heard throws an interesting light on the way the natives look at them. A tiger had been doing so much damage that the peasantry determined to have a battue, having tracked it to a certain hill, from which they thought it would be impossible for it to escape. They formed a cordon round the hill and gradually drove it to the top. The tiger, in search of refuge, looked into a shrine, and its pursuers saw this: they exclaimed, “It is certainly the God of the Hill”; so they turned tail and fled. Naturally, the tiger seeing this took the opportunity of attacking them in the rear, and several were badly mauled.[22]

Some of the mountains are very barren, others wonderfully cultivated, on terraces right up to the very top, and in rocky hollows only about a foot in diameter, with a mere handful of soil in them. How the scanty population can do such a vast amount of cultivation was a mystery we could never solve. One day we started from an altitude of eighteen hundred feet and climbed over a pass of forty-eight hundred, whence there was a wonderful panoramic view; our road could be seen for many miles, winding along the mountainside above a narrow valley; then diving down into it and up the opposite side. Our men said the last part of that day’s march, ten li (three miles), would be on the level, which sounded pleasant news. In point of fact we dropped nine hundred feet. A fine entrance gate led into Lang Tai Fung. Just outside the wall were the ruins of an old temple with a handsome stone carved bridge in front of it, enclosed within a wall. The inn was a good one, and the weather having suddenly turned cold we were glad of a brazier. The town seemed much more prosperous than most. There were large cotton looms, where weaving was going on in the open air, as well as in a disused temple. Handsome carved window-frames delighted me so much that I determined to have some made for the women’s institute at Taiyuanfu. They were about a yard square in size with a good deal of carving, so the sum named (twenty dollars including carriage to Anshun, about fifty-five miles distant) did not seem excessive! It took us three days to get to Anshun, and the windows arrived within the fortnight stipulated. We picked them up later, and they formed rather a large item of our luggage, requiring an extra coolie.

As we neared Anshun the road was less mountainous and the villages better built. Many of the houses are of grey stone, some built with mortar, some without. There was a fine waterfall, a hundred and sixty feet in depth, into the Rhinoceros Pool, near the town of Chen Lun, and above it a five-span bridge of noble proportions. A busy market was going on in the town; and a funeral, with the usual paper horses and servants for burning at the grave, formed an additional interest to the gay crowd. There were a number of picturesque tribeswomen, looking as usual very sulky, and not mixing with the Chinese. From afar we saw the lofty turrets of a Roman Catholic Church, so we went to see what it was like. The architecture and fittings were entirely Western, and we had no sooner entered the church than the fine-looking old French priest came forward and greeted us. He invited us into his room and we had an interesting, long talk. He had been thirty-two years in China, but only two in this district, and seemed very discouraged. I asked about the numbers of converts, and he said there were about sixteen hundred, but added dejectedly that they were not at all satisfactory. How hard it must be to go on working under such circumstances, and with no hope of return to his own country.