Across Asia on a Bicycle - William Lewis Sachtleben (best free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📗
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Our sojourn in this city is especially associated with the three names of Woo, Choo, and Moo—names by no means uncommon in Chinese nomenclature. We heard of a boy named the abstract numeral, “sixty-five,” because his grandfather happened to reach that age on the very day of his birth. Mr. Moo was the local telegraph operator, with whom we, and our friends Woo and Choo, of Shanghai, associated. All operators in the Chinese telegraph system are required to read and write English. The school established for this purpose at Lan-chou we occasionally visited, and assisted the Chinese schoolmaster to hear the recitations from Routledge’s spelling-book. He, in turn, was a frequent partaker of our “foreign chows,” which our English-speaking friends served with knives and forks borrowed from the missionaries. Lily and bamboo roots, sharks’ fins and swallows’ nests, and many other Chinese delicacies, were now served in abundance, and with the ever-accompanying bowl of rice. In the matter of eating and drinking, Chinese formality is extreme. A round table is the only one that can be used in an aristocratic household. The seat of honor is always the one next to the wall. Not a mouthful can be taken until the host raises his chop-sticks in the air, and gives [pg 205]the signal. Silence then prevails; for Confucius says: “When a man eats he has no time for talk.” When a cup of tea is served to any one in a social party, he must offer it to every one in the room, no matter how many there are, before proceeding to drink himself. The real basis of Chinese politeness seems to be this: They must be polite enough to offer, and you must be polite enough to refuse. Our ignorance of this great underlying principle during the early part of the Chinese journey led us into errors both many and grievous. In order to show a desire to be sociable, we accepted almost everything that was offered us, to the great chagrin, we fear, of the courteous donors.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH SENT TO THE AUTHORS BY THE PRIME MINISTER.
Our departure from Lan-chou was not, we thought, regretted by the officials themselves, for we heard that apprehension was expressed lest the crowds continuing to collect around the telegraph-office should indulge in a riot. However, we were loath to leave our genial friends for the society of opium-smokers, for we were now in that province of China which, next to Sechuen, is most addicted to this habit. From dusk till bed-time, the streets of the villages were almost deserted for the squalid opium dens. Even our soldier attendant, as soon as the wooden saddle was taken from his sore-backed government steed, would produce his portable lamp, and proceed to melt on his needle the wax-like contents of a small, black box. When of the proper consistency, the paste was rolled on a metal plate to point it for the aperture in the flute-shaped pipe. Half the night would be given to this process, and a considerable portion of the remaining half would be devoted to smoking small pinches of tobacco in the peculiar Chinese water-pipe. According to an official note, issued early in 1882, by Mr. Hart, Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, considerably less than one per cent. of the population is addicted to opium-smoking, while those who smoke it to excess are few. More to be feared [pg 208]is the use of opium as a poison, especially among Chinese women. The government raises large sums from the import duty on opium, and tacitly connives at its cultivation in most of the provinces, where the traders and mandarins share between them the profits of this officially prohibited drug.
This part of the great historic highway on which we were now traveling, between the two bends of the Hoang-ho, was found more extensively patronized than heretofore. Besides the usual caravans of horses, donkeys, and two-wheeled vans, we occasionally met with a party of shaven-headed Tibetans traveling either as emissaries, or as traders in the famous Tibetan sheep-skins and furs, and the strongly-scented bags of the musk-deer. A funeral cortège was also a very frequent sight. Chinese custom requires that the remains of the dead be brought back to their native place, no matter how far they may have wandered during life, and as the carriage of a single body would often be expensive, they are generally interred in temporary cemeteries or mortuary villages, until a sufficient number can be got together to form a large convoy. Mandarins, however, in death as in life, travel alone and with retinue. One coffin we met which rested upon poles supported on the shoulders of thirty-two men. Above on the coffin was perched the usual white rooster, which is supposed to incorporate, during transportation, the spirit of the departed. In funeral ceremonies, especially of the father, custom also requires the children to give public expression to their grief. Besides many other filial observances, the eldest son is in duty bound to render the journey easy for the departed by scattering fictitious paper-money, as spirit toll, at the various roadside temples.
Singan-foo, the capital of the Middle Kingdom, under the Tsin dynasty, and a city of the first importance more [pg 210]than two thousand years ago, is still one of the largest places in the empire, being exceeded in population probably by Canton alone. Each of its four walls, facing the cardinal points, is over six miles long and is pierced in the center by a monumental gate with lofty pavilions. It was here, among the ruins of an old Nestorian church, built several centuries before, that was found the famous tablet now sought at a high price by the British Museum. The harassing mobs gathered from its teeming population, as well as the lateness of the season, prompted us to make our sojourn as short as possible. Only a day sufficed to reach Tong-quan, which is the central stronghold of the Hoang-ho basin, and one of the best defended points in China. Here, between precipitous cliffs, this giant stream rushes madly by, as if in protest against its sudden deflec[pg 211]tion. Our ferry this time was not the back of a Chinese coolie nor a jolting ox-cart, but a spacious flat-boat made to accommodate one or two vehicles at a time. This was rowed at the stern, like the gondolas of Venice. The mob of hundreds that had been dogging our foot-steps and making life miserable, during our brief stop for food, watched our embarkation. We reached the opposite shore, a mile below the starting-point, and began to ascend from the river-basin to the highlands by an excavated fissure in the famous “yellow earth.” This gives its name, not only to the river it discolors, but, from the extensive region comprised, even to the emperor himself, who takes the title of “Yellow Lord,” as equivalent to “Master of the World.” The thickness of this the richest soil in China, which according to Baron Richthofen is nothing more than so much dust accumulated during the course of ages by the winds from the northern deserts, is in some places at least two thousand feet. Much ingenuity has been displayed in overcoming the difficulties offered [pg 212]to free communication by the perpendicular walls of these yellow lands. Some of the most frequented roads have been excavated to depths of from forty to one hundred feet. Being seldom more than eight or ten feet wide, the wheeled traffic is conducted by means of sidings, like the “stations” in the Suez Canal. Being undrained or unswept by the winds, these walled-up tracks are either dust-beds or quagmires, according to the season; for us, the autumn rains had converted them into the latter. Although on one of the imperial highways which once excited the admiration of Marco Polo, we were now treated to some of the worst stretches we have ever seen. The mountain ascents, especially those stair-like approaches to the “Heavenly Gates” before reaching the Pe-chili plains, were steep, gradeless inclines, strewn with huge upturned blocks of stone, over which the heavy carts were fairly lifted by the sheer force of additional horse-flesh. The bridges, too, whose Roman-like masonry attests the high [pg 213]degree of Chinese civilization during the middle ages, have long since been abandoned to the ravages of time; while over the whole country the late Dungan rebellion has left its countless ruins.
The people of Shan-si province are noted for their special thrift, but this quality we observed was sometimes exhibited at the expense of the higher virtue of honesty. One of the most serious of the many cases of attempted extortion occurred at a remote country town, where we arrived late one evening, after learning to our dismay that one of our remarkably few mistakes in the road had brought us just fifty miles out of the way. Unusually wearied as we were by the cross-country cuts, we desired to retire early. In fact, on this account, we were not so observant of Chinese formality as we might have been. We did not heed the hinted requests of the visiting officials for a moon-light exhibition, nor go to the inn-door to bow them respectfully out. We were glad to take them at their word when they said, with the usual hypocritical smirk, “Now, don’t come out any farther.” This indiscretion on our part caused them, as well as ourselves, to suffer in the respect of the assembled rabble. With official connivance, the latter were now free, they thought, to take unusual liberties. So far, in our dealings with
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