Across China on Foot - Edwin John Dingle (i love reading books txt) 📗
- Author: Edwin John Dingle
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Rain came on at Chennan-chou, a small town of about three hundred houses, where I sought shelter in the last house of the street. The householder, a shrivelled, goitrous humpback, received me kindly, removed his pot of cabbage from the fire to brew tea for his uninvited guest, and showed great gratitude (to such an extent that he nearly fell into the fire as he moved to push the children forward towards me) when I gave a few cash to three kiddies, who gaped open-mouthed at the apparition thus found unexpectedly before their parent's hearth. More came in, my beneficent attention being modestly directed towards them; others followed, and still more, and more, whilst the man, removing from his mouth his four-foot pipe, and wiping the mouthpiece with his soiled coat-sleeve before offering it to me to smoke, smiled as I distributed more cash.
"They are all mine," he said cutely.
Poor fellow! There must have been a dozen nippers there, and I sighed at the thought of what some men come to as the last of half a string of cash slipped through my fingers.[AN]
Outside the town, on the lee side of a triumphal arch—erected, maybe, to the memory of one of the virtuous widows of the district—I untied my pukai and donned my mackintosh and wind-cap. A gale blew, my fingers ached with the cold, breathing was rendered difficult by the rarefied air. As we were thus engaged and discussing the prospects of the storm, yelling from under a gigantic straw hat, a fellow said—
"Suan liao" ("not worth reckoning") "only five more li to Sha-chiao-kai."
We had thirty li to do. Such is the idea of distance in Yün-nan.[AO]
The storm did not come, however, and my men ever after reminded me to keep out my wind-cap and my mackintosh, partly to lighten their loads, of course, and partly on account of the good omen it seemed to them to be.
FOOTNOTES:
[AH]
"Gwan" is the Chinese for "official."
[AI]
I have seen a European, with an imperfect hold of an eastern language, knock an Asiatic down because he thought the man was a fool, whereas he himself was ignorant of what was going on. The message the coolie was bringing was misunderstood by the conceited assistant, and as a result of having just this smattering of the vernacular, he ran his firm in for a loss of fifty thousand dollars.—E.J.D.
[AJ]
Ts'u-hsiong-fu, as it is pronounced locally, with a strong "ts" initial sound.
[AK]
Meaning a relief hand (Malay).
[AL]
Literally, "tea money."
[AM]
"Heaping up merit" is one of the elementary practices of Chinese religious life.
[AN]
Chennan-chou, which stands at a height of 6,500 feet, has been visited again since by myself. My caravan consisted on this occasion of two ponies (one I was riding), two coolies, a servant, and myself. As we got to the archway in the middle of the street leading to the busy part of the town, my animal nearly landed me into the gutter, and the other horse ran into a neighboring house, both frightened by crackers which were being fired around a man who was bumping his head on the ground in front of an ancestral tablet, brought into the street for the purpose. A horrid din made the air turbulent. I sought refuge in the nearest house, tying my ponies up to the windows, and was most hospitably received as a returned prodigal by a well-disposed old man and his courtly helpmate. The genuineness of the hospitality of the Chinese is as strong as their unfriendliness can be when they are disposed to show a hostile spirit to foreigners. Just as I had laid up for dinner the din stopped, we breathed gunpowder smoke instead of air, everyone from the head-bumping ceremony came around me, and there lingered in silent admiration. My boy came and whispered, quite aloud enough for all to hear, that in that part of the town cooked rice could not be bought, and that I was going to be left to look after the horses and the loads whilst the men went away to feed. He advised the assembled crowd that if they valued sound physique they had better keep their hands off my gear and depart. My friendly host shut the doors and windows, with the exception of that through which I watched our impedimenta, and at once commenced good-natured inquiry into my past, and concerning vicissitudes of life in general. Luckily, I was able to give the old man good reason for congratulating me upon my ancestral line, my own great age, the number of my wives and offshoots—mostly "little puppies"—and as each curious caller dropped in to sip tea, so did one after another of the patriarchal dignitaries who were responsible for the human product then entertaining the crowd come vividly before the imagination of the company, and they were graced with every token of age and honor. (Chinese speak of sons as "little puppies.")
[AO]
In crossing a river here I slipped, and from ray pocket there rolled a box of photographic films, and in reaching over to re-capture it, I let my loaded camera fall into the water. I was disappointed, as most of my best pictures were thus (as I imagined) spoilt. But when I developed at Bhamo, I found not a single film damaged by water, and every picture was a success from both the roll in the tin and the roll in the camera. It is a tribute to the Eastman-Kodak Company Ltd. that their non-curling films will stand being dipped into rivers and remain unaffected. The films in question should have been developed six months prior to the date of my exposure.—E.J.D.
CHAPTER XVIII.Stampede of frightened women. To the Eagle Nest. An acrobatic performance, and some retaliation at the author's expense. Over the mountains to Pu-pêng A magnificent storm, and a description. In a "rock of ages." Hardiness of my comrades. Early morning routine and some impressions. Unspeakable filth of the Chinese. Lolo people of the district. Physique of the women. Aspirations towards Chinese customs. Skilless building. Mythological, anthropological, craniological and antediluvian disquisitions. At Yün-nan-ï. Flat country. Thriftless humanity. To Hungay. A day of days. Traveler in bitter cold unable to procure food. Fright in middle night. A timely rescue. Murder of a bullock on my doorstep. Callous disposition of fellow-travelers. Leaving the capital of an old-time kingdom. Bad roads and good men. National virtue of unfailing patience. Human consumption of diseased animals. Minchia at Hungay. Major Davies and the Minchia. Author's differences of opinion. Increasing popularity of the small foot.
But the storm came the next day, as we were on our way to Pu-pêng, during the ninety li when we passed the highest point on this journey. By name The Eagle Nest Barrier (Ting-wu-kwan), this elevated pass, 8,600 feet above the level, reached after a gradual ascent between two mountain ranges, was surmounted after a couple of hours' steep climbing, where rain and snow had made the paths irritatingly slippery and the task most laborious. Although the condition of the road was enough to take all the wind out of one's sails, the sublimity of the scenery of the dense woods which clothed the mountains, exquisitely pretty ravines, tumbling waterfalls, running rivulets and sparkling brooks, with little patches of snow hidden away in the maze of greens of every hue, all rendered it a climb less tiring than the narrow pathways over which we were then to travel. Half-way up we met a string of ponies, and I underwent a few nervous moments until they had passed in the twenty-inch road—a slight tilt, a slip, a splutter, probably a yell, and I should have dropped 500 feet without a bump.
As we went along together, just before reaching this hill, we saw women carrying bags of rice. They saw us, too. One passed me safely, but with fear. The others carelessly dropping their burdens, scampered off, afraid of their lives; and when one of my soldiers (whose sense of humor was on a par with my own when as a boy I used to stick butterscotch drops on the bald head of my Sunday School teacher, and bend pins for small boys to sit on and rise from) shouted to them, they dived straight as a die over the hedge into a submerged rice-field, and made a sorry spectacle with their "lily" feet and pale blue trousers, covered with the thin mud. In struggling to get away, one of them, the silly creature, went sprawling on all fours in the slime, and with only the imperfect footing possible to her with her little stumps, she would have been submerged, had not the man who had frightened her, at my bidding, gone to drag her out. As it was, they looked anything but beautiful with their wet and muddy garments clinging tightly to their bodies, and betraying every curve of their not unbeautiful figures. One of the women, a comely damsel of some twenty summers, did not jump into the field, but lay flat on the ground behind some bushes, thereby hoping to get out of sight, and now came forward with amorous glances. We, however, sent them on their way, and I will lay my life that they will not "scoot" at the sight of the next foreigner.
And now we are at the "Nest." Many travelers have made remarks upon this place, where I was waited upon by a shrivelled, shambling specimen of manhood, whose wife—in contrast to her kind in China—seemed to rule house and home, bed and board. Whilst we were there, a Chinese, bound on the downward journey, endeavored to mount his mule at the very moment the animal was reaching out for a blade of straw. As he swung his leg across the mule took another step forward, and the rider fell bodily with an enormous bump into the lap of one of my coolies, upsetting him and his bowl of tea over his trousers and my own. I could not suppress hearty approval of this acrobatic incident.
But the end was not yet.
I sat on one end of one of those narrow forms, and this same coolie sat on the other. He rose up suddenly, reached over for the common salt-pot, and I came off—with the multitude of alfresco diners laughing at this smart retaliation until their chock-full mouths emitted the grains of rice they chewed.
After that I cleared off. Descending through a fertile valley, from the bottom there loomed upwards higher mountains, looking black and dismal, with clouds black and dismal keeping them company. We had
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