Across China on Foot - Edwin John Dingle (i love reading books txt) 📗

A low grunt of unrestrained approval came from the multitude. The underlings—Chino-Kachino-Burmo-Shan people—who ran about in a little of each of the clothing characteristic of the four said races, were all busy in their endeavors to extricate from me a few cash apiece by doing all and more than was necessary.

Then the great man rose. He condescended to depart. He passed from the threshold, turned, paused, bowed, turned again, went down the steps, bowed again—a long curving bow, which nearly sent him to the ground—and then continued with a light heart towards that loveliest land of the East. My men exhibited no emotion. That they were coming into British territory was of no concern to them; they had come from far away in the interior, and were the greenest of the green, the rawest of the raw.

But soon I passed over a small bridge, a spot where two great empires meet. I was in Burma.

So I have crossed from one end of China to the other. I entered China on March 4th, 1909; I came out on February 14th, 1910.

I had come to see how far the modern spirit had penetrated into the hidden recesses of the Chinese Empire. One may be little given to philosophizing, and possess but scanty skill in putting into words the conclusions which form themselves in one's mind, but it is impossible to cross China entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of propulsion from within, but produced, on the contrary, by artificial means, in bitter conflict with inherent instincts, inherited traditions, innate tendencies, characteristics, and genius, racial and individual. In the eyes of the Chinese of the old school these changes in the habit of life infinitely old are improving nothing and ruining much—all is empty, vapid, useless to God and man. The tawdry shell, the valueless husk, of ancient Chinese life is here still, remains untouched in many places, as will have been seen in previous chapters; but the soul within is steadily and surely, if slowly, undergoing a process of final atrophy. But yet the proper opening-up of the country by internal reform and not by external pressure has as yet hardly commenced in immense areas of the Empire far removed from the imperial city of Peking. And the mere fact that the Chinese propose such an absurd program as that which plans the building of all their railways without the aid of foreign capital is sufficient to react in an unwholesome manner economically.[BH][BI]

I cannot but admit that, whilst in most parts of my journey there are distinct traces of reform—I speak, of course, of the outlying parts of China—and some very striking traces, too, and a real longing on the part of far-seeing officials to escape from a humiliating international position, it is distinctly apparent that in everything which concerns Europe and the Western world the people and the officials as a whole are of one mind in the methods of procrastination which are so dear to the heart of the Celestial, and that peculiar opposition to Europeanism which has marked the real East since the beginning of modern history.

And now lovely, lovely Burma!

I had not been in Burma two minutes before the very box containing the clothes into which I must change before I could enter into the social life of Bhamo swung from the broken pole of one of my coolies, and rolled rapidly towards the river. It was recovered after great trouble.

Thick jungle land lay out before me, fleecy clouds in the dense blue sky hung lazily over the green hills, the heavy air was pregnant with that delicious ease known only in the tropics—all was still and sweet. The river flowed grandly from the interior through magnificent forest country, receiving on either shore the frequent tribute of other minor streams, and its banks were marvelous cliffs of jungle—tangles of giant trees on crowding underwood, clinging vine and festooning parasite—rising sheer from the water's brink. Now long clusters of villages, deep in the shade of palm and fruit trees; now wide expanses of grass-grown meadow, where the grazing grounds dip to the river, and where the only echoes of China are the resting pack-horse caravans—the banks cut into huge trampled clefts by the passage of the kine trooping down to drink. Occasional wooded islands broke the monotony of the river, and were just discernible from the magnificent English roads which skirted the hills high up from the river, and yellow sandspits and big wedges of granite and rock ran far out into its uneven course. By day the joyous Burma sun smiled upon all, and at midday poured its merciless heat down upon all mankind, unheeding the weary wanderer whose tramp was now near done. At night the tropical moon turned all this riverine world to the likeness of a very fairyland. Lying in a long chair in the dâk bungalows one drank in the scenes which succeeded one another in bewildering succession, and felt himself thrilled by an almost fierce appreciation of eastern beauty. It was good to meet again an Englishman, a sturdy, firm-featured Englishman, whose love of the East, like mine own, was a veritable obsession. The sun glare of the tropics had parched the color out of our white skin, and despite the fact that malaria came back again here to taunt me, yet I was again in the East that I loved, that had scarred and marked me ere my time mayhap. And yet I, with many such of my own countrymen, despite her rough handling, worship her.

In three days I was in Bhamo.

FOOTNOTES:

[BF]