Across China on Foot - Edwin John Dingle (i love reading books txt) 📗
- Author: Edwin John Dingle
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From Kweifu to Wan Hsien there was the same kind of scenery—the clear river winding among sand-flats and gravel-banks, with occasional stiff rapids. But after having been in a wu-pan for several days, suffering that which has been detailed, and much besides, the journey got a bit dreary. These, however, are ordinary circumstances; but when one has been laid up on a bench of a bed for three days with a high temperature, a legacy of several years in the humid tropics, the physical discomfort baffles description. Malaria, as all sufferers know, has a tendency to cause trouble as soon as one gets into cold weather, and in my case, as will be seen in subsequent parts of this book, it held faithfully to its best traditions. Fever on the Yangtze in a wu-pan would require a chapter to itself, not to mention the kindly eccentricities of a companion whose knowledge of malaria was most elementary and whose knowledge of nursing absolutely nil. But I refrain. As also do I of further talk about the Yangtze gorges and the rapids.
From Kweifu to Wan Hsien is a tedious journey. The country opens out, and is more or less monotonously flat. The majority of the dangers and difficulties, however, are over, and one is able to settle down in comparative peace. Fortunately for the author, nothing untoward happened, but travelers are warned not to be too sanguine. Wrecks have happened within a few miles of the destination, generally to be accounted for by the unhappy knack the Chinese boatman has of taking all precautions where the dangerous rapids exist, and leaving all to chance elsewhere. Some two years later, as I was coming down the river from Chung-king in December, I counted no less than nine wrecks, one boat having on board a cargo for the China Inland Mission authorities of no less than 480 boxes. The contents were spread out on the banks to dry, while the boat was turned upside down and repaired on the spot.
A hopeless cry is continually ascending in Hong-Kong and Shanghai that trade is bad, that the palmy days are gone, and that one might as well leave business to take care of itself.
And it is not to be denied that increased trade in the Far East does not of necessity mean increased profits. Competition has rendered buying and selling, if they are to show increased dividends, a much harder task than some of the older merchants had when they built up their businesses twenty or thirty years ago. There is no comparison. But Hong-Kong, by virtue of her remarkably favorable position geographically, should always be able to hold her own; and now that the railway has pierced the great province of Yün-nan, and brought the provinces beyond the navigable Yangtze nearer to the outside world, she should be able to reap a big harvest in Western China, if merchants will move at the right time. More often than not the Britisher loses his trade, not on account of the alleged reason that business is not to be done, but because, content with his club life, and with playing games when he should be doing business, he allows the German to rush past him, and this man, an alien in the colony, by persistent plodding and other more or less commendable traits of business which I should like to detail, but for which I have no space, takes away the trade while the Britisher looks on.
The whole of the trade of the three western provinces—Yün-nan, Kwei-chow and Szech'wan—has for all time been handled by Shanghai, going into the interior by the extremely hazardous route of these Yangtze rapids, and then over the mountains by coolie or pack-horse. This has gone on for centuries. But now the time has come for the Hong-Kong trader to step in and carry away the lion share of the greatly increasing foreign trade for those three provinces by means of the advantage the new Tonkin-Yün-nan Railway has given him.
The railway runs from Haiphong in Indo-China to Yün-nan-fu, the capital of Yün-nan province. And it appears certain to the writer that, with such an important town three or four days from the coast, shippers will not be content to continue to ship via the Yangtze, with all its risk. British and American merchants, who carry the greater part of the imports to Western China, will send their goods direct to Hong-Kong, where transhipment will be made to Haiphong, and thence shipped by rail to Yün-nan-fu, the distributing center for inland trade. To my mind, Hong-Kong merchants might control the whole of the British trade of Western China if they will only push, for although the tariff of Tonkin may be heavy, it would be compensated by the fact that transit would be so much quicker and safer. But it needs push.
The history of our intercourse with China, from the days of the East India Company till now, is nothing but a record of a continuous struggle to open up and develop trade. Opening up trade, too, with a people who have something pathetic in the honest persistency with which their officials have vainly struggled to keep themselves uncontaminated from the outside world. Trade in China cannot be left to take care of itself, as is done in Western countries. However invidious it may seem, we must admit the fact that past progress has been due to pressure. Therefore, if the opportunities were placed near at hand to the Hong-Kong shipper, he would be an unenterprising person indeed were he not to avail himself of the opportunity. Shanghai has held the trump card formerly. This cannot be denied. But I think the railway is destined to turn the trade route to the other side of the empire. It is merely a question as to who is to get the trade—the French or the British. The French are on the alert. They cannot get territory; now they are after the trade.
It is my opinion that it would be to the advantage of the colony of Hong-Kong were the Chamber of Commerce there to investigate the matter thoroughly. Now is the time.
FOOTNOTES:
[D]
Cash, a small brass coin with a hole through the middle. Nominally 1,000 cash to the dollar.
THIRD JOURNEY CHUNG-KING TO SUI-FU (VIA LUCHOW)
Beginning of the overland journey. The official halo around the caravan. The people's goodbyes. Stages to Sui-fu. A persistent coolie. My boy's indignation, and the sequel. Kindness of the people of Chung-king. The Chung-king Consulate. Need of keeping fit in travelling in China. Walking tabooed. The question of "face" and what it means. Author runs the gauntlet. Carrying coolie's rate of pay. The so-called great paved highways of China, and a few remarks thereon. The garden of China. Magnificence of the scenery of Western China. The tea-shops. The Chinese coolie's thirst and how the author drank. Population of Szech-wan. Minerals found. Salt and other things. The Chinese inn: how it holds the palm for unmitigated filth. Description of the rooms. Szech-wan and Yün-nan caravanserais. Need of a camp bed. Toileting in unsecluded publicity. How the author was met at market towns. How the days do not get dull.
In a manner admirably befitting my rank as an English traveler, apart from the fact that I was the man who was endeavoring to cross China on foot, I was led out of Chung-king en route for Bhamo alone, my companion having had to leave me here.
It was Easter Sunday, a crisp spring morning.
First came a public sedan-chair, bravely borne by three of the finest fellows in all China, at the head of which on either side were two uniformed persons called soldiers—incomprehensible to one who has no knowledge of the interior, for they bore no marks whatever of the military—whilst uniformed men also solemnly guarded the back. Then came the grinning coolies, carrying that meager portion of my worldly goods which I had anticipated would have been engulfed in the Yangtze. And at the head of all, leading them on as captains do the Salvation Army, was I myself, walking along triumphantly, undoubtedly looking a person of weight, but somehow peculiarly unable to get out of my head that little adage apropos the fact that when the blind shall lead the blind both shall fall into a ditch! But Chinese decorum forbade my falling behind. I had determined to walk across China, every inch of the way or not at all; and the chair coolies, unaware of my intentions presumably, thought it a great joke when at the western gate, through which I departed, I gave instructions that one hundred cash be doled out to each man for his graciousness in escorting me through the town.
All the people were in the middle of the streets—those slippery streets of interminable steps—to give me at parting their blessings or their curses, and only with difficulty and considerable shouting and pushing could I sufficiently take their attention from the array of official and civil servants who made up my caravan as to effect an exit.
The following were to be stages:—
1st day—Ts'eo-ma-k'ang 80 li. 2nd day—Üin-ch'uan hsien 120 li. 3rd day—Li-shïh-ch'ang 105 li. 4th day—Luchow 75 li. 5th day—Lan-ching-ch'ang 80 li. 6th day—Lan-chï-hsien 75 li. 7th day—Sui-fu 120 li.In my plainest English and with many cruel gestures, four miles from the town, I told a man that he narrowly escaped being knocked down, owing to his extremely rude persistence in accosting me and obstructing my way. He acquiesced, opened his large mouth to the widest proportions, seemed thoroughly to understand, but continued more noisily to prevent me from going onwards, yelling something at the top of his husky voice—a voice more like a fog-horn than a human voice—which made me fear that I had done something very wrong, but which later I interpreted ignorantly as impudent humor.
I owed nothing; so far as I knew, I had done nothing wrong.
"Hi, fellow! come out of the way! Reverse your carcass a bit, old chap! Get——! What the—— who the——?"
"Oh, master, he wantchee makee much bobbery. He no b'long my pidgin, d—— rogue! He wantchee catch one more hundred cash! He b'long one piecee chairman!"
This to me from my boy in apologetic explanation.
Then, turning wildly upon the man, after the manner of his kind raising his little fat body to the tips of his toes and effectively assuming the attitude of the stage actor, he cursed loudly to the uttermost of eternity the impudent fellow's ten thousand relatives and ancestry; which, although it called forth more mutual confidences of a like nature, and made T'ong (my boy) foam at the mouth with rage at such an inopportune proceeding happening so early in his career, rendering it necessary for him to push the man in the right jaw, incidentally allowed him to show his master just a little that he could do. The man had been dumped against the wall, but he was still undaunted. With thin mud dropping from one leg of his flimsy pantaloons, he came forward again, did this chair coolie, whom I had just paid off—for it was assuredly one of the trio—leading out again one of those little wiry, shaggy ponies, and wished to do another deal. He had, however, struck a snag. We did not come to terms. I merely lifted the quadruped bodily from my path and walked on.
Chung-king people treated us well, and had it not been for their kindness the terrible three days spent still in our wu-pan on the crowded beach would have been more terrible still.
At the Consulate we found Mr. Phillips, the Acting-Consul, ready packed up to go
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