Part 19
Of course, because our inn was particularly dirty and bad, the innkeeper was proportionately extortionate. He was evidently a bad character and rather fallen in the world, and had taken us in, in spite of prejudices which he shared with the rest of his fellow-townsmen, in order to make a profit out of us. We were glad to be quit of him, the inn, and the town. Our mid-day halt was at a very different sort of place, a little village called Shou Hu Ying, which takes its name from a tradition that the famous Emperor, Káng Hsi, once came here a-hunting, and killed a tiger on the spot where the village now stands. There was only one inn, humble enough, but very clean, and a few pots of flowers in the principal room gave it an air of smartness. The guest-room also served as village school, of which all the paraphernalia were scattered about. There was the magisterial chair and scholars’ stools covered with bits of felt or sheep-skin,—more luxury than we had at Eton,—well-thumbed copies of the San-tzŭ-ching,—three character classic,—the Chinese boy’s primer, a few cheap writing-materials, and a copy-book in which some little urchin had been making laborious attempts at copying the numerals and other simple characters. By way of ornament there was a picture of four little boys representing the seasons, dancing round a basket of impossible flowers with the most grotesque contortions, with the superscription, “The four seasons when prosperous beget riches.” In the cause of letters it was satisfactory to know that we were not interrupting studies, for the dominie had given himself and the boys a holiday, and had betaken himself to a fair at the neighbouring village of Po Li Nao, in order to go to the theatre. It is very funny to hear a class of little fellows droning out the classics, of which they don’t understand a word, in chorus, the tones of the language making a sort of cadence. The system of teaching a boy a lot of characters without their sense, each character simply representing a meaningless sound to him, could only exist in China. We passed Po Li Nao, some fifteen li farther on, and to the great astonishment of the sightseers did not stop to hear a play by a troupe of poor strollers. “What! been to Po Li Nao and didn’t go to see the theatre! Ai ya! that’s strange!” said a footpad of whom I asked the way. At any rate we saw what was better, Po Li Nao itself, one of the most picturesquely situated little places I have seen in China. It stands at the foot of a bend of low hills, above which rises a towering range of dark, jagged peaks, and beside it winds a clear pebbly stream, breaking here and there against large stones; add to this a few quaint Chinese buildings, plenty of trees, and all the bustle of the fair. We had a difficult sandy track again for the heavy cart; we were 13½ hours on the road, stopped two hours at noon, and only accomplished about thirty miles. We put up at Kwa Yo Erh, where, as at all small places, the people were civility itself, our landlord even turning his family out of his own house in order to lodge us comfortably.
_14th May._
We took care that our host, who combined the profession of military officer with that of innkeeper, should not lose by his civility, and we parted with mutual expressions of goodwill. We had a climb of it up a steepish hill, on the top of which is a temple to the god of war, and then descended on to the valley of Ku Pei Ko̔u by a winding road cut in stages over a precipice such as one finds on a large scale in Switzerland and the Tyrol. More than once on our journey through these mountains I have been put in mind of the Alps, not only by the scenery which, if it were not for the absence of snow and glaciers, would stand the comparison well, but also by the goitres and cretinism which seem to be the curse of mountainous districts. The other day at a cross-road I asked the way of a man who was collecting dung for fuel; he turned round and said very simply, “I know nothing, I’m only an idiot; ask him,” pointing to a man ploughing, “he knows everything.” Deafness, too, seems rather common, probably owing to the very hard weather which prevails during some seven months of the year. The old people seem hearty enough, barring their hearing. I came across none of a very advanced age, but one old fellow of seventy-nine was very hearty, and to all appearance likely to remain so, but he was by many years the _doyen_ of all I met, and anything past seventy seems to be looked upon as extraordinary.
We had a scorching ride to-day: there was a good deal of electricity in the air, which told upon us when we had been some hours in the saddle. As we were a full hour ahead of our baggage we turned the horses to graze, and sat down by a brook to smoke a cigar. As luck would have it we had no matches; however, there was a house not far off, so the doctor volunteered to go and beg a light. On arriving at the cottage he found forty or fifty people engaged in a “white affair,” which is the euphemism for a funeral, because white is the colour of mourning. A dozen or so of the relations, friends, and neighbours were seated round a bier weeping and crooning officially, while the others, waiting till their turn came for grief, were smoking their pipes and retailing country gossip. They were very civil, and presently—for apparently the attraction of seeing the foreigners was superior to that of mourning by commission for a poor old woman—all, except those actually on duty round the coffin, were crowding about us as merry as possible; even the women with their heads bound up in white cloth as if they had the face-ache turned out to have a peep at us from behind the house, grinning and giggling as if they were assisting at a marriage.
We did not go into the town of Ku Pei Ko̔u, but stopped at an inn just outside the gates; so we had all the advantage of the fine view over the Great Wall of China, with pure air to breathe, instead of the garlic and muck-stained atmosphere of the town.
During the whole of our journey from Llama Miao to Ku Pei Ko̔u we did not see a single Mongol, much less a camp. The ground is not suited to their nomad and pastoral habits; it is colonised exclusively by Chinese, principally farmers from the province of Shantung. Europeans have very rarely followed this route; so far as I can make out they have been seen here once, or at most twice.
_15th May._
This day week we were shivering in furs at Llama Miao. To-day a gauze shirt was too much; the flies were a perfect pest. It was too hot to do anything but sleep, which they put out of the question. It was not until after dinner that we could venture out. We went up a hill behind the inn, from which we had a fine view of the sun setting behind the heights which the Great Wall scales. In the valley beneath wayfarers were hurrying to reach the town before the closing of the gates; the rear was brought up by a herd of about a hundred pigs, the last travellers who entered China this night by the gates of Ku Pei Ko̔u.
About Ku Pei Ko̔u and the road back to Peking I wrote to you last year, and this letter is too long already. Three days brought us home to the Legation.
_P.S._—By the bye, although the part of Mongolia we visited is set down on the maps as belonging to the province of Chi Li, which it is so far as its government is concerned, I have spoken of _China_ as bounded by the Great Wall. No Mongol living beyond it would consider himself as an inhabitant of China, and the Chinese themselves speak of the places which are “Ko̔u-wai,” outside the mouth or frontier, as Mongolia. In Stamford’s large map of China and Japan you will see how Chang Chia Ko̔u, Dolonor or Llama Miao, and Ku Pei Ko̔u are placed—some of our other halting-places are also given, but you would hardly recognise them from their spelling.
_May 20th—Sunday._—Went round some of the curiosity shops, where I was shown, among other things, a wonderful ewer and cover of rock crystal, about a foot high. I have seen nothing finer of its kind than the carving. In the days of Chien Lung the Magnificent, himself a great patron of art, when a fine piece of rock crystal, jade, or cornelian was brought in from the western mountains as tribute, a committee of taste decided the shape to be given to it, and fixed upon the artist to whom it should be entrusted by Imperial Command.
_May 21._—The pious Chinese are all off these days making a pilgrimage to a holy shrine among the hills, called Miao Fêng Shan, to burn joss-stick as a sovereign prophylactic against disease and misfortune of all kinds.
_May 22._—The thermometer standing at 100° in the shade. The heat frightfully oppressive. Happily on the following day there came a great thunderstorm, with hailstones as big as pigeon’s eggs. This cooled the air. The formation of the hailstones was curious: a nodule of ice surrounded by a coating of frozen snow, which in its turn was encased in ice. Bad for heads!
_May 27._—An outbreak of the “Heavenly Flowers,” or smallpox, causes general consternation and vaccination. Any one who is opposed to vaccination had better see the ravages of this horrible disease in an Eastern city; so common is it that no Chinaman who has not “put forth the heavenly flowers” is considered quite complete. It is like distemper with dogs in Europe.
_May 29._—Dined with Dr. and Mrs. Wells Williams at the American Legation, a handsome and delightful couple now entering middle age. Dr. Williams, the author of a Chinese dictionary, and that most encyclopædic book _The Middle Kingdom_, is one of the most learned of sinologues. He began his career in China as a missionary in the south, but his great talents rendered him necessary to the American Government, and he is now _chargé d’affaires_ here. He was very interesting, talking, among other subjects, on the paper currency. Bank-notes, it seems, were first introduced in the days of the Sung dynasty, during the reign of Shao Hsing (A.D. 1170). At that time copper was scarce, so the Government issued great notes (Ta Chao) of the value of 1000 to 5000 copper cash, and small notes (Hsiao Chao) worth from 100 to 700 cash. Officers were appointed everywhere to issue and receive these notes. They were to be renewed within seven years, and fifteen cash in every thousand were deducted for the expense of making them. They were said to be “kung ssŭ pien,” “convenient both for the public and for private individuals.” Marco Polo mentions them with praise.
_June 1._—My new colleague, Sir Eric Farquhar, arrived from England. An old schoolfellow. He was accompanied by Mr. Brenchley, a most accomplished traveller, who seems to have been all over the world, and being a great naturalist and profound observer, is a charming companion to boot.
_June 10._—The last few days have been occupied in showing Brenchley the lions of Peking. To-day we went to breakfast at a fashionable Chinese restaurant, “The House of Eternal Prosperity,” in the Ta Shih La Erh, which we call Curio Street. In order that we might make a genteel appearance and observe the ten thousand proprieties, my servant Chang Hsi insisted on our going in carts. Walking is so vulgar! We were jolted and bruised over the indescribable ruts and paving-stones to a horrible degree, but our dignity was kept up. We found the House of Eternal Prosperity very shabby and dirty, and we should have had a much better breakfast at home.
_June 15–20._—Two more parties of travellers arrived. More work as “intelligent guide.”
LETTER XXVII
TA-CHIO-SSŬ, THE TEMPLE OF GREAT REPOSE, _23rd July 1866_.
The last mail took you no letter from me because I was far away in Mongolia. My first intention had been merely to go as far as Chang Chia Ko̔u, to accompany Brenchley and make the arrangements for his journey across Siberia to Russia. Ultimately, however, the party increased to four, of whom one was a lady, and our programme grew in proportion. We started on June the 21st. We were detained four or five days at Chang Chia Ko̔u, owing to the chicanery of a faithless Mongol camel-owner who did not keep faith with us. However, it is a bright, cheerful little town, so I did not much mind. It was gayer than ever too, for on account of the great drought, morning, noon, and night, the town was being paraded by processions of distressed agriculturists praying for rain. Preceded by squeaky clarionets, drums, and gongs, a crowd of men and boys with wreaths of willow round their heads and middles, above which their sunburnt bodies were naked, some wearing fillets of red paper, others doing penance with their necks enclosed in the heavy board used as a punishment for prisoners, escorted a sedan chair with a tiny god in it to the Lung Wang Miao, the Temple of the Dragon Prince, whom, being a water-god, it is well to propitiate in cases of drought.[16] Some of the votaries were armed with spears and rude guns, which from time to time they fired off, and altogether there was din and clatter enough even to please a Chinese crowd. “Ah! these agriculturists!” said a Chinese gentleman who was looking on with the most supreme contempt, and whom I asked for an explanation of the affair; “they are never content! It’s always too much rain or too little, or something the matter. Unsurpassable!” The prayers of the worthy people were heard, however, and the Dragon Prince took a favourable view of their case, for the first day of my stay at Chang Chia Ko̔u there came a thunderstorm, with a downfall of rain, such as one seldom sees out of the tropics, and there was more or less rain all the time we were there. The coincidence will not improve the chances of an American missionary who has been physicking the natives of Chang Chia Ko̔u for rather more than a year, but in spite of the drastic arguments of blue pill and black dose, has not yet made a convert.
There are three main passes leading from China into Mongolia, Chang Chia Ko̔u, Ku Pei Ko̔u, and between them Tu Shih Ko̔u, which is smaller and less important, but which I had not seen. The plan which I proposed, and which my companions accepted, was to make a tour of the three, following a line outside, but in some parts parallel with the Great Wall.
We left Chang Chia Ko̔u on the 30th of June. It was frightfully hot, but I had provided a refuge against the scorching sun, which at mid-day would have been unbearable. We each had with us a mule litter, a sort of long carriage in which a single person can almost lie at full length, with shafts behind and before which are borne on mules’ backs. This sounds rather a comfortable and luxurious way of travelling, seeing that one’s bed and pillows are placed inside. As a fact it is horridly jolty and sea-sicky; then no sooner has one established one’s self in a tolerably easy position and dozed off (which is inevitable, and makes one very hot and uncomfortable), than one is called upon by the muleteer to trim the boat: “Your Excellency! please sit a little more to the south. Your Excellency’s weight is all to the north! The north side of that mule’s back is becoming terribly galled.” My muleteer was a very original character. He had a prodigious talent for screaming out Chinese anacreontics at the top of his voice, and for dramatic recitations and imitations of popular actors. He was always the last of the muleteers to get up in the morning, and when at last I took to waking him with the crack of a hunting-whip, he only grumbled good-humouredly and said the “old lord,” meaning me, was very hard upon him, but none the more did he get up to feed his mules. He had been to Mongolia once with Sir Frederic Bruce, to whom he applied the most glowing eulogy that a Chinaman can bestow, holding up his thumb; words could go no further. Altogether Cha Mai Chu—that is his name—was the merriest, grinningest, and most laughable devil that I have ever come across here. When we arrived at the inn, and the six muleteers, having acquiesced in the landlord’s civil proposal, “You six gentlemen” (if you could but see the six gentlemen!) “will dine together, I suppose,” had sat down to the coarse fare, a sort of macaroni with garlic and pickles, which they allow themselves, Cha Mai Chu used to keep the other five in a roar of laughter, and I rather think that by that means he contrived to suck up the lion’s share of the white strings.
As the first part of our road, as far as Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin, was but a repetition of the same journey which I wrote about in my last long letter describing my expedition to Llama Miao, I spare you the repetition. Farther on we followed a route new to me, and in some places not visited before by foreigners. This may interest you. After leaving Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin on the 3rd July, instead of pushing on northwards across Mongolia, which at this season is far more worthy of its Chinese name, “The Land of Grass,” than it was two months ago, we steered south-east back towards China, across a sandy plain, richly cultivated with potatoes and other crops. In the midst of this sandy tract stands a little tumble-down Chinese village called Lien Hwa Tan, “the lotus-flower fountain,” from an old tradition that there once stood there a temple in which was a fountain flourishing with lotus-flowers. Now it is a case of _lucus a non_, for temple, fountain, and flowers have all faded away together, and as for anything flourishing, there was barely a roof for us to eat our breakfasts under. We were making for a ridge of green hills, from the top of which I expected to come in sight of the Great Wall, which, however, did not appear until we had reached the bottom of an emerald-green valley, with luxuriant vegetation, lying between rugged and bare rocks. Hard by Tu Shih Ko̔u the great brick monster showed itself again, but in ruins, undermined and sapped by continual watercourses. The rocks here are very fine, picturesque and astonishing in their shapes. Tu Shih Ko̔u itself is a queer little old town. The fortifications and walls are falling into decay, uncared for and unrepaired. In a few years, I should think, its quaint gables and towers and useless fortifications will have crumbled away; but on the other hand, inside the walls there are shops, neat and tidy, and houses showing signs of some prosperity. Perhaps, after all, there is some method in the apparent madness of letting the old remains of protection against border warfare go to the dogs. I have often told you how bothered travellers are here on arriving at an inn by gapers and starers. The nuisance was multiplied a hundred-fold on this excursion by the fact of our having a lady with us. I was armed with special letters of recommendation from the Ministers of Foreign Affairs to the high mandarins along the road, and as soon as these last heard that we were annoyed, they hastened to send us “po-po” (sweetmeats) and protection, but before this arrived I had been obliged to take the law into my own hands, for three dirty, old, gray blackguards had actually, using their wet thumbs as centre-bits, made holes in one of our paper windows, at which they were playing peeping Tom, and so interested by what they saw that they did not hear Retribution stealing up on tiptoe armed with a hunting-whip. Retribution, that is myself, tied their three nasty old tails together and packed them off howling, to the great delight of their friends and relations, who quite recognised the breach of Tao Li of which they had been guilty. An appeal to Tao Li, good manners, or propriety, is always a trump card to play when in difficulties with a Chinese crowd.
We only stayed one night at Tu Shih Ko̔u, and then rode back through another pass to the fresh air of the steppe. We passed the night at a little hamlet called Chang Leang. There was but one inn, and that was full, and we should have had to pass the night _al fresco_ if a good-natured Bachelor of Arts returning from Llama Miao to Tu Shih Ko̔u had not consented to push on and give us up his room for the lady of our party. The rest of us managed to huddle up somehow. Never in all my wanderings here have I had to sleep in such queer places as I did on this journey. The villages were poor, the inns worse; and instead of having the high place, we males were bound to put up with holes such as the very beggars in England would back out of. However, the game was worth the candle so far as scenery was concerned, and then the air of Mongolia makes up for everything. Even the Alpine Club do not know what fresh air is; they must come to the steppes.