Unmarried women and widows were these three women. The Yung Ning Chou mission consists of four old bachelors and three old maids. Not for a moment do I suppose the majority of the Chinese believe they are what they are, men and women living the lives of ascetics, giving up all for their faith, and the absence of children in child-loving China must seriously handicap them in their efforts to spread their faith. Think of the weary years of those workers toiling so hopelessly in an alien land among a poor and alien population, whose first impulse is certainly to despise them. All honour to those workers even though they have failed in their object so far as human eye can see, and even though that object makes no appeal to people like me.
0155
0156
0157
And I passed on through Yung Ning Chou, on across the stony plateau, and at last, at a village called Liu Lin Chen, I was brought up with a sharp turn with a tale of Pai Lang.
I was having my midday meal. Not that it was midday. It was four o'clock, and I had breakfasted at 6 a.m.; but time is of no account in China. Liu Lin Chen was the proper place at which to stop for the noonday rest, so we did not stop till we arrived there, though the badness of the road had delayed us. I was sitting in the inn-yard waiting for Tsai Chih Fu to bring me the eternal hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice when Mr Wang came up, accompanied by the two muleteers, and they—that is, the two muleteers—dropped down to the ground and clamoured, so I made out from his excited statements that the gates of Sui Te Chou had been closed for the last four days on account of Pai Lang! And Sui Te Chou was the first town I proposed to stop at after I crossed the river! If I would go to Lan Chou Fu and on through Sin Kiang to the Russian border through Sui Te Chou I must go. There was no other way. These days in the mountains had shown me that to stray from the caravan road was an utter impossibility. Had I been one of the country people conversant with the language I think it would have been impossible. As it was, I had my choice. I might go on or I might go back. Mr Wang apparently thought there should be no doubt in my mind. He evidently expected I would turn tail there and then, and I myself realised—I had been realising ever since round the table in the mission station at Ki Hsien we had read Dr Edwards' letter—that my journey across the continent was ended; but to turn tail in this ignominious fashion, having seen nothing, within, I suppose, twenty-five miles of the Yellow River, with the country about me as peaceful as the road in Kent in which I live at present, how could I? It was more peaceful, in fact, for now at night searchlights stream across the sky, within a furlong of my house bombs have been dropped and men have been killed, and by day and by night the house rocks as motors laden with armament and instruments of war thunder past. But there in Shansi in the fields the people worked diligently, in the village the archway over which they held theatrical representations was placarded with notices, and in the inn-yard where I sat the people went about attending to the animals as if there was nothing to be feared. And I felt lonely, and James Buchanan sat close beside me because at the other side of the very narrow yard a great big white dog with a fierce face and a patch of mange on his side looked at him threateningly.
“I'll have none of your drawing-room dogs here,” said he.
But Buchanan's difficulties were solved when he appealed to me. I—and I was feeling it horribly—had no one to appeal to. I must rely upon myself.
And then to add to my woes it began to rain, soft, gentle spring rain, growing rain that must have been a godsend to the whole country-side.
It stopped, and Mr Wang and the muleteers looked at me anxiously.
“We will go on,” I said firmly, “to the Yellow River.”
Their faces fell. I could see the disappointment, but still I judged I might go in safety so far.
“Don't they want to go?” I asked Mr Wang.
“Repeat, please,” said he. So I repeated, and he said as he had said before:
“If you say 'Go,' mus' go.”
And I said “Go.”
It is better, says a Chinese proverb, “to hear about a thing than to see it,” and truly on this journey I was much inclined to agree with that dictum.
We were bound for Hsieh Ts'un. I can't pronounce it, and I should not like to swear to the spelling, but of one thing I am very sure, not one of the inhabitants could spell it, or even know it was wrongly set forth to the world, so I am fairly safe.
We went under the archway with the theatrical notices at Liu Lin Chen, under the arched gateway of the village, out into the open country, and it began to rain again. It came down not exactly in torrents but good steady growing rain. The roads when they were not slippery stones were appalling quagmires, and my mule litter always seemed to be overhanging a precipice of some sort. I was not very comfortable when that precipice was only twenty feet deep, when it was more I fervently wished that I had not come to China. I wished it more than once, and it rained and it rained and it rained, silent, soaking, penetrating rain, and I saw the picturesque mountain country through a veil of mist.
Hsieh Ts'un is a little dirty straggling village, and as we entered it through the usual archway with a watch tower above the setting sun broke through the thick clouds and his golden rays strcamed down upon the slippery wet cobblestones that paved the principal street. The golden sunlight and the gorgeous rainbow glorified things a little, and they needed glorifying. The principal inn, as usual, was a fairly large yard, roughly paved, but swimming now in dirty water; there were stalls for animals all round it, and there was a large empty shed where they stored lime. It was stone-paved, and the roof leaked like a sieve, but here I established myself, dodging as far as possible the holes in the roof and drawing across the front of the shed my litter as a sort of protection, for the inn, as usual with these mountain inns, had but one room.
It was cold, it was dirty, and I realised how scarce foreigners must be when through the misty, soaking rain, which generally chokes off a Chinaman, crowds came to stand round and stare at me. I was stationary, so the women came, dirty, ragged, miserable-looking women, supporting themselves with sticks and holding up their babies to look at the stranger while she ate. By and by it grew so cold I felt I must really go to bed, and I asked Mr Wang to put it to the crowd that it was not courteous to stare at the foreign woman when she wished to be alone, and, O most courtly folk! every single one of those people went away.
“You can have a bath,” said he, “no one will look”; and, all honour give I to those poor peasants of Western Shansi, I was undisturbed. I am afraid a lonely Chinese lady would hardly be received with such courtesy in an English village were the cases reversed.
Next day the rain still teemed down. The fowls pecked about the yard, drenched and dripping; a miserable, mangy, cream-coloured dog or two came foraging for a dinner, and the people, holding wadded coats and oiled paper over their heads, came to look again at the show that had come to the town; but there was no break in the grey sky, and there was nothing to do but sit there shivering with cold, writing letters on my little travelling table and listening to my interpreter, who talked with the innkeeper and brought me at intervals that gentleman's views on the doings of Pai Lang.
Those views varied hour by hour. At first he was sure he was attacking Sui Te Chou. That seemed to me sending the famous robber over the country too quickly. Then it wastufeis—that is, bands of robbers—that Sui Te Chou feared, and finally, boiled down, I came to the conclusion that Sui Te Chou had probably shut her gates because the country round was disturbed, and that she admitted no one who had not friends in the city or could not in some way guarantee his good faith. It served to show me my friends in Ki Hsien had been right, such disturbed country would be no place for a woman alone. I suppose it was the rain and the grey skies, but I must admit that day I was distinctly unhappy and more than a little afraid. I was alone among an alien people, who only regarded me as a cheap show; I had no one to take counsel with, my interpreter only irritated me and, to add to my misery, I was very cold. I have seldom put in a longer or more dreary day than I did at Hsieh Ts'un. There was absolutely nothing to do but watch the misty rain, for if I went outside and got wetter than I was already getting under the leaking roof—I wore my Burberry—I had no possible means of drying my clothes save by laying them on the hotk'angin the solitary living-room of the inn, and that was already inhabited by many humans and the parasites that preyed upon them. Therefore I stayed where I was, compared my feet with the stumps of the women who came to visit me—distinctly I was a woman's show—gave the grubby little children raisins, and wondered if there was any fear of Pai Lang coming along this way before I had time to turn back. If it kept on raining, would my muleteers compel me to stay here till Pai Lang swept down upon us? But no, that thought did not trouble me, first, because I momentarily expected it to clear up, and secondly, because I was very sure that any rain that kept me prisoner would also hold up Pai Lang. I could not believe in a Chinaman, even a robber, going out in the rain if he could help himself, any more than I could believe in it raining longer than a day in China.
“The people are not afraid,” I said to my interpreter as I looked at a worn old woman in a much-patched blue cotton smock and trousers, her head protected from the rain by a wadded coat in the last stages of decrepitude; her feet made me shiver, and her finger-nails made me crawl, the odour that came from her was sickening, but she liked to see me write, and I guessed she had had but few pleasures in her weary life.
“They not knowing yet,” said he; “only travellers know. They tell innkeeper.”
Yes, certainly the travellers would know best.
And all day long he came, bringing me various reports, and said that, according to the innkeeper, the last caravan that had passed through had gone back on its tracks. I might have remembered it. I did remember it—a long line of donkeys and mules.
But the day passed, and the night passed, and the next day the sun came out warm and pleasant, and all my doubts were resolved. My journey was broken beyond hope, and I must go back, but turn I would not till I had looked upon the Yellow River.
We started with all our paraphernalia. We were to turn in our tracks after tiffin, but Mr Wang and the muleteers were certain on that point, everything I possessed must be dragged across the mountains if I hoped to see it again, and I acquiesced, for I certainly felt until I got back to civilisation I could not do without any of my belongings.
Almost immediately we left the village we began to ascend the mountain pass. Steeper and steeper it grew, and at last the opening in my mule litter was pointing straight up to the sky, and I, seeing there was nothing else for it, demanded to be lifted out and signified my intention of walking.
There was one thing against this and that was an attack of breathlessness. Asthma always attacks me when I am tired or worried, and now, with a very steep mountain to cross and no means of doing it except on my own feet, it had its wicked way. My master of transport and Mr Wang, like perfectly correct Chinese servants, each put a hand under my elbows, and with Buchanan skirmishing around joyfully, rejoicing that for once his mistress was sensible, the little procession started. It was hard work, very hard work. When I could go no longer I sat down and waited till I felt equal to starting again. On the one hand the mountain rose up sheer and steep, on the other it dropped away into the gully beneath, only to rise again on the other side. And yet in the most inaccessible places were patches of cultivation and wheat growing. I cannot imagine how man or beast kept a footing on such a slant, and how they ploughed and sowed it passes my understanding. But most of the mountain-side was too much even for them, and then they turned loose their flocks, meek cream-coloured sheep and impudent black goats, to graze on the scanty mountain pastures. Of course they were in charge of a shepherd, for there were no fences, and the newly springing wheat must have been far more attractive than the scanty mountain grasses.
And then I knew it was worth it all—the long trek from Fen Chou Fu, the dreary day at Hsieh Ts'un, the still more dreary nights, this stiff climb which took more breath than I had to spare—for the view when I arrived at a point of vantage was beautiful. These were strange mountains. The road before me rose at a very steep angle, and all around me were hill-sides whereon only a goat or a sheep might find foothold, but the general effect looked at from a distance was not of steepness. These were not mountains, rugged, savage, grand, they were gentle hills and dales that lay about me; I had come through them; there were more ahead; I could see them range after range, softly rounded, green and brown and then blue, beautiful for all there were no trees, in an atmosphere that was clear as a mirror after the rain of the day before. Beautiful, beautiful, with a tender entrancing loveliness, is that view over the country up in the hills that hem in the Yellow River as it passes between Shansi and Shensi. Is it possible there is never anyone to see it but these poor peasants who wring a hard livelihood from the soil, and who for all their toil, which lasts from daylight to dark all the year round, get from this rich soil just enough wheaten flour to keep the life in them, a hovel to dwell in, and a few unspeakable rags to cover their nakedness? As far as I could see, everyone was desperately poor, and yet these hills hold coal and iron in close proximity, wealth untold and unexploited. The pity of it! Unexploited, the people are poor to the verge of starvation; worked, the delicate loveliness of the country-side will vanish as the beauty of the Black Country has vanished, and can we be sure that the peasant will benefit?
0166
0167
Still we went up and up, and the climbing of these gentle wooing hills I found hard. Steep it was, and at last, just when I felt I could not possibly go any farther, though the penalty were that I should turn back almost within sight of the river, I found that the original makers of the track had been of the same opinion, for here was the top of the pass with a tunnel bored through it, a tunnel perhaps a hundred feet long, carefully bricked, and when we, breathless and panting, walked through we came out on a little plateau with a narrow road wandering down a mountain-side as steep as the one we had just climbed. There was the most primitive of restaurants here, and the woman in charge—it was a woman, and her feet were not bound—proffered us a thin sort of drink like very tasteless barley water. At least now I know it was tasteless, then I found it was nectar, and I sat on a stone and drank it thankfully, gave not a thought to the dirt of the bowl that contained it, and drew long breaths and looked around me.
The hills rose up on either hand and away in the distance where they opened out were the beautiful treeless hills of forbidden Shensi, just as alluring, just as peaceful as the hills I had come through. It was worth the long and toilsome journey, well worth even all my fears.
Then we went down, down, but I did not dare get into my litter, the way was too steep, the chances of going over too great, for it seems the Chinese never make a road if by any chance they can get along without. They were driven to bore a tunnel through the mountains, but they never smooth or take away rocks as long as, by taking a little care, an animal can pass without the certainty of going over the cliff.
And at last through a cleft in the hills I saw one of the world's great rivers and—was disappointed. The setting was ideal. The hills rose up steep and rugged, real mountains, on either side, pheasants called, rock-doves mourned, magpies chattered, overhead was a clear blue sky just flecked here and there with fleecy clouds, beyond again were the mountains of Shensi, the golden sunlight on their rounded tops, purple shadow in their swelling folds, far away in the distance they melted blue into the blue sky, close at hand they were green with the green of springtime, save where the plough had just turned up patches of rich brown soil, and at their foot rolled a muddy flood that looked neither decent water nor good sound earth, the mighty Hoang-Ho, the Yellow River, China's sorrow. China's sorrow indeed; for though here it was hemmed in by mountains, and might not shift its bed, it looked as if it were carrying the soul of the mountains away to the sea.
There is a temple where the gully opens on to the river, a temple and a little village, and the temple was crowded with blue-clad, shabby-looking soldiers who promptly swarmed round me and wanted to look in my baggage, that heavy baggage we were hauling for safety over fourteen miles of mountain road. Presumably they were seeking arms. We managed to persuade them there were none, and that the loads contained nothing likely to disturb the peace, and then we went down to the river, crossing by a devious, rocky and unpleasant path simply reeking of human occupancy, and the inhabitants of that soldier village crowded round me and examined everything I wore and commented on everything I did.
They were there to guard the crossing; and far from me be it to say they were not most efficient, but if so their looks belied them. They did not even look toy soldiers. No man was in full uniform. Apparently they wore odd bits, as if there were not enough clothes in the company to go round, and they were one and all dirty, touzly, untidy, and all smiling and friendly and good-tempered. I only picked them out from the surrounding country people—who were certainly dirty and poverty-stricken enough in all conscience—by the fact that the soldiers had abandoned the queue which the people around, like all these country people, still affect. The soldier wore his hair about four or five inches long, sticking out at all angles, rusty-black, unkempt and uncombed, and whether he ran to a cap or not, the result was equally unworkmanlike.
I conclude Chun Pu is not a very important crossing. What the road is like on the Shensi side I do not know, but on the Shansi side I should think the pass we had just crossed was a very effective safeguard. He would be a bold leader who would venture to bring his men up that path in the face of half-a-dozen armed men, and they need not be very bold men either. Those soldiers did not look bold. They were kindly, though, and they had women and children with them—I conclude their own, for they nursed the grubby little children, all clad in grubby patches, very proudly, took such good care they had a good view of the show—me—that I could not but sympathise with their paternal affection and aid in every way in my power. Generally my good-will took the form of raisins. I was lavish now I had given up my journey, and my master of transport distributed with an air as if I were bestowing gold and silver.
He set out my table on the cobble-stones of the inn-yard in the sunshine. I believe, had I been a really dignified traveller, I should have put up with the stuffiness and darkness of the inn's one room, but I felt the recurrent hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice, with a certain steamed scone which contained more of the millstone and less of the flour than was usual even with the scones of the country, were trials enough without trying to be dignified in discomfort.
And while I had my meal everybody took it in turns to look through the finder of my camera, the women, small-footed, dirty creatures, much to the surprise of their menfolk, having precedence. Those women vowed they had never seen a foreigner before. Every one of them had bound feet, tiny feet on which they could just totter, and all were clad in extremely dirty, much-patched blue cotton faded into a dingy dirt-colour. Most of them wore tight-fitting coverings of black cloth to cover their scalps, often evidently to conceal their baldness, for many of them suffered from “expending too much heart.” Baldness is caused, say the Chinese half in fun, because the luckless man or woman has thought more of others than of themselves. I am afraid they do not believe it, or they may like to hide their good deeds, for they are anything but proud of being bald. Most of the mouths, too, here, and indeed all along the road, were badly formed and full of shockingly broken and decayed teeth, the women's particularly. Wheaten flour, which is the staple food of Shansi, is apparently not enough to make good teeth. The people were not of a markedly Mongolian type. Already it seemed as if the nations to the West were setting their seal upon them, and some of the younger girls, with thick black hair parted in the middle, a little colour in their cheeks, and somewhat pathetic, wistful-looking faces, would have been good-looking in any land.
Then I had one more good look at the river, my farthest point west on the journey, the river I had come so far to see. It was all so peaceful in the afternoon sunlight that it seemed foolish not to go on. The hills of Shensi beckoned and all my fears fell from me. I wanted badly to go on. Then came reason. It was madness to risk thetufeiswith whom everyone was agreed Shensi swarmed. There in the brilliant sunshine, with the laughing people around me, I was not afraid, but when night fell—no, even if the soldiers would have allowed, which Mr Wang declared they would not—I dared not, and I turned sadly and regretfully and made my way back to Fen Chou Fu.
Had I gone on I should have arrived in Russia with the war in full swing, so on the whole? am thankful I had to flee before thetufeisof Shensi. Perhaps when the world is at peace I shall essay that fascinating journey again. Only I shall look out for some companion, and even if I take the matchless master of transport I shall most certainly see to it that I have a good cook.
Well, I had failed! The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still more horrid thought was ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my footsteps, and I come of a family that does not like to fail.
I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great waterways of Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them, little-known rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I might see something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the streams, along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy little villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and means by which I might penetrate Siberia.
At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in too easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I met the veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not feel so markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked God that his letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully my ways, for of one thing he was sure, there would have been but one ending to the expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been impossible.
Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals I wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather a humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr Reginald Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu ten days before I too had proposed to start West.
“I often wondered,” said he, “what became of you and how you had got on. We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf and then———” He paused.
Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have spelled death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from the left bank of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took diametrically opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have everything: one has to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new world, the rush and the scramble and the progress, to the calm of the Oriental. Very likely this is because I am a woman. In the East woman holds a subservient position, she has no individuality of her own, and I, coming from the newest new world, where woman has a very high place indeed, is counted a citizen, and a useful citizen, could hardly be expected to admire a state of society where her whole life is a torture and her position is regulated by her value to the man to whom she belongs. I put this to my friend when he was admiring the Chinese ladies and he laughed.
“I admit,” said he, “that a young woman has a”—well, he used a very strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough—“of a time when she is young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position she holds. That little old woman sitting on ak'angrules a whole community.”
And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West. But I am thankful that the Fates did not make me—a woman—a member of a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came if I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.
0176
0177
On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except at Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at miserable inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and allowed me to sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eightylifrom Fen Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would beanathema maranathato the Nonconformists with whom I had been staying. It is curious this schism between two bodies holding what purports to be the same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a doctor at Ping Ting Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren, who spoke of the Roman Catholics as if they were in as much need of conversion as the ignorant Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I strongly suspect that Mr Farrer will put me in the same category as I put my friend from Ping Ting Chou! However, here under the care of the Alsatian Fathers the country was most beautifully cultivated. The wheat was growing tall and lush in the land, emerald-green in the May sunshine; there were avenues of trees along the wayside clothed in the tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a whole village, men and boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never in China have I seen such evidences of well-conducted agricultural industry; and the Fathers were militant too, for they were, and probably are, armed, and in the Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and any missionaries fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found much to commend in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as useful to the country people in their way as were the Americans to the people of the towns.
Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to the making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of it set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting more pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a bank plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing on top.
All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys, and, strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden too. A wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great wheel, a man holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap round his shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is harnessed to help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the roughest way, and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went in China this was impressed upon me, that man was the least important factor in any work of production. He might be used till he failed and then thrown lightly away without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough to take his place.
I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must make some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey through the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey anywhere that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything could possibly be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was young. I stopped at inns that were the disgusting product of the slums; I passed men working in the fields who were survivals of an old civilisation, and when I passed any house that was not a hovel it was secluded carefully, so that the owner and his womenkind might keep themselves apart from the proletariat, the serfs who laboured around them and for them.
Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su, where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep in, only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they drove Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that I hustled off thek'angby means of powdered borax and Keating's, strewed over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and dropped down upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a horrid night. I don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on the spot are far worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in the future. All that night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's energies and vowed I was a fool for coming to China, and then in the morning as usual I walked it all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came to me and, after the best personally conducted Cook's tourist style, explained that here was a temple which “mus' see.”
I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little way back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I think, over nine warm springs—the sort of thing that weighed down the scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The steps up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet through countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and broken; from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they once had borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China allows to fall upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the early morning, with the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full leaf, the sunshine lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the trees, it was gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain, gentle, soft, warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive grey mist that veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of one of the beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.
At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him a glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really hope there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any country; he was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did get back safely, but I must confess to feeling on sending him away much as I should do were I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way across London. Indeed I have met many babies of four in Australia who struck me as being far more capable than the interpreter who had undertaken to see me across China.
I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that town—somehow I had done with China—but because the personality of Mr and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.
Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and it is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi, and beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf Fort. The hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take any animal, but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top, and this, with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled, so the story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on his back; there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the land and they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very likely it is true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.
At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of the Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings, sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.
When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills that surround the town. Their converts and friends—for they had many friends who were not converts—hardly dared come near them, and death was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.
“I could not help it,” said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being human. “I used to look at my children and wonder how the saintscouldrejoice in martyrdom!”
When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving themselves up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of the cave offered five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not converts, merely pagan friends, had remembered their sufferings. Still they looked at the scenes doubtfully, and though the little children—they were only four and six—held out their hands for them eagerly, they were obliged to implore them not to eat them, they would make them so desperately thirsty. But their Chinese friends were thoughtful as well as kind, and presently came the same soft voice again and a hand sending up a basketful of luscious cucumbers, cool and refreshing with their store of water.
But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way down to the river bank, the Ching River—the Clear River we called it, and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal—and slowly made their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading. Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An—not the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River in Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in English-speaking lands—and here they, hearing a band was after them, hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as a man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh hopeless—at least I should have been hopeless—but still their faith upheld them. It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his rays, but towards evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew with little children they must leave their refuge.
“But surely, I know,” said Mrs Green, “the dear Lord will never let it rain.”
And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with which she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a Chinese prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could not stay.
It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.
“It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,” said the teller of the tale fervently, “for we fell into the hands of a comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten by a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who certainly would have killed us.”
But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed against. They carried the children kindly enough—the worst of Chinamen seem to be good to children—but they constantly threatened their elders with death. They were going to their death, that they made very clear to them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet, and the pins came out of the women's long hair—there was another teacher, a girl, with them—and it trailed in the dust of the filthy Chinese paths. And Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck, but still they had no pity.
Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao Ting Fu that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol there—and, knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness of a Chinese gaol—and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had dysentery; they had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were always in the rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and this was done, of course, ofmalice prepense, for no one values the privacy of their women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission to go down to the river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always accompanied her, and always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went along in the glaring sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from these scornful people. Only strangely to the children were they kind; the soldiers used to give them copper coins so that they might buy little scones and cakes to eke out the scanty rations, and once—it brought home to me, perhaps as nothing else could, the deprivations of such a life—instead of buying the much-needed food the women bought a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for their long hair was about their shoulders, and though they brushed it to the best of their ability with their hands it was to them an unseemly thing.
And before the order came—everything is ordered in China—that their lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the little maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In the filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending over her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard your little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel called upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.
After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the desolated mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they continue their work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose, to the end, for most surely their sufferings and their endurance have fitted them for the work they have at heart as no one who has not so suffered and endured could be fitted. And so I think the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges.
I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at the other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful things, and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have ever met, walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when I parted from her I knew that among a class I—till I came to China—had always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only respect, but whom I could love and admire.
Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had not received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when James Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon the scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me—bless their kind hearts!—with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise a thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my journey.
It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our lives—our wedding day and such-like—and that coming back on the warm summer's day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into the cool, clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at Pao Ting Fu is one of them. And that compound is one of the places in the world I much want to visit again.
There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only two members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James Buchanan, and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me to dinner. He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His house was only about two miles away and it could be reached generally by going round by the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the ground by the rounded north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside a city in China is ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the moat is a relic of the past—useful in these modern times for disposing of unwanted puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as Shansi—but otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial goldfields round Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the houses are ramshackle to the last degree, and all the fields, even when they are green with the growing grain, look unfinished. But round the north-west corner of Pao Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are thousands and thousands of them. And on that particular day it rained, it rained, and it rained, steady warm summer rain that only stopped and left the air fresh and washed about six o'clock in the evening. I ordered a rickshaw—a rickshaw in Pao Ting Fu is a very primitive conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and, with James Buchanan on my knee, in the last evening dress that remained to me and an embroidered Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had started early because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there might be a little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much because I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language, I was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come back that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and that only waits till the last train at nine o'clock.
It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started, but when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling up dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My man only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went on again—going through floods was apparently all in the contract—but we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.
We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the road was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for a road at any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means spells security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But apparently my coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's pace and the water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the rickshaw, and when I had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in the middle of the sheet of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie stopped and gave me to understand that he had done his darnedest and could do no more. He dropped the shafts and stood a little way off, wringing the water out of his garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course, but it was distinctly uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress wading through two feet of dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at the side. I waited a little because the prospect did not please me, and though there were plenty of houses round, there was not a soul in sight. It was getting dark too, and it was after eight o'clock.
Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned vehemently.
Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners, and they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank tucked up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend took a maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they proceeded to drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow pathway along the top and they apparently decided that if they could get the conveyance up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to step out, and it looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful. As a preliminary I handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he had to sit on my knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary. Buchanan did not like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace till I, stepping out, slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when he promptly bit the man who was holding him and, getting away, expressed his sympathy by licking my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two men yelled in dismay. Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to get on my feet again, for the path was very slippery. It was long past eight now and could I have gone back I would have done so, but clearly that was impossible, so by signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had to be salved—copper did it—to push behind, and we resumed our way....
Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take me home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.
He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that the men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could get over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart. That was all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of night, with the city gates shut?
Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner—a Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late—and we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas! I was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium light and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right, and at two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin, or some relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial mule. I confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I knew the state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges we had to cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was beginning to break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the adventurous men who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much silver and to me very little. I have been to many dinners in my life, but the last meeting of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains engraved on my memory.
Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my Siberian trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the missionaries were going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta Ho for their summer holiday and the first stage of the journey was down the Ching River to Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant way of getting over the country, and it would be pleasant too to have company. I am not enamoured of my own society; I can manage alone, but company certainly has great charms.
So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.
In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done, and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth to try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the things right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was known I was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only had to put my nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be seller. I have had as many as nine men selling at once; they enlisted the servants, and china ranged round the kitchen floor, and embroideries, brass and mirrors were stowed away in the pantry. Indeed I and my followers must have been an awful nuisance to the missionaries. They knew no English, but as I could count a little in Chinese, when we could not get an interpreter we managed; and I expect I bought an immense amount of rubbish, but never in my life have I had greater satisfaction in spending money. More than ever was I pleased when I unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever since.
Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on making the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal blue vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved wooden frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the merchants and we started.
I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these we embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao Ting Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which I could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage, so was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be exceedingly useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in her youth and was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own food, as I bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She was a foolish soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in Buchanan, offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted apparently largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now James Buchanan was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered him, but he could not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went to bed at night I often came in contact with something cold and clammy which invariably turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals bestowed upon my courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good manners. There really was nowhere else to hide them.
They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities. Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for we knew then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought provisions; sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the pleasant summer weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more unique voyage. And at last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my friends, and they went on to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare for my journey east and north.
And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in my comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of China; and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a different place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On our side, of course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a losing cause. But, after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the cave-dwellers in theyaosof Shansi know about a world's war? The very, very small section that rules China manages these affairs, and the mass of the population are exactly as they were in the days of the Cæsars, or before the first dynasty in Egypt for that matter.
“China,” said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just before I left, “was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are coming in and money was never so easy to get.”
“There was a row over the new tax,” said a missionary sadly, in the part I know well, “in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.”
He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like that which came within my ken during my last month in China.
The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations of the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual ought to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the individual with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should like to rule out the “few exceptions,” but that would be asking too much of this present world. At least I like to think that most people have a chance of happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the population has that.