0292
A foreigner went to a Chinese tailor the other day to make him a suit of clothes, and he found occasion to complain that the gentleman's prices had gone up considerably since he employed him last. The man of the scissors was equal to the occasion, and explained that, since “revelations,” so many Chinese had taken to wearing foreign dress, he was obliged to charge more.
“You belong revolution?” asked the inquiring foreigner, anxious to find out how far liberty, fraternity, and equality had penetrated.
The tailor looked at him more in sorrow than in scorn. How could he be so foolish.
“I no belong revelation,” he explained carefully, as one who was instructing where no instruction should have been necessary. The thing was self-evident, “I belong tailor man.”
When the revolution first dawned upon the country people all they realised—when they realised anything at all—was that there was no longer an Emperor, therefore they supposed they would no longer have to pay taxes. When they found that Emperor or no Emperor taxes were still required of them, they just put the President in the Emperor's place. I strongly suspect that if the greater part of the inhabitants of my walled city were to be questioned as to the revolution they would reply like the tailor: “No belong revolution, belong Tsung Hua Chou!”
But in truth the civilisation of China is still somuch like that of Babylon and Nineveh, that it is best for the poor man, if he can, to efface himself. He does not pray for rights as yet. He only prays that he may slip through life unnoticed, that he may not come in contact with the powers that rule him, for no matter who is right or who is wrong bitter experience has taught him that he will suffer.
We do not realise that sufficiently in the West when we talk of China. We judge her by our own standards. The time may come when this may be a right way of judging, but it has not come yet. Rather should we judge as they judged in the days of the old Testament, in the days of Nineveh and Babylon, when the proletariat, the slaves, were as naught in the sight of God or man.
A man told me how in the summer of 1912, travelling in the interior, he came to a small city in one of the central provinces, a city not unlike Tsung Hua Chou, like indeed a thousand other little cities in this realm of Cathay. The soldiers quartered there had not been paid, and they had turned to and looted the town. The unwise city men, instead of submitting lest a worse thing happen unto them, had telegraphed their woes to Peking, and orders had come down to the General in command that the ringleaders must be executed. But no wise General is going to be hard on his own soldiers. This General certainly was not. Still justice had to be satisfied, and he was not at a loss. He sent a body of soldiers to the looted shops, where certain luckless men were sadly turning over the damaged property. These they promptly arrested. The English onlooker, who spoke Chinese, declared to me solemnly these arrested men were the merchants themselves,their helpers and coolies. That was nothing to the savage soldiery. There had to be victims. Had not the order come from the central government. Some of the men, there were twenty in all, they beat and left dead on the spot, the rest they dragged to the yamen. The traveller, furious and helpless, followed. Of course the guilt of the merchants was a foregone conclusion. They never execute anyone who does not confess his guilt and the justice of his sentence in China, but they have means of making sure of the confession. Presently out the unfortunate men came again, stripped to the waist, with their arms tied up high behind them, prepared, in fact, for death. The soldiers dragged them along, they protesting their innocence to unheeding ears. Their women and children came out, running alongside the mournful procession, clinging to the soldiers and to their husbands and fathers, and praying for mercy. They tripped and fell, and the soldiers, the soldiers in khaki, pushed them aside, and stepped over them, and dragged on their victims. The traveller followed. No one took any notice of him, and what could he do, though his heart was sore, one against so many. Through the narrow, filthy streets they went, past their own looted shops. They looked about them wildly, but there was none to help, and before them marched the executioner, with a great sharp sword in his hands, and always the soldiers in modern uniform emphasised the barbarity of the crime. Presently they had distanced the wailing women and were outside the walls, but the foreign onlooker was still with them.
“And one was a boy not twenty,” he said witha sharp, indrawn breath, wiping his face as he told the ghastly tale.
They knelt in a row, just where the walls of their own town frowned down on them, and one by one the executioner cut off their heads. The death of the first in the line was swift enough, but, as he approached the end of the row the man's arm grew tired and he did not get the last two heads right off.
“I saw one jump four times,” said the shocked onlooker, “before he died.”
And then they telegraphed to Peking that order had been restored, and the ringleaders executed.
Since I heard that man's story, I always read that order has been restored in any Chinese city with a shudder, and wonder how many innocents have suffered. For I have heard stories like that, not of one city, or told by one man, but of various cities, and told by different men. The Chinese, it seems to me, copy very faithfully the European newspapers, the great papers of the Western world. Horrors like that are never read in a Western paper, therefore you never see such things reported in the Chinese papers. After all they are only the proletariat, the slaves of Babylon or Nineveh. Who counted a score or so of them slain? Order has been restored, comes the message for the benefit of the modern world, and in the little city the bloody heads adorn the walls and the bodies lie outside to be torn to pieces by thewonksand the vultures.
And when I heard tales like this, I wondered whether it was safe for a woman to be travelling alone. It is safe, of course, for the Chinaman, strange as it may sound after telling such tales, is at bottom more law-abiding than the averageEuropean. True, he is more likely to insult or rob a woman than a man, because he has for so long regarded a woman as of so much less consequence than a man, that when he considers the matter he cannot really believe that any nation could hold a different opinion. Still, in all probability, she will be safe, just as in all probability she might march by herself from Land's End to John o' Groats without being molested. She may be robbed and murdered, and so she may be robbed and murdered in China. The Chinese are robbed and murdered often enough themselves poor things. Also they do not suffer in silence. They revenge themselves when they can.
A man travelling for the British and American Tobacco Company, he was a young man, not yet eight-and-twenty, told me how, once, outside a small walled town, he came upon a howling mob, and parting them after the lordly fashion of the Englishman, who knows he can use his hands, he saw they were crowding round a pit half filled with quicklime. In it, buried to his middle, was a ghastly creature with his eyes scooped out, and the hollows filled up with quicklime.
“If I had had a pistol handy,” said the teller of the tale, “I would have shot him. I couldn't have helped myself. It seemed the only thing to put him out of his misery, but, after all, I think he was past all feeling, and I wonder what the people would have done to me!”
They told him, when he investigated, that this man was a robber, that he had robbed and murdered without mercy, and so, when he fell into their hands, they had taken vengeance.Was that Babylon, or Nineveh, I wondered? Since such things happen in China one feels that the age of Babylon and Nineveh has not yet gone by. Talk with but a few men who have wandered into the interior, and you realise the strong necessity for these walled towns.
When the rumour of the slaughter of the Manchus, and the killing in the confusion of eight Europeans at Hsi An Fu in Shensi in October 1911, reached Peking, nine young men banded themselves together into the Shensi Relief Force, and set out from the capital to relieve the missionaries cut off there. One of these young men it was my good fortune to meet, and the story of their doings, told at first hand, unrolled for me the leaves of history. They set out to help the men and women of their own colour, but as they passed west from Tai Yuan Fu, again and again, the people of the country appealed to them to stop and help them. The Elder Brother Society, the Ko Lao Hui were on the warpath, and, with whatever good intentions this society had originated, it was, on this way from Tai Yuan Fu to Hsi An Fu, nothing less than a band of robbers, pillaging and murdering, and even the walled cities were hardly a safeguard. Village after village, with no such defences, was wrecked, burned, and destroyed, and their inhabitants were either slain or refugees in the mountains. And the suffering that means, with the bitter winter of China ahead of them, is ghastly to think of. They died, of course, and those who were slain by the robbers probably suffered the least.
“What could we do? What could we possibly do?” asked my informant pitifully.At last they came to Sui Te Chou, a walled city, and Sui Te Chou was for the moment triumphant. It had driven off the robbers. The Elder Brother Society had held the little city closely invested. They had built stone towers, and, from the top of them, had fired into the city, and at the defenders on the walls, and, under cover of this fire from the towers, they had attempted to scale the battlements. But the people on the walls had pushed them down with long spears, and had poured boiling water upon them, and, finally, the robbers had given way, and some braves, issuing from the south gate had fallen upon them, killing many and capturing thirty of them. It was a short shrift for them, and a festoon of heads adorned the gateway under which the foreigners passed.
But, though victorious, the braves of Sui Te Chou knew right well that the lull was only momentary. They were reversing the Scriptural order of things, and beating their ploughshares into swords. The brigands would be back as soon as they had reinforcements, the battle would be to the strong and it would indeed be “Woe to the Vanquished!”
“We could not help them. We could not,” reiterated the teller of the tale sadly; “we just had to go on.”
It was old China, he said, let us hope the last of old China. In that town were English missionaries, a man and his wife, another man and two little children, members of the English Baptist Church, dressed in Chinese dress, the men with queues. These they rescued, and took along with them, and glad were they to have two more able-bodied men in the party, even though they were counterbalancedby the presence of the woman and two children, for everywhere along the track were evidences of the barbaric times in which they lived. Human head? in wicker cages were common objects of the wayside, and the wolves came down from the mountains and gnawed at the dead bodies, or attacked the sick and wounded. Old China was a ghastly place that autumn of 1911, during the “bloodless” revolution. Chung Pu they reached immediately after it had been attacked by six hundred men.
“I had to kick a dog away that was gnawing at a dead body as we led the lady into a house for the night,” said the narrator. “I could only implore her not to look.”
But at I Chün things were worse still. They reached it just as it had fallen into the hands of the Elder Brother Society, and they began to think they had taken those missionaries out of the frying-pan into the fire. I Chün is a walled city up in the mountains of Shensi, and the only approach was by a pathway so narrow that it only allowed of one mule litter at a time. On one side was a steep precipice, on the other the city wall, and along that wall came racing men armed with matchlocks, spears, and swords, yelling defiance and prepared, apparently, to attack. The worst of it was there was no turning that litter round. They halted, and the gate ahead of them opened, and right in the centre of the gateway was an ancient cannon with a man standing beside it with a lighted rope in his hand. Turn the litter and get away in a hurry they could not. Leave it they could not. There was seemingly no escape for them. It only wanted one of those excited men to shout “Ta, Ta,” and the matchcould have been applied, and the ancient gun would have swept the pathway. Then the leader of the band of foreigners stepped forward. He flung away his rifle, he flung away his revolver, he flung away his knife, and he stood there before them defenceless, with his arms raised—modem civilisation bowing for the moment before the force of Babylon. It was a moment of supreme anxiety. Suppose the people misunderstood his actions.
“We scarcely dared breathe,” said the storyteller. Every heart stood still. And then they understood. The man with the lighted rope dropped it, and they beckoned to the strangers to come inside the gates.
It required a good deal of courage to go inside those gates, to put themselves in the power of the Elder Brother Society, and they spent an anxious night. The town had been sacked, the streets ran blood, the men were slain, their bodies were in the streets for the crows and thewonksto feed on, and the women—well women never count for much in China in times of peace, and in war they are the spoil of the victor—the Goddess of Mercy was forgotten those days in I Chün. All night long the anxious little party kept watch and ward, and when day dawned were thankful to be allowed to proceed on their way unmolested, eventually reaching Hsi An Fu and rescuing all the missionaries who wished to be rescued.
“It was exciting,” said my friend, half apologising for getting excited over it. “It was the last of old China. Such things will never happen again.”
Exciting! it thrilled me to hear him talk, to know such things had happened barely a year before, toknow they had happened in this country. Would they never happen again? I was not so sure of that as I went through walled town after walled town, as I looked up at the walls of Tsung Hua Chou. This was the correct setting. To talk in friendly, commonplace fashion to people who lived in such towns seemed to annihilate time, to bring the past nearer to me, to make me understand, as I had never understood before, that the people who had lived, and suffered, and triumphed, or lived, and suffered, and fallen, were almost exactly the same flesh and blood as I was myself.
Back at the inn my friend the landlady brought me her little grandson to admire. He was a jolly little unwashed chap with a shaven head, clad in an unwashed shift, and I think I admired him to her heart's content. It was evidently worth having been born and lived all the strenuous weary days of her hard life to have had part in the bringing into the world of that grandson. His little sister in the blue-cornered handkerchief, looking on, did not count for much, and yet she had her own feelings, for when I clambered into my cart and was just rumbling over the step I was startled by a terrified childish outcry. Looking back, I saw that a little serving-maid, a slave probably, was running after my cart with the small son and heir in her arms, making believe to give away the household treasure to the foreign woman, with grandmother and subordinates looking smilingly on. Only the little sister, who was not in the secret, was shrieking lustily in protest.
I had been thinking of the cities in the plain of Mesopotamia! And this carried me back to thedays of my own childhood and the hills round Ballarat! Many and many a time in my young days have I seen the household baby offered to the “vegetable John,” and the small brothers and sisters shrieking a terrified protest. “They would be good, and love baby, and never be cross with him any more.” Here was I taking the place of the smiling, bland, John Chinaman of my childhood. After all human nature is much the same all the world over, on the sunny hills of Ballarat, or in a walled city at the foot of the mountains in Northern China. If we could but bridge the gulf that lies between, I expect we should have found it just exactly the same on the banks of the Euphrates and beneath the walls of Babylon.
The crossing of the Lanho—A dust storm—Dangers of a new inn—Locked in—Holy mountain—Ruined city—My interpreter—A steep hill—The barren woman—Unappetising food—The abbot—The beggar—Burning incense—The beauty of the way.
We were fairly in the mountains when we left Tsung Hua Chou. As we crawled along slowly, and I trust with dignity, though dignity is not my strong point, I looked up to the hills that towered above us, almost perpendicular they seemed in places, as if the slope had been shorn off roughly with a blunt knife, and I saw that one of these crags, that must have been about a thousand feet above the valley bottom, anyhow it looked it in the afternoon sunlight, was crowned by buildings; and not feeling energetic, nobody does feel energetic who rides for long in a Peking cart, I thanked my stars that I had not to go up there. I thought if it were the most beautiful temple in the world I would not go up that mountain to visit it. Which only shows that I did not reckon on my Chinese servant. There may be people who can cope single-handed with the will of a Chinaman. I can't. I know now that if my servant expresses a desire for a thing, he will only ask, of course, for what is perfectly correct and goodfor his Missie, he will have it in the end, so it is no good struggling; it is better to give in gracefully at first.
0306
As we neared a river, the Lanho, or I suppose I should say the Lan, for “ho” means a river, the clouds began to gather for the first time since I had set out on my journey, and it seemed as if it were going to rain.
“Must make haste,” said Tuan looking up at the grey sky with the clouds scurrying across it, and making haste in a Peking cart is a painful process.
By the time we arrived at the river-banks it was blowing furiously, and a good part of the country, as always seems to be the case in China when the wind blows, was in the air. The river, wide and muddy and rather shallow, was flowing swiftly along, and the crossing-place was just where the valley was widest, and there was a large extent of sand on either bank, so there was plenty of material for the wind to play with. It used it as if it had never had a chance before and was bound to make the most of it. There were many other people on that sandy beach, there were other Peking carts, there were laden country carts with their heavily studded wheels cut out of one piece of wood, looking like the wheels Mr Reed puts on his prehistoric carts inPunch, there were laden donkeys and mules, there were all the blue-clad people in charge of the traffic, and there were tiny restaurants, rough-looking shacks where the refreshment of these people was provided for. They weren't refreshing when I arrived, the wind was blowing things away piecemeal, and every man seemed to be grabbing something portable, or putting it down with a stone upon it to anchor it."Must make haste,” said Tuan again, as he helped me out of the cart, and the wind got under my coat, tore at my veil, and succeeded in pulling down some of my hair.
We had got beyond the region of bridges, I suppose in the summer the floods come down and sweep them away, and everybody was crossing on a wupan, a long, shallow, flat-bottomed boat that had been decked in the middle to allow of carts being taken across. The mules were taken out, and the carts with the help of every available man about, except the fat restaurant-keeper, were got on the boat.
“Must make haste,” repeated Tuan, distributing with a liberal hand my hard-earned cents. I used to think a cent or two in China didn't matter, but I know by bitter experience they mount up.
And then just as we were all ready, my leading mule, a fawn-coloured animal of some character, expressed his disapproval of the mode of transit by a violent kick, and broke away. The dust was blowing in heavy clouds, but every now and then I could see through the veil a dozen people racing after him, while he kicked up his heels in derision, and in a fashion of which I should not have thought any beast that had brought a Peking cart so far over such roads was capable. Then a brilliant idea occurred to the younger “cartee man.” He decided to mount the white mule that led the other cart. This was a meek-looking beast who I presume always did exactly as he was told; but a worm will turn, and to be ridden after all the long journey was more than even he would stand. With a buck and a kick he got rid of the “cartee man,” and thenthere were two mules careering about in the wild dust storm. It looked highly probable that they would take advantage of their liberty to go back to Peking, and I crossed that river wondering very much how I was to get any farther on my journey, and whether lost mules were a part of the just expenditure expected of a foreign woman. After about two hours, however, they were brought in, the fawn-coloured mule as perky as ever, but the white one so depressed by his only taste of freedom that he never recovered as long as I had the pleasure of his acquaintance.
Before we were on our way again the dust storm had subsided, and I was shaking the mountains, or the Gobi Desert, or whatever it was, out of the folds of my clothes and out of my hair and eyes, and Tuan was once more urgent.
“Must make haste.”
But it was no good, we had lost too much time, we could not possibly reach the little town we had planned to reach, and before the sun set we turned into the yard of a little hostelry in a small mountain hamlet underneath the holy mountain that was crowned with the temple I had been looking at all the afternoon.
And then to my joy I found that this place was clean, actually clean!! Two notes of exclamation do not do proper justice to it. The yard bore little traces of occupation, the room I was shown into had a new blue calico curtain at the door, it was freshly whitewashed, a clean mat was on the k'ang, the wood that edged it was new, and there was clean tissue paper over the lattice-work of the windows. The floor, of course, was only hard, beaten earth, but that did not matter. I would sit on the k'ang, andbesides this place smelt of nothing but whitewash. I rejoiced exceedingly as I had the paper torn off the top of the window to let in the fresh air, but Tuan looked at it from another point of view.
“Must take care,” said he, “this new inn. 'Cartee man' no know she. Must take care,” and he looked so grave that I wondered what on earth was the penalty I ran the risk of paying for cleanliness.
They evidently were afraid, for all the luggage, which as a rule stayed strapped on the carts in the inn yard, was taken off and brought in. I was worth robbing, for I had about seven-and-twenty pounds in dollars in my black box, and that, judging by what I saw, would have bought up all the villages between Jehol and Peking. However, it was no good worrying about it, however agitated Tuan might be. Besides, anyhow he was something of a coward, all Chinese servants are, it seems to me.
His fear didn't seem to last very long, for presently he came bustling in, all excitement.
I was brushing my hair to try and get some of the dust out of it, and reflecting there was possibly some reason in so many Chinese women being bald. It must be much easier to keep a hairless head free from dust.
“Missie, Missie, innkeeper man, she say my Missie come in good time. Nine Dragon Temple,” he pointed upwards, and I knew with a sinking heart he meant the one I had watched all day and decided that to it I would not go, “open one time for ten day, never in year open any more,” and he looked at me to see his words sink in. They sank in right enough. I knew I was going there, but still I protested.
“I cannot walk up that mountain.”
“No walk, Missie no walk, can get chair.”
Still I struggled. “It will cost too much money.”
“Three dollars, Missie, can do. Not spend much monies,” and he looked at me as much as to say I would never let three dollars, about six shillings, stand between me and a wonder that was only open for ten days in the year, especially when I had arrived on the auspicious day.
“But what will you do, Tuan,I really cannot afford a chair for you,” for I knew my follower on every occasion, even when I should have walked made a point of riding. He looked at me, but I suppose he saw I had reached the limit of my forbearance. His chest swelled out virtuously.
“I strong young man, I walk.”
I made another effort. “But the bottom of the mountain is a good way off, how shall I get there?”
“I talkee 'cartee man,' he takee Missie two dollars.”
It was mounting up. I knew it would.
“But who will look after our things here?”
“One piecey 'cartee man,' stop,” said he airily. So it was all arranged and I was booked for the Nine Dragon Temple whether I liked it or not. Then there was the night to consider in this new inn, the safety of which Tuan had doubted. In my room were all my possessions, including the black box with the money in it, and I looked at the door and saw to my dismay that there was no fastening on the inside.
“I take care Missie,” said Tuan loftily, and thenproceeded to instruct me in the precautions he had taken.
“Innkeeper man ask how long Missie stay and I say p'r'aps five day, p'r'aps ten day. No tell true.” No tell true indeed, for I had every intention of leaving next day even if I did have to go up to the mountain temple in the morning.
Again I looked at the rough planks of the door coming down to the earthen floor, and decided I would draw my heavy box across it, and I said so to Tuan.
But he was emphatic, “I take care Missie,” I wonder if he would have done so had there really been any danger. Then he bid me good night and, going out, drew the door to after him and proceeded to lock it on the outside! I presume he put the key in his pocket. Some papers have honoured me by referring to me as a “distinguished traveller,” and I have had hopes of being elected to the Royal Geographical Society! For a moment I thought of calling him back indignantly, and then I thought better of it. “A man thinks he knows,” says the Chinese proverb, “but a woman knows better.”
The window was frail and all across the room, and I knew I could break the lattice-work if I wanted to, so could the thief for that matter, so I slept peacefully, the sleep of the utterly weary, and the innkeeper proved an honest man after all.
And next day, after breakfast, just as the sun was rising, I started for the Nine Dragon Temple. The peak which it crowned stood out from the rest like a very acute triangle. They say the camera cannot lie, I only know I did not succeed in getting a photograph of that mountain that gave any idea of its steepness. Its slopes, faintly tinged with green and dotted with fir-trees, fell away like the sides of a house from the narrow top that was crowned with buildings. It was just one of the many holy mountains that are scattered over China, and it seemed to me, looking up, that nothing but a bird could reach it. But still I had to try. All the country was bathed in the golden rays of the sun as I climbed into the cart, and we made our way through a ruined city that must once have been very rich and prosperous. Only the poorest of the poor apparently lived among the ruins, and we went through a ruined gateway where no man watched now, and over half-tilled fields, to the supplementary temple at the bottom of the mountain.
Here Tuan blossomed forth wonderfully. Up till now he had only been my servant, a most important servant but still a servant, now he became, on a sudden, that much more important functionary, my interpreter.
A solemn old gentleman in a dark-coloured robe with a shaven head received me with that perfect courtesy which it is my experience these monks always show, escorted me into a large room with a k'ang on one side and a figure of a god, large and gorgeous, facing the door. He asked me my age, as apparently the most important question he could ask—itisrather an important factor in one's life—and then when I was seated on the k'ang, with my interpreter, in his very best clothes of silk brocade, on the other, a variety of cakes in little dishes were set on the k'ang table beside me, and a small shavenheaded little boy who I was informed was called “Trees” was set to pour out tea as long as I would drink it. I was so amused at the importance of Tuan. Not for worlds would I have given him away as he sat there sipping tea and nibbling at a piece of cake; and I wonder still what he thought I thought. Did he fear I should call him to account for sitting down as if he were on terms of equality with me? Did he think I was a fool, or was he properly grateful that I allowed him this little latitude? At any rate, except in the matter of squeeze, he always served me very well indeed, and there is no doubt my dignity was enhanced by going about with a real, live interpreter. The priest could not know what a very inadequate one he was.
Presently they came and announced that the chair was ready.
“Put on new ropes,” announced my interpreter pointing out the lashings to me. The chair was fastened to a couple of stout poles and four coolies, they might have been own brothers to the ones I had at the Ming Tombs, lifted it to their shoulders and we were off. All the people who dwelt in the little hamlet that clustered round the temple at the foot of the mountain, hoary-headed old men, little, naked children, small-footed women, peeped out and looked at the foreign woman as she passed on her pilgrimage up the steep and narrow pathway, the first foreigner that had passed up this way for some years, and probably the only one who would pass up this year. It took a good many people to get me up, I noticed, it wouldn't have been Tuan if it hadn't. There was his all-important self of course, there was a man carrying my camera, another one carrying my umbrella and a bundle of incense sticks, there were various minor hangers-on in the shape of small boys, and there were, of course, my four chair coolies.
0316
0317
A Chinese chair is a most uncomfortable thing anyway, and this had exaggerated the faults of its kind. Always it is so built that there is not seat enough, while the back seems specially arranged to pitch the unlucky occupant forward. It is bad enough in the ordinary way—going up a mountain, and a very steep mountain, it is anathema, and coming down it is beyond words. And this mountain was steep, its looks had not belied it; never have I gone up such a steep place before, never, I devoutly hope, shall I go up such a steep place again. The mountain fell away, and I looked out into space on either side. I could see hills, of course, away in the far distance, with a great gulf between me and them, rounded, treeless hills with just a faint touch of green upon them, and the trees on my own mountain, firs and pines with an occasional poplar, green and fresh with the tender green of May time, stood up at an acute angle with the hill-side above, and an obtuse angle below. The air was fresh, and keen, and invigorating, and in the green grass grew bulbs like purple crocuses, wild jessamine sweetly scented, and delicate blue wild hyacinths, that in Staffordshire they call blue bells. I remember once in a delightful wood in the Duke of Sutherland's grounds near Stoke-on-Trent, that most sordid town of the Black Country, seeing the ground there carpeted with just such blossoms as I saw here on the holy mountain in China.
Up we went and up. There were stone steps put together without mortar, all the way, and there were platforms every here and there, where the wearymight rest, and because the hill was so steep, these platforms were generally made by piling up stones that looked as if a touch would send them rolling to the bottom of the mountain, a step and one would be over oneself, for there were no barriers. It was twelve li, four miles up, and the way was broken by smaller temples dedicated to various gods, among them one to the goddess who takes pity on barren women. This one was half-way up the mountain, and here we met a small-footed woman toiling along with the aid of a stick. Half-way up that cruel mountain she had crawled on her aching feet, and every day she would come up, she told us, to burn incense at the shrine. And she looked old, old. It would be a miracle indeed, I thought, if she bore that longed-for child. Hope must be dying very hard indeed. And yet she must have known. Poor thing, poor weary woman, what was the tragedy of her life? Children, one would think, were a drug in the market in China, they swarm everywhere. I burned an incense stick for her and could only hope the God of Pity would answer her prayer, and take away her reproach before men.
Up and up and up, and so steep it grew I was fain to shut my eyes else the sensation that I would fall off into space would have been too much for me. From the doorways of the wayside temples we passed through we looked into space, and the mountains at the other side of the valley seemed farther away than ever. A cuckoo called and called again “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” As we waited once a coolie passed with a bamboo across his shoulder from which were slung two very modern kerosene tins—Babylon and America meeting—and they told me there was no water on the mountain, every drop had to be carried up; and then the men took up the poles on their shoulders and tramped on again, and every time they changed the pole from one shoulder to the other I felt I would surely fall off into the valley, miles below. Up and up and up, they were streaming with perspiration, and at last when it seemed to me we had arrived at the highest point of the world, and that it was very like a needle-point, they set down my chair at the bottom of the flight of steps that led up to the entrance to the main temple, and the abbot and a crowd of monks stood at the top to greet me.
They swarmed everywhere, it was impossible to estimate their numbers, young men and old, all with shaven heads and dark, rusty red robes, and then others, blind, and halt, and maimed, evidently pensioners on their bounty. It seemed to me it could hardly be worth while to climb up so steep a place for the small dole that was all the monks had it in their power to give. It must have been so little, so little. They showed me the shrine, a poor little shrine to one who had seen the wonders of the Lama Temple in Peking. I took a picture of the abbot standing in front of it, and they showed me their kitchen premises, where were great jars of vegetables salted and in pickle, and looking most unappetising, but that apparently, with millet porridge, was all they had to live on.
It was crowded, it was dirty, it was shabby, but there were great stone pillars, eighteen of them, that they told me had been brought from a great distance south of Peking, and had been carried up the mountain in the days of the Mings, long before there werethe steps, which were only put there a little over a hundred years ago—quite recently for China. How they could possibly get them up even now that there are four miles of steep stone steps I cannot possibly imagine. Babylon! Babylon!! I shut my eyes and saw the toiling slaves, heard the crack of the taskmaster's whip, and the hopeless moan of the man who sank, crushed and broken, beneath the burden.
The abbot bowed himself courteously over a gift of thirty cents which Tuan, and I am sure he would not have understated it, said was the propercumshaw, and I bade them farewell and turned to go down that hill again. The thought of it was heavy on my soul. Outside was a beggar, men are close to starvation in China. The wretched, forlorn creature, with wild hair and his nakedness hidden by the most disgusting rags, had followed my train up all those four steep miles in the hope of a small gift. For five cents he too bowed himself in deepest gratitude. It was a gift I was ashamed of, but the important interpreter considered he had the right to regulate these things, and he certainly led me carefully on all other occasions. Then I looked at my chair and I looked at the steep steps down which we must go. How could I possibly manage it without getting giddy and pitching right forward, for going down would be much worse than coming up had been. And then the men showed me that I must get in and be carried down backwards.
Would they slip? I could but trust not. I was alone and helpless, days, and they must have known it, from any of my own people. They might easily have held me up and demanded more than the three dollars for which they had contracted, but they did not. Patient, uncomplaining, as the Babylonish slaves to whom I had compared them, they carried me steadily and carefully from temple to temple all the way down, and at every altar we stopped I sat and looked on, and Tuan burned incense sticks, the officiating priest, he was very poor, dirty and shabby, struck a melodious gong as the act of adoration was accomplished and Tuan, in all his best clothes, knelt and knocked his head on the ground. I wondered whether I, too, was not acquiring merit, for my money had bought the incense sticks, and my money, it was only a trifling ten cents, paid the wild-looking individual, with torn coat and unshaven head, who carried them up the mountain.
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Oh, but I had something—something that I cannot put into words—for my pains; the something that made the men of five hundred years before build the temple on the mountain top to the glory of God, my God and their God, by whatever Name you choose to call Him. It was good to sit there looking away at the distant vista, at the golden sunlight on the trees and grass, at the shadows that were creeping in between, to smell the sensuous smell of the jessamine, and if I could not help thinking of all I had lost in life, of the fate that had sent me here to the Nine Dragon Temple, at least I could count among my gains the beauty that lay before my eyes.
And when I reached the bottom of the mountain in safety, I felt I had gained merit, for the men who had carried me so carefully were wild with gratitude, and evidently called down blessings upon my head, because I gave them an extra dollar. It pleased me, and yet saddened me, because it seemed an awful thing that twenty-five cents apiece, sixpenceeach, should mean so much to any man. Their legs ached, they said. Poor things, poor things. Many legs ache in China, and I am afraid more often than not there is no one to supply a salve.
So we came back to the little mountain inn in the glorious afternoon, and the people looked on us as those who had made a pilgrimage, and Tuan climbed a little way down from his high estate. He set about getting me a meal, the eternal chicken, and rice, and stewed pear, and I looked back at the mountain I had climbed and wondered, and was glad, as I am often glad, that I had done a thing I need never do again.
Was there merit? For Tuan, let us hope, even though I did pay for the incense sticks, for me, well I don't know. On the mountain I was uplifted, here in the valley I only knew that the view from the high peak, the vista of hill and valley, the greenness of the fresh grass on the rounded, treeless hills, and the greenness of the springing crops in the valley, the golden sunshine and the glorious blue sky of Northern China, the sky that is translucent and far away, was something well worth remembering. Truly it sometimes seems that all things that are worth doing are hard to do.