To Lu-chiang-pa.Drop from 8,000 feet to 2,000 feet.Shans meet for the first time.Dangers of the Salwen Valley exaggerated.How reports get into print.Start of the climb from 2,000 feet to over 8,000 feet.Scenery in the valley.Queer quintet of soldiers.Semi-tropical temperature.My men fall to the ground exhausted.A fatiguing day.Benighted in the forest.Spend the night in a hut.Strong drink as it affects the Chinese.Embarrassing attentions of a kindly couple.New Year festivities at Kan-lan-chai.The Shweli River and watershed.Magnificent range of mountains.Arrival at Tengyueh.
No Chinese, I knew, lived in the Valley; but I had yet to learn that so soon as the country drops to say less than 4,000 feet the Chinese consider it too unhealthy a spot for him to pass his days in. The reason why Shans control the Valley is, therefore, not hard to find.
And owing to the probability that what European travelers have written about the unhealthiness of this Salwen Valley has been based on information obtained from Chinese, its bad name may be easily accounted for. The next morning, as I descended, I saw much malarial mist rising; but, after having on a subsequent visit spent two days and two nights at the lowest point, I am in a position to say that conditions have been very much exaggerated, and that places quite as unhealthy are to be found between Lu-chiang-pa (the town at the foot, by the bridge) and the low-lying Shan States leading on to Burma.
A good deal of the country to the north of the Yün-nan province, towards the Tibetan border, is so high-lying and so cold that the Yün-nanese Chinese is afraid to live there; and the fact that in the Shan States, so low-lying and sultry, he is so readily liable to fever, prevents him from living there. These places, through reports coming from the Chinese, are, as a matter of course, dubbed as unhealthy. The average inhabitant—that is, Chinese—strikes a medium between 4,000 feet and 10,000 feet to live in, and avoids going into lower country between March and November if he can.
To pass the valley and go to Kan-lan-chi (4,800 feet), passing the highest point at nearly 9,000 feet—140 li distant from Fang-ma-ch'ang—was our ambition for the day.
Starting in the early morning, I had a pleasant walk over an even road leading to a narrowing gorge, through which a heart-breaking road led to the valley beyond. Two and a half hours it took me, in my foreign boots, to cover the twenty li. I fell five times over the smooth stones. The country was bare, desolate, lonely—four people only were met over the entire distance. But in the dreaded Valley several trees were ablaze with blossom, and oranges shone like small balls of gold in the rising sun. Children playing in between the trees ran away and hid as they saw me, although I was fifty yards from them—they did not know what it was, and they had never seen one!
Farther down I caught up my men, Lao Chang and Shanks, and pleasant speculations were entered into as to what Singai (Bhamo) was like. They were particularly interested in Singapore because I had lived there, and after I had given them a general description of the place, and explained how the Chinese had gone ahead there, I pointed out as well as I could with my limited vocabulary that if the people of Yün-nan only had a conscience, and would only get out of the rut of the ages, they, too, might go ahead, explaining incidentally to them that as lights of the church at Tong-ch'uan-fu, it was their sacred duty to raise the standard of moral living among their countrymen wherever they might wander. Their general acquiescence was astounding, and in the next town, Lu-chiang-pa, these two men put their theory into practice and almost caused a riot by offering 250 cash for a fowl for which the vendor blandly asked 1,000. But they got the chicken—and at their own price, too.
As I was thus gently in soliloquy, I first heard and then caught sight of the river below—the unnavigable Salwen, 2,000 feet lower than either the Mekong or the Shweli (which we were to cross two days later). It is a pity the Salwen was not preserved as the boundary between Burma and China.
Gradually, as we approached the steep stone steps leading down thereto, I saw one of the cleverest pieces of native engineering in Asia—the double suspension bridge which here spans the Salwen, the only one I had seen in my trip across the Empire. The first span, some 240 feet by 36 feet, reaches from the natural rock, down which a vertical path zigzags to the foot, and the second span then runs over to the busy little town of Lu-chiang-pa.
Here, then, were we in the most dreaded spot in Western China! If you stay a night in this Valley, rumor says, you go to bed for the last time; Chinese are afraid of it, Europeans dare not linger in it. Malaria stalks abroad for her victims, and snatches everyone who dallies in his journey to the topside mountain village of Feng-shui-ling. The river is 2,000 feet above the sea; Feng-shui-ling is nearly 9,000 feet.
It was ten o'clock as I pulled over my stool and took tea in the crowded shop at Lu-chiang-pa. I saw Shans here for the first time.
The village now, however, is anything but a Shan village. Of the people in the immediate vicinity I counted only ten typical Shans, and of the company around me in this popular tea-house twenty-one out of twenty-eight were Chinese, including ten Mohammedans. It was, however, easy to see that several of these were of Shan extraction, who, although they had features distinctly un-Chinese, had adopted the Chinese language and custom. A party of Tibetans were here in the charge of a Lama, in an inner court, and scampered off as I rose to snap their photographs. This was a very low altitude for Tibetans to reach.
Whilst I sipped my tea the local horse dealer wanted so very much to sell me a pony cheap. He offered it for forty taels, I offered him five. It was gone in the back, was blind in the left eye, and was at least seventeen years old. The man smiled as I refused to buy, and told me that my knowledge of horse-flesh was wonderful.
The road then led up to a plain, where paths branched in many directions to the hills. Men either going to the market or coming from it leaned on their loads to rest under enormous banyans and to watch me as I passed. Horses browsed on the hill-sides. One of my soldiers had laid in provisions for the day, and ran along with his gun (muzzle forward) over one shoulder and four lengths of sugar-cane over the other. Ploughmen with their buffaloes halted in the muddy fields to gaze admiringly upon me; women ran scared from the path when my pony let out at a casual passer-by who tickled him with a thin bamboo. Maidenhair ferns grew in great profusion, showing that we were getting into warmer climate; streams rushed swiftly under the stone roadway from dyked-up dams to facilitate the irrigation, at which the Chinese are such past-masters. All was smiling and warm and bright, dispelling in one's mind all sense of gloom, and breeding an optimistic outlook.
We were now a party of nine—my own three men, an extra coolie I had engaged to rush Tengyueh in three days from Yung-ch'ang, four soldiers, and the paymaster of the crowd. We still had ninety li to cover, so that when we left the shade of two immense trees which sheltered me and my perspiring men, one of the soldiers agreed that everyone had to clear from our path. We brooked no interception until we reached the entrance to the climb, where I met two Europeans, of the Customs staff at Tengyueh, who had come down here to camp out for the Chinese New Year Holiday. I knew that these men were not Englishmen. I was so thirsty, and the best they could do was to keep a man talking in the sun outside their well-equipped tent. How Icouldhave done with a drink!
A tributary of the Salwen flows down the ravine. Too terrible a climb to the top was it for me to take notes. I got too tired. Everything was magnificently green, and Nature's reproduction seemed to be going on whilst one gazed upon her. But the natural glories of this beautiful gorge, with a dainty touch of the tropical mingling with the mighty aspect of jungle forest, with glistening cascades and rippling streams, where all was bountiful and exquisitely beautiful, failed to hold one spellbound. For since I had left Tali-fu I had rarely been out of sight of some of the best scenery on earth. Yet vegetation was very different to that which we had been passing. There were now banyans, palms, plantains, and many ferns, trees and shrubs and other products of warmer climates, which one found in Burma. What impressed me farther up was the marvelous growth of bamboos, some rising 120 feet and 130 feet at the bend, in their various tints of green looking like delicate feathers against the haze of the sky-line, upon which houses built of bamboo from floor to roof seemed temporarily perched whilst others seemed to be tumbling down into the valley. This spot was the nearest approach to real jungle I had seen in China; but Whilst we were climbing laboriously through this densely-covered country, over opposite—it seemed no more than a stone's throw—the hills were almost bare, save for the isolated cultivation of the peasantry at the base. But then came a division, appearing suddenly to view farther along around a bend, and I saw a continuation of the range, rising even higher, and with a tree growth even more magnificent, denser and darker still.
Here I came upon a party of soldiers with foreign military peak caps on their heads, which they wore outside over their Chinese caps. In fact, the only two other garments besides these Chinese caps were the distinguishing marks of the military. Coats they had, but they had been discarded at the foot of the climb, rolled into one bundle, and tied together with a piece of ribbon generally worn by the carrier to keep his trousers tight. We were now in summer heat, and this military quintet made a peculiar sight in dusty trousers, peak caps and straw sandals, with the perspiration streaming freely down their naked backs as they plodded upwards under a pitiless sun. Thus were they clad when I met them; but catching sight of my distinguished person, mistaking me for a "gwan," they immediately made a rush for the man carrying the tunics, to clothe themselves for my presence with seemly respectability. But a word from my boy put their minds at rest (my own military were far in the rear). A couple of them then came forward to me sniggeringly, satisfied that they were not to be reported to Peking or wherever their commander-in-chief may have his residence—they probably had no more idea than I had.
By the side of a roaring waterfall, in a spot which looked a very fairyland in surroundings of reproductive green, we all sat down to rest. The air was cool and the path was damp, and water tumbling everywhere down from the rocks formed pretty cascades and rivulets. We heard the clang of the hatchets, and soon came upon men felling timber and sawing up trees into coffin boards. We were in the Valley of the Shadow, and it was the finest coffin center of the district. I took my boots off to wade through water which overran the pathway, and just beyond my men, exhausted with their awful toil, lay flat on their backs to rest; they were dead beat. One pointed up to the perpendicular cliff, momentarily closed his eyes and looked at me in disgust. I gently remonstrated. It was not my country, I told him; it was the "Emperor's." And after a time we reached the top.
Shadows were lengthening. In the distance we saw the mountains upon which we had spent the previous night, whose tops were gilded by the setting sun. Down below all was already dark. A cold wind blew the trees bending wearily towards the Valley.
And still we plodded on.
We had come to Siao-p'ing-ho, 115 li instead of the 140 I had been led to believe my men would cover. Every room in the hut was full, we were told, but the next place (with some unpronounceable name), fifteen li farther down, would give us good housing for the night. Lao Chang and I resolved to go on, tired though we were. Before I resolved on this plan I stopped to take a careful survey of the exact situation of the sheltering hollow in which we meant to pass the night. The sun was fast sinking; the dust of the road lay grey and thick about my feet; above me the heavens were reddening in sunset glory; the landscape had no touch of human life about it save our own two solitary figures; and the place, fifteen li away, lay before me as a dream of a good night rather than a reality.
Then on again we plodded, and yelled our intentions to the men behind.
From the brow of the hill we descended with extreme rapidity—down, down into a valley which sent up a damp, oppressive atmosphere. Through the trees I could see one lovely ball of deep, rich red, painting the earth as it sank in a beauty exquisite beyond all else. Four men met us, stared suspiciously, thought we were deaf, and yelled that the place was twenty li away, and that we had better return to the brow of the hill. But we left them, and went still farther down. In the hush that prevailed I was unaccountably startled to see the form of a woman gliding towards me in the twilight. She came out of the valley carrying firewood. She spoke kindly to my man, and invited me to spend the night in her house near by.
I was for the moment vaguely awed by her very quiescence, and gazed wondering, doubting, bewildered. What was the little trick? Could I not from such things get free, even in Inland China? The red light of the sunken sun playing round her comely figure dazzled me, it is admitted, and I followed her with a sigh of mingled dread and desire for rest. Shall I say the shadow of the smile upon her lips deepened and softened with an infinite compassion?
Dogs rounded upon me as I entered the bamboo hut stuck on the side of the hill—they knew I had no right there. Inside a man was nursing a squalling baby; our escort was its mother, the man her husband. So I was safe. The place was swept up, unnecessary gear was taken away, fire was kindled, tea was brewed, rice was prepared; and whilst in shaving (for we were to reach Tengyueh on the morrow) I dodged here and there to escape the smoke and get the most light, giving my hospitable host a good deal of fun in so doing; every possible preparation was made for my comfort and convenience by the untiring woman at whose invitation I was there. Their attentions embarrassed me; every movement, every look, every gesture, every wish was anticipated, so that I had no more discomfort than a roaring wind and a low temperature about the region which no one could help. It was bitterly cold. In front of the fire I sat in an overcoat among the crowd drinking tea, whilst the soldiers drank wine—they bought five cash worth. Had my lamp oil run out, I should have bought liquor and tried to burn it instead. Soon the spirit began to talk, and these braves of the Chinese army got on terms of freest familiarity, telling me what an all-round excellent fellow I was, and how pleased they were that I had to suffer as well as they. But they never forgot themselves, and I allowed them to wander on uncontradicted and unrestrained. After a weary night of tossing in my p'ukai, with a roaring gale blowing through the latticed bamboo, behind which I lay so poorly sheltered, we started in good spirits.
Twenty-five li farther we reached Kan-lan-chai (4,800 feet), February 9th, 1910, New Year's morning. Nothing could be bought. Everywhere the people said, "Puh mai, puh mai," and although we had traveled the twenty-five li over a terrible road, with a fearful gradient at the end, we could not get anyone to make tea for us. It is distinctly against the Chinese custom to sell anything at New Year time, of course. We had to boil our own water and make our own tea. A larger crowd than usual gathered around me because of the general holiday; and as I write now I am seated in my folding-chair with all the reprobates near to me—men gazing emptily, women who have rushed from their houses combing their hair and nursing their babies, the beggars with their poles and bowls, numberless urchins, all open-mouthed and curious. These are kept from crowding over me by the two soldiers, who the day before had come on ahead to book rooms in the place. I stayed at Kan-lan-chai on another occasion. Then I found a good room, but later learned that it was a horse inn, the yard of which was taken up by fifty-nine pack animals with their loads. Pegs were as usual driven into the ground in parallel rows, a pair of ponies being tied to each—not by the head, but by the feet, a nine-inch length of rope being attached to the off foreleg of one and the near foreleg of the other, the animals facing each other in rows, and eating from a common supply in the center. Everyone in the small town was busy doing and driving, very anxious that I should be made comfortable, which might have been the case but for some untiring musician who was traveling with the caravan, and seemed to be one of that species of humankind who never sleeps. His notes, however, were fairly in harmony, but when it runs on to 3:00 a.m., and one knows that he has to be again on the move by five, even first-rate Chinese music is apt to be somewhat disturbing.
From the Salwen-Shweli watershed I got a fine view of the mountains I had crossed yesterday. Some ten miles or so to the north was the highest peak in the range—Kao-li-kung I think it is called—conical-shaped and clear against the sky, and some 13,000 feet high, so far as I could judge.
An easy stage brought me to Tengyueh. I stayed here a day only, Mr. Embery, of the China Inland Mission, a countryman of my own, kindly putting me up. But Tengyueh, as one of the quartet of open ports in the province, is well known. It is only a small town, however, and one was surprised to find it as conservative a town as could be found anywhere in the province, despite the fact that foreigners have been here for many years, and at the present time there are no less than seven Europeans here.
I was glad of a rest here. From Tali-fu had been most fatiguing.
Travel up the Salwen Valley.My motive for travelling and how I travel.Valley not a death-trap.Meet the Li-su.Buddhistic beliefs.Late Mr. G. Litton as a traveler.Resemblance in religion to Kachins.Ghost of ancestral spirits.Li-su graves.Description of the people.Racial differences.John the Baptist's hardship.The cross-bow and author's previous experience.Plans for subsequent travel fall through.Mission work among the Li-su.
On my return journey into Yün-nan, I stopped at Lu-chiang-pa,[BB]and left my men at the inn there while I traveled for two days along the Salwen Valley. My journey was taken with no other motive than that of seeing the country, and also to test the accuracy of the reports respecting the general unhealthy nature of this valley of the Shadow of Death. The people here were friendly, despite the fact that my route was always far away from the main road; and although my entire kit was a single traveling-rug for the nights, I was able to get all I wanted. Lao Chang accompanied me, and together we had an excellent time.
I might as well say first of all that the idea of this part of the Salwen Valley being what people say it is in the matter of a death-trap is absolutely false. With the exception of the early morning mist common in every low-lying region in hot countries, there was, so far as I could see, nothing to fear.
During the second day, through beautiful country in beautiful weather, I came across some people who I presumed were Li-su, and I regretted that my films had all been exposed. The Li-su tribe is undoubtedly an offshoot from the people who inhabit south-eastern Tibet, although none of them anywhere in Yün-nan—and they are found in many places in central and eastern Yün-nan—bear any traces of Buddhistic belief, which is universal, of course, in Tibet. The late Mr. G. Litton, who at the time he was acting as British Consul at Tengyueh traveled somewhat extensively among them, says that their religious practices closely resemble those of the Kachins, who believe in numerous "nats" or spirits which cause various calamities, such as failure of crops and physical ailments, unless propitiated in a suitable manner. According to him, the most important spirit is the ancestral ghost. Li-su graves are generally in the fields near the villages, and over them is put the cross-bow, rice-bags and other articles used by the deceased. "It is probably from foundations such as these," writes Mr. George Forrest, who accompanied Mr. Litton on an excursion to the Upper Salwen, and who wrote up the journey after the death of his companion, "that the fabric of Chinese ancestor worship was constructed," a view which I doubt very much indeed.
I am of the opinion that the Li-su may be closely allied to the Lolo or the Nou Su, of whom I have spoken in the chapters in Book I dealing with the tribes around Chao-t'ong. And even the Miao bear a distinct racial resemblance. They are of bony physique, high cheek bones, and their skin is nearly of the same almost sepia color. The Li-su form practically the whole of the population of the Upper Salwen Valley from about lat. 25° 30' to 27° 30', and they have spread in considerable numbers along the mountains between the Shweli and the Irawadi, and are found also in the Shan States. Those on the Upper Salwen in the extreme north are utter savages, but where they have become more or less civilized have shown themselves to be an enterprising race in the way of emigration. Of the savages, the villages are almost always at war with one another, and many have never been farther from their huts than a day's march will take them, the chief object of their lives being apparently to keep their neighbors at a distance. They are exceedingly lazy. They spend their lives doing as little in the way of work as they must, eating, drinking, squatting about round the hearth telling stories of their valor with the cross-bow, and their excitement is provided by an occasional expedition to get wood for their cross-bows and poison for their arrows, or a stock of salt and wild honey.
Mr. Forrest, in his paper which was read before the Royal Geographical Society in June, 1908, speaks of this wild honey as an agreeable sweetmeat as a change, but that after a few days' constant partaking of it the European palate rejects it as nauseous and almost disgusting, and adds that it has escaped the Biblical commentators that one of the principal hardships which John the Baptist must have undergone was his diet of wild honey. In another part of his paper the writer says, speaking of the cross-bow to which I have referred: "Every Li-su with any pretensions tochicpossesses at least one of these weapons—one for everyday use in hunting, the other for war. The children play with miniature cross-bows. The men never leave their huts for any purpose without their cross-bows, when they go to sleep the 'na-kung' is hung over their heads, and when they die it is hung over their graves. The largest cross-bows have a span of fully five feet, and require a pull of thirty-five pounds to string them. The bow is made of a species of wild mulberry, of great toughness and flexibility. The stock, some four feet long in the war-bows, is usually of wild plum wood, the string is of plaited hemp, and the trigger of bone. The arrow, of sixteen to eighteen inches, is of split bamboo, about four times the thickness of an ordinary knitting needle, hardened and pointed. The actual point is bare for a quarter to one-third of an inch, then for fully an inch the arrow is stripped to half its thickness, and on this portion the poison is placed. The poison used is invariably a decoction expressed from the tubers of a species ofaconitum, which grows on those ranges at an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 feet ... The reduction in thickness of the arrow where the poison is placed causes the point to break off in the body of anyone whom it strikes, and as each carries enough poison to kill a cart horse a wound is invariably fatal. Free and immediate incision is the usual remedy when wounded on a limb or fleshy part of the body."[BC]
Some time after I was traveling in these regions I made arrangements to visit the mission station of the China Inland Mission, some days from Yün-nan-fu, where a special work has recently been formed among the Li-su tribe. Owing to a later arrival at the capital than I had expected, however, I could not keep my appointment, and as there were reports of trouble in that area the British Consul-General did not wish me to travel off the main road. It is highly encouraging to learn that a magnificent missionary work is being done among the Li-su, all the more gratifying because of the enormous difficulties which have already been overcome by the pioneering workers. At least one European, if not more, has mastered the language, and the China Inland Mission are expecting great things to eventuate. It is only by long and continued residence among these peoples, throwing in one's lot with them and living their life, that any absolutely reliable data regarding them will be forthcoming. And this so few, of course, are able to do.
FOOTNOTES:
[BB]
The town by the double suspension bridge over the Salwen.
The town by the double suspension bridge over the Salwen.
[BC]
The poisoned arrows and the cross-bow are used also by the Miao, and the author has seen very much the same thing among the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula.
The poisoned arrows and the cross-bow are used also by the Miao, and the author has seen very much the same thing among the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula.
Last stages of long journey.Characteristics of the country.Sham and Kachins.Author's dream of civilization.British pride.End of paved roads.Mountains cease.A confession of foiled plans.Nantien as a questionable fort.About the Shans.Village squabble, and how it ended.Absence of disagreement in Shan language.Charming people, but lazy.Experience with Shan servant.At Chiu-Ch'eng.New Year festivities.After-dinner diversions.Author as a medico.Ingratitude of the Chinese: some instances.
The Shan, the Kachin and the abominable betel quid! That quid which makes the mouth look bloody, broadens the lips, lays bare and blackens the teeth, and makes the women hideous. Such are the unfailing characteristics of the country upon which we are now entering.
By the following stages I worked my way wearily to the end of my long walking journey:—
Shans here monopolize all things. Chinese, although of late years drawn to this low-lying area, do not abound in these parts, and the Shan is therefore left pretty much to himself. And the pleasant eight-day march from Tengyueh to Bhamo, the metropolis of Upper Burma, probably offers to the traveler objects and scenes of more varying interest than any other stage of the tramp from far-away Chung-king. To the Englishman, daily getting nearer to the end of his long, wearying walk, and going for the first time into Upper Burma, incidentally to realize again the dream of civilization and comfort and contact with his own kind, leaving Old China in the rear, there instinctively came that inexpressible patriotic pride every Britisher must feel when he emerges from the Middle Kingdom and sets his foot again on British territory. The benefits are too numerous to cite; you must have come through China, and have had for companionship only your own unsympathetic coolies, and accommodation only such as the Chinese wayside hostelry has offered, to be able fully to realize what the luxurious dâk-bungalows, with their excellent appointments, mean to the returning exile.
Paved roads, the bane of man and beast, end a little out of Tengyueh. Mountains are left behind. There is no need now for struggle and constant physical exertion in climbing to get over the country. With no hills to climb, no stones to cut my feet or slip upon, with wide sweeps of magnificent country leading three days later into dense, tropical jungle, entrancing to the merest tyro of a nature student, and with the knowledge that my walking was almost at an end, all would have gone well had I been able to tear from my mind the fact that at this juncture I should have to make to the reader a great confession of foiled plans. For two days I was accompanied by the Rev. W.J. Embery, of the China Inland Mission, who was making an itinerary among the tribes on the opposite side of the Taping, which we followed most of the time. He rode a mule; and am I not justified in believing that you, too, reader, with such an excellent companion, one who had such a perfect command of the language, and who could make the journey so much more interesting, you would have ridden your pony? I rode mine! I abandoned pedestrianism and rode to Chiu-Ch'eng—two full days, and when, after a pleasant rest under a sheltering banyan, we went our different ways, I was sorry indeed to have to fall back upon my men for companionship.
But it was not to be for long.
Nantien is, or was, to be a fort, but the little place bears no outward military evidences whatever which would lead one to believe it. It is populated chiefly by Shans. The bulk of these interesting people now live split up into a great number of semi-independent states, some tributary to Burma, some to China, and some to Siam; and yet the man-in-the-street knows little about them. One cannot mistake them, especially the women, with their peculiar Mongolian features and sallow complexions and characteristic head-dress. The men are less distinguishable, probably, generally speaking, but the rough cotton turban instead of the round cap with the knob on the top alone enables one more readily to pick them out from the Chinese. Short, well-built and strongly made, the women strike one particularly as being a hardy, healthy set of people.
Shans are recognized to be a peaceful people, but a village squabble outside Chin-ch'eng, in which I took part, is one of the exceptions to prove the rule.
It did not take the eye of a hawk or the ear of a pointer to recognize that a big row was in full progress. Shan women roundly abused the men, and Shan men, standing afar off, abused their women. A few Chinese who looked on had a few words to say to these "Pai Yi"[BD]on the futility of these everyday squabbles, whilst a few Shans, mistaking me again for a foreign official, came vigorously to me pouring out their souls over the whole affair. We were all visibly at cross purposes. I chimed in with my infallible "Puh tong, you stupid ass, puh tong" (I don't understand, I don't understand); and what with the noise of the disputants, the Chinese bystanders, my own men (they were all acutely disgusted with every Shan in the district, and plainly showed it, because they could not be understood in speech) and myself all talking at once, and the dogs who mistook me for a beggar, and tried to get at close grips with me for being one of that fraternity, it was a veritable Bedlam and Tower of Babel in awfullest combination. At length I raised my hand, mounted a boulder in the middle of the road, and endeavored to pacify the infuriated mob. I shouted harshly, I brandished by bamboo in the air, I gesticulated, I whacked two men who came near me. At last they stopped, expecting me to speak. Only a look of stupidest unintelligibility could I return, however, and had to roar with laughter at the very foolishness of my position up on that stone. Soon the multitude calmed down and laughed, too. I yelled "Ts'eo," and we proceeded, leaving the Shans again at peace with all the world.
Shans have been found in many other parts, even as far north as the borders of Tibet. But a Shan, owing to the similarity of his language in all parts of Asia, differs from the Chinese or the Yün-nan tribesman in that he can get on anywhere. It is said that from the sources of the Irawadi down to the borders of Siamese territory, and from Assam to Tonkin, a region measuring six hundred miles each way, and including the whole of the former Nan-chao Empire, the language is practically the same. Dialects exist as they do in every country in the world, but a Shan born anywhere within these bounds will find himself able to carry on a conversation in parts of the country he has never heard of, hundreds of miles from his own home. And this is more than six hundred years after the fall of the Nan-chao dynasty, and among Shans who have had no real political or commercial relation with each other.[BE]
I found them a charming people, peaceful and obliging, treating strangers with kindness and frank cordiality. For the most part, they are Buddhists. The dress of the Chinese Shans, which, however, I found varied in different localities, leads one to believe that they are an exceptionally clean race, but I can testify that this is not the case. In many ways they are dirtier than the Chinese—notably in the preparation of their food. And I feel compelled to say a word here for the general benefit of future travelers.Never expect a Shan to work hard!Hecanwork hard, and he will—when he likes, but I do not believe that even the Malay, that Nature's gentleman of the farther south, is lazier.
As servants they are failures. A European in this district, whose Chinese servant had left him, thought he would try a Shan, and invited a man to come. "Be your servant? Of course I will. I am honored." And the European thought at last he was in clover. He explained that he should want his breakfast at 6:00 a.m., and that the servant's duties would be to cut grass for the horse, go to the market to buy provisions, feed on the premises, and leave for home to sleep at 7:00 p.m. The Shan opened a large mouth; then he spoke. He would be pleased, he said, to come to work about nine o'clock; that he had several marriageable daughters still on his hands and could not therefore, and would not, cut grass; he objected going to the market in the extreme heat of the day; he could not think of eating the foreigner's food; and would go home to feed at 1:00 p.m. and leave again finally at 5:00 p.m. for the same purpose. He left before five p.m. Another man was called in. He was quite cheery, and came in and out and did what he pleased. On being asked what he would require as salary, he replied, "Oh, give me a rupee every market day, and that'll do me." The person was not in service when market day rolled round, and I hear that this European, who loves experiments of this kind, has gone back to the Chinese.
Chiu-Ch'eng (Kang-gnai) was going through a sort of New Year carousal as I entered the town, and everybody was garmented for the festival.
I had great difficulty in getting a place to stay. People allowed me to career about in search of a room, treating me with courteous indifference, but none offered to house me. At last the headman of the village appeared, and with many kindly expressions of unintelligibility led me to his house. A crowd had gathered in the street, and several women were taking from the front room the general stock-in-trade of the village ironmonger. Scores of huge iron cooking pans were being passed through the window, tables were pushed noisily through the doorway, primitive cooking appliances were being hurled about in the air, bamboo baskets came out by the dozen, and there was much else. Bags of paddy, old chairs (the low stool of the Shan, with a thirty-inch back), drawers of copper cash, brooms, a few old spears, pots of pork fat, barrels of wine (the same as I had blistered the foot of a pony with), two or three old p'u-kai, worn-out clothes, disused ladies' shoes, babies' gear, and last of all the man himself appeared. Men and women set to to clean up, an old woman clasped me to her bosom, and I was bidden to enter. New Year festivities were for the nonce neglected for the novel delight of gazing upon the inner domesticity of this traveling wonder, into his very holy of holies. I received nine invitations to dinner. I dined with mine host and his six sons.
Through the heavy evening murk a dull clangor stirred the air—the tolling of shrill bells and the beating of dull gongs, and all the hideous paraphernalia of Eastern celebrations. The populace—Shan almost to a man—were bent on seeing me, a task rendered difficult by the gathering darkness of night. Soldiers guarded the way, and there were several broken heads. They came, stared and wondered, and then passed away for others to come in shoals, laughingly, and seeming no longer to harbor the hostile feelings apparent as I entered the town.
My shaving magnifier amused them wonderfully.
There was an outcry as I entered the room after we had dined, followed by a scream of women in almost hysterical laughter. When they caught sight of me, however, a brief pause ensued, and the solemn hush, that even in a callous crowd invariably attends the actual presence of a long-awaited personage, reigned unbroken for a while; then one spoke, then another ventured to address me, and the spell of silence gave way to noise and general excitability, and the people began speedily to close upon me, anxious to get a glimpse of such a peculiar white man. Later on, when the shutters were up and the public thus kept off, the family foregathered unasked into my room, bringing with them their own tea and nuts, and laying themselves out to be entertained. My whole gear, now reduced to most meager proportions, was scrutinized by all. There were four men and five women, the usual offshoots, and the aged couple who held proprietary rights over the place. They sat on my bed, on my boxes; one of the children sat on my knee, and the ladies, seemingly of the easiest virtue, overhauled my bedclothes unblushingly. The murmuring noise of the vast expectant New Year multitude died off gradually, like the retreating surge of a distant sea, and the hot motionless atmosphere in my room, with eleven people stepping on one another's toes in the cramped area, became more and more weightily intensified. The husband of one of the women—a miserable, emaciated specimen for a Shan—came forward, asking whether I could cure his disease. I fear he will never be cured. His arm and one side of his body was one mass of sores. Before it could be seen four layers of Chinese paper had to be removed, one huge plantain leaf, and a thick layer of black stuff resembling tar. I was busy for some thirty minutes dressing it with new bandages. I then gave him ointment for subsequent dressings, whereupon he put on his coat and walked out of the room (leaving the door open as he went) without even a word of gratitude.
The Chinese pride themselves upon their gratitude. It is vigorous towards the dead and perhaps towards the emperor (although this may be doubted), but as a grace of daily life it is almost absent. I have known cases where missionaries have got up in the middle of the night to attend to poisoning cases and accidents requiring urgent treatment, have known them to attend to people at great distances from their own homes and make them better; but never a word of thanks—not even the mere pittance charged for the actual cost of medicine.
FOOTNOTES:
[BD]
The Chinese name for the Shan.
The Chinese name for the Shan.
[BE]
VideYün-nan, the Link between India and the Yangtze,by Major H.R. Davies.—Cambridge University Press.
VideYün-nan, the Link between India and the Yangtze,by Major H.R. Davies.—Cambridge University Press.
Two days from Burma.Tropical wildness induces ennui.The River Taping.At Hsiao Singai.Possibility of West China as a holiday resort from Burma.Fascination of the country.Manyüen reached with difficulty.The Kachins.Good work of the American Baptist Mission.Mr. Roberts.Arrival at borderland of Burma.Last dealings with Chinese officials.British territory.Thoughts on the trend of progress in China.Beautiful Burma.End of long journey.
I was now two days' march from the British Burma border. The landscape in this district was solemn and imposing as I trudged on again, very tired indeed, after a day's rest at Chiu-ch'eng. In the morning heavy tropical vapors of milky whiteness stretched over the sky and the earth. Nature seemed sleeping, as if wrapped in a light veil. It attracted me and absorbed me, dreaming, in spite of myself; ennui invaded me at first, and under the all-powerful constraint of influences so fatal to human personality thought died away by degrees like a flame in a vacuum; for I was again in the East, the real, luxurious, indolent East, the true land of Pantheism, and one must go there to realize the indefinable sensations which almost make the Nirvana of the Buddhist comprehensible.
The river Taping farther down, so different from its aspect a couple of days ago, where it rushed at a tremendous speed over its rocky bed, was now broad and calm and placid, and extremely picturesque. The banks were covered with trees beyond Manyüen. Near the water the undergrowth was of a fine green, but on a higher level the yellow and red leaves, hardly holding on to the withered trees, were carried away with the slightest breath of wind.
At Hsiao Singai, on February 15th, I again had difficulty in getting a room; so I waited, and whilst my men searched about for a place where I could sleep, an extremely tall fellow came up to me, and having felt with his finger and thumb the texture of my tweeds and expressed satisfaction thereof, said—
"Come, elder brother, I have my dwelling in this hostelry, and my upper chamber is at your disposal." And then he added with a twinkle in his eye, "Ko nien, ko nien,"[BF]whereat I became wary.
Lao Chang, however, was more cute. Whilst I was assuring this well-dressed holiday-maker that he must not think the stranger churlish in not accepting at once the proffered services, but that I would go to look at the room, he sprang past us and went on ahead. In a few moments I was slowly going hence with the multitude. Lao Chang nodded carelessly to the strange company there assembled, and passing through the room with a soft, cat-like tread, began to ascend a dark flight of narrow stairs leading to the second floor of the inn. And I, down below startled and bewildered by mysterious words from everyone, watched his blue garments vanishing upwards, and like a man driven by irresistible necessity, muttered incoherent excuses to my amazed companions, and in a blind, unreasoning, unconquerable impulse rushed after him. But I wish I had not. There were several ladies, who, all more or lessen déshabille, scampered around with their bundles of gear—sewing, babies' clothes, tin pots, hair ornaments, boxes of powder and scented soap of that finest quality imported from Burma, selling for less than you can buy the genuine article for in London!—and then we took possession.
If once there is a railway to Tengyueh from Burma, a visit to West China, even on to Tali-fu, for those who are prepared to rough it a little, will become quite a common trip. A few days up the Irawadi to Bhamo, through scenery of a peculiar kind of beauty eclipsed on none other of the world's great rivers, would be succeeded by a day or two over some of the best country which Upper Burma anywhere affords, and then, when once past Tengyueh, the grandeur of the mountains is amply compensating to those who love Nature in her beautiful isolation and peace. From a recuperating standpoint, perhaps, it would not quite answer—the rains would be a drawback to road travel, and it would at best mean roughing it; but for the many in Burma who wish to take a holiday and have not the time to go to Europe, I see no reason why Tengyueh should not develop into what Darjeeling is to Calcutta and what Japan is to the British ports farther East. Expense would not be heavy. To Bhamo would be easy. As things now stand, with no railway, one would need to take a few provisions and cooking utensils, and a camp bed and tent, unless one would be prepared to do as the author did, and patronize Chinese inns, such as they are. The rest would be easy to get on the road. For three days from Bhamo dâk bungalows are available, and to a man knowing the country it would be an easy matter to arrange his comforts. To one who knows the conditions, there is in the trip a good deal to fascinate; for in the lives and customs of the people, in the nature of the country, in the free-and-easy life the traveler would himself develop—having a peep at things as they were back in the ancient days of the Bible—to the brain-fagged professional or commercial there is nothing better in the whole of the East.
He would get some excellent shooting, especially in the Salwen Valley, not exactly a health resort, however; and had he inclinations towards botanical, ethnological, craniological, or philological studies, he would be at a loss to find anywhere in the world a more interesting area.
But a man should never leave the "ta lu" (the main road) in China if he would experience the minimum of discomfort and annoyance, which under best conditions is considerable to an irritable man. As I sit down now, on the very spot where Margary, of the British Consulate Service was murdered in 1875, I regret that I have sacrificed a great deal to secure most of the photographs which decorate this section of my book. No one, not even my military escort, knows the way, and is being sworn at by my men therefor. How I am to reach Man Hsien, across the river at Taping, I do not quite know. Manyüen, so interesting in history, is a native Shan-Kachino-Chinese town untouched by the years—slovenly, dirty, undisciplined, immoral, where law and order and civilization have gained at best but a precarious foothold, the most characteristic feature of the people being the gambler's instinct. But I remember that I am coming into Burma, into the real East, where the tangle and the topsy-turvydom, the crooked vision and the distorted travesty of the truth, which result from judging the Oriental from the standpoint of the Europeans and looking at the East through the eyes of the West, impress themselves upon one's mind in bewildering fashion as a hopeless problem. Everything is all at cross purposes.
However, although I lost my way from Manyüen to Man Hsien, I got my photographs of Kachins, those people whose appearance is that they have no one to care for them body or soul. Their thick, uncombed locks, so long and lank as to resemble deck swabs, overlapped roofwise the ugliest aboriginal faces I ever saw in Asia or America, and their eyes under shaggy brows looked out with diabolical fire.
So much information is to be obtained from theUpper Burma Gazetteerabout the Kachins that it is needless for me to write much here, especially as I can add nothing. But I feel I should like to say just a word of praise of the remarkable work of the American Baptist Mission, which has its headquarters at Bhamo, among this tribe in Burma. At the time I arrived in the city the annual festival was being conducted at the Baptist Church, and hundreds of Kachins were assembled in the splendid premises of this mission. They had come from many miles around; and to one who at previous times in his residence in the Far East had written disparagingly about missionaries and their work, there came some little personal shame as he looked upon the extremely creditable work of the American missionaries in this district. Kachins are a somewhat uncivilized and quarrelsome race, unspeakably immoral, and steeped in every vice against which the Christian missionary has to set his face—a most difficult people to work among. But there I saw scores and scores of baptized Christians living a life clean and ennobling, endeavoring honestly to break away from their degrading customs of centuries, some of them exceedingly intelligent people.
I speak of this because I feel that in the face of untruthful and malicious descriptions which in former years have got into print respecting this very mission and the very missionaries on this field, it is only fair that people in the homeland interested in the work should know what their American brethren are doing here. I cannot praise too highly this mission and the enthusiastic band of workers whom it was my pleasure to meet. In Mr. Roberts, the superintendent of the field, the American Baptist Board have a man of wonderful resource, who is not only an ardent Christian evangelist and capable administrator, but a gentleman of considerable business ability and a remarkable organizer. A writer who, passing through in 1894, was indebted to Mr. Roberts for many kindnesses, found that the only adverse criticism he could make of the missionary was in respect to his knowledge of horses. My experience is that in the whole of the Far East there can be found no more capable pioneer missionary, and his friends in America should pray that Mr. Roberts may be spared many years still to control the work on the successful mission field in which he has spent so much of his labor of love for the Kachins.
Kachins form the bulk of the population in the extreme north of Burma. To the west they extend to Assam, and to the south into the Shan States, as far even as latitude 20° 30'. By far the largest proportion of them live in Burmese territory, but they also extend into Western Yün-nan, though nowhere are they found farther east than longitude 99°.
Man Hsien is the last yamen place before reaching the British border. I crossed the river Taping from Manyüen, being shown the road by a Burmese member of the Buddhistic yellow cloth, who was most pressing that I should stay with him for a few days. Again did I get a fright that my manuscript would never get into print, for my pony, Rusty, probably cognizant of the fact that he, too, was finishing his long tramp, nearly stamped the bottom of the boat out, and threatened to send us down by river past Bhamo quicker than our arrival was scheduled.
The large official paper given to one's military escort from point to point was here produced for the last time, and great ado was made about me. Reading this document aloud from the top of the steps, when he came to my name the mandarin bowed very low, called me Ding Daren[BG](a sign of highest respect), asked if I would exchange cards, and then lapsed unconsciously into profuse congratulation to myself that I should have been born an Englishman. So far as he knew, I could be assured that the existing relations between the administrative bodies of his contemptible country and my own royal land were of a nature so felicitously mutual and peaceful—in fact, both Governments saw eye to eye in regard to international affairs in Far Western China—that he felt sure that I should arrive at the bridge leading into Burma without personal harm. He then, with a colossal bow to myself and a gentle wave of his three-inch finger-nail, handed me over with pungent emphasis of speech to the keeping of a Chinese and a Shan, who with a keen sense of favors to come were to form my escort to Burma's border.
A low grunt of unrestrained approval came from the multitude. The underlings—Chino-Kachino-Burmo-Shan people—who ran about in a little of each of the clothing characteristic of the four said races, were all busy in their endeavors to extricate from me a few cash apiece by doing all and more than was necessary.
Then the great man rose. He condescended to depart. He passed from the threshold, turned, paused, bowed, turned again, went down the steps, bowed again—a long curving bow, which nearly sent him to the ground—and then continued with a light heart towards that loveliest land of the East. My men exhibited no emotion. That they were coming into British territory was of no concern to them; they had come from far away in the interior, and were the greenest of the green, the rawest of the raw.
But soon I passed over a small bridge, a spot where two great empires meet. I was in Burma.
So I have crossed from one end of China to the other. I entered China on March 4th, 1909; I came out on February 14th, 1910.
I had come to see how far the modern spirit had penetrated into the hidden recesses of the Chinese Empire. One may be little given to philosophizing, and possess but scanty skill in putting into words the conclusions which form themselves in one's mind, but it is impossible to cross China entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of propulsion from within, but produced, on the contrary, by artificial means, in bitter conflict with inherent instincts, inherited traditions, innate tendencies, characteristics, and genius, racial and individual. In the eyes of the Chinese of the old school these changes in the habit of life infinitely old are improving nothing and ruining much—all is empty, vapid, useless to God and man. The tawdry shell, the valueless husk, of ancient Chinese life is here still, remains untouched in many places, as will have been seen in previous chapters; but the soul within is steadily and surely, if slowly, undergoing a process of final atrophy. But yet the proper opening-up of the country by internal reform and not by external pressure has as yet hardly commenced in immense areas of the Empire far removed from the imperial city of Peking. And the mere fact that the Chinese propose such an absurd program as that which plans the building of all their railways without the aid of foreign capital is sufficient to react in an unwholesome manner economically.[BH][BI]
I cannot but admit that, whilst in most parts of my journey there are distinct traces of reform—I speak, of course, of the outlying parts of China—and some very striking traces, too, and a real longing on the part of far-seeing officials to escape from a humiliating international position, it is distinctly apparent that in everything which concerns Europe and the Western world the people and the officials as a whole are of one mind in the methods of procrastination which are so dear to the heart of the Celestial, and that peculiar opposition to Europeanism which has marked the real East since the beginning of modern history.
And now lovely, lovely Burma!
I had not been in Burma two minutes before the very box containing the clothes into which I must change before I could enter into the social life of Bhamo swung from the broken pole of one of my coolies, and rolled rapidly towards the river. It was recovered after great trouble.
Thick jungle land lay out before me, fleecy clouds in the dense blue sky hung lazily over the green hills, the heavy air was pregnant with that delicious ease known only in the tropics—all was still and sweet. The river flowed grandly from the interior through magnificent forest country, receiving on either shore the frequent tribute of other minor streams, and its banks were marvelous cliffs of jungle—tangles of giant trees on crowding underwood, clinging vine and festooning parasite—rising sheer from the water's brink. Now long clusters of villages, deep in the shade of palm and fruit trees; now wide expanses of grass-grown meadow, where the grazing grounds dip to the river, and where the only echoes of China are the resting pack-horse caravans—the banks cut into huge trampled clefts by the passage of the kine trooping down to drink. Occasional wooded islands broke the monotony of the river, and were just discernible from the magnificent English roads which skirted the hills high up from the river, and yellow sandspits and big wedges of granite and rock ran far out into its uneven course. By day the joyous Burma sun smiled upon all, and at midday poured its merciless heat down upon all mankind, unheeding the weary wanderer whose tramp was now near done. At night the tropical moon turned all this riverine world to the likeness of a very fairyland. Lying in a long chair in the dâk bungalows one drank in the scenes which succeeded one another in bewildering succession, and felt himself thrilled by an almost fierce appreciation of eastern beauty. It was good to meet again an Englishman, a sturdy, firm-featured Englishman, whose love of the East, like mine own, was a veritable obsession. The sun glare of the tropics had parched the color out of our white skin, and despite the fact that malaria came back again here to taunt me, yet I was again in the East that I loved, that had scarred and marked me ere my time mayhap. And yet I, with many such of my own countrymen, despite her rough handling, worship her.
In three days I was in Bhamo.
FOOTNOTES: