The threep’ai-lousof Hsi Ling, the Western Tombs
The threep’ai-lousof Hsi Ling, the Western Tombs
The threep’ai-lousof Hsi Ling, the Western Tombs
In Shansi four men often work at as many windlasses over a single well to irrigate the fields
In Shansi four men often work at as many windlasses over a single well to irrigate the fields
In Shansi four men often work at as many windlasses over a single well to irrigate the fields
Prisoners grinding grain in the “model prison” of Taiyüan
Prisoners grinding grain in the “model prison” of Taiyüan
Prisoners grinding grain in the “model prison” of Taiyüan
That would have been the end of the matter if Peking had not notified Jehol that the honorable investigator was coming. When I arrived, therefore, long after my mind had purged itself of any thought of my putative official capacity, I was startled to find that Jehol insisted on taking me seriously, even in the face of the scantiness of my wardrobe and the donkeyness of my escort. A day or two before, the official Chinese investigator also had come, by the direct route, with a fat English-speaking secretary and suitable retinue, inchaotzegay with red pompoms between mules important with jingling bells. He would remain a month or so, though also taking care not to be caught by the inhospitable poppy-growing peasants or their military beneficiaries and protectors up in the hills. We could both make our reports just as well without risking our lives, without ever coming to China, for that matter, so far as any real results through the League of Nations is concerned, so long as one of the nations bulking largest in that league continues to supply China with opium from her principal colony by a roundabout, oval-eyed route, though every poppy-plant in the erstwhile Middle Kingdom were uprooted.
But there is centuries-old precedent for feasting all “censors” or special investigators sent out from Peking, and this serious part of the affair Jehol did not overlook. My distinguished Chinese colleague and I had already met across the board before blood-red invitations a foot long confirmed the verbal rumor that we were to be honored with a feast by the “Tartar General” himself. Delightful little Mi Ta-shuai, with his chin-tickling mustache-ends and the inherent good nature that bubbles out even through his formal demeanor, is no more a Tartar than I am a Turk; he is an exact picture of a Chinese mandarin of the T’ang dynasty, in somewhat modernized garb. But the ruler of the special extramural district of Jehol has borne that title for centuries, just as his troops continue to be considered the nativeI-Chün, though they come chiefly now from Anhwei and Honan. Three of the four brand-new rickshaws that had just introduced that innovation into Jehol delivered the three male foreigners in town at the gate of honor of the former summer palace, more jolted than seriously hurt after all, and the eight or ten most distinguished Chinese officials joined us in one of the score of long low buildings through which the entrance to almost any yamen of importance stretches on and on, like a half-lighted tunnel.
The feast—but why go into unnecessary details? A Chinese feast is just what the name implies, with variations of no importance according to the latitude and the ability of the feaster’s cooks to give it such hints of foreign ways as their master may be able to specify. Suffice it to say that we gathered soon after four in the afternoon and were gone again by seven, that much more food was carried out again than was consumed by a company that did not rise needing a bedtime snack, and that I had no assistance whatever from the other two representatives of the Western world in replying to the toasts that were incessantlypoured into our slender glasses, though they hailed respectively from Ireland and Scotland. There were several men worth talking with in the general’s suite, too, and all in all my official capacity was more endurable than it might have been suspected as we jolted homeward between unbroken lines of peering yellow faces eager for a closer glimpse of Jehol’s distinguished foreign guest.
The “Tartar General” insisted on sending two mounted troopers of theI-Chünwith me on the way back to Peking. There was something in the bandit stories, it seemed, and though they were operating well to the north, the scent of a possible foreign hostage might give their legs double speed. No doubt the general knew as well as I that two lone Chinese soldiers, even of his unusually soldierlyI-Chün, would be more likely to add two rifles to the arsenal of any respectable gang of brigands than to protect me from them, and he certainly knew that such escorts expect to live on the traveler’s bounty for at least twice as many days as they accompany him; but it would have been unseemly, of course, to let a special agent of the League of Nations, nebulous as that body may be to the mind of a Chinese militarist, depart without suitable honors.
The best way back to Peking would have been to float down the Lwan Ho, with its striking cliffs and gorges, to the railway, well north of Tientsin. But low waters made this trip uncertain, and boatmen were too busy with grain to give a lone traveler much attention. I turned regretfully back, therefore, along the direct main route, worn with centuries of travel, by the feet of man and his beasts, though never aided by his hands. The scent of lilacs, white and of the more usual color, filled the air as we left the city. Inconspicuous on the white donkey or on foot beside the troopers astride good horses and beneath their big straw hats, I scarcely caught the eye of travelers drowsing in the mule-litters that passed so often, to say nothing of attracting bandits out of the north. We crossed two passes and forded the Lwan Ho on the first day and on the morning of the second sighted a high cragged range stretching from infinity to infinity across the horizon ahead, with little unnatural-looking promontories, like knobs on a casting, dotting it at frequent intervals. They were the towers of the Great Wall, it turned out, climbing like a chamois from one lofty peak to another, but it was blazing noon before we passed through it at the much-walled town of Kupehkow. Coolies carrying down to Jehol brushwood and even roots had passed us all the first day; naked children were everywhere;men, and once or twice, unless my eyes deceived me, women, stripped to the waist toiled in the dry fields, sometimes waded knee-deep in the liquid mud of little patches that in another month would be pale green with rice. Graves grew numerous again inside the Great Wall; half-ruinedyentai, “smoke-platforms” from the tops of which news was sent from the capital in olden days, towered above us at regular intervals; the peddlers of fluffy chicks and coolies carrying green onions to market once more appeared; and the caricature of a road became almost a procession of travelers in both directions.
It was an atrocious road nearly all the way, plodding along sandy, stony river-beds except where it clambered laboriously over another mountain ridge, the sun beating ruthlessly down upon us from its rising to its setting. Babies with shaved heads apparently impervious to its rays rooted in the dirt with the black pigs, or stood on sturdy legs suckling even more soil-incrusted mothers. There ought to be very few weeds in China; the whole family is incessantly after them, just as every usable form of filth is promptly gathered. The most common sight in China is of men and boys, sometimes women and girls, wandering the roads and trails with a fork or shovel with which to toss the droppings of animals into a basket over their shoulders, whence it will later be spread on the fields. Each night we put into an inn-yard, where the best available room was quickly assigned me; my cot and a foot-high table were set on the oiled cloth with which I covered thek’ang, and after as nearly a bath as can be had in a basin of hot water there was nothing left to do but to wait patiently for whatever supper my not too adaptable “boy” chose to serve me. The escort had reduced itself to one soldier at the first relief, and at noon on the third day it disappeared entirely. At length the stony sand changed to the fertile plain of Peking, though the road was nothing to boast of up to the last, and while rain and two splittings of my little party at forks of the route all but spoiled my schedule, the afternoon of the fourth day saw us filing through one of the eastern gates of the Tartar City.