A few of the 508 Buddhas in one of the lama temples of Jehol
A few of the 508 Buddhas in one of the lama temples of Jehol
A few of the 508 Buddhas in one of the lama temples of Jehol
The youngest, but most important—since she has borne him a son—of the wives of a Manchu chief of one of the tomb-tending towns of Tung Ling
The youngest, but most important—since she has borne him a son—of the wives of a Manchu chief of one of the tomb-tending towns of Tung Ling
The youngest, but most important—since she has borne him a son—of the wives of a Manchu chief of one of the tomb-tending towns of Tung Ling
Interior of the notorious Empress Dowager’s tomb at Tung Ling, with her cloth-covered chair of state and colors to dazzle the stoutest eye
Interior of the notorious Empress Dowager’s tomb at Tung Ling, with her cloth-covered chair of state and colors to dazzle the stoutest eye
Interior of the notorious Empress Dowager’s tomb at Tung Ling, with her cloth-covered chair of state and colors to dazzle the stoutest eye
The Potalá of Jehol, said to be a copy, even in details, of that of Lhasa; the windows are false and the great building at the top is merely a roofless one enclosing the chief temple
The Potalá of Jehol, said to be a copy, even in details, of that of Lhasa; the windows are false and the great building at the top is merely a roofless one enclosing the chief temple
The Potalá of Jehol, said to be a copy, even in details, of that of Lhasa; the windows are false and the great building at the top is merely a roofless one enclosing the chief temple
Long before the end of the journey the traveler is reminded that Shansi is one of the world’s greatest deposits of coal, perhaps of iron. From the train could be seen coal-mines, mere surface diggings, but producing splendid anthracite in big chunks large as a strong man could lift. One of these broken in two made a donkey-load, two gave a mule his quota, and long trains of these animals picked their ways down the treeless defiles. Here and there a string of coolies, each with a lump of coal on his back, trailed over the steeper hills. A European who made a diligent investigation of the question reported that the province of Shansi alone has coal enough to supply the world for a thousand years. Thus far it has scarcely begun to be exploited, in the real sense of the word, like so many of the great natural resources, other than agricultural, of China. For one thing, some of the old superstitions that made delving in the earth so unpopular still prevail. Evil spirits guarding these hidden treasures will wreak vengeance on the men who dare to disturb them—and, what is worse, on the entire community. Dragons are still known to spit death-dealing fire upon those who dig too deeply for coal; in other words, there have been cases of fire-damp explosions. According to popular Chinese fancy, dragons, snakes, and tortoises produce pearls, and many of the miners themselves still think that coal will grow again in an empty shaft within thirty years, and iron and gold in longer periods.
We came out in mid-afternoon upon the broad plain of Shansi, “West of the Mountains,” two or three thousand feet above sea-level and thickly dotted everywhere with toiling peasants. Here the windlassing of water for irrigation again seemed to be the chief occupation, and this time there were often four men at as many handles over a single well-drum. Yütze swarmed with travelers, for there nearly all the traffic for the south of the province leaves the train, or enters it to return to the capital, toward which the railroad turns as much north as westward. Less than an hour later the twin pagodas of Taiyüanfu rose close at hand on the ridged landscape, and we were set down well outside the walls of the Shansi capital.
The police stopped every traveler at the city gate to ask his name, his errand, and other pertinent questions. But there was a courteous atmosphere about the interrogatory which made it seem the precaution of a careful ruler rather than the espionage of a tyrant. Inside, thestreets were on the whole in better condition, modern improvements in general more numerous, than in most provincial capitals. Yet somehow this was not yet the model city much hearing about it had caused the imagination to picture. The pace of life, too, was noticeably slow, surprisingly so for the capital of one of China’s most important provinces, almost the cradle of the Chinese race and for centuries the home of its great bankers. What was perhaps most exasperating of all to the passing traveler was to find the rickshaw-men the poorest in China, so slow and so untrained for their tasks that it was almost faster and certainly more comfortable to walk. Possibly the altitude of nearly three thousand feet was the explanation, though not the excuse, of their snail-like habits, and their awkwardness could be largely due to the fact that many of them are peasants from the surrounding villages who make rickshaw-pulling a slack-time avocation instead of a profession. But the impression survived that they were merely outstanding examples of the provincial leisureliness of life back here behind the mountains. Residents did not seem to realize that their rickshaw-runners resemble lame turtles, any more than they were aware of the incessant unnecessary racket they create. Custom or some local ordinance has fitted the right shaft of all Taiyüan rickshaws with a kind of automobile horn, and not merely do the runners blow these beyond all reason when in action but amuse themselves like the adult children they are by constant honking while waiting or wandering for fares, so that night and day are an unbroken charivari.
Taiyüan—its name means “great plain,” and the “fu” so often tacked on to the names of second-grade Chinese cities is as out-of-date now as the word “yamen,” though both survive in popular speech—and the province it governs still retain some of the traits and customs of olden times, long ago abandoned, if not forgotten, in other provinces. Though there is a good modern police force, night-watchmen of the old régime go their rounds every two hours beating a gong to warn thieves of their coming. Surely the origin of this aged custom, whatever tradition may allege, is rooted in the inherent timidity, not to call it cowardice, of the Chinese. Pushed beyond a certain point they can die more easily than Westerners; but the fear of a mere slap, the sight of a stick that would not frighten a normal American boy, is terrifying to the great mass of them. Naturally the night-watchman would rather warn the thieves to move on, or to lay aside their activities until he has passed, than to come to blows with them. A thousand Chinese staring fixedly with their little monkey-like eyes were likely to surroundthe foreigner who does, or has about him, anything suggestive of the unusual, though foreign residents are neither rare nor new. No one has ever succeeded in sounding the depths of Chinese curiosity. When I called inopportunely on the fellow-countryman who was destined to become my host in Taiyüan, he left a class of Y. M. C. A. students of university age, long used to foreigners and their ways, in charge of one of their number while he stepped out to have a word with me; and seven of the fifteen young men left the class and followed him down-stairs to see what he was doing.
The foreign atmosphere of Taiyüan is almost entirely British. Such American missionaries as work in this province are not stationed in the capital, and England assigned the indemnity exacted for the killing of a large group of her nationals here in Boxer days to education in the province, as we did for the whole country. For ten years Shansi youths were distributed among English universities and technical schools, and now that the preparatory school in which they were groomed for the journey has reverted to the Chinese and become the University of Taiyüan, there are many returned students among the faculty and in important official positions, some of them with English wives. The good and the trivial points of British university life came back with them. They seem to have lost, for instance, the Chinese virtue of early rising. Taiyüan labors under the handicap of three kinds of time,—“railway,” “gun,” and “university” time. The last is considerably slower than either the station clock or the governor’s noon-gun, and rumor has it that it gradually became so because the curriculum included a number of eight-o’clock classes which certain of the most influential faculty members could never quite reach.
Yen Hsi-shan, both military and civil governor of Shansi, is known in China as the “model governor.” The mere fact that he has held his position ever since the revolution, while the rest of the country has been like a seething mass, a boiling kettle, of officials of all grades, in which the scum has all too often come to the top, is enough to have given him that title. But he has done more than that to warrant it. Under his rule a number of motor roads have radiated from the capital, and now carry a considerable motor-bus traffic. It is true that these roads are largely due to American famine relief funds under missionary management, and that the principal highway runs about two hundredlinorthward exactly to the governor’s native village. But they are unusually well kept roads for China, with guards enough to keep thesharp-wheeled carts off them, and a species ofpeon camineroat regular distances whose permanent task it is to keep them in repair. Besides, a branch of that north road goes on, as a kind of afterthought, to a gate of the inner Great Wall, which crosses northern Shansi. Governor Yen has done much toward the establishment of village schools, with the accent wisely on primary and general instead of higher and class education; he has made a certain amount of schooling compulsory for both sexes, though even he would scarcely assert that such an innovation is already effective throughout the province, for after all Shansi is still China. He has actually and visibly taken the beggars off the streets of Taiyüan; and has established a school of trades for them. He has improved outdoor recreation facilities for the people, and has had erected in conspicuous places about town, and in the province, long boards bearing the thousand characters which he thinks every one should learn to read and, if possible, to write. Bandits have been unknown in Shansi for years; the opium which it used to grow more widely than any other province has almost if not completely disappeared. Both these curses of China have been chased over the provincial boundaries. Taiyüan boasts a beginning of an opium-consumers’ refuge, with free keep and treatment for the indigent. Just beyond it, to be sure, there is what the Japanese call ayoshiwara, an officially protected restricted district two by four blocks large, with five hundred women; but every one of the identical courtyards within is in a condition to suggest unusually good sanitary conditions, and a high wall surrounds the entire district, so that no one can be in doubt as to what he is entering. The governor, by the way, was a student in Japan for four years, and both he and his policies bear various reminders of that fact.