Part 34

Wuhu, on the Yangtze, half-way up to Hankau, is recovering from the blow dealt it by the Taipings in the 60’s. It will take a prominent place in the coming industrial China because of riches in land, mine, silk, tea and bamboo near it. It is one of the new strongholds in education and medicine under American and European auspices. It has a foreign colony in the hills. The Hwangchi River brings grain and produce down to its marts, and the great Yangtze sweeps by its harbor bund. Game, such as pheasant, quail and duck, abounds. There are very fine pagodas, and in particular a Buddhist rock temple with the figures of men, animals and birds cut solidly out of, or in relief on the solid rock, the shrubbery and grass serving for hair and beard in a startling way. Excursions can be made to the Chin Shan and San Shan hills, temples, lily lakes and flowery restaurants. The town is full of the festival spirit, and the beauty of lanterns, arches, flags and matting shelter is often delightfully exhibited. Wuhu early went over to the rebel movement of October, 1911. Wuhu is a great sufferer from floods. They were so deep in August, 1911, that Lion Hill became an island. The Yangtze, instead of mounting willingly up to Nanking, tries at Wuhu to break across country for Shanghai. The result is deplorable flood and resultant famine, involving millions of people.

Tai Yuen is the walled capital of the great coal, iron and loess province of Shansi, which is as large as England. It is the richest in minerals of all the provinces. The famous Ping Ting coal and iron mines are near. The city lies in a great plain 3,000 feet above the sea on the Fen River, and has railway connection with Peking and all the east and south. It is to have connection with the capital of Kansu province, and all the great northwest for thousands of miles. Mills will arise, for stone, clay, iron and coal are available in this province as nowhere else. Though the air of the city is exhilarating and there is little consumption, skin diseases and diseases due to poor water are prevalent. With irrigation in operation, fertilization of this loess province would be unnecessary, so that Tai Yuen will yet be a great wheat and millet center. Her grain, stock and wool merchants will be taking contracts to feed and clothe America and Britain when our fields are impoverished and overrun with people. It will be a financial center, for Shansi’s wealth in China’s new industrial era can not be computed. Even now the Shansi bankers are the best known, their guild houses being in every city of the land. The railway, electric light, post, telegraph and telephone have arrived, and so has the printing press, raying out reform. The railway has brought progress to quaint Tai Yuen. There are match factories, police department, a public band, modern schools of all sorts, an agricultural and military school, modern roads and a street-cleaning department, a modern jail which aims to teach instead of confirming in despair. Confucius fled here to the Wei State, when his own state persecuted him, and this province is the home of the original clan of Chinese, the Chou, who instituted ancestor worship and the rule of princes at the beginning of history. The great Shansi University was established here in 1901 by the British with indemnity funds restored to the Chinese at the request of British missions, which was a singularly Samaritan act; for on July 9, 1900, at the yamen in Tai Yuen, all the missionaries, their wives and children, were put to a brutal death by the infamous “Boxer,” the Luciferian brute, Governor Yu Hsien, whose name is hated by the progressive Chinese as much as we hate it, and the Manchu officials who took their “tip” from the dowager empress, Tse Hsi. Doctor Timothy Richard, promoter of the successful Red Cross in China, was the first president of this institution, and W. E. Soothill was its second president. Both these gentlemen lead in Britain’s educational influence in China. English, of course, is taught. Like all the northern cities, Tai Yuen is cursed in fall with the penetrating loess and sand-storms. The blue-roofed and blue-walled Temple of Heaven is beautiful, with its magnificent eaves, carved terminals, colored frieze, columns, statues, scrolls, paintings and theater. There are also Confucian, Manchu-Fox, Buddhist and Taoist temples and pagodas, and a Mohammedan mosque, for this is the first city, going west, where we meet this last sect, whose sphere extends right on to the far northwest. There is a notable four-storied fort over the Romanesque south gate.

The Manchus have their own Tartar or military city, which will now become the administrative headquarters. Many furs are brought down from the Mohammedan and Mongolian plains in the west and north. There are mission schools and hospitals, a military parade ground, and an arsenal. The twin pagodas of thirteen stories, with narrow galleries, are famous. The pailoo memorial arches are distinct from the open southern type, the Shansi type being a solid top-heavy tower. More ponies are to be seen here than in most of the cities, and the horsemanship of the Mongols is daring, as we should expect from the descendants of Kublai Khan’s hordes, whom Marco Polo praised in that famous memorial that was dictated in a prison of Europe more terrible to him than all the dangers of Far Cathay.

Yunnan, the capital of the great copper and tin province, is five hundred miles from the Gulf of Tonquin, with which a French narrow gage railway, completed at awful cost of men and money, now connects it. The city is in a plain five thousand feet high, at the foot of the Tibetan Mountains. A great lake, the Tanklu, near by, is connected by canal with the city. It is the center of a warmer art than the other provinces, the architecture showing the elaborate Burmese influence, which relies on ornament and color more than line and proportion. Some of the pagodas are square, peculiar to Yunnan, and have nine to thirteen stories, and galleries, as compared with seven to nine stories elsewhere. The gate forts are ornate, though the roofs do not curl up as fantastically and richly as in the east of China. The British and French are fighting it out for chief foreign influence, with the latter ahead as yet, because the railway from Mandalay has not been run through. There are fine French stores where you can purchase madame’s millinery, confection or perfumery, a French hospital and a palatial French consulate; but the Chinese have far greater trust in the Americans and British, for French designs on Chinese territory are feared. Yunnan does not want to follow Tonquin. There are many Mohammedans, and their round mosque towers are in evidence.

Great rebellions and massacres have occurred, as in those bloody years 1857–73 when General Tsen made a name for ruthlessness which still strikes terror throughout China. The city, with a splendid division of the modern army, went over to the rebels on November 3, 1911. Outside the walls are two interesting temples. The Golden Heaven Temple is in the northeastern hills. Part of it is made of gilt copper, and shows Burmese influence. The stairs, terraces, openwork balustrades, tiling, roofs and scrolls are very fine. The Buddhist temple cut in the rock over the lake is a noble work, even extra niches being cut for the statues. It is not likely that this costly work will ever again be done in China, for “the god has lost his grip,” the devotee having found out that he was hollow! The bald monks are scratching their heads and thinking what new thing they can devise to bolster up the system. Many of them have gone in the hotel and teaching business! The flags of the temples have bells attached to them, and bells are hung under the eaves. Every breeze in Yunnan is laden with silver and gold, therefore. There are temples and shrines to the goddess Kwan Yun, who is said to give good luck to travelers. It is proper ritual to roll the prayer paper on your tongue, and in a ball shoot it toward the statue, where, if it sticks, it means fortune for you, as the goddess will certainly be unable to forget you. There are beautiful pavilions at the lake, and Yunnan can now be considered a health resort for Southern and French China. It is a center of engineering, and the headquarters of the inventors of the stone-and-chain suspension bridges which are peculiar to this province of gorges. The piers and pier houses are very artistic, and stand unique in the world’s architecture.

Yunnan has modern schools, colleges, hotels, hospitals; a mint, post-office and telegraph station; splendid modern barracks, a fine parade ground, etc. The university is a modern domed brick building on a hill in the center of the city. Its dormitories are lighted by electricity and the equipment is wonderful compared to what used to be. There is a museum, and English, Japanese, French, science, music, agriculture and sericulture are among the branches taught. The best trade school, however, is the modern jail, which is very popular! When you hire a mechanic in Yunnan you are reasonably sure that you have a former jailbird, just as in Peking, if you have a good clerk you are sure he is a Manchu prince incognito, for pensions have been stopped of late! One sees here the famous Yunnan yellow pigs, and peculiar white and black fowl, whose bones and skin are black, probably on account of iron and copper in what they eat. Boys are driving water buffaloes to the rice and maize fields, which have superseded the poppy plantations. The stores exhibit the famous jade and the Yunnan (Tali) landscape-veined marble which is used in the tops of tables, the seats of chairs and panels of cabinets and screens. Peculiar bamboo and paper toys in which the figures move by the heat of a candle, are made, which is another proof that the Chinese love children more than they are said to do in many books of travel! The city is famous for its copper and bronze work. The copper smelting by charcoal up to 1911 was an imperial government monopoly, the ingots being sent overland to Peking by pack animals, which took the route via Sui-fu and Chungking. At the Peking mint it was used in the heavy “cash” coinage. Yunnan is noted for its cloth dyers, who as yet use the famous indigo of the province, instead of analine dye. The tin, iron, pewter and furniture shops are noted, and foreign models are being copied with success.

The city is noted for its modern prison, with model workshops, the best in China. The police corps, uniformed in knee boots, tight tunics and German caps, and wearing swords, is a model gendarmerie. Yunnan, the farthest removed city of the empire from the capital, Peking, has been the foremost in these startling reforms since the French railway came through from the coast in 1910. Many Hongkong Chinese, who at once visited the place, are largely responsible for this reform leaven, but the chief credit is due to the progressive governor, Li Chin Hsi, who, remote as he was from headquarters, preserved order during the exciting months of 1911–12. In the streets the chair coolies rush along, with the right of way, shouting “Pei Ha” (We’ll poke you in the back). It was once the king town of opium, where a whole city walked for years in a sleep, but the government has largely stamped out both poppy field and opium joint. On the parade ground on a fall day of 1909, with military honors, the governor amusingly burned in public hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of opium and ivory pipes. On account of magnesian limestone and minerals in the water, awful-looking victims of goitre are constantly met. The poppy fields are now being used by a wide-awake people for the cultivation of mustard, rice, maize, sugar, banana, orange, pomegranates, bamboo, walnuts, etc.

Many peculiar races and varied costumes are to be seen in this Museum of Languages: Shans with high black head-dress and a red band across their foreheads; Mohammedans with green turbans; Lolos without queues and hair piled on the head like men who have a perpetual nightmare; Tibetan women driving their pack trains to their mountain home, the “Roof of the World,” and driving their husbands, too! Burmese with combs in their hair, though they are not women! Kilted Kachins, carrying their long, two-handed dha-swords on their shoulders, and their women wearing bamboo sticks through their ears and chains of river shells and colored stones on their necks; Annamese in gorgeous gold silk, embroidered as though they were on their way to claim a throne; daring, dirty Bhamo muleteers, who dare to be full of polyglot oaths, for they wear nothing worth throwing mud at; women riding ponies, donkeys and mules, and trying to evade the thrust of one another’s pin-filled hair as though they were on tourney; aboriginal Miaos and Lolos with figured yellow cloaks like circus clowns, and wide hats whose rims are stayed down to their shoulders with strings; French surveyors in white duck and kettle helmets, and exhausting themselves with the vivacious volubility that you listen to on Marseilles’ Cannabiere; British in khaki, Calcutta topey-helmets and putties, and as “cool as cucumbers” both in tongue and temperature, men who “get there”; yellow-gowned bonzes wondering where their religion has flown of late; black-gowned Roman priests and flat-hatted _frères_ of the Missions d’Etrangeres, wearing Chinese soutanes; gray-gowned Taoists who are satisfied with their incomes, because while religion has flown in China, superstition still sticks; blue-gowned Chinese; flame-robed Tibetan lamas; pink-gowned Buddhists, who are thinking of opening hotels instead of temples, in which latter there has been a “slump”; and occasionally an American in a Sabutan hat and a Shangtung silk suit, ready for anything, and showing the mood in his eyes and laughter.

The district is gorgeous with flowers, camellias, mustard, poppies, magnolia, indigo, olive, jasmine, and every kind of fern, bush and vine. Yunnan is rich in animals, including the tiger and black panther, and fine skins, and some ivory are to be obtained. Beautiful cranes and duck are to be seen on the lake. It is also rich in valuable lumber, and therefore its furniture stores are notable. Coal, iron, zinc, copper and salt are produced in abundance, and there is much gold, silver, nickel and quicksilver. The tin mines of Kuo Chia produce 13,000,000 pounds of tin a year. There are also beds of precious stones, rubies, garnets, sapphires, amethysts, etc. No district of the empire has so many varied metals as Yunnan. The many races keep the province more disjointed than any other. An authority on these aboriginal races is the British consul at Tongyueh, Yunnan, whose exhaustive articles have appeared in the London _Geographical Magazine_. In natural scenery Yunnan presents the most sublime panorama in the world.

Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, goes back to 1100 B. C., and ethnologically is very interesting, as these are the people of Confucius and Mencius, the descendants of the Tsi State of original China. The city, which is walled and moated, is quite beautiful with trees, springs, mosques, theaters and temples. There are hills all about, and inside the walls on the north a lake dotted with islands, on which memorial arches and temples have been erected. Communication with the sea is had by the famous Yellow River (“China’s Sorrow” of flood), and the Grand Canal is also in touch. The German railway gives connection with the east, and national railways are to run north, south and west. Fine glass and the famous colored vitreous crockery, called liu-li, are made here. The guild halls and jewelry shops on Kuan Ti and Fu Run Boulevards are very interesting. The mineral springs will doubtless gather sanatorium hotels. There is a girls’ school, a military school, an arsenal, and a modern native university in the suburbs, where English preferably and German are used in scientific studies, and peculiarly music is also studied. The markets are well supplied by a province rich in agriculture. Missions, colleges and medical schools, like those of the Baptists and Presbyterians, have a strategic center at Tsinan, as millions of Confucian and Mencian pilgrims come here on their way to the shrine of Taishan Mountain, and the birthplaces at Kufow (Yenchow), and Tsou, respectively.

It is to be hoped that the Duke Kung and other members of the Kung family will take their places in China’s government, intellectual and religious life. They are the oldest family on earth, older than the Mikado’s ancestry, and China could with genuine and lasting pride gather around real leaders of the Kung family for noble causes. A plan has been drawn up by which, if the Chinese republic is a failure, an experiment will be made to enthrone one of the Kungs (Confucius), who happens to be a Christian He would be in somewhat of a quandary, as his appeal to the Chinese would have to be that he was born a Confucian, and his appeal to the five nations would be that he was a Christian. Still a little thing as that might not bother a Chinese diplomat! It never did in the Manchu days of twist and turn, _volte-face_, and come back again, smiling ever! The proposed Union University of all the American and British denominations in Shangtung will be brought from Wai Hsien and other cities to Tsinan, and this move will be fraught with great success, for “in union is strength.” Tsinan, with the province of Shangtung, under the rebel governor, Sun Hao Chi, went over to the revolution on November 13, 1911.

XXIII

RELIGIOUS AND MISSIONARY CHINA

Buddhism, the religion of China which owns most of the finer pagodas and temples, celebrated in 1912 the 2500th anniversary of Buddha. They do not celebrate Buddha’s birth in the body, but rather birth in the mind or soul, the celebration being called “the anniversary of Buddha’s enlightenment.” Despite the troubles that Buddhism has encountered at the instigation of the government’s amban in Tibet, the celebration occurred there with avidity, as it did also in Mongolia, at Kuren, etc. Throughout the rest of the land, despite the prominence of Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity, the Buddhists made their anniversary well known. Every one was interested in those who once taught that man should be clean, and sincere in good works, and should love his fellow man disinterestedly. The thousand little rules for purchasing a specific pardon in the next world have, however, confused the Chinese mind, and many of those who looked on called the ritual now merely a mass of superstition. No one can deny that this is the world’s most picturesque religion which the Chinese imported from India so long ago, and of which they are now the leading exponents. There are temples in San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and London also. If Buddhism were purified from its accretion of rites, and took up again vigorous sermons on the virtues, responsibility and self-sacrifice, as in the days when Asoka’s preachers started out to convert the world to doctrines of service, it would not be a long step from Buddhism to Christianity.

Architecturally, the world enthuses over Buddhism, and now that travel to China is increasing, a cry is going up over the artistic world: “Save the incomparable pagodas and temples for art’s sake, for they can never be repeated, the spirit having departed.” Many of the temples are dropping to pieces, as in the break-up of old faiths the bonzes have been unable to collect the money which is necessary for upkeep. The government is maintaining some of the temples, but it uses them as schools, and the monks themselves have turned some of the temples into inns. The nation, rich merchants and interested foreigners might take part in preserving these beautiful monuments, and Christianity, which is spreading in China, is wide enough in its charity to appreciate and wish to preserve the beautiful architecture of Buddhism. Let experiments be tried; let the government, with its supreme authority, buy out some beautiful Buddhist temples and pagodas and turn them over as headquarters to Christian schools or medical missions. The Buddhist monks are a forlorn-looking set, their parishioners contributing too little for their support. This parsimony has induced the monks to invent the system of superstitious credit indulgences and absolutions, which, by working on their fears regarding the future life, they compel the Chinese--particularly the women--to buy.

As a rule the statues of Buddha are solemn or gentle-faced, as in the Temple of the Five Hundred Genii at Canton. But there is one hilarious exception, the laughing gilded Buddha of the Ming Hong Temple, near Shanghai. The god’s eyebrows, nose, eyes, mouth and chin all curve into great bows of mirth, like the irresistible Coquelin’s face in a full-blooded comedy, or DeWolf Hopper’s face in _Wang!_ The Buddhist priests who run inns keep a guests’ literary book, in which one will find sentiments written by many of the world’s noted travelers. The priests wear a yellow gown. Over the left shoulder hangs an over-gown, made of square red patches, sewed together, typifying the vow and rags of poverty. On the walls of the famous Lung Chang Buddhist Monastery, near Chingtu, in Szechuen province, hangs a celebrated text reconciling Buddhist and Christian teachings on the doctrine of peace. The Chinese hang a popular text on the walls, which corresponds with “God bless our home.” It is “Tien Kun Kong Fuk” (May Heaven send happiness).

Disfiguring by branding, just as the Romanists used to flagellate themselves, has not died out in China, for some of the Buddhist and Taoist monks of Soochow and elsewhere bear regular scars on their shaven heads and on their limbs, placed there to show penance during fasts, and to gain a reputation for holiness, or to use the Chinese phrase, “attain virtue.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi liked to assume the character of the Buddhist goddess Kwan Yun, and have herself painted with bare feet riding on a lotus leaf; in her hand a rosary; and wearing a blue veil, gray robes, a gold, garnet and pearl crown, earrings and necklaces. The eunuchs and friends of the empress always referred to her as the “Old Buddha,” which was the nickname that she liked the best. It is worthy of note that the Taiping rebels in the 60’s destroyed Buddhist temples and slew the bonzes, largely because the Buddhists of that time were opposed to progress and oppressed the poor with their “privileged orders.” On account of his not marrying, the Chinese call a bonze a “Chek Ke” (forsake family). They are, therefore, despised by Chinese men, but have a stronger hold on the women, with their picturesque religion, and good omens whenever they are paid for them.