Part 3

On leaving the station by a wide new thoroughfare, you see numbers of European-looking shops, full of up-to-date European wares, for Hangchow is a large and wealthy manufacturing city, in the centre of an important agricultural district. Learning and Industry have flourished here from the earliest times, and now it has a population estimated at 35,000. I was thankful to get away from the modern town to a good old-fashioned Chinese quarter, where I shared the ever-generous hospitality of Dr. and Mrs. Main. Their hospitals are a sight worth seeing—although in certain respects they would challenge criticism; that is because they grew into being nearly forty years ago and were built up under every kind of difficulty by the untiring zeal of one man, and his hall-mark is seen in every part of them. The Chinese are an industrious people and put our own to shame, but even to them this object-lesson of what can be achieved by one individual is perhaps as valuable as the actual good done to the thousands who have found healing and comfort in these hospitals. There are no less than twenty-two departments of work, of which I shall only enumerate a few of the most important.

Directly after breakfast on the day after my arrival I started on a tour of inspection, and saw over the men’s and the women’s general hospitals, where a cheerful activity reigned. There is a family likeness about mission hospitals, so I shall say nothing further about them; but what amused and fascinated me was my visit to the maternity hospital, which is a thoroughly attractive place. Already five little new-comers into this sad world were lying in a row, all tidy and washed, and one was lifting up a loud remonstrance at her fate; another was only an hour old. Sometimes you may see as many as fifteen, and I hope they do not get mixed up. There were no less than a hundred and seventy-seven in-patients during the year. These maternity hospitals are an unspeakable boon to the country, the more so because they are training schools for midwives. How badly these are needed can only be known by dwellers in the East. The Chinese make admirable nurses, especially the women, and many hospitals who in deference to custom have been in the habit of having men to nurse their own sex, are now giving it up in favour of women, because they are found more reliable and conscientious. This I was told when I deprecated the change.

Next we visited the Lock Hospital, and then the Medical School, where fifty or sixty students are admitted annually. Numbers of well-trained men have passed through this school, but it is hampered by lack of funds, and the premises and gardens are quite inadequate for the number. Girls, too, I saw hard at work in the classrooms. One most interesting part of the work was the series of workshops, in which disabled patients are employed on all sorts of trades connected with the needs of the hospitals. No doubt it is not only a boon to the workers, but a great economy for the hospital, especially in these dear times. It is astonishing to see the metal work done there, not to speak of the carpentering, matting and brushmaking. All wooden cases coming to the place are rapidly transformed into useful pieces of furniture, and everything seems to be capable of being transformed into something useful.

In the afternoon in pouring rain we set off in rickshas to visit another series of hospitals for lepers, incurables, and isolation cases. It was a long drive to the lonely hill-side overlooking the city, where these pleasant homes are situated, for they are indeed _homes_, as attractive and comfortable as they can be made for lifelong sufferers. It needs something stronger than humanitarianism to tackle such a work, and the spirit of a Father Damien is needed to make it a success. Well may the poor patient say:

“My body, which my dungeon is.”

But they seemed wonderfully content, and eagerly welcomed the doctor’s visit. The expenses of these homes were only 2,788 dollars for the year. In cases of epidemics it is a special boon to have an isolation hospital outside the city, and the Home for Incurables needs no weak words of mine to commend it. All these buildings are newer than the hospitals in the city, and built on very hygienic principles.

From the hospitals we drove to the lovely lake-side, where we had tea in a charming house recently built by Dr. Main for the doctors. The lake-side was glorious, with great beds of water-lilies just coming into blossom. What a staff is required for work like the above described! and what an opportunity for men of noble ambitions! The staff is mainly Chinese, but Englishmen are greatly needed as well, and are sadly lacking. The Church Missionary Society is responsible for this important piece of work.

Close to this house is another new and charming one built for convalescent Chinese ladies, and it stands in a pretty little garden. It was empty at the time I was there, but had been used for the Conference of the China Continuation Committee. It will be interesting to see whether the ladies make use of it; it is in the nature of an experiment, being the only one I saw in China. But Chinese ideas are so rapidly changing and the position of women is so different from what it was even ten years ago, that they will welcome the possibility of such a home for convalescence. The rooms devoted to women, even in big houses, are often miserable, and this experiment may promote a better state of affairs.

On the other side of the West Lake is the latest creation of Dr. Main, which was opened next day. It is a rest-house for Chinese workers, and ought to be valuable in connexion with so large a mission work. The funds have all been raised by Dr. Main.

Next day I got a glimpse of the old world before leaving Hangchow. I was escorted up a steep hill to visit a group of temples and to get a view over the wonderful West Lake. Magnificent old trees cast their welcome shade on the buildings, and a curious serpentine stone pathway which had a symbolical meaning leads up the hill. On the top is a group of stones of curious shapes, which are said to represent the twelve requisites of agriculture, but it required a great deal of imagination to trace the resemblance. The air was scented with wild roses, and the view from the top of the ridge was superb—on one side lay the shimmering lake, with its delicate tracery of raised pathways and bridges leading across certain parts of it, and a fine old red sandstone pagoda; on the other side the busy city and the river leading to the sea. It is an ideal spot for artists, and there is the _West Lake Hotel_ on the margin of the lake, where it is quite pleasant to stay if you are not too exacting.

Hangchow is the starting-place for that wonder of the world, the Grand Canal, which stretches nine hundred miles, and part of which was built nearly five hundred years B.C., with solid stone walls. It is spanned in places by beautiful bridges, sometimes a single arch and sometimes several. The bridges of China are very varied and most beautiful; in no other part of the world have such remarkable blocks of stone been used in their construction, and it is impossible to understand how some of them were placed in their present position. The heavy floods in Fukien prevented my visiting the most celebrated one near Chuan Chow, called Lo-yung-kio; it is three thousand six hundred feet in length and fifteen feet wide. Some of the granite monoliths stretching from one abutment to another actually measure as much as sixty feet in length, so we were told by an English captain who had measured them. As there are only twenty abutments, it is obvious they must be very wide apart. In all such bridges that I have seen, the spaces between the abutments vary in size. Even small bridges, like one on the West Lake near Hangchow, are often quite interesting because of their architectural qualities, the artist’s touch being very marked. The Chinese never seem to grudge labour in the beautifying of things great or small, important or unimportant, which gives one great joy in using the common things of daily life. It is as if the workman worked for sheer creative joy and regardless of recompense. If a man, for instance, engraves a line drawing in the hinge of a door, where it will practically be always out of sight, what motive can he have save the creative faculty?

Hangchow is situated at the mouth of the Tsientang-kiang, a most important waterway for the trade from Kiang-si, which comes down on peculiar junks, sixty feet long and ten feet wide.

There is a remarkable tide bore at the river’s mouth; at full tide there is a column of water six feet high which rushes furiously in from the sea, and which is a source of great danger to shipping. This is a sight well worth seeing.

From Shanghai we went down the coast by the steamer _Sinkiang_ to Hong Kong, only putting into Amoy on the way, and enjoying a few hours ashore with friends. They urged us to come and stay with them, an invitation which I gladly accepted later on. The sea was kind to us most of the way, and we accomplished the journey in four days, reaching Hong Kong at 8 a.m. Here we found the housing problem as acute as at home, and were thankful to be taken in at a delightful house for ladies, called the Helena May Institute. It was the greatest boon to me not only then, but when I returned in July to join the ship for England. The house is beautifully situated and strongly to be recommended to ladies travelling alone.

We were delayed some ten days waiting for a boat to Haiphong, as coasting steamers seem peculiarly uncertain in their sailings.

The journey to Haiphong took three nights and two days. When we finally started we found that no Hong Kong money (Hong Kong has a coinage of its own, being British, and admits no other) would be accepted in Indo-China, and that we must re-bank there before starting inland. Haiphong is a most dull and unprogressive little French town: an intelligent young Frenchman at the custom-house told us that red tape rules everything and makes progress impossible.

We were obliged to stay there two days, the bank not being open on Sunday. The train only runs by day up to Yünnanfu, and starts at a very early hour: the carriages are primitive in the extreme and badly arranged. There is only _one_ corridor coach for first-, second- and third-class passengers, the first-class being in the middle and the passengers for the others passing to and fro through the carriage all the time. Besides this one coach there were a number of seatless luggage vans, in which were herded large numbers of fourth-class passengers, with their belongings. Their legs might frequently be seen dangling out of the unglazed windows. The line was opened in 1910, and is about 150 miles in length.

The scenery was fascinating and varied during our three days’ journey to Yünnanfu. At first it was sub-tropical, passing through forests with great tree-ferns and bamboos, or ricefields where water-buffaloes toiled. Lovely rose bushes and brilliant canna were the chief flowers visible, and tall trees full of crimson blossom. From seven in the morning till 8.30 p.m. we travelled slowly towards the Chinese frontier, and spent the night at Laokay, in a not too bad little French hotel. There was food served on the train, but we mostly relied on our own provisions. The frontier town was quite attractive, at the junction of two rivers; we were supposed to have our luggage examined, but both French and Chinese let us off, and I had time to sketch from the dividing bridge while our less lucky interpreter, Mr. Li,[5] underwent searching examination. It is most difficult for any Chinese to get passports for going through French territory, and you can never foresee what difficulties the officials will put in the way, even when everything is _en règle_. Li was taken off to the police station and put through an elaborate interrogatory. We had been rather anxious about our own passports, as Sir John Jordan was not able to authorize our having them from Peking, on account of the political division between North and South. He very kindly arranged that the British Consul at Canton (if he considered it safe for us to prosecute our journey) should supply us with them, and we experienced a great sense of relief on finding them awaiting us at Hong Kong. As an illustration of the strictness of French rule, no one is allowed to take more than two dollars out of Indo-China in their coinage; at Haiphong we had obtained Chinese dollars suitable for the province of Yünnan.

One of the most serious questions for China to-day is that of finance, and I was told by a reliable business man that the unification of the coinage would have been settled long ago, but for the fierce opposition of the banking community, who make unheard-of profits by the present system. It is extremely tiresome and injurious to trade, and adds greatly to the difficulty of travelling.

As soon as we had crossed the frontier the scenery changed and became grander. The railway passes through malarious districts, and its construction was impeded (at one time even entirely suspended) on account of the number of deaths which took place among the workmen. It is a narrow-gauge single line, and there are so frequently obstructions and accidents that the train only runs by daylight; it takes therefore three days to accomplish the journey; but it is so interesting that one is glad to go slowly. The stations on the line are few, and the only important town is Mongtsze, a big trading centre. The province is considered one of great natural wealth and beauty, and I was glad to be in it once more, having already traversed it from north-east to west (a distance of over a thousand miles) on foot or carried in a chair. On the second day we passed through glorious wooded gorges, gradually rising to a height of two thousand seven hundred feet. The hill-sides were terraced up to the very summits in places, and despite the sparse population the land was well cultivated wherever possible. We reached the town of Amichow soon after five o’clock, and found a decent little French hotel. Strolling out to watch the glorious sunset, we came to a barracks, where men were drilling in orthodox German style and singing a monotonous sort of chant.

Next morning when we came to pay our seven-dollar bill with the Yünnanese notes we had bought at Haiphong, we had an unusual experience with regard to the exchange, for we found that it only meant three Yünnanese dollars. While I attended to this, my niece went ahead to secure the window seats, for you see very little otherwise. There were other travellers who had secured them the previous day, and we knew the scenery would be magnificent. The line is really a remarkable one, running in and out of the rock, crossing rivers far below, and wholly unlike the tame railway lines at home. One part was singularly beautiful as we emerged from a tunnel at a high level; we saw a lovely jade-coloured lake spread below us, melting away into the far distance. As we approached the capital, Yünnanfu, we left the mountains behind and passed through well-cultivated lowlands, already clad in shining green, or reflecting the blue sky in watery ricefields. We were not sorry, however, to say good-bye to the railway for many weeks to come. Friends had arranged for us to stay at a comfortable French hotel, the _Terminus_, outside the city wall and with a fine view across the fields to distant hills.

We eagerly inquired as to the prospects of being allowed to go eastwards, and were informed that the robbers were most aggressive and had taken prisoners three missionaries, besides securing much loot from other quarters. I confess my spirits sank low that night, despite our having got a much-longed-for mail, and it was with some misgivings we set off to the British Consulate next morning. The postal commissioner, a portly Frenchman, had told us that he didn’t consider it at all dangerous to go eastward, but it was true that he had ceased to send money orders, owing to the number of robbers! He could transmit no money for us, but promised to see what could be done in the matter through merchants.

We found that the British Consul, Mr. Otterwell, remembered me as an old traveller. I had been his guest at Tengyueh twelve years before, though he was at the time absent in the district. He was quite encouraging, and promised at once to have our passports visé-ed and a military escort obtained for the following week. Our further doings in Yünnan Province are chronicled in Chapter III. Suffice it to say that from Yünnanfu we set off in carrying-chairs, and travelled north-eastward into the province of Kweichow—a wild and beautiful mountainous country, far from railways and steamboats and all the busy bustle of the West. There we were to make friends with strange aboriginal tribes in their native haunts and to see unadulterated China once more.

Kweichow (the Land of Demons) surpassed our most sanguine hopes. It was far more beautiful and interesting than we had been told, and not nearly so difficult to travel in as I had been led to expect. We had provided ourselves with tinned meats, as we were told that we could expect to get no meat or chickens or vegetables in so poor a province, whereas we found all these things in abundance, and every mission station to which we came most hospitable in supplying us with bread and cakes. It is true we only came to five stations in the next seven weeks, that is in crossing the whole province. There is no road in any part of it—sixty thousand square miles, roughly speaking—suitable for wheeled traffic; so no wonder it must be considered as one of the most backward parts of China, and has rarely been visited by travellers. To carry a load of rice for a hundred miles more than doubles its cost.

From Yünnanfu we took the ordinary route via Malong, Kütsingfu, and the Yünnan Pass into Kweichow Province. It has been admirably and fully described in Sir A. Hosie’s latest book _On the Trail of the Opium Poppy_, so it is unnecessary for me to do it, and I shall merely describe the things which struck us as of special interest.

The journey from Yünnanfu to Anshun took us seventeen days—a distance altogether of about three hundred miles.[6] From Anshunfu we struck north, through much wilder and less-frequented country, in order to visit the haunts of aboriginal tribes, and made a wide detour, returning to the main road near Kwei Yang, the capital. We greatly wished to visit other tribes in the eastern part of the province, but that was absolutely vetoed by the governor, and we were obliged to follow the high road through Ping-yüe and Huang Ping Chow to Chen Yüen. Here we took to the waterway, from which we did not once swerve till we reached Shanghai. The first part of the journey, up the Yüen Kiang, is a distance of four hundred and forty-six miles, and one may go down it in five days, if it is in flood, with a fair chance of getting drowned! We took ten days, but a good deal of time was spent at places on the way. Coming up stream the journey is long and tedious: it may extend to months instead of days. The natural superstition of the Chinese is displayed on such a journey by the lavish use of crackers[7] and incense to ward off evil spirits. These superstitions will die hard: nothing less vital than genuine Christianity can displace them.

We entered Hunan on May 14, having spent forty-two days in Kweichow Province. The frontier is indicated by two elaborate archways, as we saw on entering the province from Yünnan. Although Hunan is within fifteen days’ reach of Shanghai, it has so far no facilities for travel better than by water. It is true there is a short railway line on its western border, but we were not encouraged to try it, and in summer there is always a good steamship line from the capital Changsha to Hankow—a distance of two hundred and twenty miles. The railway is part of the projected line from Hankow to Canton, and will be of great trade value when it is completed, as there is no good route to connect this part of the country with the south. We intended going from Changsha into Kwangsi Province on account of the beautiful scenery, but unfortunately that was impossible owing to the fighting going on between the troops of the north and the south exactly in the region where our road lay. It might be supposed that we could have taken an alternative route through so vast a country, but such is not the case. If you leave the great high road (and what a misnomer that is!) there is no way except by devious paths through endless mountain ranges, where no accommodation and little food would be obtainable. In a province of 83,398 square miles there appear to be only two main roads running from north to south, and three from east to west; yet it has a population of over twenty-one millions. The two main roads running from north to south are near the eastern and western borders, and all the central part of the province has none. We crossed the province entirely by water, first in a house-boat as far as Changteh, thence in a miserable little native steamer across the Tong Ting Lake to Changsha; from Changsha up the Siang-kiang,[8] across the Tong Ting on to the Yangtze, which bounds the province on the north.

We had no choice, therefore, of leaving Hunan except by going to Hankow, and we found good accommodation on a British steamer, the _Sinkiang_. There are six good lines between Changsha and Hankow—two British, a Japanese, and several Chinese steamship companies, whose ships run in the summer; owing to the extraordinary subsidence of the lake in winter (_see_ Chapter VI) it has to be discontinued then for several months. The journey from Changsha to Hankow takes about thirty-two hours: at Hankow we transhipped for Shanghai on a most comfortable steamer (with nice beds), the _Nganking_, belonging to Messrs. Butterfield & Swire. It is quite easy for travellers knowing no Chinese to penetrate by this route into the very centre of China. I am so often asked about the possibilities of doing this that I can only recommend this as a wholly charming and easy way of getting about and much to be preferred to railway travelling.

Hankow itself is a big bustling cosmopolitan town, with a rapidly increasing volume of commerce. It is a link between old and new, and has no less than thirty-six associations, called “hangs,” for different kinds of goods. It has its foreign concessions like the seaports, and the important trading companies have their own floating wharves, where the big ocean liners moor, six hundred miles away from the coast. There are said to be 25,000 junks engaged here in river traffic, and they connect Hankow with all the central and western provinces, often travelling as much as a hundred miles a day.