Part 7

The second day across the border we crossed a small plain from which rise a series of round low mounds, like pudding-basins, from the flat ricefields—an extraordinary contrast to the lofty, jagged mountains from which we had just descended. In the midst of it all was a curious tumbled heap of lava-like appearance, looking as if it had been ejected from the earth by some colossal earthworms. Sir Alexander Hosie says[21] that there is a parallel row of these mounds about ten miles to the south: they run east and west. In the ricefields I saw a brilliant kingfisher, hanging poised in mid-air in search of prey, while a heron stalked away at our approach.

The rain grew more and more persistent, and the roads were muddy and slippery to the last degree. Even the sure-footed Chinese kept tumbling down, and it was almost less trying to walk than to be bumped down in our chairs. As we advanced into the province the culture of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum) increased till it was as much as ninety-nine per cent. of the crops, and the appearance of the inhabitants showed only too plainly its disastrous effects. In some of the villages the children were naked, although it was still cold weather, being only the beginning of April. In the markets the goods were of the meanest and cheapest description, and the people looked abject. They rushed out to beg from us. The main industry of the district was evidently the making of coal balls. The coal lies actually on the surface, and has only to be scraped together, mixed with a little earth and water, and then dried: it burns quite well. Some of the coal is used for fertilizing the ground, being reduced to ash by being burnt in pits with stones piled on it. Lime also is used for the poppy fields. Sometimes the coal holes by the wayside are a couple of yards in diameter. The coir palm is to be seen in every village, and loquats and walnut trees are cultivated for their fruit.

We struggled along through a thick mist one day, and one after another went down like ninepins on the slippery path. One of my bearers cut his ankle, and was thankful for the doctor’s attentions. Suddenly I heard an ominous roaring sound, and looked in vain for the cause. It proved to be produced by a big stream, which disappeared into a hole in the earth; this appears to be quite a common phenomenon, and later on we saw one bubble out of the ground in the same strange fashion.

Another shape of hill attracted my attention, and as I tried to reproduce it accurately on paper it became obvious that this was one of the Chinese mountain forms with which one has been familiar from childhood in their pictures, and which one had supposed to be a work of imagination. As they always hold in their canons of art that “form” is quite subsidiary to “spirit,” I imagined that it was not inability to imitate form accurately, but a deliberate intention of ignoring it in order to express some more important truth that was the cause of their drawing, what seemed to me, such unnatural mountains. But here one discovered that these forms _are_ natural in China, and it is after all only our ignorance that makes us so misjudge them.

There were hedges by the roadside all bursting into leaf and blossom, and I never saw such a wealth of ferns of many kinds. There was material for a whole volume on ferns alone. Lofty trees of catalpa bungei with their purple blossom, and Boehmeria nivea grew by the roadside, and rhea grass in the village gardens.

We generally started the day in a damp mist, and were happy when it cleared away, even though there was no sunshine. We scanned the hedges for roses, and felt quite aggrieved if we failed to find fresh varieties every single day. A lovely blush rose filled us with delight, but pink moss-roses were only seen on one occasion. We decided that nowhere else could a greater variety of roses be found: we counted twenty-three varieties before we left the province, and felt sure we should have found many more had we stayed longer, for they were hardly in full bloom by the end of April. One day I picked up a broken branch on the road, thrown away by some passer-by no doubt because it had no blossoms on it, but the bright green leaves were a lovely violet on the under side, and I searched in vain to find a bush of it growing, in order to see what the flowers were like.

Then, too, the birds were reminiscent of home—magpies, larks, woodpeckers, wagtails, and even the aggravating cuckoo. But there was one elusive little fellow, known to all dwellers in Kweichow, though no one could tell me his name: he had a long shrill note with a short tut-tut-tut at the end. We both watched for him daily, as he seemed to haunt our path continually, but never could we catch a sight of him, so dexterously did he hide himself. Occasionally we thought we saw him, but it was so momentary a glimpse that we were never sure; the bird we saw looked about the size and shape and colour of a linnet.

The fourth day in Kweichow we came to a splendid three-arch bridge in a fertile valley, and spent the night in a very different village from most—Kuan Tzu Yao. A number of fine new houses were in course of construction, built largely of stone; amongst others, a post office next door to our inn. The postal system in China is really wonderful, even in this backward province, and we had a most charming surprise at the first post town we entered. Our interpreter went to the post office, and was surprised at being asked if he were travelling with English ladies. On admitting this, he was asked to inform us that if we were in need of money we could draw as much as was necessary at any office we came to, by order of the postal commissioner at Kwei Yang. The reason for this delightful arrangement was that the English Commissioner at Taiyuanfu, whose advice we had asked about transmitting money, said he would write to his Chinese colleague and ask him to help us if we got into difficulties, because of the prevalent highway robberies. This gentleman was ill at the time the letter reached him, but he telegraphed to Taiyuanfu as soon as he was fit, that he would do what he could—and this was his splendid way of meeting the difficulty. No finer testimony could be wanted of the way the Chinese trust our people.

The postal system is a fine piece of organization: it reaches to the utmost bounds of the empire, and although the mails are mainly carried by runners on foot, they travel very rapidly. The stages are not long, and there is no delay when the bags are handed from one runner to the next. For instance, we were told that on this particular road, what we did in seventeen days the mails would do in four, and we did an average of eighteen miles a day. We had postal maps given us of the provinces we were going to visit. On them are marked all the postal stations, with the distances from one to another; the line of route; the various grades of offices; the limit of the district; daily or bi-daily day and night service; daily, bi-daily or tri-daily service; less frequent ones; postal connexion by boat; telegraphic connexion; rural box offices, etc. The names of the main towns are in both Chinese and English, the others only in Chinese. On the whole, letters travel wonderfully safely. The old postal system was quite hopeless, and in the interior the missionaries used to organize their own. Even Peking used to be closed to the rest of the world yearly for several months. I remember six months when we had no letters from my sister in Shansi, due to a misunderstanding at a transmitting station, and there was no telegraphic communication in those days. Now the old Chinese system has practically died out.

We had another proof of the thoughtfulness of the Chinese commissioner later. Having heard from one of the missionaries that we were going into the Miao country before coming to the capital, he sent up all our letters, a tremendous boon after being weeks without any. The postal service is under international control, having been originated in 1896 and built up by Sir Robert Hart in connexion with the customs: in each province there is a commissioner; nearly all are Europeans.

As we got further into the province the vegetation grew more and more luxuriant. The banks were carpeted with lycopodium and primula and the hedges were full of roses, white and yellow jasmine, hawthorn, clematis montana, Akebia lobata—a very curious creeper with wine-coloured blossom, both male and female. The brilliant yellow-blossomed cassia forms a most impenetrable hedge, with upstanding thorns, like nails, all along its tough stems. We tied water jars into our chairs, so as to keep the flowers fresh, and by the end of the day the chairs were perfect bowers, our men vying with one another to get us the choicest blossoms. Perhaps the most beautiful of any was the large white, sweet-scented rhododendron, the Hymenocallis. This is rare; we only found it once.

The scenery was very grand; long ranges of jagged mountains and precipitous cliffs, but the road was not in the least dangerous from that point of view. It was extremely slippery and a heavy mist lay over everything in the early hours of most days: our men kept tumbling down. The only one who seemed always steady was Yao, and he constituted himself my guardian on slippery days, holding my elbow with a relentless grip, which certainly prevented my tumbling down and gave me confidence.

At Kuan Tzu Yao we found a nice clean new inn, courtyard behind courtyard, and each raised a step or two above the last: ours was the innermost, and we felt unusually secluded. The next night our immediate neighbours were two fine water buffaloes with their calves. They are the most valuable domestic animals throughout this country, as they plough the ricefields quite happily when they are under water. These two were taken out to work in the early morning, and we were amused to see a little tatterdemalion bringing them back in a perfect fury to fetch their calves, which had been left in the shed. The buffaloes seem to be generally left in the care of boys, who manage them with much skill, and love to disport themselves on their broad backs, often lying negligently at ease along them, looking as much at home as if they were an integral part of the creature. They are sluggish animals, coming originally from the Philippines.

Leaving Tu Tien our men seemed possessed of a sudden energy, and went at a great rate, doing nearly seven miles in two hours. Sometimes we thought we were lacking in humanity to give them such heavy loads; but then again our scruples seemed foolish in the light of certain experiences. For instance, one man carried two heavy suit-cases and a chair, another two large carved window-frames and a bed, but it didn’t prevent them taking a steep bank at a run, or having a race at the end of a thirty-mile stage to see who would be in first. The Chinese coolie is really an amusing creature, and even if he is clad in rags he finds life a cheerful business. I used to try and count the patches on the coat of one of my coolies, and never made them less than forty-six between the neck and waistband, not including those on the sleeves!

Then the incidents of travel have a humorous side, even on a wet day in a dangerous neighbourhood. Instead of having our light midday meal as usual by the roadside near the village, where the men get theirs, one is obliged to have it in the chairs, placed side by side in the main street of a busy town. Our escort draws an imaginary cordon round us, and no one dares approach within two yards as long as they mount guard. It was a thrilling sight for the assembled crowd to watch the barbarians wielding knives and forks, instead of the dear, familiar chopsticks. I must say they behaved beautifully.

When I sat down to sketch a lovely river scene outside a village gateway, though many came to look on they did not jostle. These entrance gates are often quite imposing and of infinite variety. Just inside was a fine litter of pigs, with a most important-looking sow, and it was amusing to watch their antics. On a doorstep, extended at full length lay a large hairy black pig. Its face wore a beatific expression, with half-closed eyes of rapt enjoyment, while a woman vigorously groomed it with her brush.

The mountains of Kweichow give shelter to many wild animals, and even tigers, as well as leopards, are to be found, which cause great havoc in some of the villages. One story we heard throws an interesting light on the way the natives look at them. A tiger had been doing so much damage that the peasantry determined to have a battue, having tracked it to a certain hill, from which they thought it would be impossible for it to escape. They formed a cordon round the hill and gradually drove it to the top. The tiger, in search of refuge, looked into a shrine, and its pursuers saw this: they exclaimed, “It is certainly the God of the Hill”; so they turned tail and fled. Naturally, the tiger seeing this took the opportunity of attacking them in the rear, and several were badly mauled.[22]

Some of the mountains are very barren, others wonderfully cultivated, on terraces right up to the very top, and in rocky hollows only about a foot in diameter, with a mere handful of soil in them. How the scanty population can do such a vast amount of cultivation was a mystery we could never solve. One day we started from an altitude of eighteen hundred feet and climbed over a pass of forty-eight hundred, whence there was a wonderful panoramic view; our road could be seen for many miles, winding along the mountainside above a narrow valley; then diving down into it and up the opposite side. Our men said the last part of that day’s march, ten li (three miles), would be on the level, which sounded pleasant news. In point of fact we dropped nine hundred feet. A fine entrance gate led into Lang Tai Fung. Just outside the wall were the ruins of an old temple with a handsome stone carved bridge in front of it, enclosed within a wall. The inn was a good one, and the weather having suddenly turned cold we were glad of a brazier. The town seemed much more prosperous than most. There were large cotton looms, where weaving was going on in the open air, as well as in a disused temple. Handsome carved window-frames delighted me so much that I determined to have some made for the women’s institute at Taiyuanfu. They were about a yard square in size with a good deal of carving, so the sum named (twenty dollars including carriage to Anshun, about fifty-five miles distant) did not seem excessive! It took us three days to get to Anshun, and the windows arrived within the fortnight stipulated. We picked them up later, and they formed rather a large item of our luggage, requiring an extra coolie.

As we neared Anshun the road was less mountainous and the villages better built. Many of the houses are of grey stone, some built with mortar, some without. There was a fine waterfall, a hundred and sixty feet in depth, into the Rhinoceros Pool, near the town of Chen Lun, and above it a five-span bridge of noble proportions. A busy market was going on in the town; and a funeral, with the usual paper horses and servants for burning at the grave, formed an additional interest to the gay crowd. There were a number of picturesque tribeswomen, looking as usual very sulky, and not mixing with the Chinese. From afar we saw the lofty turrets of a Roman Catholic Church, so we went to see what it was like. The architecture and fittings were entirely Western, and we had no sooner entered the church than the fine-looking old French priest came forward and greeted us. He invited us into his room and we had an interesting, long talk. He had been thirty-two years in China, but only two in this district, and seemed very discouraged. I asked about the numbers of converts, and he said there were about sixteen hundred, but added dejectedly that they were not at all satisfactory. How hard it must be to go on working under such circumstances, and with no hope of return to his own country.

“Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.”

Generally missionaries seem a wonderfully hopeful set of people, even under very adverse circumstances, and we came to a most cheerful group at Anshunfu, where we had a few days of welcome rest in their hospitable house.

Anshun is a very pretty town, with its shady trees, its winding waterways and handsome stone balustrades along them. On a picturesque bridge were shrines, which made a subject to delight an artist’s eye: indeed it was a continual trial to me to have so little time for drawing when there was such a wealth of material. Facing the house where we stayed was a temple transformed into a government school, and it had an ornamental wall such as I had not seen elsewhere. There were panels at intervals, about three and a half feet from the ground, of various sizes, with open stucco work, looking like designs from Æsop’s fables. They lent a great charm to the garden, in which the wall seemed to be only of decorative value. Throughout China the human figure and animals are used in all sorts of architectural ways which would never occur to us. Anshun is situated in a small plain, and a fine road leads to it with pailous (memorial arches) at intervals. We walked across the fields one day and climbed a neighbouring hill, surmounted by the usual temple; from it there was a magnificent view of all the country round. A lurid thunderstorm heightened the effect. There were oleanders in full bloom in the courtyard, and the priests were polite and friendly, bringing tea to us, while we waited for the storm to clear away.

There is a hospital at Anshun built by the Arthington Fund, but as there is only one doctor attached to it, and he was away on furlough, the place was closed. As it is the only hospital for hundreds of miles, indeed there is only one other hospital in the province, for 11,300,000 people, this seemed a dreadful pity. The coming of my doctor was quite an event, especially for a lady who badly needed her advice. In the whole province there are only these two European hospitals, as far as I heard, and no Chinese ones.

We made Anshunfu our starting-point for a trip into the unfrequented mountains, where aboriginal tribes are to be found in great numbers. No census can be taken of them, and it is only by years of unremitting toil, in the face of continual danger, that missionaries have succeeded in making friends with them. Mr. Slichter, of the C.I.M., was our guide, and as soon as we left the city we struck up a pathway into the hills to the north of it. After several hours’ travelling we came to a river, which until recent years was the boundary, beyond which no foreigner was allowed to go because of the acute hostility felt by the tribes-people against all strangers. It was a rapid, swirling river, lying in a deep narrow gorge, and we were ferried across.

We climbed up a long hot ascent on the further side, and reached a Keh-lao village,[23] where a fair was going on. The contrast was extraordinary, quite as great as if we had gone from one European country into another. It was only with difficulty, and because he was known, that Mr. Slichter could persuade some one to boil water for us, and then it was only very little, whereas in any Chinese village you could get as much as you wanted. We spent about twelve hours reaching our destination—a village perched up on a steep hill-side. Seeing us from afar, a laughing group of Miao boys and girls came running down the path to greet us, looking a most picturesque group in their red, white and blue clothes.

In another chapter I shall try and give a detailed account of these people, so will for the present only say a little about the country. From the top of the crag on which the village of Ten-ten is situated there may be counted fourteen ranges stretching away into the far distance, and in such hollows as are practicable for agriculture, wheat, poppy, rice and hemp are grown. There are most curious trees, which we saw for the first time, called Rhus vernicifera, from which varnish is obtained. They are plentiful in the district, and itinerant tappers come round from time to time to hire their services to the owners, for the varnish is a valuable crop, but must be carefully handled. It is most poisonous, and people even lose their lives by handling it carelessly. We found Mrs. Slichter at Ten-ten; she had been seriously ill as the result of using a branch of the tree for a walking-stick. The varnish causes terrible pains in the head, loss of sight for several days, and an eruption of the hands rendering them useless for a time.

The first Miao church was built at Ten-ten, and would hardly be recognized as such, I fear, by the orthodox: it looked like a cross between a goods shed and a hall, with a ladder at each end leading to a couple of rooms to accommodate visitors. The only clerical detail was a pulpit, but close beside it was a cooking-stove, and in vain I protested that our meals were not to be prepared while service was going on. The people seemed to find it quite natural, and when Yao was not too concerned in his cooking he lent an interested ear to what was being said. One thing was clear, and that was that the congregation was thoroughly in earnest, and gave undivided attention to the service. It meant so much to them and especially to the women, who took part in the prayer-meeting quite simply and fervently. On the Sunday morning we were about one hundred people, who attended a baptismal service, which was performed in a dammed-up stream in the ricefields. It was extraordinarily picturesque to see the Miao in their short full-kilted skirts, trooping down the zigzag path to the spot, where twenty-five received baptism. They have names given them, as many, if not most of them, have none.

After spending a few days at Ten-ten we continued our journey northwards, but were somewhat tried by the difficulty of getting any guide. One of the tribes-people took us a certain distance across the mountains, but the path was not only steep and rough, but the lanes were so narrow and thorny that we thought our chairs would be torn to pieces, and our clothes to ribbons: the thorns and brambles overhanging the path made it difficult to get the chairs along. We found it decidedly preferable to walk, and enjoyed the glorious scenery up hill and down dale, the air laden with the scent of roses and sweetbrier, and the hill-sides carpeted with mauve-coloured orchids and primulas.