CHAPTER XX.
FROM THE GREAT WALL TO TCHAH-TAO.
First view of China proper--Last Russian hospitality--The Palankeen--The streets of Kalkann--Travelling along the Great Wall--The Secret Societies--Chinese Art--How order is maintained--Origin of the tress--How the titles of Chinese nobility become extinct.
We were hospitably received in a Chinese house belonging to a Russian, a friend of M. Schévélof. This house was charmingly situated out of the town, on the other side of the brook I have just mentioned, and, consequently, in view of the mountain we had lately descended surmounted with the irregular outline of the Great Wall.
It was the last Russian house into which I entered, and not the least agreeable. During my leisure in the day I went to ramble about this strange country and among the still more strange people.
I lounged also many hours on the balcony of this house, where I took refreshments, agreeably occupied in contemplating the scene around me. I shall never forget these days of _far niente_ passed at Kalkann after the long monotonous passage of the Gobi without stages and almost without repose. I was approaching at last the goal of my travels--that city of Pekin, towards which I had been almost daily moving for the last seven months. I was indeed in China at last, and all my surroundings forcibly impressed me with the novelty of my situation. I was never tired of watching every object, every incident, from my observatory, and when evening closed in I quitted it with regret.
Then we retired to a distant room. Wassili Michäelovitch, as well as a young inhabitant of Tien-tsin who happened to be visiting Kalkann, played on the guitar, and, in listening to the melancholy notes of their melodies, I recalled to memory the far-reaching steppe of Omsk and its changing aspects, the perilous night adventure in the snow on leaving Tumen, the savage grandeur of the frozen Angara, the terrors of the lonely Baikal, Mrs. Grant and Constantine--all my adventures in Siberia,--in fact, that now, with the rigours of an Arctic winter, were things of the past. The remembrance of all these incidents I cherished with that genial sensation that is experienced when we find ourselves safe at the end of a series of perilous adventures, provided they leave behind no ill consequences, but, on the contrary, a feeling of congratulation that we have so happily escaped them.
But what a contrast was this past to the present! It was not simply a change of country and people, but a change of the face of nature; for the trees had put forth their tender leaves and vied in brilliancy of tints with the verdure of the ground, and the whole was bathed in the genial beams of the warm spring sun.
Still it is the destiny of a traveller, who has before him a long journey to be accomplished without delay, to be always on the move. On the morning of the 3rd of May, therefore, we had five palanquins brought up for our accommodation. They are a kind of litter without wheels, furnished with two long shafts projecting before and behind and supported by these on two mules. The mule in the rear is not put in without some trouble, it being repugnant, apparently, to these animals to go into the shafts head foremost; they are, therefore, generally obliged to have their eyes bandaged during the operation.
The palanquin with mules is the most disagreeable vehicle I have ever travelled in: in the first place the greatest care is necessary to keep yourself quite in the middle, inasmuch as the least movement on the one side or the other disturbs at once the adjustment of the harness. In the second place the two mules do not step together or move in harmony, and consequently there is a continual pitching and jolting in every direction, producing as much sickness and distressing fatigue as the movement of the sea.
Our host would accompany us beyond Kalkann; we, therefore, began our journey afoot, going through the city from end to end. We went inside the fortifications, which consist of crenulated walls very solidly built, and from these we had a good view of the streets.
The attention is arrested at once by the swarming of the population. The Arab bazaars, the most thronged even, can give no adequate idea of such a circulation. The noise of all this is quite equal to the concourse. Every shop-keeper considers it his duty to stand in front of his shop to praise his wares. He calls out to the passer-by, to invite him to come in and buy, and, as every one strains his voice to make himself heard over his competitor, it may easily be imagined what a hurly-burly would greet the ear on penetrating further into the city.
Mule drivers, palanquin leaders, mandarins’ coachmen or carriers, scream also with all their might to have the way clear. Conjurers and tumblers are exercising their profession all along the streets, some violently beating their drums, others blowing their bamboo pipes with all the vigour at their command to arrest attention. But the concert of sounds is not yet complete; children being drubbed are squalling, and awkward people, that cannot escape from being crushed, are screaming: petty traders are violently quarrelling with their rivals, and then comes the growl of the tam-tam, marking, from time to time, the hour or the intervals on the bourse. An early morning at Billingsgate, or at the Halles in Paris, is quite peaceable in comparison with the obstreperous precinct of a Chinese town. Our ears were greeted with this uproar for an hour without cessation in passing on our way from one end to the other. M. Schévélof turned round to me many times with a wearied look, and exclaimed: “O Mongolia! calm of the desert, how precious thou art, and how I regret thee!” We arrived at last at the limit of the town, passed through another gate, and were in the country again, but Chinese country without solitude and silence. We took leave of our host, and a quarter of an hour afterwards we were swinging in our five palanquins, anxious to look out, but, following the advice of Mr. Schévélof, we closed our curtains and tried to escape from persecuting curiosity.
When night had quite closed in I opened the three windows of my palanquin, one on the right, one on the left, and the other in front, and was thus enabled to contemplate at my ease the magnificent scenery amid which we were travelling.
We had entered into a narrow and precipitous ravine: it was indeed so narrow, occasionally, that the palanquin had only just room to pass. Massive rocks rising perpendicularly were starting on our vision on all sides. It was clear we were now travelling along the crest of a mountain range, for gaps suddenly appearing here and there opened to view fearful precipices that made the head swim. The wind was blowing violently all the evening; and clouds flitting quickly over the face of the moon gave, through the fitful movements of light and darkness, a most fantastic aspect to this bit of nature.
We fell in with a second wall, built also of stone like the first, but in a better state of preservation: we travelled some distance over this wall, and our mules sometimes approached so near the edge that they made us tremble. The rear mule is especially disquieting to the traveller unaccustomed to this mode of locomotion, this one being obliged to follow blindly the leading of the other; but, unlike the leader, unable to pick its way with the same liberty, and being drawn along at the same time over the ground, which is hardly visible; but at the moment the foot is ready to fall, might very easily take a false step and draw everything with it over the precipice. In several places the Great Wall, along the top of which we were travelling this night, turned suddenly in its course at a right angle; and as our mules had the detestable habit like those of the Alps to follow invariably the edge of a precipice, it resulted that while the leader was turning these angles the rear mule must have marched in a line which would, if prolonged a few feet, have led over the brink of the declivity. In order, however, to accommodate their course to each other, as the rigidity of the shafts compelled them, a struggle invariably took place between the two, and, inevitably, at the most critical spot, during which the poor traveller found himself unpleasantly suspended a moment over the angle of the fearful escarpment.
After a journey of sixty _lies_, about twenty English miles, not without exciting moments, but still in contemplating a phase of nature unique, perhaps, in the world, we arrived at Suen-oua-fou. No sooner had we passed the fortifications of this village than our mule drivers began uttering constantly repeated cries. There is no country more infested with secret societies than China. Every inhabitant of this empire makes it a point of honour to belong to one or two of them. The cries of our mule leaders were the rallying signals of those to which they were attached. I wondered what was the cause of this warning, but did not discover it.
The hotel at which we stopped was disposed like the houses of Maimatchin, already mentioned: there was merely that difference between the two which there is in France between an inn and a palace. One thing in particular deserves notice; it is that throughout China, even in the most humble dwellings, art may be recognized, not merely in the general arrangement, but even in the minutest details. The tables that are placed on the estrade of every room, the stools, the little cups out of which rice brandy is sipped, the small teapots, the slender eating sticks, have all an artistic form or look. It is very often singular, and even occasionally a little far-fetched, but everywhere may be witnessed the predominance of artistic ideas, and every object is interesting to examine. After the meal--a miserable low tavern repast this time, and sadly adapted to the demands of European palates--we soon stretched ourselves to sleep, like the Chinese, on the estrade where we had just dined.
The next day, the 4th of May, we passed over a charming country; the loveliest I have seen anywhere, except in some parts of Japan. We followed constantly the course of a rivulet only a few yards wide meandering along the foot of a wall-sided cliff, the top of which was crowned with large trees that formed a bower over the stream and dropped from their spreading branches long festoons of verdant tufty creepers, coming down to caress lovingly the bosom of the brook. We continued our way through this attractive country for at least sixty _lies_ more, and at last arrived at an immense village, called Ti-mih-gnih, about eleven in the morning, where we breakfasted. This, like all Chinese villages, was fortified, and had outgrown its fortifications from time to time, for there were several lines of enclosure one within the other. It may surpass in size Toun-cheh-ouh, with its population of 400,000 souls. It took us an hour to cross it.
Perhaps the reader may wonder how good government is ensured among such masses of human beings, and may suppose that an immense army is requisite for the emperor to maintain his throne and his dynasty. Order is secured almost without an army, and by means of a secret police and the rigorous application of the law by those who are responsible for its maintenance. The father of the family answers with his head as a gauge for the conduct of his children; the mandarin of the third class likewise for the order of his district, etc. On the other hand, the father has the power of life or death over his children; and the mandarin likewise over the members of his district. In case of conspiracy, therefore, it may be suspected what takes place. The father of a family, fearing the repressive power of the mandarin, sacrifices his children immediately he knows they are guilty. Before revolution can reach so far as the imperial palace, all the members of the administrative hierarchy must have steeped their hands in it with the conviction that they have all thereby exposed their lives. Such an event, therefore, is highly improbable. This explains also how many travellers have been witnesses of twenty or thirty executions at a time, as they have described in their narratives. If a mandarin admonished of a grave crime in his district spares a single accomplice, he is responsible to his superior: he generally prefers, then, to sacrifice a few lives, and thus be on the right side for the safety of his own head, to running the risk of overlooking a single guilty one.
It is quite intelligible that with such summary, arbitrary proceedings, the Chinese government does not desire Europeans to penetrate into its empire. They are, in short, an imbecile race, who are so besotted as to share the hatred of their government towards us and sacrifice the missionaries we send there rather than profit by them to obtain their liberty.
On leaving Ti-mih-gnih the valley opened considerably. The wind became so boisterous that it caused our mules to yield to its force, even so far as to expose them to the risk of being blown over the edge into the river. After a third march of sixty _lies_ we reached Chah-tchen. The evening passed away in the most disconsolate manner. The palanquin journey and the Chinese _cuisine_ superadded, had indisposed us severely. M. Schévélof, M. Wassili-Michäelovitch, and Pablo did not even rise from their palanquins. M. Marine and I only slept on the inn platform.
We were startled out of our slumbers in the middle of the night by the report of fire-arms in the court. We leaped up in a hurry, convinced that one of our companions, and probably young Kousnietzof, who had two guns and a revolver, had been the victim of an accident. Our fears were, however, immediately calmed on seeing our friends in a deep sleep. The discharge of fire-arms had taken place undoubtedly in the street. A Chinese man or woman had perhaps received it full in the chest, an incident much too trifling to interrupt one’s slumber in this country.
We started early the next morning, and having done fifty _lies_ through an uninteresting country we stopped to breakfast at Hrouaé-laeh-sien.
The Chinese villages, just the same as the Arab villages, are very much like one another. I was never tired, however, at every halt of regarding this bustling movement, quite exceptional and unknown in our western cities, even the most commercial, such as London, San Francisco, or New York. How many types presented themselves in reality now! types I had seen formerly only in albums, or on folding screens. The street porter balancing on his shoulder a pole of exaggerated length, with little round cards hanging from each end covered with dragons or some fantastic figures; children with puffed-out stomachs and three little tails of hair hanging from their shaven crowns, one above the forehead and the other two dangling near their ears. The constant shaving till the age of twelve or fifteen gives to the hair of the back of the head an unusual vigour when it is wanted to form a fine pigtail.
The habit of adults of preserving but a single long tress behind, dates only from the conquest of the Tartars and the establishment of their dynasty. The conquerors being Mahometans, and consequently fanatics, endeavoured to impose the Koran throughout China. They did not succeed in this object, but an edict promulgated by the Emperor, requiring the head to be shaved in the Arabian manner, preserving merely a little tuft of hair on the crown of the head, commonly called the _Mahomet_, continued in force. But as the Chinese are artistic in everything they do, they transformed the ludicrous little tuft of the Arabs into a long thick silky tress. This _coiffure_ is, moreover, perfectly consistent with the climate and the nature of the soil. It is so in this way; the dust is so fine, and consequently is so copiously raised by the lightest breeze, that it is necessary after the least travelling, or in Pekin after even an ordinary promenade in the streets, to get into a bath so soon as one reaches his home. Now all the Chinese without exception have abundance of hair, and if they were to keep it all on their heads, it may easily be imagined what care and trouble it would demand to cleanse it, and if neglected, particularly by those whose occupations compelled them to remain constantly in the open air, what foul, dusty mops they would have usurping the place of head-gear. Exported and sold too, in such a condition, these shorn chignons would evidently be less presentable to the ladies of England and France, to whom China sends so many cargoes of these delicate _objets de luxe_--the only valuable remnants probably of so many decapitated criminals.
They can, on the other hand, very easily keep their pigtail free from dust, and as spruce as a skein of silk, either by hiding it under a cap, or by letting it hang under their clothing. The peasants, who are obliged during summer to work in the open field, use this tress to fasten large wet napkins over their heads as a protection against the fierce rays of the sun.
It is astonishing, moreover, on entering China--a country we in France have too long ridiculed--to see what industry pervades the people in everything they do, and especially in their agriculture, which, however much it may be favoured by the richness of the soil, is nevertheless indebted for its prosperity to the industry of the people.
With regard to this question I will refer to a social organization well worth notice. When a Chinese has merited by his services a title of nobility, his son in due course inherits merely the title immediately inferior, and the nobility thus descends, diminishing in rank in the family from generation to generation until it becomes definitely extinct, unless one of its members render some service to his country and thus regain the title originally granted to his ancestors. No one, certainly, has more veneration than I have for old French families and ancient titles; but I should always desire to have good reason to esteem the men that are honoured by them as much as I respect the bare names and titles themselves. The ingenious Chinese institution gives an ever active emulation to the nobility, a desire all the stronger to render a service to the country, since the title is always fading away, because it is thought more dishonourable to suffer this inheritance to become extinct by those who have enjoyed it, than never to have merited a distinction at all.