Wandering in Northern China

There are various ways of getting about Peking, even though it lacks the principal one of most large cities in other lands; but of them all I like best riding “Hwei-Hwei.” He is...

The changes which burst suddenly upon the traveler at Changchun would be startling if he were not almost certain to be prepared for them. Unless his memory is short or his age b...

The holy city of Urga squats out on what would be an ordinary Mongolian plain were it not for the rows of hills or low mountains which roll up on either side of it. The landscap...

Whatever the dreadful hardships of our journey, they would have been increased by at least one had the loess country been as dry and arid as it looked, and thus compelled us to...

The chief impression of the long all-day journey from Peking to Tzinan in early spring is of graves. All sizes of them, from mere haycocks to veritable haystacks, take up almost...

The Great Wall at its greatest, thirty-odd miles northwest of Peking, with the Ming Tombs thrown in, is well worth the journey, both by train and foot and by airplane—the one in...

A splendid task for some scholar of unlimited patience and a mathematical turn of mind would be to count the graves in China and compute how many sadly needed acres they withdra...

It is obvious that this chapter should be written by the head of the house. But any husband, at least of the United States of America, will understand perfectly what I mean when...

High up above the plain of Lanchow, on the topmost hillock of the partly terraced mountains that bound it on the south, stands a new pagoda. It was built by the wife of the form...

Early on the fourth day we climbed up out of a great road cañon to a mammoth stone archway that marks the boundary between Honan and Shensi provinces, and immediately pitched do...

The traveler from Japan to the peninsula still known to the Western world as Korea has a sense of being wafted on some magic carpet thousands of miles while he slept, a sensatio...

One of our military attachés at Peking purposed to see China’s Far West before the cycle of duties called him home to a regiment, and he consented to have company. At least if i...

From the moment that it enters the province of Kansu, the most westerly of China proper, the ancient route from Sian-fu to Lanchow is lined by huge old willows, supplanted here...

Perhaps it is because I was properly “Japalacked” that I was able to wander at will about Korea by train, steamer, Ford, rickshaw, and on foot without the annoyance of that cons...

Our good British host of Sian-fu conceived the nefarious project of sending us on to Lanchow in “Peking carts”; but the few unavoidable churnings in those of the Tuchun had firm...

We might as well have indulged in an extra nap next morning instead of being as exacting as usual on the hour of departure, for the city gate was still closed when we reached it...

The saddest part of seeing Lanchow was not that we had taken twenty-seven days to reach it, but that it would require fully that amount of time to undo again what we had done. T...

We were off at six, with the night still black about us. But that did not mean that we actually got started so early, for it would be a strange Chinese journey that began withou...

In Korea the traveler who has seen them at home gets a somewhat corrected picture of the Japanese. It is as if they had put their best and their worst foot forward there simulta...

In September, when the _kaoliang_ has ripened to its purple-red, there is added beauty to the eight-hour climb from Peking, by leisurely Chinese train, through Nankow Pass and t...

If I found time to see all Urga during my stay there it must have been due to the fact that it is not, after all, a large city, for most of my waking hours were of necessity spe...

It was our good fortune to dwell out over the hills beyond Seoul rather than in the hot and often breathless city itself. The half-hour walk led up past the big granite Bible Sc...

It is a simple matter to visit Hsi Ling, the Western Tomb, where all the Manchu emperors not at Tung Ling are buried. A short branch of the Peking-Hankow line sets the traveler...

would have been gained by locking the gate. The door of the mud house that usually served as church, as well as for the sleeping-room of the local pastor and ourselves, was no b...

Across the broken valley at a gallop came two mounted men who turned out to be Mongol soldiers, picturesque certainly, but not otherwise particularly inviting. As they rode, the...

The change from Korea to China is not merely abrupt, it is instantaneous. In the exact middle of the big bridge over the Yalu, across which rickshaws trot and pedestrians of all...

The day was delightful, fleckless and summery as if it had been three months later, and we should willingly have lingered longer among the cypress-sighing shades of Mencius, had...