Across China on Foot, Edwin John Dingle [ebook pc reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Edwin John Dingle
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One does not wish to be pessimistic, but it is foolish to close one's eyes to bare fact.
At the moment I am writing, in the middle of China, I know that I am safe enough here, but I do not disguise from myself that the wildest reports are still current within a quarter of a mile from me about me and my own kind in this peaceful city of Tong-ch'uan-fu. And it takes very little to light the fuse and to cause a terrible explosion here, in common with other places in this province. A man might be quite safe one day and lose his head the next if he did not, at times when the rebellious element is apparent, conform strictly to the general wishes and accepted customs of the people among whom he is living.
No, we cannot afford to laugh. We must seek the opinion of those people who were confined within the walls of Chao-t'ong city—the silence of their own homes broken up by the distant uproar of a frantic chorus of yells and angry disputations, sounding, as it were, their very death-knell, as if they were to form a manacled procession dragging their chains of martyrdom to their own slow doom—before we show contempt for the opinion of those who would tell the truth. There is more of Boxerism in the far-away interior parts of China than we know of.
Even as late as the middle of January of the year 1910 there was no rumor of any uprising. About this time, however, to supply a serious deficiency in the revenue caused by the dropping of the opium tax, since that drug had ceased to be grown, a general poll-tax was levied, which the people refused to pay, and at the same time they demanded that they be allowed again to grow the poppy. Among the population of Chao-t'ong-fu, or more particularly among the people around the city, especially the tribespeople, this additional tax was supposed to have been caused by the Europeans, and other wild rumors concerning the Tonkin-Yün-nan Railway (to be opened in the following April), which gained currency with remarkable rapidity, added to the unrest. It required only that brilliant phenomenon of the heavens, with its wonderful tail—none other than Halley's Comet—to bring the whole to a climax. This was altogether too much for the superstitious Chinese, and he looked upon the comet as some evil omen organized and controlled by the foreigner especially for the working of his own selfish ends in the Celestial Empire; and a number believed it to be a heavenly sign for the Chinese to strike.
That the riot was being started was plain, but the first definite news the foreigners received was on February 5th, when an I-pien (one of the tribes), whose little girl attended the mission school, was captured and compelled to join the rebelling forces between T'o-ch-i (on the River of Golden Sand[O]) and Sa'i-ho, in a westerly direction from the town. A march would take place on the fifteenth of that month, the Europeans would be assassinated, their houses would be burned and looted—so ran the rumor. By this date, for two days' march in all directions from Chao-t'ong, the rebels had camped, and a motley crowd they were—Mohammendans, Chinese, I-pien, Hua Miao, and other hooligans. Mobilization was effected by spies taking round secret cases (the ch'uandan) containing two pieces of coal and a feather—a simile meaning that the rebels were to burn like fire and fly like birds. Meanwhile, military forces had been dispatched from Yün-nan-fu, the capital (twelve days away), and from Ch'u-tsing-fu (seven or eight days away), and these, to the strength of a thousand, now came to the city, and it was thought that the brigadier-general would be able to cope with the trouble now that he had so many armed troops. Soldiers patrolled the city walls (which, by the way, had to be built up so that the soldiers might be able to get decent patrol), more were stationed on the premises of the Europeans, and every defensive precaution was taken. The officials were in daily communication by telegraph with the Viceroy, and at first the riot was kept well in hand by Government authorities.
But the rebels had by this time got together no less than three thousand men, and were holding three impregnable positions on the adjacent hills, and had effectually cut off communication by the main road. Despite their numbers, they were afraid to strike, however, and lucky it was for the city that the leaders were not sufficiently trusted by their followers, many of them pressed men—men who had joined the rebelling ranks merely to save their own necks and their houses. At this time the pen-fu (a sort of mayor of the city) demanded that the missionaries working among the Hua Miao, and two lady workers paying a visit to that place, should return from Shïh-men-K'an (70 li away), as he could not protect them in the country. A special messenger was dispatched, demanding instant departure, and in the dead of night—a bitter wintry night, icy, dark, slippery, and cold—these ladies came under cover to the city.
They reached the mission premises without molestation.
By this time a new ch'en-tai (brigadier-general) had arrived from the capital, having been sent as a man who could handle the situation successfully. He was a Liu Ta Ren, who had previously held office in the city, and whose cunning a Scotland Yard detective might envy.[P]
Rumors grew more and more serious; the mandarins went all round the countryside endeavoring to pacify the people, and the foreigners could do nothing but "sit tight" through these most trying days. The suspense of being shut up in one's house during a time of trouble of this nature, hearing every rumor which lying tongues create, and unable to get at the facts, is far worse than being in the thick of things, although this would have at once been fatal. But one needs to have lived in China during such a time to understand the awful tension which riots occasion.
The rioters were stationed as follows:—
1. Weining, in Kwei-chow, to the southeast 1,000 men
2. Kiang-ti Hill, in Yün-nan, to the south 1,000 men
3. Several places around the city, to the west as far as the River of Golden Sand 1,000 men
On March 13th a night attack was expected. Breathless, the foreigners waited in their suspense, but it passed off without serious damage being done. On the Sunday, the missionaries, almost at their wits' end with mingled fear and excitement, occasioned by the strain which weeks of anxiety must bring to the strongest, feared whether their services would be got through in peace.
Meetings were being held all around the city, and gradually the mandarins gained small successes. Prisoners—miserable specimens of men fighting for they hardly knew what—were captured and brought to the city, and, on March 16th, sixteen human heads, thrown in one gruesome mass into a common basket, with upturned eyes gaping into the great unknown, hideous-looking and bearing still the brutish stare of hysterical craving and morbid rage, were carried by an armed squad of military to the yamen.
They made a ghastly picture when hung over the gate of the city to put the fear of death into the hearts of their brutal compatriots. The officials, hard-worked and themselves feeling the strain of the whole business, and incidentally fearful for the safety of their own heads, were perturbed all this time by rumors coming from Weining, the mutineers of which were alleged to be the fiercest of the three bands. Up to now the officials had been playing a conciliating game. They had been trying vainly to pacify, but now they found that they had to prove their energies and their benevolence by acting the part of tyrants rather than of administrators of mercy, by warring rather than by peace-making, by fighting and forcing rather than by conciliating and persuading.
On Easter Tuesday, fighting took place on the main road to the north, when the pen-fu and his men achieved a creditable success. The rebels almost to a man were taken, and among the prisoners was a girl who had been distributing the beans, a lovely damsel of eighteen, said to have been the fiancée of the leader of that band. Both her legs were shot through and she was considerably mutilated; but although the pen-fu thought this sufficient punishment, instructions came from the capital that she must die. She was accordingly taken outside the city and beheaded. This caused some consternation among the rebels, as the death of the girl was looked upon as an omen of direct misfortune.
For a very long time she had been going around the country dropping beans into the ground outside any houses she came across, the superstition being that wherever a bean was dropped there in the very spot, perhaps at the very moment, for aught that we know, an invincible warrior would spring up. She had dropped some millions of beans, but the ranks were not swelled as a consequence.
The ch'en-tai had also been out all night, and as men were captured so they were beheaded on the spot without mercy and their heads subsequently hung outside the city gates. The headman of a small village—some forty li from the city—succeeded in capturing one of the leaders, and great credit was due to him; but soon the leader was rescued again by his followers, who then brutally killed and mutilated the body of the headman, causing him to undergo the ignominy of having his tongue and his heart cut out. Fighting was going on everywhere, and by the end of March things were at their height. The fact that rain was badly needed tended only to aggravate the situation, and that lustrous comet made things worse. Day by day miserable processions brought the wounded into the city, and the last day of the month, taken by sudden fright and almost getting out of hand, the panic-stricken people raised the cry that the rebels were marching direct for the city gates. Through the capital tactics adopted by the mandarins, however, this was prevented; but, on the following day, the chapel belonging to the United Methodist Mission at an out-station was burnt to the ground and the houses of the people razed and looted. The caretaker, a faithful Hua Miao convert, was taken, stripped of his clothing, and threatened with an awful death if he did not betray the foreigners. He refused manfully to divulge any information whatsoever, and was on the point of being sacrificed, when the ch'en-tai came unexpectedly upon the scene with his military. He released the Miao, captured thirty-six rebels, killed sixteen more where they stood, and carried away many of their horses and the dreaded Boxer flag around which the men rallied.
And now comes the smartest thing I heard of throughout the rebellion.
A man named Li was the most dreaded of the trio of rebel chiefs, a man of marvelous strength, and who seemed to be able to fascinate his men and get them to do anything he wished—and Liu, the ch'en-tai, set himself the task of capturing him. Disguising himself in the garb
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