Across China on Foot, Edwin John Dingle [ebook pc reader TXT] 📗

to come and teach them, it was found absolutely necessary that the language should be reduced to writing, and the whole of this extremely creditable work fell to the Rev. Samuel Pollard, who may be characterized as the pioneer of this Christianizing movement in North-East Yün-nan.

In reducing the language to writing, however, considerable difficulty was complicated by the presence of "tones," so well known to all students of Chinese, itself said to be an invention of the Devil. Tones introduce another element or dimension into speech. The number of sounds, not being sufficient for the reproduction of all the spoken ideas, has been multiplied by giving these various sounds in different tones. It is as if the element of music were introduced according to rule into speech, and as if one had not only to remember the words in everything he wished to say, but the tune also.

The Miao people being so low down in the intellectual scale, and having never been accustomed to study, it was felt by the promoters of the written language that they should be as simple as possible, and hence they looked about for some system which could be readily grasped by these ignorant people. It was necessary that the system be absolutely phonetic and understood easily. By adapting the system used in shorthand, of putting the vowel marks in different positions by the side of the consonant signs, Mr. Pollard and his assistant found that they could solve their problem. The signs for the consonants are larger than the vowel signs, and the position of the latter by the side of the former gives the tone or musical note required.

At the present time there are thousands of Miao now able to read and write, and the work of this enterprising missionary has conferred an inestimable boon upon this people. When I went among the Miao I was able, after ten minutes' instruction, to stand up and sing their hymns and read their gospels with them. Miao women, who heretofore had never hoped to read, are now put in possession of the Word of God, and the simplicity of the written language enables them almost at once to read the Story of the Cross. Surely this is one of the outstanding features of mission work in the whole of China. I hope at some future date to publish a work devoted exclusively to my travels among the Hua Miao, for I feel that their story, no matter how simply written, is one of the great untold romances of the world. As a people, they are extremely fascinating in life and customs, emotional, large-hearted, and absolutely distinct from, with hardly a manner of daily life in common with, the Chinese.

MISSION WORK AMONG THE MIAO

Whilst referring to mission work, it is a great privilege for the writer to add a word of most deserved eulogy of the United Methodist Mission at Chao-t'ong and Tongi-ch'uan-fu, and to the kindness shown by the missionaries towards me when I came, an absolute stranger, among them in May, 1909. It is to two members of this Mission that I owe a life-long debt of gratitude, for it was Mr. and Mrs. Evans, of Tong-ch'uan-fu, who saved my life, a week or two after I left Chao-t'ong, as is recorded in a subsequent chapter.

It was in the old days of the Bible Christian Mission—than which the individual members of no mission in the whole of China worked with more zeal and lower stipends—that a most interesting development in the mission took place.

The mass of the Miao are the serfs of the descendants of their ancient kings, who are large landowners, and the Miao are tenants. In 1905 the Miao heard of the Gospel, and came to listen to the preaching, and thousands came in batches at one time and another to the mission house. Their movements thus aroused suspicion among the Chinese, there was a good deal of persecution and personal violence, and at one time it looked as if there might be serious trouble. But the danger quieted down. The chieftain gave land, the Miao contributed one hundred pounds sterling, and themselves put up a chapel large enough to accommodate six hundred people. A year later, a thousand at a time crowded their simple sanctuary, and in 1907 nearly six thousand were members or probationers, and the work has steadily progressed ever since.

I am indebted to the Rev. H. Parsons, who had charge of the work at the time I passed through this district, and whose guest I was for several months, for the following interesting details regarding the methods adopted in the running of this enormous mission field. Mr. Parsons is assisted in his work by his genial wife, who is a most ardent worker, and a capable Miao linguist. Mrs. Parsons regularly addresses congregations of several hundreds of Miao, and has traveled on journeys often with her husband; and such work as hers, with several others in this mission, is a testimony to the wisdom of a system advocating the increase of the number of lady workers on the mission field in China.

THE NOU-SU (OR I-PIEN)

There is a class of people around Chao-t'ong who are called Nou-su, a people who, although occupying the Chao-t'ong Plain at the time the Chinese arrived, are believed not to be the aboriginals of the district. What I actually know about this people is not much. I have heard a good deal, but it must not be understood that I publish this as absolutely the final word. People who have lived in the district for many years do not agree, so that for a mere traveler the task of getting infallible data would be quite formidable.

No tribe is more widely known than the Nou-su, with their innumerable tribal distinctions and hereditary peculiarities so perplexing to the inquirer into Far Western China ethnology.

The Nou-su are a very fine, tall race, with comparatively fair complexions, suggesting a mixture of Mongolian with some other straight-featured people. Of their origin, however, little can be vouched for, and with it we will have nothing to do here. But at the present time the Nou-su provide a good deal of interest from the fact that their power as tyrannic landlords and feudal chiefs is fast dying, and it may be that in a couple of decades, or a still shorter time, a people who, by obstinate self-reliance and great dislike to the Chinese, have remained unaffected by the absorbing spirit of the arbitrary Chinese, will have passed beyond the vale of personality. Even now, however, they own and rule enormous tracts of country (notably that part lying on the right bank of the River of Golden Sand) in north-east Yün-nan. Some are very wealthy. One man may own vast tracts bigger than Yorkshire. In this tract there may be one hundred villages, all paying tribute to him and subject to the vagaries of his vilest despotism. From his tyranny his struggling tenantry have no redress. So long as the I-pien (the local name of the Nou-su) greases the palm of the squeezing Chinese mandarin in whose nominal control the district extends, he may run riot as he pleases. Social law and order are unknown, justice is a complete contradiction in terms, and whilst one is in the midst of it, it is difficult to realize that in China to-day—the China which all the world believes to be awakening—there exists a condition of things which will allow a man to torture, to plunder, to murder, and to indulge to the utmost degree the whims of a Neronic and devilish temperament.

Slave trading is common. If a tenant cannot pay his tribute, he sells himself for a few taels and becomes the slave of his former landlord, and if he would save his head treads carefully.

In the early days, when different clans were driven farther into the hills, they each clinched as much land as they could. In course of time, by petty quarrels, civil wars, and common feuds, the Nou-su were gradually thinned out. The Miao-tsi—the men of the hills and the serfs of the landlords, who four thousand years ago were a powerful race in their own kingdom—became the tenants of the Nou-su, whose rule is still marked by the grossest infamy possible to be practiced on the human race. All the methods of torture which in the old days were associated with the Chinese are still in vogue, in many cases in an aggravated form. I have personally seen the tortures, and have listened to the stories of the victims, but it would not bear description in print.

It must not, however, be understood that to be a Nou-su is to be a landlord. By no means. For in the gradual process of the survival of the fittest, when the weaker landlords were murdered by their stronger compatriots and their lands seized, only a small percentage of the tribe in this area have been able to hold sway. However, wherever there are landlords in this part of the country, they are always Nou-su or Chinese. The Miao—or, at least, the Hua Miao, own no lands, and are body and soul in the tyrannic clutch of the tyrannic I-pien. Then, again, in the Nou-su tribe there are various hereditary distinctions enabling a man to claim caste advantage. There are the Black Bones, as they style themselves, the aristocrats of the race, and the White Bones, the lower breeds, who obey to the letter their wealthier brethren—or anybody who has authority over them.

The Nou-su, who are a totally different race and a much better class than the Miao, are believed to have been driven from the Chao-t'ong Plain, preferring migration to fighting, and many trekked across the Yangtze (locally called the Kin-sha) river into country now marked on good maps as the Man-tze country. It appears that the following are the two important branches:—