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

The Chinese have the crudest ideas of the age of foreigners. Among themselves the general custom is for a man to shave his upper lip so long as his father is alive, so that in the ordinary course a man wearing a moustache is looked upon as an old man. In Tong-ch'uan-fu the rumor got abroad that three "uei kueh ren" ("foreign men") went riding horses—(two young ones and one old one. The "old one" was myself, because I had hair on my top lip, despite the fact that I was considerably the junior. And the fact that one was a lady was not deemed worthy of the slightest consideration.—E.J.D.

Lu-fêng-hsien and its bridge. Magnificence of mountains towards the capital. Opportunity for Dublin Fusiliers. Characteristic climbing. Crockery crash and its sequel. Mountain forest. Changeableness of climate. Wayside scene and some reflections. Is your master drunk? Babies of the poor. Loess roads. Travelers, and how they should travel. Wrangling about payment at the tea-shop. The lying art among the Chinese. Difference of the West and East. Strange Chinese characteristic. Eastern and Western civilization, and how it is working. Remarks on the written character and Romanisation. Will China lose her national characteristics? "Ih dien mien, ih dien mien." A nasty experience of the impotently dumb. Rescued in the nick of time.

When the day shall come for its history to be told, the historian will have little to say of Lu-fêng-hsien, that is—if he is a decent sort of fellow.

He may refer to its wonderful bridge, to its beggars and its ruins. The stone bridge, one of the best of its kind in the whole empire, and I should think better than any other in Yün-nan, stands to-day conspicuously emblematic of ill-departed prosperity. So far as I remember, it was the only public ornament in a condition of passable repair in any way creditable to the ratepayers of the hsien. The wall is decayed, the people are decayed, and in every nook and cranny are painful evidences of preventable decay, marked by a conservatism among the inhabitants and unpardonable indolence.

The bridge, however, has stood the test of time, and bids fair to last through eternity. Other travelers have passed over it since the days of Marco Polo, but I should like to say a word about it. Twelve yards or so wide, and no less than 150 yards long, it is built entirely of grey stone; with its massive piers, its excellent masonry, its good (although crude) carving, its old-time sculpturing of dreadful-looking animals at either end, its decorative triumphal arches, its masses of memorial tablets (which I could not read), its seven arches of beautiful simplicity and symmetry and perfect proportion, it would have been a credit to any civilized country in the world. I noticed that, in addition to cementing, the stones and pillars forming the sides of the roadway were also dovetailed. Among the works of public interest with which successive emperors have covered China, the bridges are not the least remarkable; and in them one is able to realize the perseverance of the Chinese in the enormous difficulties of construction they have had to overcome.

Passing over the stream—the Hsiang-shui Ho, I believe—I stepped out across the plain with one foot soaked, a pony having pulled me into the water as he drank. Peas and beans covered with snow adjoined a heart-breaking road which led up to a long, winding ascent through a glade overhung by frost-covered hedgerows, where the sun came gently through and breathed the sweet coming of the spring. From midway up the mountain the view of the plain below and the fine range of hills separating me from the capital was one of exceeding loveliness, the undisturbed white of the snow and frost sparkling in the sunshine contrasting most strikingly with the darkened waves of billowy green opposite, with a background of sharp-edged mountains, whose summits were only now and again discernible in the waning morning mist. Snow lay deep in the crevices. My frozen path was treacherous for walking, but the dry, crisp air gave me a gusto and energy known only in high latitudes. In a pass cleared out from the rock we halted and gained breath for the second ascent, surmounted by a dismantled watch-tower. It has long since fallen into disuse, the sound tiles from the roof having been appropriated for covering other habitable dwellings near by, where one may rest for tea. The road, paved in some places, worn from the side of the mountain in others, was suspended above narrow gorges, an entrance to a part of the country which had the aspect of northern regions. The sun, tearing open the curtain of blue mist, inundated with brightness one of the most beautiful landscapes it is possible to conceive. A handful of Dublin Fusiliers with quick-firing rifles concealed in the hollows of the heights might have stopped a whole army struggling up the hill-sides. But no one appeared to stop me, so I went on.

Climbing was characteristic of the day. Lu-fêng-hsien is about 5,500 feet; Sei-tze (where we were to sleep) 6,100 feet. Not much of a difference in height; but during the whole distance one is either dropping much lower than Lu-feng or much higher than Sei-tze. For thirty li up to Ta-tsü-sï (6,900 feet) there is little to revel in, but after that, right on to the terrific drop to our destination for the night, we were going through mountain forests than which there are none better in the whole of the province, unless it be on the extreme edge of the Tibetan border, where accompanying scenery is altogether different.

From a height of 7,850 feet we dropped abruptly, through clouds of thick red dust which blinded my eyes and filled my throat, down to the city of Sei-tze. I went down behind some ponies. Upwards came a fellow struggling with two loads of crockery, and in the narrow pathway he stood in an elevated position to let the animals pass. Irony of fate! One of the horses—it seemed most intentional—gave his load a tilt: man and crockery all went together in one heap to a crevice thirty yards down the incline, and as I proceeded I heard the choice rhetoric of the victim and the muleteer arguing as to who should pay.

Just before that, I dipped into the very bosom of the earth, with rugged hills rising to bewildering heights all around, base to summit clad luxuriously in thick greenery of mountain firs, a few cedars, and the Chinese ash. Black patches of rock to the right were the death-bed of many a swaying giant, and in contrast, running away sunwards, a silver shimmer on the unmoving ocean of delicious green was caused by the slantwise sun reflections, while in the ravines on the other side a dark blue haze gave no invitation. Smoothly-curving fringes stood out softly against the eternal blue of the heavens. Farther on, eloquent of their own strength and imperturbability, were deep rocks, black and defiant; but even here firs grew on the projecting ledges which now and again hung menacingly above the red path, shading away the sunlight and giving to the dark crevices an atmosphere of damp and cold, where men's voices echoed and re-echoed like weird greetings from the grave. Onwards again, and from the cool ravines, adorned with overhang branches, forming cosy retreats from the now blazing sun, one emerged to a road leading up once more to undiscovered vastnesses. Yonder narrowed a gorge, fine and delicately covered, pleasing to one's aesthetic sense. The center was a dome, all full of life and waving leafage, ethereal and sweet; and running down, like children to their mother, were numerous little hills densely clothed in a green lighter and more dainty than that of the parent hill, throwing graceful curtsies to the murmuring river at the foot. As I write here, bathed in the beauty of spring sunlight, it is difficult to believe that