CHAPTER V
OLLA PODRIDA
It is doubtful if these Central Asian towns ever change. Their dull mud walls, mud houses, mud mosques look as if they would remain the same for ever. In most climates they would be washed away, but in Central Asia there is hardly any rain and so they stay on for ages....
“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,” would be a particularly appropriate motto to place over the gateway of a Central Asian town.—The Heart of a Continent, Sir F. Younghusband.
We arrived at the capital of Chinese Turkestan in the spring, with the best of the year before us. The trees that bordered the countless irrigation channels were all in leaf, the jigdah, or Babylonian willow, was bursting into flower with gusts of perfume, one species bearing later on a yellow fruit something like a date in appearance and called nan, or bread, by the Kashgaris; the sickly-sweet white, and the big purple mulberries were ripening; the fields brilliantly green with lucerne and young corn, and the many gardens enclosed by low mud walls pink with fruit blossom. The picturesque loess cliffs—such a characteristic feature of Chinese Turkestan—broke up the country in every direction and the two branches of the river added great charm to the landscape, the frequent haze of dust giving a curious glamour to the scene.
During our rides outside the city we often came across some little mosque with carved wooden columns and roof, the building overlooking a large hauz or tank of water planted round with tall silver-stemmed poplars, or a vacant space in some village lane would be occupied by a huge spreading poplar, or the beautiful elm of the country, or the rather rare weeping-willow. There were few flowers to be seen, save the small mauve irises that were always found in the graveyards, where they spread themselves in sheets of blue among the tombs; but along the sandy tracks big bushes of wild roses with their faint scent reminded us of home.
There were plenty of birds, hoopoes and doves being the commonest, if one excepts the ubiquitous crows and sparrows; the cuckoo was heard occasionally and the swallows skimmed after flies. I was interested in a pair of hawks that had made a rough nest in a tall poplar in the garden, their wild “keening” sounding all day long as they came backwards and forwards with food for their offspring. On one occasion they attacked M. Romanoff as he was standing on the terrace below their nest and looking through a pair of field-glasses. He said that they swooped down upon him again and again, brushing his head with their wings and uttering piercing cries, and they even pursued him to the roof of the Consulate whither he retreated to continue his survey of the country. His idea was that the hawks must have imagined the glasses to be a weapon directed at the nest. Mr. Bohlin once observed one of these birds swoop down in the midst of the crowded bazar and snatch a piece of meat from a boy, and he had often seen men washing the carcasses of sheep in the river and calling to the hawks that caught bits of offal flung into the air.
There were only harmless snakes in the Oasis, and not many of them. The boys were fond of winding them round their heads under their skull-caps, and they keep them in their shirts. On the other hand, the big six-inch-long lizards were feared, as their bite was said to be very poisonous. We sometimes saw the pretty jerboa, and there is a kind of small rat indigenous to the country, called “bag-mouth” by the natives, from its habit of filling the pouches in its cheeks with grain that it stores away. On one occasion Mr. Bohlin discovered that a large box of garden-seeds was nearly empty, and setting a watch he caught the ingenious little thief busily filling its pouches. On killing it he recovered a surprising quantity of the stolen goods!
The newly built Consulate was agreeably free from scorpions, which usually come out at night and can move at a great rate with a curious rustling noise; but we had plenty of spiders. The very large ones that could run at lightning speed I was assured were harmless; but one of the missionaries told me that the pain she had suffered from this spider’s bite was intense, and that her finger had had a lump on it for many a long day after. An entomologist endorsed her experience, saying that these were hunting spiders, and killed their prey with a bite that was poisonous. Their size may be judged from the fact that Mr. Bohlin once saw a sparrow try to attack one, but the spider defended itself by waving its legs, and by this manœuvre apparently so much alarmed the bird that it flew off! I used to call Sattur to the rescue when my rooms were invaded by one of these creatures, and he often had an exciting chase with the broom before he could dislodge his agile prey from its niche, its long leaps filling me with fear lest it might alight upon my head and then wreak vengeance upon me. Finally, it would be caught in a cloth and flung outside the house, my henchman refusing to destroy it, as the world-wide superstition that it is unlucky to kill a spider holds good in Kashgar. A comparatively small, but very hairy spider, I was told, was extremely poisonous. Great black bees and dragon-flies flew about the garden, big horse-flies often attacked our mounts as we rode, and, when the first cold of autumn set in, we suffered from a regular invasion of wasps crawling about on windows and floors, all in a half-torpid condition.
During the summer it was almost impossible to read in the evenings, because a light attracted swarms of midges, little beetles and other insects; but we could sit or walk on the terrace in the darkness unmolested, nor were we troubled by mosquitoes.
Until I became accustomed to it, the noise of Kashgar disturbed me a good deal. At dawn the whole world was up and about, men and boys singing lustily, or yelling at their donkeys, which from their continual braying are nicknamed the “nightingales of Kashgar,” the bird of the poets not being a visitor to these regions. A jingling of bells would denote the passing of the blue-tilted Chinese mapas drawn by sturdy ponies, or a deeper booming would indicate that a caravan of camels was on its way across the desert, perhaps to far Khotan, or even to Peking. The city gun, really a Chinese cracker, went off with a bang at sunrise to announce that the city gates were open, and it seemed to let loose a perfect pandemonium of sound. Women shrieked to one another, children cried and quarrelled, dogs barked, horses neighed and cocks crew; the flocks of small birds twittered unceasingly, there was an all-pervading hum of insects, in which one could distinguish the shrill chirp of the tree-cricket, and multitudes of frogs croaked from the watercourses.
At intervals throughout the day would be heard the blowing of an ibex horn, resembling the hoot of a motor. This was a signal from one of the many mills, to inform customers that the miller was ready to grind their grain, or perhaps that the flour was waiting to be carried away. These mills are ramshackle mud buildings on the river or on a water channel, everything being open to the air and no provision made to keep out wind and rain and dust. The wheat is poured into boxes which feed the millstones, and these cast the flour, when ground, on to flat tables, upon one of which I noticed a dirty old cap being used to sweep it up. The Kashgar millers had by no means a good reputation for honesty. A customer’s grain is weighed before grinding, yet when it is returned to him as flour it will probably be mixed with some inferior cereal or even with sand, of which there is enough and to spare.
With the noonday heat there always came a welcome lull in the concert of noise, this being the hour of siesta for most living things. But when the sun descended towards the west all the world awoke, and a crescendo of sound would be reached by sunset, all the sounds of the early morning recurring, the legions of cocks seeming to salute the parting day as vociferously as they greeted its appearance. The Kashgaris, by the way, have a very inferior breed of poultry, and their rendering of our saying: “To count your chickens before they are hatched” is “To count your chickens in the autumn.” They speak of a coward as being “chicken-livered,” just as we do.
There must be added to the noises I have already enumerated the thudding of drums, the drone of bagpipes, the twanging of sitars and the singing of choruses, often most agreeable to western ears. Nor must I omit to mention the muezzins calling men to prayer from the minarets of the mosques, their powerful voices ringing out over the city with a solemn beauty as they testify that there is but one God and that Mohamed is His Prophet.
The sunsets of Kashgar were most lovely, with a delicacy and charm all their own. They were not spectacular displays of scarlet, purple and gold as in many parts of the world, but the sky was softly flushed with pale pinks, mauves and yellows, while a wonderful golden haze, due I imagine to the dust particles in the air, shimmered over the whole landscape. The broken loess cliffs, on which stood shabby mud hovels and tombs with no pretensions to architecture, seemed now to be crowned with castles and domes worthy of some city of high romance, the ruined garden-house with its columned verandah standing high above the river was turned into a Greek temple, and the tall poplars silhouetted darkly against the glow resembled cypresses, transporting me in spirit to many an Italian garden in Rome or in the City of Flowers. The chocolate-coloured river flowing below us was now iridescent as the breast of a dove, and across the sands of its wide bed there gleamed the enchanted light that cast a spell over the whole landscape. And then the sun would set, and in an instant a grey, deathlike pallor would creep over everything, making me shiver and turn away with a curious sense of depression.
During the spring the Kashgaris make pleasure expeditions to the different shrines round the city, going rather to eat and gamble than to say their prayers. Bands of friends are in the habit of feasting one another in turn in some garden, meeting four afternoons a week for the purpose, and sometimes on our evening walks we came across these revellers returning home. The Begs and the Sayyids, who claim to be descendants of the Prophet, rode showy stallions or well-fed asses and looked imposing figures in their snowy turbans and long silk coats. They were usually handsome men with well-cut noses, fresh complexions and full beards. The young men had moustaches and invariably stuck a rose or a sprig of blossom under the brim of their embroidered caps, and all alike presented a strong contrast to the flat-faced, yellow-skinned Chinese.
The women, who, as in all Moslem countries, have no social intercourse with the men, took their outings by visiting the shrines, one of which they had all to themselves, the Mazzar of Bibi Anna. The grave of this female saint was situated on a bluff opposite the Consulate, the mud tomb, on which a white flag fluttered, being enclosed with a mud wall. Here widows and divorced women who desired remarriage and girls anxious for a husband were wont to resort: putting their hands into holes built in the tomb, they would implore the holy woman to aid them.
THE SHRINE OF BIBI ANNA.
Page 93.
Try as I would, I was unable to gain any information about the Bibi Khanum, as she was called. The white flag brought her often to my mind, as I could not stand upon the garden-terrace without seeing it, and now and again at night I observed a lighted lamp hanging above her last resting-place. In a Mohamedan country where woman in theory is little regarded, what had the Lady Anna done that a shrine at which miracles were reputed to be performed should be erected to her memory? When did she live? Was she perhaps kin to Hazrat Apak the Priest-King of Kashgar? I can answer none of these questions, and merely know that she was regarded with much veneration.
On one occasion, when many women were assembled at her grave, I asked some of them to put their hands into the holes of the tomb and allow me to photograph them in that position, but realized at once how tactless I had been. With shocked faces the women explained that such a thing would practically amount to sacrilege; but they had no objection to being photographed seated beside the mazzar.
Perhaps the most popular shrine is that of Ali Arslan, a couple of miles to the north of the city, the road leading up to it being bordered on either side by gardens, the property of the mazzar and a great holiday resort. The lofty brick gateway is barred to horses and vehicles by a tree-trunk, over which we clambered, to find ourselves in a large enclosure with a great tank of water planted round with stately poplars, a usual and pleasing characteristic of holy places in Chinese Turkestan. Behind it lay the shrine, an insignificant building entered by an old carved and fretted doorway, one of the best specimens of this form of native art that we came across in the country. An old akhun—his office is to read the Koran at the graves for the benefit of the departed—was kneeling and reciting prayers before it, and inside the small space was filled by a large tomb covered with blue and white tiles, trophies of flags, and horns of the wild sheep.
Sultan Arslan Boghra, the hero-saint, surnamed the Tiger for his bravery, who is honoured here, fought with great valour against the Buddhist inhabitants of Khotan, who did not wish to change their religion for the tenets of Islam. He was one of the earliest Mohamedan conquerors of Kashgar, and it is recorded by Bellew that the pagan ruler of Khotan, who led his force against the Moslems, offered a large reward to the man who could compass the Sultan’s death. At this time the Nestorian Church had its adherents throughout Asia, and the story runs that one of its priests counselled the Buddhists to fall upon their opponents at dawn, as they would then be engaged with their devotions and so would be taken unawares. The advice was followed, and in a great battle on the desert plain of Ordam-Padshah, some fifty miles south-east of Kashgar, the adherents of the Prophet were utterly routed and their gallant leader slain.
Ali Arslan’s head was carried in triumph round the walls of Kashgar, into which the Moslems had retreated for the time, and it is supposed to be buried in the shrine that we visited. His body, however, rests at Ordam-Padshah, and Sir Aurel Stein writes that a mound covered with poplars from which flutter rags is all that marks the grave of the saint, although it is a peculiarly holy spot and is annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.
There are various shrines outside the city that claim to cure particular diseases. A relative of Ali Arslan is interred in one of these, and before the fretted windows of his mazzar is an ancient willow that leans over nearly to the ground. If a patient afflicted with rheumatism will go round the tree seven times in a believing spirit, bending nearly double in order to rub his back against the bark, it is said that he will be freed from his complaint. Old Jafar Bai tried the treatment one day when we were there, but I never ventured to question him as to the result. The so-called Tombs of the Mongols outside the city seemed to me to be somewhat of a fraud, as the mud-domed graves were quite modern. But they are visited annually by thousands of the Faithful, who gamble, feast and have a day’s outing in the neglected cemetery, many, I was told, omitting to say their prayers.
To turn to another subject, although Kashgar is the seat of Government, the entrance of the yamen being marked by the masts, some seventy feet high, and the grotesque stone lions that signify authority, yet the Chinese troops are in barracks at Yangi Shahr (New City) some six or seven miles distant. This town is surrounded by high parapeted mud walls in good repair; two sally-ports have to be passed before the big bazar can be entered, and, as is customary, these entrances are crooked in order to foil the evil spirits. Just inside the Pai-fang, or roofed gateway, there is a Chinese temple, and over the gate a building in which paper prayers are burnt on fête days and the ashes flung to the heavens.
The stalls in the bazar, with their wooden shutters and matting awnings, seemed much the same as those in the Old City, but in Yangi Shahr the Celestial was at home instead of looking like an intruder, and soldiers in khaki uniforms and forage caps of German appearance were everywhere to be seen. Black, the royal colour of the Manchus, was still affected by the inhabitants, and most unsuitable wear it was for such a dusty place, but the flag of the Republic, with its five colours, flew over every yamen. It interested me to hear that the yellow stripe stood for China, the black for the Manchus, the red for the Mongols, the blue for Tibet, and the white for the Moslem subjects.
The Chinese seem to hold the province more by bluff than by force, the troops being few, of all ages, and not troubled by overmuch drill. Certainly the Governor and the Commander-in-Chief always go forth in considerable state with detonations of crackers in order to impress the populace, but as, owing to Chinese arrogance, the officials decline to learn any foreign language, they never get into touch with the people they are supposed to govern. Being intensely proud of their old civilization, they utterly decline to move with the times or absorb new ideas, and so are, as it were, petrified.
The upper classes are brought up to despise manual labour and are admirers of the pen, holding the sword in contempt, and as a result are often incapable of defending themselves if attacked. Social distinction goes by learning, a literatus being the equal of any one and invariably accorded a seat of honour at the yamen. Probably their unhealthy lives—for they take no exercise, love darkened rooms and are addicted to drink and opium-smoking—have brought them to this ignominious pass; and one Governor said that the long nails he affected were an excellent aid to self-control, for he could never clench his hand to strike any one in anger! They rule the province easily, because the inhabitants are a mild unwarlike race, accustomed for centuries to be under the heel of a conqueror and preferring the tolerant domination of China to that of Russia.
Liu-Kin-tang, the general who reconquered the province after the death of Yakub Beg, has a big temple erected to his honour outside the New City, and one afternoon we made an expedition to see it. It is just off the broad tree-planted road, always full of traffic, which is spanned by imposing-looking painted bridges that cross the Kizil Su. On our arrival we rode into a large courtyard, where we dismounted to pass through a fantastically decorated gateway into a second courtyard, and were met by the Governor of the City, whose robes of black and blue were crowned by a panama hat. One of his attendants wore a black felt “billy-cock” that looked oddly out of keeping with the rest of his costume, as did the caricatures of English straw hats that were affected by the others. The Governor escorted us to the temple, the façade of which was a blaze of gold, blue and scarlet mingled with Chinese inscriptions. The tomb of the famous general was under a carved canopy, over which gilded dragons careered, and before it was the hero’s portrait, an enlarged coloured photograph. An old bronze tripod for burning joss-sticks, and a great bronze bell that the Governor struck in order that we might hear its wonderful tone, stood in front of the photograph, and on one side of the tomb was a fresco of a black and white tiger. Formerly there were large paintings on the walls depicting the general’s career, but unluckily all these had been destroyed by a recent earthquake, and the temple had practically been rebuilt and was shorn of much of its original decoration.
I wondered whether Liu-Kin-tang at all resembled the general of an amusing story told us by Sir Aurel Stein. This Chinaman set out with an army of twelve thousand men to conquer an enemy that inhabited a very hilly country, and he was obliged to negotiate an extremely difficult pass in order to get into touch with the foe. His soldiers clambered to the crest of the ascent and, as he had foreseen, were seized with fear and refused to go farther, but took heart of grace when a body of the recalcitrant tribesmen came forward and tendered their submission. In reality these were devoted followers of the general, who had commanded them to disguise themselves, and on their appearance the army, with its moral restored, streamed gaily down the pass into what they imagined to be a conquered country. And so in effect it was; for the tribesmen, terrified at the great host, hastened to surrender, and thus fully justified the astute plan of the general.
The priest in charge of the temple, clad in black and wearing a curious cap, was a weird object, with long greasy hair standing out from his face, and I did my best to reproduce his Cheshire-cat grin with my kodak. When we had seen everything we were invited to partake of tea, and seated ourselves at a small table covered with a cloth badly in need of the wash. Our host put huge chunks of dingy-looking sugar into our glasses with his fingers, and with the same useful members helped us to little sponge cakes and thin biscuits made of toffee and meal. He himself had the usual little china bowl in which the tea is seethed; a small inverted bowl is placed on the top to prevent the escape of the leaves, and the tea is drunk through the crack between the two.
In common with most upper-class Chinese, the Governor looked ill and had bad teeth, and certainly the fondness of Celestials for turning night into day and carefully avoiding fresh air makes them look very different from the robust Kashgaris, who are at their best on horseback and are essentially an outdoor race. A Celestial is proud of his half-inch-long finger-nails, which show that he has never condescended to manual labour, and if he lives abroad he will send his parents a packet of nail-parings in order to assure them that he is one of the literati, who are treated with such consideration throughout the Empire. When forced to travel a Chinaman will not ride, but will go in a mapa. This is a painted cart having a blue and black awning and a tasteful dash of scarlet at the back, on which a charm is inscribed, and there are jingling bells on the horses to ward off evil spirits. But the lower classes are very different; strong, hardy and uncomplaining, and seeming to bear out the saying—“A Chinaman is ill only once in his life, and that is when he is dying.”
There were not many Chinese women at Kashgar, and I was told that the conquering race does not look upon any marriage as legal unless it is contracted with a girl of their own country, whom they practically buy. The amount that a would-be husband must pay for a wife is fixed by go-betweens according to her looks and her position in the world. When this is settled, the couple, clad in their best clothes, enter a room where their friends are assembled, bow low to each other, and then carry round a tray of bowls of tea, which they offer to their guests. This ceremony completes the marriage, and when the bridegroom has lived several days in the house of his parents-in-law he takes his bride to his own home, where she is henceforth under the rule of her mother-in-law.
Although according to English ideas the Chinaman makes but an indifferent husband, he is very proud of his sons. The Celestials carry the Oriental regard for the male sex to extremes. For example, an Englishwoman who had lived in China told me that when she bade her Chinese nurse chastise her little boy if naughty, the woman looked at her in horror, saying in shocked tones, “Him piecee man—I no touch piecee man!” I was told that parents like a boy to be headstrong and uncontrolled, because they think that he is likely to make his way in the world; and they are pleased if he steals cunningly, saying to one another, “Our son is beginning to help the house early.” Lying is a fine art among both Chinese and Kashgaris, and there is little shame at being found out.
There is no need for a “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” among the Chinese, for they are trained to be considerate to the “brute creation,”—a very pleasant trait in their characters. They certainly live up to their own saying, “Be kind to the horse that carries you, to the cow that feeds you and to the dog that guards your possessions,” and they are an example to the Kashgaris, who are callous if not actually cruel in their treatment of animals.
The frequently over-fat horses, mules and dogs belonging to Celestials presented a strong contrast to the usually overworked and underfed Kashgari donkeys, that were beaten by their owners on the slightest provocation. And yet these little creatures, sometimes almost hidden under piles of brushwood or staggering along under loads of sun-dried bricks, or perhaps a plough, the handles of which scraped the ground at every step, keep their independence strangely. They do not obey the voice of their masters, as do the horses; each donkey in a drove picks his own path and does not, like the caravan ponies, follow a leader slavishly. Surely an animal so strong and intelligent deserves a better fate than blows and semi-starvation.
Every one who has travelled in Mohamedan countries knows that the dog is looked upon as an unclean animal, and the starved and mangy pariahs of Kashgar merely filled the position of town-scavengers, though others that were kept to guard the houses were somewhat better treated. These watch-dogs used to rush out and leap at our horses in most unpleasant fashion, until my brother taught them better manners with the lash of his hunting-crop. Fortunately for the cat, the Prophet made a pet of this animal, and it is therefore held in high favour.
At the end of May we had a most interesting visitor in the person of Sir Aurel Stein, on his return from two years in the desert, where he had made fresh discoveries of great importance and extent, his finds filling a hundred and fifty packing-cases. Owing to the wonderful preservative power of sand he had found some specimens of very ancient paper, in connection with which Sir George Macartney drew my attention to the following passage in Chavannes. The French scholar wrote of two particular documents found by Sir Aurel Stein, “qu’ils paraissent bien remonter au deuxième siècle de notre ère, et sont ainsi les plus vieux spécimens de papier qu’il y ait au monde.”
Although Sir Aurel liked the Chinese so well, he said that he was glad to return to Turkestan, where the inhabitants are most hospitable and always ready to place houses and gardens at the disposal of strangers. In fact they are so open-handed that they offer food to any one who comes to the house at any hour; the well-to-do apparently eating at short intervals all day long. But in China, with its old civilization, the custom is very different, the people allowing no one to enter their doors unless he be armed with introductions. Fortunately, the gods are always ready to receive guests, and Sir Aurel has spent many a night in temples full of hideous idols. Such quarters, however, though pleasantly cool in summer, are icy cold in winter.
Another thing that makes travelling in China disagreeable to Europeans is that the inhabitants crowd round any stranger to observe him. They consider that in so doing they are showing attention, and the luckless man renders himself unpopular if he resents it. This behaviour is in strong contrast to that of the Turki, who are most polite, in the English manner, to travellers, and though my brother and I rode and walked through the whole Oasis we never once had a disagreeable look or word; in fact, the only curiosity about us was shown by the women, and that in most unobtrusive fashion.