From the hospitals we drove to the lovely lake-side, where we had tea in a charming house recently built by Dr. Main for the doctors. The lake-side was glorious, with great beds of water-lilies just coming into blossom. What a staff is required for work like the above described! and what an opportunity for men of noble ambitions! The staff is mainly Chinese, but Englishmen are greatly needed as well, and are sadly lacking. The Church Missionary Society is responsible for this important piece of work.
Close to this house is another new and charming one built for convalescent Chinese ladies, and it stands in a pretty little garden. It was empty at the time I was there, but had been used for the Conference of the China Continuation Committee. It will be interesting to see whether the ladies make use of it; it is in the nature of an experiment, being the only one I saw in China. But Chinese ideas are so rapidly changing and the position of women is so different from what it was even ten years ago, that they will welcome the possibility of such a home for convalescence. The rooms devoted to women, even in big houses, are often miserable, and this experiment may promote a better state of affairs.
On the other side of the West Lake is the latest creation of Dr. Main, which was opened next day. It is a rest-house for Chinese workers, and ought to be valuable in connexion with so large a mission work. The funds have all been raised by Dr. Main.
Next day I got a glimpse of the old world before leaving Hangchow. I was escorted up a steep hill to visit a group of temples and to get a view over the wonderful West Lake. Magnificent old trees cast their welcome shade on the buildings, and a curious serpentine stone pathway which had a symbolical meaning leads up the hill. On the top is a group of stones of curious shapes, which are said to represent the twelve requisites of agriculture, but it required a great deal of imagination to trace the resemblance. The air was scented with wild roses, and the view from the top of the ridge was superb—on one side lay the shimmering lake, with its delicate tracery of raised pathways and bridges leading across certain parts of it, and a fine old red sandstone pagoda; on the other side the busy city and the river leading to the sea. It is an ideal spot for artists, and there is the West Lake Hotel on the margin of the lake, where it is quite pleasant to stay if you are not too exacting.
Hangchow is the starting-place for that wonder of the world, the Grand Canal, which stretches nine hundred miles, and part of which was built nearly five hundred years B.C., with solid stone walls. It is spanned in places by beautiful bridges, sometimes a single arch and sometimes several. The bridges of China are very varied and most beautiful; in no other part of the world have such remarkable blocks of stone been used in their construction, and it is impossible to understand how some of them were placed in their present position. The heavy floods in Fukien prevented my visiting the most celebrated one near Chuan Chow, called Lo-yung-kio; it is three thousand six hundred feet in length and fifteen feet wide. Some of the granite monoliths stretching from one abutment to another actually measure as much as sixty feet in length, so we were told by an English captain who had measured them. As there are only twenty abutments, it is obvious they must be very wide apart. In all such bridges that I have seen, the spaces between the abutments vary in size. Even small bridges, like one on the West Lake near Hangchow, are often quite interesting because of their architectural qualities, the artist’s touch being very marked. The Chinese never seem to grudge labour in the beautifying of things great or small, important or unimportant, which gives one great joy in using the common things of daily life. It is as if the workman worked for sheer creative joy and regardless of recompense. If a man, for instance, engraves a line drawing in the hinge of a door, where it will practically be always out of sight, what motive can he have save the creative faculty?
Hangchow is situated at the mouth of the Tsientang-kiang, a most important waterway for the trade from Kiang-si, which comes down on peculiar junks, sixty feet long and ten feet wide.
There is a remarkable tide bore at the river’s mouth; at full tide there is a column of water six feet high which rushes furiously in from the sea, and which is a source of great danger to shipping. This is a sight well worth seeing.
From Shanghai we went down the coast by the steamer Sinkiang to Hong Kong, only putting into Amoy on the way, and enjoying a few hours ashore with friends. They urged us to come and stay with them, an invitation which I gladly accepted later on. The sea was kind to us most of the way, and we accomplished the journey in four days, reaching Hong Kong at 8 a.m. Here we found the housing problem as acute as at home, and were thankful to be taken in at a delightful house for ladies, called the Helena May Institute. It was the greatest boon to me not only then, but when I returned in July to join the ship for England. The house is beautifully situated and strongly to be recommended to ladies travelling alone.
We were delayed some ten days waiting for a boat to Haiphong, as coasting steamers seem peculiarly uncertain in their sailings.
The journey to Haiphong took three nights and two days. When we finally started we found that no Hong Kong money (Hong Kong has a coinage of its own, being British, and admits no other) would be accepted in Indo-China, and that we must re-bank there before starting inland. Haiphong is a most dull and unprogressive little French town: an intelligent young Frenchman at the custom-house told us that red tape rules everything and makes progress impossible.