Chinese mettle

by E. G. Kemp

OUR FELLOW TRAVELLERS.

The journey through thirteen provinces of China brought us into contact with such an amazing variety of people that it is no easy task to describe clearly what we saw. I propose to give first of all a brief account of the journey as a whole, and then deal with the more important and less-known provinces somewhat in detail. The one salient fact which emerges from the welter of experiences is that the mettle of the Chinese people is changing, even to the remotest bound of the empire. What it will eventually become, the wisest man cannot foretell, but it is amazingly interesting to watch the changes taking place, and I hope that the sympathetic interest of my readers will be quickened by the record.

The journey in China itself lasted six months. We reached Shanghai February 1, via the United States, and at once went by rail to Taiyuanfu, the capital of Shansi. Visitors to China nowadays can get on fairly comfortably without any knowledge of the language, if they keep to the beaten track. The railway runs from Shanghai up to Peking, and only two changes have to be made during the journey of two days and a night; the first is at the Pukow ferry, a very easy matter and well arranged. The train goes down to the Yangtze at Chen Kiang, and the steam tug takes you across in about ten minutes. At the other side we got into a more comfortable train where we had secured sleeping places; in all the long-distance trains there are restaurant cars, where you can get fairly good meals at reasonable prices.

The next afternoon we reached Tientsin at 4.40, and had to change into a crowded train to Peking; there is always, I believe, a sort of free fight to get in at all, and the weakest go to the wall, except in the case of children, for the Chinese are very fond of children, and never fail to make room for them. Peking is reached by 8 p.m. After leaving the train we passed through two great old gateways, linking Past and Present, to another railway station close at hand, and had only sufficient time to get our luggage through the customs, and to start at 9.30 on the Peking-Hankow line for the junction at Shihchiah Chwang. It is not pleasant to do cross-country travelling in any country at night, and to reach a place at 4.20 a.m. on a cold February morning where you have to change stations would be far too difficult a matter for foreigners were it not for mission friends. They never seem to think anything of such trifles as spending nights looking after helpless travellers. We soon got all our goods and chattels out, and handed them over to a Chinese, whom our friend had engaged to look after them till the train left at 7 a.m. for Taiyuanfu. Meanwhile he escorted us to a clean inn, and comforted us with tea and cake and bedding till it was time to start. The bright cold dawn saw us off once more at 6 o’clock, rather enjoying a walk to the station; there we got into quite a comfortable train, and our friend travelled with us back to his own station, the first up the line. All day we passed through fascinating scenery, often following the course of a river, where turbine water-wheels in groups were busy grinding corn.

The line was only begun in 1903 by a French company, but the Chinese have bought it up, and it ought to be increasingly valuable, chiefly for the transport of coal, in which product Shansi is specially rich. How well I remember in the old days seeing the long files of donkeys, each laden with basketfuls of coal, slowly wending their way across the plains and over the hills; whereas now the railway taps some of the chief coal-mines in the Pingtau district. The seams are from eleven to thirty feet in thickness and quite near the surface, and the coal is of excellent quality. The length of the line is only one hundred and fifty-five miles, and we did it in nine hours, whereas on my first journey we were more than nine days travelling up by mule litter and on horseback!

The railway station at Taiyuanfu is outside the great city wall, and we saw as we approached it fine new barracks—Governor Yen has had a macadamized road built to reach one of his barracks, leading through a gate which has been closed over three hundred years. The account of this wonderful man and all his varied activities is set down in Chapter II. The penalty of greatness is seen in the fact that in this famine year refugees from all the surrounding provinces poured by thousands and thousands into Shansi. Relief work was rapidly organized, but it meant a heavy strain on the resources of every one.

After spending ten days with our friends, we went back to Peking, starting in a heavy downfall of snow, which made the Chinese rejoice; it is considered a sign of great prosperity before the approaching New Year. There is so little rain in Shansi and irrigation is so difficult that a good fall of snow is essential for the crops. We found it extremely chilly, however, waiting for three hours at the junction in the middle of the night, without any shelter. The Hankow train was delayed; when it did arrive it was full of Chinese soldiers and others who occupied all the carriages, though we had bespoken sleeping-places in advance. We had to spend the rest of the night in the corridor—a cold and weary time. In the morning a Chinaman came out of a sleeping-carriage and took pity on us, giving us his coupé; but it is a great mistake that the railways are so badly managed, and the military are allowed to monopolize them free of charge whenever they please. Later on in the year they were for some weeks entirely closed to civilian traffic.

At Peking I had the pleasure of being welcomed by the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Society, with which I have been connected ever since it was started. Its object is to cement the friendship between our peoples by putting Chinese and other students when they come to England into touch with congenial English people, and showing them the courtesy and helpfulness they need on arrival in a strange land. It is greatly to be wished that more Chinese of both sexes should come and study in England, and see what is best in our civilization. So many go to America in comparison with those who come here; yet not a few Chinese students have told me that they felt it would be better for them had it been the reverse, because our ideals are nearer to Chinese ones, and our desire for self-realization is so keen. A denationalized Chinaman is a poor product, but a Chinaman who has got his own Chinese culture and adds to it the best we can give of Western knowledge and culture, can, when he returns home, be a tremendous power in the moulding of the new China. He has a reverence for all the great past of his own country, and will strive to preserve its beauty, together with all that is good and great in its literature, art and customs. Wherever I travelled in China this fact was brought home to me. So much that is of historic and artistic value is being ruthlessly swept away, and the tragedy of it is that it is so unnecessary. For instance, in Canton, the most historic Yamen[1] was pointed out to me on a wide new thoroughfare, but its façade had completely lost its dignity and character by the guardian lions having been swept away. There was more than room enough for them, but their value had been ignored. I wanted to see the wonderful old water-clock, the triumph of ancient Chinese science, but was informed it had been taken away in the grand new improvements, and would be set up in a garden. “But do they know how to set it up again so that it will go?” I asked. “Probably not,” said my Chinese guide complacently. So it is with countless treasures in China to-day.

It will cost more money perhaps to send students to England than to the United States, but there are plenty of wealthy men, and still more of women, who are willing to make sacrifices to give their sons and daughters the best possible education, if they realize that they will really get it by coming over here. If only those who come have either friends to look after them, or apply to the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Society, there will not be the disappointment which some have experienced in past times. In Shanghai I was told that students returning with diplomas from England had no difficulty in finding satisfactory posts at once, and are in greater demand than those from America.