We were so charmed with the city of Liao Yang, that it required small persuasion to induce us to return there a month later in order to visit the neighbouring mountains of Chang Shan (a thousand peaks), and I shall let the account of it follow the present chapter. It was the last week in April, and all the fruit-trees and the elms were bursting into blossom and leaf, as we walked from the station outside the gate to the mission premises within it, embowered among orchards, and the scent of lilac filling the air. The mission gardens were beginning to show signs of the loveliness which has won them a well-deserved reputation among travellers, and we returned like old friends to our former quarters. Life on the mission field soon cements friendship, and medical mission work must appeal even to the stubbornest heart. We had already visited the two hospitals, models of practical, unostentatious usefulness, with the excellent native staff trained by Dr. Westwater, whose name is a household word in the land. To him was due the fact that the town was saved from the horrors of bombardment by the Russian troops, and one has but to walk through the streets of Liao Yang with him to see how universal is the respect in which he is held.
There are various temples of different religions in Liao Yang, and we visited the Temple of Hell, where are depicted all the horrors of future punishment, than which nothing could be more ghastly than the Chinese conception. The grotesqueness of their realistic execution in coloured plaster fortunately took away some of the gruesomeness, and in one of the side shrines we found the extraordinary figure of the popular deity, called the “Ten Parts Imperfect One.” The sketch in Chapter XII. hardly does justice to the hideousness of the figure, which represents the main woes to which flesh is heir in China—lameness, blindness, dropsy, harelip, boils, &c. &c., and to this deity the people come to pray in all cases of sickness.
BLIND BUDDHIST NUN
We also visited a picturesque Buddhist shrine, where an old blind nun lives, the owner of much property, and of the orchards adjacent to the mission property. We found her seated on the khang immediately behind the figure of the Buddha, where she has spent many, many years in meditation. She welcomed us with cordiality, and made us sit down beside her, while she entered into a long and intimate conversation with our host, whom she had not met for some years. The nun had a remarkable head, closely shaven, of course, under her black cap, and looked more like a man than a woman. She told us that she became blind when she was only six years old, and now she was seventy-nine. She felt our hands with the subtle, searching touch of the blind, and had not a little to say on them; we much regretted our ignorance of Chinese, as our feminine curiosity to know what she said was left ungratified. The conversation then turned on the great problems of life, both this life and the next, but she seemed entirely ignorant of Buddhist philosophy, and took refuge in futile platitudes; as regards the future she said, “We die, and there is nothing more.” It is disappointing to find how utterly ignorant they are of anything beyond the externals of their religion. The Taoist monks, on the contrary, boast many men of learning, and have more conception of real religion. I understand this is also the case in other parts of the Chinese Empire.
In contrast with the various temples nothing more charming could be found than the simple beauty of the mission church. It is always difficult to arrange for parts of a building to be screened off without spoiling the effect of it as a whole; at the present time this is still considered necessary in China, so that the men and women may be separated from one another, also they have separate entrances. In the Liao Yang church the difficulty was ingeniously conquered by making the transept the women’s part, and diminishing the space of the nave where it joins the transept, by erecting a smaller arch on either side containing a screen. The pulpit, being in the centre, commands the whole building. This church was designed by an architect specially sent out by the mission committee, and it is of no small importance that such buildings should be carefully designed to be in harmony with the architecture of the country, and not to seem European. At the great World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, stress was laid by speakers from all lands on the growing desire of native Christians to have their own national churches. To this end every detail must be studied; not only must religion be taught them in their own language, but the churches in which they worship must have a homelike feeling, so that nothing may suggest to them that Christianity is a foreign religion. When all is said and done it came from the East and not from the West, so that its externals at least should have as little Western colouring as possible.
CHAPTER V
A Visit to the Thousand Peaks
Next morning we made an early start for the Changsha Valley, in which is an interesting group of monasteries, both Taoist and Buddhist. The former do not admit women visitors, but the latter do. The carts containing our luggage and bedding had started about 3 A.M., as we were to do the first few miles by rail across a monotonous plain. There was only a goods train at that early hour, 7.25, but one car is attached to it for passengers, and in this we travelled for nearly an hour. It contains but one small seat at each end, occupied by Japanese and guards, so the rest of the company mainly squatted on the floor. Some had nice skin rugs or parcels on which to sit, and looked eminently comfortable, but we had to make the best of narrow window ledges, and were glad enough to reach the roadside station where we got out. There was a little waiting-room in which we sat, as the cart had not yet arrived, but thanks to the care of a charming hospital assistant, who came to look after us from Liao Yang, we were promptly invited into the booking-office, where several smart Japanese officials were seated round a stove, and European chairs were given to us. A bullfinch was piping cheerfully in a corner, and they brought us tea to beguile the time. In about half-an-hour the carts turned up, but our hearts sank at the thought that they had required four hours to do considerably less than half the journey. We were soon packed into the carts, each with our bedding and various odds and ends. We promptly became aware that the more padding we had the better, as the jolts of the carts grew worse as time went on. For three hours we crossed the plain and then halted for lunch. This was our first experience of a Manchurian inn, which certainly falls far short of Chinese inns. The kitchen and guest-room are always combined, the khang running along each side of the room, and the fires are at one end of it, at right angles to the khangs. We were installed comfortably on one side of the room, and enjoyed a discreet investigation by the other guests and villagers from the other side of the room. Dr. Westwater’s excellent servant acted as vigilant guardian, and made us quite break the tenth commandment before the end of our excursion. It took nearly another two hours before we came to the mouth of the valley, where the monasteries lay, and the dull monotony of the plain gave way to a ravishing scene of craggy and abrupt hills clothed with vegetation.
