Across China on Foot

by Edwin John Dingle

Turning to the crowd as I came out, I smiled serenely, and with a quiet wave of the hand pointed out in faultless English that the gulf between my own country and theirs was already wide enough, and that Great Britain might—did not say that she would, but might—widen it still more if they persisted in treating her subjects in China as monstrous specimens of the human race. This was rigorously corroborated by my two soldier-men, to whom I appealed, and a parting word on the ordinary politeness of Western nations to a greasy fellow (he was a worker in brass), who felt my clothes with his dirty fingers, ended an interesting break in the day's monotony. In the street the crowd again was at my heels, and evinced more than comfortable curiosity in my straw sandals. They cost me thirty cash, equal to about a halfpenny in our coinage.

Since then I have paid other visits to Pu-piao. On one occasion in subsequent travel I had a public shave there. My arrival at the inn in the nick of time enabled me to buttonhole the barber who was picking up his traps to clear, and I had one of the best shaves I have ever had in my life, in one of the most uncomfortable positions I ever remember. My seat was a low, narrow form with no back or anything for my neck to rest upon, and afterwards I went through the primitive and painful massage process of being bumped all over the back. Between every four or five whacks the barber snapped his fingers and clapped his hands, and right glad was I when he had finished. The yard was full, even to the stable and cook-house alongside each other, the anger of a grizzly old dame, who smoked a reeking pipe and who had charge of the rice-and-cabbage depot, being eclipsed only by my infuriated barber as he gave cruel vent to his anger upon my aching back.

This reminds me of an uncomfortable shave I had some ten years ago in Trinidad, where a black man sat me on the trunk of a tree whilst he got behind and rested my head on one knee and got to work with an implement which might have made a decent putty knife, but was never meant to cut whiskers. However, in the case of the Chinese his knife was in fair condition, but he grunted a good deal over my four-days' growth.

This little story should not convey the impression that I am an advocate of the public shave in China, or anywhere else; but there are times when one is glad of it. I have been shaved by Chinese in many places; and whilst resident at Yün-nan-fu with a broken arm a man came regularly to me, his shave sometimes being delightful, and—sometimes not.

I had another rather amusing experience at Pu-piao about a month after this. A supplementary coolie had been engaged for me at Tengyueh at a somewhat bigger wage than my other men were getting, and this, known, of course, to them, added to the fact that he was not carrying the heaviest load, did not tend to produce unmarred brotherhood among them. The man had been told that he would go on to Tali-fu with me on my return trip, so that when I took the part of my men (who had come many hundreds of miles with me, and who had engaged another man on the route to fill the gap), in desiring to get rid of him, he certainly had some right on his side. The day before we reached Yung-ch'ang he was told that at that place he would not be required any longer; but he decided then and there to go no farther, and refused point-blank to carry when we were ready to start. I should have recompensed him fully, however, for his disappointment had he not made some detestable reference to my mother, in what Lao Chang assured me was not strictly parliamentary language. As soon as I learnt this—I was standing near the fellow—he somehow fell over, sprawling to the floor over my walnut folding chair, which snapped at the arm. It was my doing. The man said no more, picked up his loads, and was the first to arrive at Yung-ch'ang, so that a little force was not ineffective.

Indiscriminate use of force I do not advocate, however; I believe in the reverse, as a matter of fact. I rarely hit a man; but there have been occasions when, a man having refused to do what he has engaged to do, or in cases of downright insolence, a little push or a slight cut with my stick has brought about a capital feeling and gained for me immediate respect.

Fang-ma-ch'ang, off the main road, was our sleeping-place. Travelers rarely take this road. Gill took it, I believe, but Baber, Davies and other took the main road. This short road was more fatiguing than the main road would have been.

We again turned a dwelling-house upside down. People did not at first wish to take me in, so I pushed past the quarrelsome man in the doorway, took possession, and set to work to get what I wanted. Soon the people calmed down and gave all they could. My bed I spread near the door, and to catch a glimpse of me as I lay resting, the inhabitants, in much the same manner as people at home visit and revisit the cage of jungle-bred tigers at a menagerie, assembled and reassembled with considerable confusion. But I was beneath my curtains. So they came again, and when I ate my food by candlelight many human and tangible products of the past glared in at the doorway. After dark we all foregathered in the middle of the room and round the camp fire, the conversation taking a pleasant turn from ordinary things, such as the varying distances from place to place, how many basins of rice each man could eat, and other Chinese commonplaces, to things military. Everybody warmed to the subject. My military bodyguard were the chief speakers, and cleverly brought round the smoky fire, for the benefit of the thick-headed rustics who made up the fascinated audience, a modern battlefield, and made their description horrible enough.

One carefully brought out his gun, waving it overhead to add to the tragedy, as he weaved a powerful story of shell splinters, blood-filled trenches, common shot, men and horses out of which all life and virtue had been blown by gunpowder. The picture was drawn around the Chinese village, and in the dim glimmer each man's thought ran swiftly to his own homestead and the green fields and the hedgerows and dwellings all blown to atoms—left merely as a place of skulls. They spoke of great and horrible implements of modern warfare, invented, to their minds, by the devilry of the West. Each man chipped in with a little color, and the company broke up in fear of dreaming of the things of which they had heard, afraid to go to their straw to sleep.

As I lay in my draughty corner, my own mind turned to what the next day would bring, for I was to go down to the Valley of the Shadow of Death—the dreaded Salwen. I had read of it as a veritable death-trap.