The British Consul-General is always welcomed throughout Chinese Turkestan, and I will give a description of our entry into Yarkand, which will serve as an example of what occurred at every town during our tour. Some miles from the city we were met at intervals by groups of British subjects, mostly Hindus, who dismounted to greet my brother and then rode behind us, our escort thus becoming bigger and bigger as we proceeded. Some of its members were but indifferent horsemen. Now and again a rider would be thrown and his steed gallop off, or a horse tethered by the roadside would break loose, agitating the procession and making my chestnut scream with excitement until the runaways were captured, usually by the men from Punyal.
Old Jafar Bai had a reception all to himself. Though he lived at Kashgar and owned shops there, he told me that the chief part of his property was at Yarkand, acquired in the old days when he owned a caravan and carried goods between the two towns. I was interested to note the number of acquaintances who clasped his hands warmly, and, when we stopped to partake of the usual spread of fowls, eggs and tea laid out in a marquee, the old man had the joy of seeing his small grandson brought to him by his son-in-law. He kissed the child passionately, and then, full of pride, brought it to me and smiled as I gave the little fellow sweets and biscuits.
After this the whole company remounted and swept on again, to be stopped nearer to the city by the Russian Agent accompanied by the Russian subjects, who were standing in a large group beside tables laden with food, to which our servants always did full justice, surprised that their employers did not appreciate these incessant meals. Just outside Yarkand the beating of drums, the squealing of pipes and the scraping of tars, producing music most excruciating to European ears, announced the Chinese reception. As I always avoided this ceremony, I was glad to be met by Dr. Hoegberg, head of the Swedish Missions and incidentally the architect of the Kashgar Consulate, who drove me along the broad tree-bordered road to the new Chinese town and through interminable bazars to the pleasant garden-house of the British Agent.
“The people of Yarkand display an entire lack of energy and enterprise, or indeed of any interest in life,” was the dictum of Lieutenant Etherton, who visited the city in 1909. Though I thought the statement somewhat sweeping at first, I soon noticed how apathetic the Yarkandis were when contrasted with the lively, laughing Kashgaris, and the reason was not far to seek. The inhabitants of this district are afflicted with goitre in its most distressing forms; and the Swedish doctor told us he believed that about fifty per cent of the population were victims of the complaint, which in his opinion was not the same as the European goitre, and for which he knew of no remedy save iodine. One theory is that it is due to the habit of drinking stagnant water stored in tanks, the river unfortunately being at some distance from the city; but the peasantry living right out in the country are by no means exempt from the scourge. Many thus affected become idiots, and the children of goitrous parents inherit the disease, which Marco Polo commented on in the following words: “A large proportion of them have swollen legs and great crops at the throat, which arises from some quality in their drinking-water.” The old Chinese travellers also make mention of the complaint, but I heard that the Celestials, who boil all their water, whether used for drinking or for washing, never fall victims to it, nor apparently do the Hindu traders or travellers, although if they marry Yarkandi women their children may develop it. Some say that all who drink from a certain canal are sure to contract the disease, while others affirm that it is caused by the grey water of the Yarkand River. Be that as it may, the health of half the population is undermined, and the aged and children alike are sufferers, some unfortunates having their heads permanently tilted backwards by the horrible swelling in their throats. This has given rise to the popular anecdote of the man who rode his horse to the water but had to ask a neighbour if the animal were drinking, as he could not himself look down to see.
Besides goitre and skin-diseases induced by lack of washing, opium and hashish-smoking, and the squalor in which they live, contribute to the sickly look of the people, and I decided that dirty, dusty ruinous old Yarkand was a good place to live out of. The mosques and shrines were in a state of dilapidation, and in spite of a large body of Hindus, who trade with India by one of the highest routes in the world, the whole place looked much poorer than Kashgar.
Masses of snowy-white cotton were to be seen everywhere in the bazars, ready for the stuffing of cushions and quilts or to be spun into yarn, while at odd corners we came across groups of children busily removing the pods or beating out the seeds with sticks. Here, as at Kashgar, there is no grazing for the sheep; hence the poor quality and the toughness of the mutton. The animals were trying to get some nourishment from the withered cotton bents, and I sometimes saw a woman holding out bunches of lucerne to her half-starved charges or letting them munch dried maize leaves from a basket. One must ride in single file through the narrow alleys of the bazar, which are covered in with awnings of maize leaves to keep off the heat. Children and chickens get in the way; here a goat is tied up or a camel is lying down in the midst of the traffic; there a horse, tethered by a rope to a stall, lashes out with its heels at passing riders, and now and again one gets glimpses of extremely unsavoury courtyards. But in fairness to the inhabitants of Chinese Turkestan I defy any one to keep clean who has to live in a house of unbaked mud where there are no washing arrangements, and where, in the absence of chairs, every one must sit on the mud floor: fortunately the brilliantly coloured flowered prints do not show the prevailing dirt as much as might be expected.
The best shops in the bazar were near the Hindu serai, that was hung with silks in honour of my brother’s visit, and I was told that the Chinese are so considerate to the traders from India that they forbid the opening of any butchers’ shops near their quarters, and orders to this effect, inscribed on boards and stuck up on walls, were pointed out to me. Sometimes the Yarkandis tear down these notices and the butchers reopen their stalls, but whenever this occurs a complaint from the Hindus to the authorities is ultimately successful. This praiseworthy tolerance of the religious views of other races partly accounts for the easy Chinese mastery over a Mohamedan population.
Quantities of beautiful fruit, such as peaches and grapes, were on sale in the bazars, the vendors keeping off the swarms of flies by means of horse-hair flappers, and naked children were munching enormous chunks of melon. Horses were being shod, horse-shoes hammered out on the anvils, and near by picturesque copper pots were being worked into shape, a noisy operation. At intervals we came across a mosque with the columned verandah so characteristic of the province, its beams and pediments covered with incised carving something in the style of Jacobean work. The principal mosque had lost about half the blue and white tiles that had once adorned its façade, and the city wall was out of repair to such an extent that people could enter the town by many a breach after the crazy-looking wooden doors had been closed at sunset.
Among the callers on my brother was the son of the Thum of Hunza, whose defeat by the British in 1891 is so graphically described in Knight’s book Where Three Empires Meet. The young chief, who was a child at that time, now ekes out a penurious existence on a small estate given to his ancestors by the Chinese, and has a pension of a couple of taels a month, a sum equivalent to 4s. 8d. Safdar Ali Khan, the old Thum, after his defeat fled to Kucha, where he still lives with an ancient retainer or two, and earns a humble livelihood as a market-gardener. Sic transit!
During our stay I had the pleasure of entertaining a Yarkandi lady. She arrived accompanied by her mother and three sons, and was clad in a purple satin coat, while across her forehead was a richly embroidered head-band, over which fell in graceful folds her long white muslin shawl. When she had removed her lace-work veil her pretty face was set off by big gold earrings and her long black plaits reached half-way down her back. I photographed both ladies, together with the small boys, who were attired in velvet. Going next day to return their visit, I found myself in a garden that had formerly belonged to Yakub Beg, where the mud platform on which he was wont to perform his devotions was pointed out to me. On this occasion I gained a little insight into native etiquette; for my hostess, after graciously accepting a small gift which I presented, put it aside and did not open the parcel until I had retired, it being considered bad manners to look at and admire a present in the way that Europeans are accustomed to do. Our conversation happening to turn on scorpions, my hostess said that she had suffered agonies for three days after having been stung by one, and her husband related that the followers of a certain Indian saint have the power of taking away the pain of a scorpion sting by breathing on the afflicted part. Though he had not had personal experience of this, he had met many who swore that they had been cured instantly by this means, which was perhaps akin to hypnotism. On our return to Yarkand some three weeks later I was invited to attend the feast of the “shaving of the head” of my host’s youngest son, but having no interpreter, as men were tabooed, I declined, though I much regretted missing the sight of some forty or fifty ladies attired in their best and adorned with much jewellery.