A Chinese Street.
There are two ways of reaching Peking. You may ride or drive in those terrible country carts the eighty miles, staying one or two nights in an indescribably dirty Chinese inn, or go, as we decided, in a house boat, 120 miles up the Peiho.
At two o'clock the next afternoon, we drove in jinrikishas for an hour through the heart of the native quarter. This is my first view of a real Chinese city, and my early impressions are comprised in the all-pervading, all-powerful, smothering filth and dirt, in the revolting smells and disgusting sights; my next, in the jostling of crowds of coolies wheeling enormous iron-bound bales on wheelbarrows, of carts drawn by teams of mules, donkeys or oxen, of equestrians, pedestrians, jinrikishas, and sedan chairs, crowded into a six-foot wide street, curtained with bamboo mats above, producing a bewildering pandemonium. Passing the particularly squalid corner where is situated the Yâmen, we see the twin towers of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. They stand there as a solemn reminder of the dangers which yet threaten the Settlement, and of the fanatical people they are surrounded by, for it was here in 1870 that there was that awful massacre of Roman Catholic nuns, followed by the pillage of the Convent and Cathedral.
On arrival at the bridge of boats, we find our house-boat, Chinese boy, provisions, luggage and crew of coolies safely on board, and after many objurations from the delayed passengers, a passage by the removal of one of the boats is made for us, and we begin our long journey up the Peiho.
This house-boat is very comprehensive on a small scale, for we have a sitting-room and bed-room and kitchen. There is a tiny promenade deck in the bows, then down two steps and you are in a room with a bench, a table and two stools, the door being formed of movable planks of wood. Through an elegant arabesque of woodwork, screened with paper, we can see the raised floor on which are spread our mattresses with red quilts. Behind a similar screen is the kitchen, a few square inches, under the shadow of the helm, where our clever "Boy," who is cook, valet and interpreter in one, turns out the most deliciously cooked and varied dishes, with a batterie de cuisine, consisting of a few tin saucepans and an iron brazier of charcoal. As for the crew, they sleep on deck anywhere, and keep their provisions in the hold. The flat-bottomed boat has an arched roof of matting laid on bamboo sticks. It is clean, for I only saw one black-beetle, but is only moderately air and water-tight. Our tiny domicile is dominated by an enormous sail which is hoisted up and down on running strings. We either tow or pole, or sail, according to the wind and stream.
The vast and varied river life is before us. The banks for some miles above Tientsin are lined with these ugly sampans, their tattered sails hanging in ribbons, their decks strewn with débris where the naked children disport themselves, and the women steer at the helm; for in these sampans generations are born, live, and die, and they are coated too with the dirt of many decades. There are fishermen on the bank where, projecting out of the little hut which he inhabits, is a net stretched wide on bamboo poles, baited with the white of egg spread on the meshes. He lowers it slowly up and down, and at each dip we see the little silver-scaled fish jumping about in the net. There are children dabbling in the mud, true mud-larks, and women washing their clothes. We espy a bridge over a tributary, with a single graceful arch, so curved as to be half an oval, and with some houses, a willow tree and pig-tailed Chinaman, calling to remembrance the willow-patterned plate of our childhood. We pass several covered Chinese gun-boats,—war-junks,—with their blue and white striped awnings, and a Maxim gun in the bows kept for the defence of the Peiho, and the patrolling of the river.
We get out into the country at length, between high mud banks, and by a continuous succession of villages, their brown dusty walls abutting on to the hard-trodden towing path, whilst around is that careful cultivation resembling a succession of kitchen gardens, with its plots of lettuces of enormous size, of cabbages, turnips and onions; and the vertical pole of the water tank is always amongst them. A place is hollowed out in the bank, where, from a cross plank, the bucket attached to the pole is pulled down to the water, when the weighted end bears the bucket up and the water is emptied into the channels that surround each plot. Morning and evening you see hundreds of these automatically-working figures, thus irrigating their fields. The population appear ill-disposed towards foreigners, they collect in the villages and on the sampans and point and jeer at me, for the Chinese keep their women at home, and are shocked at the way "Barbarians," as they call us, travel with their wives.
After punting for a little while, three of the coolies begin to tow, but it is tedious work, as our line has constantly to be undone or passed round the masts of other sampans. Indeed, all the way there are processions of these vessels crawling up the river heavily laden with cargoes of rice, salt, camels' hair, sheep's wool, and vegetables, with their four or six towers, whose brown figures are bent double against the line, patiently staggering along for mile after mile against the current. Our coolies are very willing and cheerful, springing ashore to begin that weary work of tacking against stream, and subsisting on scanty meals of rice, cabbage and maccaroni, which we watch them, at midday and sunset, tucking rapidly into their mouths with chop sticks. Sometimes they sing in chorus to encourage themselves, with a soft crooning chant.
As evening approaches, columns of smoke rise from the stern of the sampans, showing the preparation of the evening meal, and the mists gather low over the villages. We see the great high road to Peking, raised on a mud embankment, that now and again keeps company with the river; it is bordered here with an avenue of whispering willows, and against the orange sunset come such picturesque figures along it. Now a little lady, with her pantaloons reaching to her little feet, tippeting along as if she must fall at every step, a horseman on a shaggy white pony, running along without rising in the saddle, a big man overshadowing a tiny donkey, a jinrikisha, a country cart with oxen, or one of those ancient wooden cabriolets, all outlined in black relief against the yellow sky.
We go to sleep with the sound of the water gently gurgling against the bottom of the boat, the croaking of the frogs on the banks, whilst our patient coolies plod automatically along. They anchor for a few hours in the middle of the night opposite a large village, whence the regular muffled tom-tom of the watchman, a deep and solemn tone, is wafted across to us. At three in the morning there is a rushing sound as of wind and water, and to our great joy we find that we are sailing before a brisk wind.