In the Shantung province, in Chihli and in Manchuria, millet stems, especially those of the great kaoliang or sorghum, are extensively used for fuel and for building as well as for screens, fences and matting. At Mukden the kaoliang was selling as fuel at $2.70 to $3.00, Mexican, for a 100-bundle load of stalks, weighing seven catty to the bundle. The yield per acre of kaoliang fuel amounts to 5600 pounds and the stalks are eight to twelve feet long, so that when carried on the backs of mules or horses the animals are nearly hidden by the load. The price paid for plant stem fuel from agricultural crops, in different parts of China and Japan, ranged from $1.30 to $2.85, U. S. currency, per ton. The price of anthracite coal at Nanking was $7.76 per ton. Taking the weight of dry oak wood at 3500 pounds per cord, the plant stem fuel, for equal weight, was selling at $2.28 to $5.00.
Large amounts of wood are converted into charcoal in these countries and sent to market baled in rough matting or in basketwork cases woven from small brush and holding two to two and a half bushels. When such wood is not converted into charcoal it is sawed into one or two-foot lengths, split and marketed tied in bundles, as seen in Fig. 77.
Along the Mukden-Antung railway in Manchuria fuel was also being shipped in four-foot lengths, in the form of cordwood. In Korea cattle were provided with a peculiar saddle for carrying wood in four-foot sticks laid blanket-fashion over the animal, extending far down on their sides. Thus was it brought from the hills to the railway station. This wood, as in Manchuria, was cut from small trees. In Korea, as in most parts of China where we visited, the tree growth over the hills was generally scattering and thin on the ground wherever there was not individual ownership in small holdings. Under and among the scattering pine there were oak in many cases, but these were always small, evidently not more than two or three years standing, and appearing to have been repeatedly cut back. It was in Korea that we saw so many instances of young leafy oak boughs brought to the rice fields and used as green manure.
There was abundant evidence of periodic cutting between Mukden and Antung in Manchuria; between Wiju and Fusan in Korea; and throughout most of our journey in Japan; from Nagasaki to Moji and from Shimonoseki to Yokohama. In all of these countries afforestation takes place quickly and the cuttings on private holdings are made once in ten, twenty or twenty-five years. When the wood is sold to those coming for it the takers pay at the rate of 40 sen per one horse load of forty kan, or 330 pounds, such as is seen in Fig. 87. Director Ono, of the Akashi Experiment station, informed us that such fuel loads in that prefecture, where the wood is cut once in ten years, bring returns amounting to about $40 per acre for the ten-year crop. This land was worth $40 per acre but when they are suitable for orange groves they sell for $600 per acre. Mushroom culture is extensively practiced under the shade of some of these wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of $100 per acre.
The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto, amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state and to the Imperial Crown.
In all of these countries there has been an extensive general use of materials other than wood for building purposes and very many of the substitutes for lumber are products grown on the cultivated fields. The use of rice straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village, Fig. 8, is very general throughout the rice growing districts, and even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was observed in the Canton delta region, such a construction being warm for winter and cool for summer. The life of these thatched roofs, however, is short and they must be renewed as often as every three to five years but the old straw is highly prized as fertilizer for the fields on which it is grown, or it may serve as fuel, the ashes only going to the fields.
Burned clay tile, especially for the cities and public buildings, are very extensively used for roofing, clay being abundant and near at hand. In Chihli and in Manchuria millet and sorghum stems, used alone or plastered, as in Fig. 88, with a mud mortar, sometimes mixed with lime, cover the roofs of vast numbers of the dwellings outside the larger cities.
At Chiao Tou in Manchuria we saw the building of the thatched millet roofs and the use of kaoliang stems as lumber. Rafters were set in the usual way and covered with a layer about two inches thick of the long kaoliang stems stripped of their leaves and tops. These were tied together and to the rafters with twine, thus forming a sort of matting. A layer of thin clay mortar was then spread over the surface and well trowelled until it began to show on the under side. Over this was applied a thatch of small millet stems bound in bundles eight inches thick, cut square across the butts to eighteen inches in length. They were dipped in water and laid in courses after the manner of shingles but the butts of the stems are driven forward to a slope which obliterates the shoulder, making the courses invisible. In the better houses this thatching may be plastered with earth mortar or with an earth-lime mortar, which is less liable to wash in heavy rain.
The walls of the house we saw building were also sided with the long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A similar layer of stems, set up on the inside of the girts and similarly plastered, formed the inner face of the wall of the house, leaving dead air spaces between the girts.
Brick made from earth are very extensively used for house building, chaff and short straw being used as a binding material, the brick being simply dried in the sun, as seen in Fig. 89. A house in the process of building, where the brick were being used, is seen in Fig. 90. The foundation of the dwelling, it will be observed, was laid with well-formed hard-burned brick, these being necessary to prevent capillary moisture from the ground being drawn up and soften the earth brick, making the wall unsafe.