The only items which are low compared with our own prices are salted turnips, radishes and eggs. Most of the articles listed were out of season for the locality and were imported for the foreigners, turnips, radishes, pork, fish and eggs being the exceptions. Prof. Ross informs us that he found eggs selling in Shensi at four for one cent of our money.
Our interpreter asked a compensation of one dollar, Mexican, or 43 cents, U. S. currency, per day, he furnishing his own meals. The usual wage for farm labor here was $8.60, per year, with board and lodging. We have referred to the wages paid by missionaries for domestic service. As servants the Chinese are considered efficient, faithful and trustworthy. It was the custom of Mr. and Mrs. League to intrust them with the purse for marketing, feeling that they could be depended upon for the closest bargaining. Commonly, when instructed to procure a certain article, if they found the price one or two cash higher than usual they would select a cheaper substitute. If questioned as to why instructions were not followed the reply would be "Too high, no can afford."
Mrs. League recited her experience with her cook regarding his use of our kitchen appliances. After fitting the kitchen with a modern range and cooking utensils, and working with him to familiarize him with their use, she was surprised, on going into the kitchen a few days later, to find that the old Chinese stove had been set on the range and the cooking being done with the usual Chinese furniture. When asked why he was not using the stove his reply was "Take too much fire." Nothing jars on the nerves of these people more than incurring of needless expense, extravagance in any form, or poor judgment in making purchases.
Daily we became more and more impressed by the evidence of the intense and incessant stress imposed by the dense populations of centuries, and how, under it, the laws of heredity have wrought upon the people, affecting constitution, habits and character. Even the cattle and sheep have not escaped its irresistible power. Many times in this province we saw men herding flocks of twenty to thirty sheep along the narrow unfenced pathways winding through the fields, and on the grave lands. The prevailing drought had left very little green to be had from these places and yet sheep were literally brushing their sides against fresh green wheat and barley, never molesting them. Time and again the flocks were stampeded into the grain by an approaching train, but immediately they returned to their places without taking a nibble. The voice of the shepherd and an occasional well aimed lump of earth only being required to bring them back to their uninviting pastures.
In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces a line of half a dozen white goats were often seen feeding single file along the pathways, held by a cord like a string of beads, sometimes led by a child. Here, too, one of the most common sights was the water buffalo grazing unattended among the fields along the paths and canal banks, with crops all about, One of the most memorable shocks came to us in Chekiang, China, when we had fallen into a revery while gazing at the shifting landscape from the doorway of our low-down Chinese houseboat. Something in the sky and the vegetation along the canal bank had recalled the scenes of boyhood days and it seemed, as we looked aslant up the bank with its fringe of grass, that we were gliding along Whitewater creek through familiar meadows and that standing up would bring the old home in sight. That instant there glided into view, framed in the doorway and projected high against the tinted sky above the setting sun, a giant water buffalo standing motionless as a statue on the summit of a huge grave mound, lifted fully ten feet above the field. But in a flash this was replaced by a companion scene, and with all its beautiful setting, which had been as suddenly fixed on the memory fourteen years before in the far away Trossachs when our coach, hurriedly rounding a sharp turn in the hills, suddenly exposed a wild ox of Scotland similarly thrust against the sky from a small but isolated rocky summit, and then, outspeeding the wireless, recollection crossed two oceans and an intervening continent, bringing us back to China before a speed of five miles, per hour could move the first picture across the narrow doorway.
It was through the fields about Tsangkow that the stalwart freighters referred to, Fig. 32, passed us on one of the paths leading from Kiaochow through unnumbered country villages, already eleven miles on their way with their wheelbarrows loaded with matches made in Japan. Many of the wheelbarrow men seen in Shanghai and other cities are from Shantung families, away for employment, expecting to return. During the harvest season, too, many of these people go west and north into Manchuria seeking employment, returning to their homes in winter. Alexander Hosie, in his book on Manchuria, states that from Chefoo alone more than 20,000 Chinese laborers cross to Newchwang every spring by steamer, others finding their way there by junks or other means, so that after the harvest season 8,000 more return by steamer to Chefoo than left that way in the spring, from which he concludes that Shantung annually supplies Manchuria with agricultural labor to the extent of 30,000 men.
About the average condition of wheat in Shantung during this dry season, and nearing maturity, is seen in Fig. 127, standing rather more than three feet high, as indicated by our umbrella between the rows. Beyond the wheat and to the right, grave mounds serrate the sky line, no hills being in sight, for we were in the broad plain built up from the sea between the two mountain islands forming the highlands of Shantung.
On May 22nd we were in the fields north of Kiaochow, some sixty miles by rail west from Tsingtao, but within the neutral zone extending thirty miles back from the high water line of the bay of the same name. Here the Germans had built a broad macadam road after the best European type but over it were passing the vehicles of forty centuries seen in Figs. 128 and 129. It is doubtful if the resistance to travel experienced by these men on the better road was enough less than that on the old paths they had left to convince them that the cost of construction and maintenance would be worth while until vehicles and the price of labor change. It may appear strange that with a nation of so many millions and with so long a history, roads have persisted as little more than beaten foot-paths; but modern methods of transportation have remained physical impossibilities to every people until the science of the last century opened the way. Throughout their history the burdens of these people have been carried largely on foot, mostly on the feet of men, and of single men wherever the load could be advantageously divided. Animals have been supplemental burden bearers but, as with the men, they have carried the load directly on their own feet, the mode least disturbed by inequalities of road surface.
For adaptability to the worst road conditions no vehicle equals the wheelbarrow, progressing by one wheel and two feet. No vehicle is used more in China, if the carrying pole is excepted, and no wheelbarrow in the world permits so high an efficiency of human power as the Chinese, as must be clear from Figs. 32 and 61, where nearly the whole load is balanced on the axle of a high, massive wheel with broad tire. A shoulder band from the handles of the barrow relieves the strain on the hands and, when the load or the road is heavy, men or animals may aid in drawing, or even, when the wind is favorable, it is not unusual to hoist a sail to gain propelling power. It is only in northern China, and then in the more level portions, where there are few or no canals, that carts have been extensively used, but are more difficult to manage on bad roads. Most of the heavy carts, especially those in Manchuria, seen in Fig. 203, have the wheels framed rigidly to the axle which revolves with them, the bearing being in the bed of the cart. But new carts of modern type are being introduced.
In the extent of development and utilization of inland waterways no people have approached the Chinese. In the matter of land transportation they have clearly followed the line of least resistance for individual initiative, so characteristic of industrial China.