An Australian in China

by George Ernest Morrison

Next day a tremendously steep descent took us down to Kiangti, a mountain village on the right bank of a swift stream, here spanned in its rocky pass by a beautiful suspension bridge, which swings gracefully high above the torrent. The bridge is 150 feet long by 12 feet broad, and there is no engineer in England who might not be proud to have been its builder. At its far end the parapets are guarded by two sculptured monkeys, hewn with rough tools out of granite, and the more remarkable for their fidelity of form, seeing that the artist must have carved them from memory. The inevitable likin-barrier is at the bridge to squeeze a few more cash out of the poor carriers. That the Inland Customs dues of China are vexatious there can be no doubt; yet it is open to question if the combined duties of all the likin-barriers on any one main road extending from frontier to frontier of any single province in China are greater than the ad valorem duties imposed by our colony of Victoria upon the protected goods crossing her border from an adjoining colony.

Leaving the bridge, the road leads again up the hills. Poppy was now in full flower, and everywhere in the fields women were collecting opium. They were scoring the poppy capsules with vertical scratches and scraping off the exuded juice which had bled from the incisions they made yesterday. Hundreds of pack horses carrying Puerh tea met us on the road; while all day long we were passing files of coolies toiling patiently along under heavy loads of crockery. They were going in the same direction as ourselves to the confines of the empire, distributing those teacups, saucers, and cuplids, china spoons, and rice-bowls that one sees in every inn in China. Most of the crockery is brought across China from the province of Kiangsi, whose natural resources seems to give it almost the monopoly of this industry. The trade is an immense one. In the neighbourhood of King-teh-chin, in Kiangsi, at the outbreak of the Taiping rebellion, more than one million workmen were employed in the porcelain manufactories. Cups and saucers by the time they reach so far distant a part of China as this, carried as they are so many hundreds of miles on the backs of coolies, are sold for three or four times their original cost. Great care is taken of them, and no piece can be so badly broken as not to be mended. Crockery-repairing is a recognised trade, and the workmen are unusually skilful even for Chinese. They rivet the pieces together with minute copper clamps. To have a specimen of their handiwork I purposely in Yunnan broke a cup and saucer into fragments, only to find when I had done so that there was not a mender in the district. Rice bowls and teacups are neatly made, tough, and well finished; even the humblest are not inelegantly coloured, while the high-class china, especially where the imperial yellow is used, often shows the richest beauty of ornamentation.

Inns on this road were few and at wide distances; they were scarcely sufficient for the numbers who used them. The country was red sandstone, open, and devoid of all timber, till, descending again into a valley, the path crossed an obstructing ridge, and led us with pleasant surprise into a beautiful park. It was all green and refreshing. A pretty stream was humming past the willows, its banks covered with the poppy in full flower, a blaze of colour, magenta, white, scarlet, pink and blue picked out with hedges of roses. The birds were as tame as in the Garden of Eden; magpies came almost to our feet; the sparrows took no notice of us; the falcons knew we would not molest them; the pigeons seemed to think we could not. All was peaceful, and the peasants who sat with us under the cedars on the borders of the park were friendly and unobtrusive. Long after sundown we reached, far from the regular stage, a lonely pair of houses, at one of which we found uncomfortable accommodation. Fire had to be kindled in the room in a hollow in the ground; there was no ventilation, the wood was green, the smoke almost suffocating. My men talked on far into the night until I lost patience and yelled at them in English. They thought that I was swearing, and desisted for fear that I should injure their ancestors. There was a shrine in this room for private devotions, the corresponding spot in the adjoining room being a rough opium-couch already occupied by two lusty thickset "slaves to this thrice-accursed drug." My men ate the most frugal of suppers. Food was so much in advance of its ordinary price that my men, in common with thousands of other coolies, were doing their hard work on starvation rations.

On the 5th we did a long day's stage and spent the night at a bleak hamlet 8500 feet above sea level, in a position so exposed that the roofs of the houses were weighted with stones to prevent their being carried away by the wind. This was the "Temple of the Dragon King," and it was only twenty li from Tongchuan.

Next day we were astir early and soon after daylight we came suddenly to the brow of the tableland overlooking the valley of Tongchuan. The compact little walled city, with its whitewashed buildings glistening in the morning sun, lay beyond the gleaming plats of the irrigated plain, snugly ensconced under rolling masses of hills, which rose at the far end of the valley to lofty mountains covered with snow. All the plain is watered with springs; large patches of it are under water all the year round, and, rendered thus useless for cultivation, are employed by the Chinese for the artificial rearing of fish and as breeding grounds for the wild duck and the "faithful bird," the wild goose. A narrow dyke serpentining across the plain leads into the pretty city, where, at the north-east angle of the wall, I was charmed to find the cheerful home of the Bible Christian Mission, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Pollard and two lady assistants, one of whom is a countrywoman of my own. This is, I believe, the most charming spot for a mission station in all China. Mr. Pollard is quite a young man, full of enthusiasm, modest, and clever. Everywhere he is received kindly; he is on friendly terms with the officials, and there is not a Chinese home within ten miles of the city where he and his pretty wife are not gladly welcomed. His knowledge of Chinese is exceptional; he is the best Chinese scholar in Western China, and is examiner in Chinese for the distant branches of the Inland Mission.

The mission in Tongchuan was opened in 1891, and the results are not discouraging, seeing that the Chinaman is as difficult to lead into the true path as any Jew. No native has been baptized up to date. The convert employed by the mission as a native helper is one of the three converts of Chaotong. He is a bright-faced lad of seventeen, as ardent an evangelist as heart of missionary could desire, but a native preacher can never be so successful as the foreign missionary. The Chinese listen to him with complacency, "You eat Jesus's rice and of course you speak his words," they say. The attitude of the Chinese in Tongchuan towards the Christian missionary is one of perfect friendliness towards the missionary, combined with perfect apathy towards his religion. Like any other trader, the missionary has a perfect right to offer his goods, but he must not be surprised, the Chinese thinks, if he finds difficulty in securing a purchaser for wares as much inferior to the home production as is the foreign barbarian to the subject of the Son of Heaven.

There is a Catholic Mission in Tongchuan, but the priest does not associate with the Protestant. How indeed can the two associate when they worship different Gods!

The difficulty is one which cannot be easily overcome while there exists in China that bone of contention among missionaries which is known as the "Term Question."