A Yankee in the Far East

by George Hoyt Allen

Modes of travel and transportation have always had a fascination for me.

For instance, I was so captivated with the Shanghai wheelbarrows, that the first thing I did after arriving in Shanghai on my first trip to China was to tackle the first Chinaman I saw in the street pushing one of those empty barrows, dicker with him, and then and there buy that wheelbarrow.

Three dollars was the consideration, but, with first cost, boxing, freight, and duty it cost me $29.05 landed in Clinton—and I've never regretted the purchase.

When telling circles of chance acquaintances and friends at home that a Chinaman would carry a mixed cargo of from five to ten thousand tons on one of those barrows, the chance acquaintances would cast significant glances and cough, while my dear friends would hand me life membership cards in the Ananias Club.

The chance acquaintances would cast significant glances and cough

My only regret in the matter is, that in telling about the Shanghai wheelbarrow I was not acquainted with all its possibilities. When a chance acquaintance doubts my word it's immaterial to me whether he is caught with a nasty little hacking cough, or contracts a violent and fatal congestive chill, and as for those dear doubting Thomas friends of mine who, from me, might have stood for a load of, say from three to five thousand tons—for their benefit I want to chronicle here that as you travel north from Shanghai they put bigger loads on that same pattern of wheelbarrow and rig them up with mules or sails, and I have photographs to prove it; and apologies will be accepted.

Now as to the Pekin cart:

We have all read of it and seen pictures of it, and travelers, irresponsible travelers of no reputation, or travelers without a sensitive and jealous regard for their veracity, have so misled me about that vehicle that what I expected to see was two wheels sawed off the end of a log, set on an axletree, a hood covering, and two stiff saplings for shafts. And, as I shut my eyes to let the picture sink in and tried to recall the motive power, I couldn't recall that there was any motive power. The cart was stuck in an awful rut in the streets of Pekin, and even though motionless, I could hear it squeak. A dead dog was lying to the right of the cart, the carcasses of a couple of cats to the left, and in the cart a load of human corpses—the life having been joggled out of them by being jounced over the awful ruts in the Pekin streets.