From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

The native city of Shanghai, is walled and separated from the French and English settlements by a deep, muddy moat. Some clumsy iron cannon, said to be the oldest in existence, are mounted upon its dilapidated grass-grown battlements. This was our first experience of a celestial city, and we did not, after visiting it, look forward with unalloyed pleasure to the two hundred odd miles of country we were about to traverse between Pekin and the Great Wall of China. But I did not then know that Shanghai is renowned as being the dirtiest city in the Chinese Empire, and certainly we never afterwards came across one to equal it in this respect. Pekin itself was a paradise in comparison.

The streets of Shanghai proper are none of them more than ten feet in breadth. Some are even considerably narrower, and the tottering, tumble-down dwellings, the majority built of wood, bend forward on either side until they nearly touch overhead. The thoroughfares are thus always, even on the brightest day, in a state of semi-darkness. The pavements, rough and uneven, are formed of huge stone slabs, some of them, judging by the characters inscribed thereon, many hundreds of years old. Worn away by time and use, many are broken away in parts, revealing underneath the sewage and filth of years, which, slowly rotting away, infects the whole city with a hot, sickly odour of putrefaction. It was a hot, muggy day when we visited it, and the stench from these places was something beyond description. I was not surprised to hear that cholera and typhus number their victims by thousands at times, and that an epidemic (of some sort or another) always exists.

Yet it seemed a busy, bustling place, and we could scarcely make our way along the sloppy streets for the continuous stream of traffic. It was exactly like a human bee-hive, and we should very soon have lost ourselves without a guide in the crooked, tortuous streets that ran in all directions like a maze, without any regard to regularity or order. We came suddenly in the very heart of the city, upon an oasis in this desert of filth and squalor, a space about a quarter of a mile square. A large circular lake overhung with weeping willows occupied the centre. Great white and yellow lilies lay here and there on the surface of the smooth clear water, in which one could see the gold fish swimming lazily to and fro about the thick green weeds and stems, ten or fifteen feet deep. About fifty yards from the shore, and connected with it by a light bamboo bridge, stood a large pagoda gorgeous in vermilion and gold, with countless little gilt bells hung around the roof, which, with every breath of air gave out a sweet, musical jangle. Seated in this were a crowd of men and women, talking, laughing, and drinking tea. All were dressed in the richest silks, the men in dark blue or plum colour, the women in lighter shades of green, heliotrope, or orange, their necks and arms loaded with heavy gold ornaments, their quaint, impassive, doll-like faces thickly smeared with paint. On the banks around the lake were booths for the sale of sweetmeats, fans, silks, cigarettes, and jewellery, while jugglers and acrobats plied their trade among the busy crowd, or at the little tables set out by the waterside and occupied by noisy chattering tea-drinkers. I stood for some time watching the curious scene, which was for all the world like a bit broken out of a willow-pattern plate. It seemed so odd to walk suddenly out of the filthy, sewage-laden streets into this hidden corner of cleanliness and picturesque revelry. But China is full of such contradictions. I afterwards discovered that we had strayed into a tea-garden (there are a dozen such in the city) and that the pretty pagoda was used as a kind of private box for the better classes, just as our own smart people at home occasionally patronize the Alhambra and other music-halls to gaze at a respectful distance on the manners and customs of the “Oi Polloi.”

The Chinese, I found, are great believers in the art of fortune-telling. We passed on our way homewards many of the shops, or rather boxes, in which the professors of the art received their subjects. They seemed to have many methods, but the favourite one consists in dipping the thumb into a piece of hot, soft, black wax, and then impressing it firmly upon a piece of parchment or white wood. The lines thus obtained are supposed to predict the future. The professors seemed to be doing a roaring trade. Their fees were not extortionate; a couple of cash (about ½d.) each consultation.

The most important thing we now had to consider was the purchase of stores for our journey over the “Great Hungry Desert,” as Gobi is called by the Chinese. It was by no means easy to decide how much or how little to take, for no one in Shanghai seemed to know whether in the eight hundred odd miles lying between the Great Wall of China and Ourga food of any sort or kind was procurable. However, hearing that everything in the way of provisions was outrageously dear at Tientsin, and unprocurable at Pekin, we decided to lay in our stock at Shanghai, and curiously enough furnished ourselves with exactly the right amount, for our stores failed the very day before we reached Kiakhta. The claret, whisky, and soda-water gave out some time before, but we had plenty of lime-juice, which made the brackish desert water drinkable.

Were I to do this journey again, I should certainly send everything of this kind straight out from England, for the camp furniture, saddlery, and stores we bought at Shanghai were, besides being outrageously dear, of very inferior quality. On opening the cases in the desert, we found at least a quarter of the provisions uneatable. The American firm who furnished us must make a good thing of it if they do business with all their customers on the same terms.

The operation of packing was by no means easy. As the reader is perhaps aware, the weight on a camel’s back must be quite equally distributed on either side, otherwise (in Mongolia at least) the animal lies down and utterly declines to move a step. Eight strong wooden chests, with padlocks, met all our requirements, and having made our adieus to our hospitable friends, we embarked, the 31st of May, on the coasting-steamer Tungchow for the port of Pekin, Tientsin.

We were presented before leaving Shanghai with a so-called itinerary on the journey we were taking, written by an Englishman resident in China, who had travelled the caravan route from Pekin to Europe in 1872. Things must have changed considerably, both in Mongolia and Siberia, since those days, for almost all the book contained, including distances, was so inaccurate and misleading that we discarded its use long before we reached Kiakhta.

The “Tungchow” was more like a yacht than a cargo boat, and the run up coast was delightful; with bright sunshine and light cool breezes, exactly like Mediterranean weather in early spring, though the nights were very cold, and one was glad of an overcoat. We passed daily numbers of fishing junks, their dark brown mat-sails and bright red and yellow banners standing out in picturesque contrast to the clear blue sea, which often for miles round us was dotted with net corks and men in small canoes. A gale springs up in a few minutes in these latitudes, and during the typhoon season many of these poor fishermen, unable to get back to the junks, are blown out to sea and drowned, their companions on the huge, swirling craft, being, of course, unable to render them any assistance. The captain of the Tungchow told us that many lives are lost annually in this manner.

We reached Chefoo late at night, and were therefore unable to land, as we were off again at daybreak. This is the Brighton of Shanghai and Pekin. There is capital bathing here, and many good hotels, which are crowded to overflowing in the summer months by Europeans escaping from the damp, steamy heat of Shanghai, and the no less disagreeable odours, and “dust fogs” (I can call them nothing else) of the capital.