Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

With smiling faces and with an air of victory in their voices, they lifted the poles on to their shoulders and commenced the long journey of twenty miles that lay before us. When the bearers are strong and know their work, and when they have got into step with each other, the motion of the chair is a very pleasant one and the time passes by very quickly.

This latter is in a great measure due to the constantly changing scenes that meet one by the way. After leaving the city we emerged into the open country, where we had ample evidence of the skill with which the farmer cultivates his fields. He seems, indeed, to have penetrated into the secrets of nature and to have learned how to manipulate his fields, and how to coax and win the various kinds of seeds that he plants that they shall all respond to the efforts he puts forth and gladden his heart with their fruitful harvests.

The Chinese farmer is a most unæsthetic, most uninteresting looking character, and strikes one as far inferior to the rosy-cheeked, jolly-looking specimens that till our lands in England. He has altogether a mean appearance and does not at first sight induce us to have any high respect for him. His dress is against him. It is made of sombre-looking blue cotton cloth, slouchily made, and usually anything but clean. He absolutely neglects his toilette, and his face and hands show an ingrained dislike to water. Whether as the result of hard work or of exposure to the sun, which burns like X Rays into his skin, his countenance in a comparatively early stage becomes furrowed with wrinkles, and in time he gets prematurely old looking.

It is when you become acquainted with him, and chat with him, that these external disadvantages seem to vanish from your thoughts, and you realize that here you have a man who has held deep communion with nature, and who knows her so well that she responds to his touch, and pours with no unwilling hand out of the abundance of her treasury the riches that are to fill the homes with gladness and content.

The fields that we are now passing through are an evidence of the skill and ingenuity of the farmers. They are all covered with luxuriant crops of rice, and as the sun shines down upon the heads that have just issued from their leafy enclosures, and his rays flash upon the water at their feet, making it to sparkle and glisten as so many diamond points that reflect his glory, the sight is one that the eye never gets tired of looking upon. One is led to reflect in gazing upon these fields with what exquisite beauty and with what marvellous detail God fashions the growing grain so that it shall come with as perfect and divine a form as His great Master Mind can devise it.

As far as the eye can reach there is little else to be seen but rice. One sees it down in the hollows where the little rivulets flow, and where they have left their trace in the deeper green and the ranker growth of the crops near by. On the rising ground one’s eye is caught with the lifelike, graceful motions that the passing breeze with the art of a master makes the stalks that stand so thickly side by side perform. Like the waves breaking on the shore, one never wearies looking at them, for they vary with every gust of wind, so that they never become monotonous.

The only exception to this universal growth of the rice are fields of sweet potatoes that occupy grounds where the water cannot reach. As this is an essential for the cultivation of rice, which must stand in it during the whole time of its growth, until within a few days of its being harvested, other kinds of crops have to be planted in what are called “the dry fields.” These are mainly sweet potatoes, though various others are also cultivated in them.

Here, for example, is a small plot of land that we are passing by, which illustrates not only the ingenuity of the Chinese farmer, but also shows the varied purposes to which “the dry fields” may be put. There are no fewer than three distinct crops growing harmoniously side by side on it. There are peanuts with their short, insignificant growth and their tiny yellow flowers that seem the very embodiment of retiring modesty. Out of their very midst there spring up the sturdy millet-stalks, with their lofty ambitions that would make them stretch far beyond the humble leaves and flowers at their feet; and last, but not the least important, there is a crop of sweet potatoes that will quietly survive when the other two have been gathered, and will gladden the hearts of the farmers after the others have been garnered.

As we travel on, we notice how very bad the roads are. We are on what is called the “Great Road,” for it is a great thoroughfare, and for more than two thousand miles it runs over great plains, and winds up and down hills and mountains, and crosses great rivers and countless streams, and penetrates great and populous cities, and yet, excepting at occasional places, it never averages more than ten feet wide. It seems, too, to be in a chronic state of disrepair. The rains fall, and the storms and the typhoons spend their fury on it, and try their very utmost to obliterate it. The countless feet, too, of weary travellers, and of coolies with burdened shoulders, and chair-bearers with their weighty fares tread it down and fill it with ruts, and wear away the stones, and disfigure its surface with heights and hollows that make travelling in the rainy season a serious trial to those who have to journey along it.

If this be the case with the “Great Roads” it may easily be imagined what the character of the “Small Roads” must be. These latter are practically but footpaths that exist like a huge network throughout the Empire, and are reserved for the local traffic that goes on between village and village, and between market town and market town, and whilst on the whole they aim at being as straight and as direct as possible, they are from the very nature of the case generally very winding and roundabout. Fields have to be crossed and private property has to be invaded, and so the traveller has to accommodate himself to the necessities of the case, and follow the windings and the turnings by which the least damage may be done to those whose farms or homesteads have been invaded by those who never dream of paying any compensation for the liberty they have taken.