XXII
NATIVE CITIES OF CHINA
Singan or Sian (meaning “Chinese”), the capital of Shensi province, dates back to the twelfth century, B.C. The whole valley is full of the monuments, mounds and relics of kings of many ancient dynasties. As its name appropriately shows, Singan was the original capital of China, when the tribes first united in mutual recognition of kinship, and it is a shrine, therefore, appealing to antiquarians. Out on the plain the Emperor Tsin, builder of the Great Wall, “burned the books” of China, and buried the scholars under mounds of contumely. The most remarkable pyramidal pagoda in China lies beyond the south wall. It has seven stories, surmounted with a turban, and temple buildings with rich screens are attached. To this city the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi retreated from Peking in a springless cart over sunken loess roads before the march of the European allies and the American column in 1900. Its walls and large forts, filled with ports, are the oldest and best preserved of all Chinese cities.
The Bankers’ Guild building is famous for its many-pinnacled roof and ornate tiling. Its monuments relate the intellectual communion of China and India in the seventh century A. D. Very old buildings exhibit a four-leaf clover design in stone screens, and the fish-scale design in wooden and bamboo balustrades. There are wonderful gardens with pavilions and wavy stone bridges. Pailoos, bearing legends, are built over the entrance stairs to temples and guild houses. The square space within the walls is six miles long each way. One reason for its strong fortification is that it is in the Mohammedan section of China, and the Mohammedans are always rebelling. It withstood a Mohammedan siege of two years in 1870–1.
If Russia aimed to cut off eastern from western China, she would strike at Singan, as it is the strategic base which holds Turkestan, Tibet and Szechuen to the empire. Its trade is vast and various. From a religious and antiquarian point of view, hardly any Chinese city equals it in the interest of Occidentals, for here the famous Nestorian Tablet, dated 781 A.D., stands in the park of a heathen temple. This tablet records the communion of the earliest Chinese Christians. A copy of this supremely venerable and artistic stone was placed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1909. The National Library, Paris, has had a replica since 1850. The Pei Lin Park contains a library cut in 1,300 stone tablets; the “Stone Forest”, it is called. The city lies in a plain, and presents a striking appearance from the limestone and loess hills which surround it. In these hills, to the northwest, are cut the cave dwellings, temples and statues of prehistoric and early civilizations. In one cave temple is the sandstone and gilt colossal Ta-Fu-Tsze Buddha, fifty-six feet high, the largest statue in China, showing the tremendous zeal of the Buddhist movement in the brilliant Tang dynasty in the seventh century, when our Europe was in intellectual darkness. Two colossal statues of Buddha’s pupils are also in this temple.
The city presents a brilliant kaleidoscope of nationalities: Mohammedans with red turbans, Tartars wearing red panels; Mongols with blue turbans; high-booted, bewhiskered Russians; booted Tibetans; blue-gowned Chinese; yellow-robed Lamas; now and then a top-knotted aborigine; robed Manchus; and descendants of the original Tsin and Chou tribes of Chinese who came east to China from the cradle of the race, seated in the saddle of pioneer conquerors; and with the Hebrews, these Singan men can probably boast that they bring down the purest blood from the dispersion of Ararat. Descendants of kings and generals of many a dynasty now plough farms on the plain, and they will tell you: “Yes, I am the son of a king.” Near here the builder of the Great Wall, infinitely the greatest mason and military commander of history, the Emperor Tsin, 220 B. C., had his capital at Hsien Yang. His huge pyramidal mound, and other burial mounds, are among the world’s greatest curiosities. On the plain are the two unique marble arches, with four roofs, erected by Governor Lu to the memory of his mother and wife, in the China where some writers say women meet with no honor. A stone bridge of seventy arches over the Pa River, and the hot sulphur springs of Lin Tung, are notable. The round, instead of square stone piers, are unique in China, and show Moslem influence. Not all Chinese cities were without attention from the sanitary engineer. Old culverts and drains constructed by the ancient kings of the north exist in Singan and elsewhere, and some of the southern cities have drainage canals, sewage canals not being considered necessary, as the night-soil is collected for fertilization. China, however, is going to drain her cities so as to carry off expectoration and decaying matter. The smells which the tourist revolts at are not as dangerous as they seem, as opium, peculiar incense, and vegetable cooking oils, such as sesamum, peanut, bean, etc., contribute the most malodorous portion.
Chingtu stands in a wide plain in the heart of the vast empire. The walls are fifteen miles around, and the gates of these walls are never opened at night, except to the “chi” (government messengers). Either Chingtu or the Hankau cities will be the capital of the nation eventually. It is an intellectual center, and there are many publishing shops. Two rivers, the Min and To, border the plain, and are broken up into the widest system of irrigation canals that the world shows. No garden of the earth is so rich as this warm moist Eden. Every tree, herb and plant of the tropics and sub-tropics is raised, and more men are supported here to the acre than anywhere else in the world. It is the earth’s model school of intensive farming, and would delight the professors of the specializing University of Wisconsin! In the sandstone and loess hills are the cliff dwellings of prehistoric man. There are hundreds of bridges and ferries, many temples, arches, cemeteries and villages, the latter often populated by one family clan. The great walled city of a million inhabitants has the widest streets of any native city except Peking. There is a Tartar walled city within the Chinese city. The forts over the gates are of three stories. The loyal General Chao Ehr Feng, the hero of the Tibet campaign in 1910, held Chingtu for many months against the republicans in the fall of 1911.
The Provincial Assembly proclaimed reform in September, 1911, from a wonderful, circular, double-roofed temple in Chingtu. There is a large Mohammedan population, and mosques are therefore conspicuous. Marco Polo was a traveler here. There are wide Tartar parade grounds and rifle butts. The markets and fairs held in the temple grounds (religion and business being partners in China as in that Boston church that uses its basement for stores!) are the best in the empire. It is the splendid capital of the largest and richest province; a center of independent provincials who are crying “China for the Chinese.” It has a modern union university, which teaches English, science and Chinese; trade, military and girls’ schools; musk, silk, brass, salt, horn-lantern, oil, fur, spice, lace, porcelain, cotton and wool shops; a few iron shops; decorated yamen and guild halls. Its traveling kitchens, its porters and wheelbarrow brotherhoods are unique. One temple, erected to the Sheep-god in particular, is remarkable for two reasons: first, that it is a Taoist and not a Buddhist monastery: and second, that it is one of the finest examples of architecture in the empire. It is the beautiful Ching Yang Kung (Temple of the Golden Sheep) monastery outside the south gate. The Chu Ko Liang monastery, with its circular doors, is another chef-d’œuvre.
Many nations and faiths have missions here, and their medical schools and hospitals have won the hearts of the Chinese even ahead of their excellent schools. Chingtu is one of the centers that the Canadian missions have selected for special work. One meets many foreign engineers, and there are also native engineers. The climate is far more endurable for foreigners than that of South China at the seacoast. Many Lolo and Miaotse aborigine mountaineers, with their hair worn in a top-knot, are seen on the busy streets. Rice and wheat mills are being erected, and furniture, florist, book, bronze and picture stores abound. Chingtu will be the center of the commercial attack on rich Southeast Tibet, as the main pass of Ta Chien is not far away. Britain plans to link Chingtu to her Burmese and Indian railways by loaning the Chinese the necessary money. The Chingtu gentry started a railway to Ichang on the Yangtze River, and differences with the Peking authorities over the nationalization of this railway in September precipitated the October, 1911, rebellion at the Hankau cities. There is an arsenal, a mint, a military school and police barracks, the police being uniformed in modern style, with the addition of arms. The French are also in evidence at Chingtu, as they would like to run their railway up from Yunnan City. Railways are planned to run north to Singan, east to Ichang through exceedingly difficult country, south to Chungking, and west to Batang and Burma. Politically the Chingtu people are progressive and fearless like the men of Hupeh province, whence they came, as in 1644 Chang Hsien Chang depopulated Chingtu.
Chungking, the second city of vast Szechuen province, is a riverine port with a great future as a railway, boat, trading and manufacturing center; a future Pittsburgh, perhaps. It is built on a rocky peninsula just like Macao, the Yangtze and Kialing Rivers forming two sides, and a wall the third side of a triangle. From the hills outside the wall, the graves of the ages look down on the busy scene, as the carriers set out on the long stone road toward the capital, Chingtu. Chungking is famous for its water-gates, overhanging buildings propped over the rock with long poles. Some of its streets are exceptionally clean, wide and well paved. It is called the “piled-up” city, like the lower part of rocky Hongkong, the roof of one row of buildings being part of the street of the tier of buildings above. There is a great parade ground, and a military school by the land wall. The city is a center for fitting up expeditions which are bound for the prosperous capital in the north, the rich hilly south, or the wild west. Drugs, vegetable and mineral oils, water-proof paper, salt, coal, furs, iron, tea, lanterns, cement, agricultural products including sugar, bamboo, silk in particular, boat builders’ and chandlers’ supplies, placer and quartz gold, are all specialties of the district. Fine pagodas, with beautiful, up-curling galleries, overlook the river, and there are excellent “Li Pais” or mission compounds, and modern educational institutions. There are fine guilds, as one could expect of the Hupeh and Hunan province merchants, and the Ho Gai Monastery reveals a delightful touch of the old times. Beautiful pailoo arches span the roads. The Guild of Benevolence is famous for its extremely beautiful pavilions and terraces. As at all the riverine ports of the Yangtze, the great flights of wet stone stairs are characteristic. Chungking was once the second worst opium hell in the kingdom, but the people awoke to their danger in a wonderfully surprising way, and in the years from 1908–11 largely threw off the curse.
In Chungking the rebels of 1911 recruited many of their first patriots, and the first attacks were planned from here. The people are an earnest-looking set, yet the place for centuries, like its great winter mists which float down from Tibet, was the center of sorcery, superstition, fortune-telling and folk-lore. It was just the place to raise soothsayers, poets and astrologers. The only man who had a stronger wand like Aaron’s which swallowed up all the rest, was the American or British medical missionary, who by 1910 grew to be heartily beloved, so much so that every foreigner was welcomed by rich and poor, and implored to “come in here, see my art treasures, and (incidentally!) before you go won’t you please heal my child, my beloved and my old parent?” It was enough to make every traveler swear that if he returned home safely he would at once study medicine and come back to China as a physician of the body first, and the soul and economic state afterward. The boat people of the port are famous for their courage and skill, and the mountain coolies are noted for their endurance. Much of the blood of the race is from Hupeh, which means a strong strain of “China for the Chinese”. The city is surrounded with hills and ranges, and there are many mountain health resorts used by natives and foreigners, which are exceedingly welcome in the moist hot summer. There is the Golden Buddha range to the south, with its fine temples and many aborigine dwellers. Ho Ih Shan Mountain is to the north. The Gong Gorge is a scenic spot of great beauty. The British have a palatial consulate at Chungking, with a bungalow adjunct in the hills so as to afford escape from the terrific summer. This is the policy that the Hongkong Bank long ago instituted in China; mess quarters over the bank for winter occupancy, and airy bungalow quarters on Hongkong peak for summer occupancy. There are many Mohammedans in Chungking, and four of the industries which they control are bakeries, butcher shops, inns and common carrying.