The Che Ling Road runs from Chinchow, in Hunan province, to Canton. This is the road the new railway will take. The foot road is fifteen feet wide and composed of great stone blocks one foot thick. Before traffic was gathered at Hankau and Canton by steamships, the traffic on the Che Ling foot road was very heavy, and shops lined the long stone highway. Another famous road, the Mei Ling, also composed of stone blocks, climbs the great Nan Shan (Southern Mountains) and connects Nangan in Kiansi province and Canton. This is the road that Abbé Huc took in 1849 when he made his daring journey from Tibet to Chingtu, Chungking, Hankau, Kowkiang, Nanchang, up the Kan River to Canton and Macao. There is a famous imperial road from Peking to Jehol, through Kupikan pass, where the Manchus may finally be segregated. The road from Peking to the Ming tombs is paved with a course of large stones. The “Great Road” runs from Peking to Canton along the coast, and answers to the old Japanese “Tokkaido”, which runs from Tokio to Kioto. It was a Mongol road, dating back to the Great Wall. The best Chinese roads, however, were made in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries A. D., during the Sung dynasty, whose capital was Hangchow.
In 1890 the province of Szechuen built sixty-five miles of a mountain river road in the gorges of the Yangtze River, starting from Kwei-chow and running eastward. The road is from one hundred to five hundred feet above high water and is cut six feet wide and eight feet high into the limestone cliffs, truly a splendid revival of the noble works of the Ming kings, and in a sublime situation not to be equaled anywhere. The Szechuen people boast that their “road goes where a monkey couldn’t hang”. The road was planned and executed entirely on Chinese initiative. The best known road in China, and considering its length, the best conditioned road in the empire, runs for four hundred miles in Szechuen province from Wan Hsien on the Yangtze River, overland to Chingtu City, the capital. It is called the Siao Pen Lu (smaller north road), and is paved to the width of six feet. It has many wonderful staircases cut up mountain faces. The road could be shortened one hundred miles if bridges were built at the gorges. An internationally owned railway was planned for this route. From Chungking to Chingtu in Szechuen province, up hill and down, and across fields and marshes, runs a traveled road paved much of the way with large stone slabs. From Chungking to Sui Fu, along the Yangtze River for two hundred miles runs a notable stone road five feet wide. Along all these old roads the freight of 400,000,000 people has been carried on the backs of men and women, and even children, whether by barrow or shoulder load, during the long quiet centuries, at an awful cost of money; for too large a proportion of the nation has been engaged in the transportation as compared with the producing department, and this is one reason why China has been poor so long.
Wells have been sunk by contractors, with whom the mayor of the village (hsiang lao) dealt. A brick caisson, fitted on a bamboo frame, is dug under and sunk. On this caisson the upper wall is built. Sometimes iron-pointed bamboo pipes are driven through the bottom of the well. These old methods will give way to the new, and windmills will begin to hum in old China.
The modern water-works of Peking take the water from the Sha Ho, a clear stream in the Western Hills. There are settling tanks, pumping stations, stand-pipes, etc. One hundred and thirty thousand families are supplied from the mains. The same concession to labor has been made as at Hongkong, in that the cleaning of the filter sand and gravel is done by hand instead of by machine. Nearly all the treaty ports are putting in modern water-works, which have been sorely needed. China’s death rate is decreasing, and it is not necessary, even from a Chinese point of view, that there should be so many births or dual wives any more.
Electric light plants are in operation at nearly all the coast treaty ports, as well as at some of the Yangtze treaty ports and West River ports inland. In the Occident, intellectual and spiritual light preceded lighted roads and the light of science, but as everything is opposite in China, it seems that science is preceding intellectual and spiritual light. But “these twain shall meet in one equator round the globe”.
The Lighthouse Department of the National Customs is employing foreign engineers in harbor and channel work, and some improvements have been made on the coast and along the rivers, the provincial authorities making a special tax wherever possible to foot the bills. Often the boatmen, merchants’ and bankers’ guilds are required to subscribe.
The first systematized attempt to handle public works scientifically was undertaken by the provincial assemblies of Nganhwei and Kiangsu provinces in the summer of 1911, during the awful famines, which followed the great floods. America has sent large contributions of flour and money for rice. The assemblies put the men, whom the floods withheld from their fields, on railway building, canal dredging, bridge building, and road making. It was along these roads that the triumphant right wing of the republicans marched, headed by Generals Hsu and Ling, in the memorable attack on Nanking, which broke the imperial resistance, and threw the Manchu over the yamen wall!
Self-reliance is half brother of independence. I have found that with these improvements has grown up not a little talk of “China for the Chinese”. One finds constant complaints in the native Chinese press that lucrative contracts, such as the erection of government buildings, are given to Japanese and other foreign contractors instead of local firms. The signs, taken altogether, are hopeful, and West and East have enough to interchange without overlapping each other. Nice adjustments will have to be made in some cases, but tact, patience, mutual sympathy and altruism will in the end overcome any misunderstandings that may arise.