Always at midday the litter was lifted off the mules' backs, my table and chair were produced from some recess among the packs, my blue cotton tablecloth was spread and Tsai Chih Fu armed himself with a frying-pan in which to warm the rice and offered it to me along with hard-boiled eggs of dubious age. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and it is not an exhilarating diet when it is served up three times a day for weeks with unfailing regularity. I never grew so weary of anything in my life, and occasionally I tried to vary it by buying little scones or cakes peppered with sesame seed, but I'm bound to say they were all nasty. It always seemed to me that an unfair amount of grit from the millstones had got into the flour. Chinese are connoisseurs in their cooking, but not in poor little villages in the mountains in Western Shansi, where they are content if they can fill their starving stomachs. To judge Chinese taste by the provisions of these mountaineers is as if we condemned the food of London, having sampled only those shops where a steak pudding can be had for fourpence.
And all these little inns, these underground inns, very often had the most high-sounding names. “The Inn of Increasing Righteousness”—I hope it was, there was certainly nothing else to recommend it; but the “Inn of Ten Thousand Conveniences” really made the greatest claim upon my faith. The Ritz or the Carlton could hardly have claimed more than this cave with the hard-beaten earth for the floor of its one room and for all furnishing the k'ang where landlord and guests slept in company.
Yet all these uncomfortable inns between Fen Chou Fu and Yung Ning Chou were thronged. The roads outside were littered with the packs of the mules and donkeys, and inside the courtyard all was bustle, watering and feeding the animals and attending to the wants of the men, who apparently took most of their refreshment out of little basins with chopsticks and when they were very wealthy, or on great occasions, had tea without milk or sugar—which, of course, is the proper way to drink it—out of little handleless cups. I don't know that they had anything else to drink except hot water. I certainly never saw them drinking anything intoxicating, and I believe there are no public-houses in China proper.
Every now and then the way through the loess widened a little and there was an archway with a tower above it and a crowded village behind. Always the villages were crowded. There was very often one or perhaps two trees shading the principal street, but other hints of garden or greenery there were none. The shops—open stalls—were packed together. And in these little villages it is all slum: there is no hint of country life, and the street was full of people, ragged people, mostly men and children. The men were in rags in all shades of blue, and blue worn and washed—at least possibly the washing is doubtful, we will say worn only—to dun dirt colour. It was not picturesque, but filthy, and the only hint of luxury was a pipe a yard long with a very tiny bowl which when not in use hung round their necks or stuck out behind from under their coats. Round their necks too would be hung a tiny brass tobacco box with hieroglyphics upon it which contained the evil-smelling compound they smoked. Sometimes they were at work in their alfresco kitchens—never have I seen so much cooking done in the open air—sometimes they were shoeing a mule, sometimes waiting for customers for their cotton goods, or their pottery ware, or their unappetising cooked stuff, and often they were nursing babies, little blaek-eyed bundles of variegated dirty rags which on inspection resolved themselves into a coat and trousers, whatever the age or the sex of the baby. And never have I seen so many family men. The Chinaman is a good father and is not ashamed to carry his baby. At least so I judge.
Only occasionally was a woman or two to be seen, sitting on their doorsteps gossiping in the sun or the shade, according to the temperature. Men and women stared at the foreign woman with all their eyes, for foreigners are rather like snow in June in these parts, and my coming made me feel as if a menagerie had arrived in the villages so great and interested were the crowds that assembled to look at and comment on me.
After we passed through the loess the track was up a winding ravine cut in past ages by the agency of water. From five hundred to a thousand feet above us towered the cliffs and at their feet trickled a tiny drain of water, not ankle-deep, that must once have come down a mighty flood to cut for itself such a way through the eternal hills. For this, unlike the road through the loess, is a broad way where many caravans might find room. And this trickle was the beginnings of a tributary to the Yellow River. Along its winding banks lay the caravan route.
And many caravans were passing. No place in China is lonely. There were strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats—second-hand goods, Mark Twain calls them—there were strings of pack-mules and still longer strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos across their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men had come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of Shensi; but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of them stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side of the river. Always, always through the loess, through the deep ravines, across the mountain passes, across the rocky plateau right away to the little mountain city was the stream coming and going, bearing Pekingese and Cantonese goods into the mountains, and coming back laden with wheat, which is the principal product of these places.
Ask the drivers where they were going, camel, mule or donkey, and the answer was always the same, they were going east or west, which, of course, we could see for ourselves. There was no possibility of going any other way. Those in authority knew whither they were bound, but the ignorant drivers knew nothing but the direction. At least that is one explanation, the one I accepted at the time, afterwards I came to know it is a breach of good manners to exhibit curiosity in China, and quite likely my interpreter simply greeted the caravans and made his own answer to my question. It satisfied or at least silenced me and saved my face.
One thing, however, grew more and more noticeable: the laden beasts were coming east, going west the pack-saddles were empty. Fear was upon the merchants and they would not send goods across the great river into turbulent Shensi.
Already, so said my interpreter, and I judged the truth of his statement by the empty pack-saddles, they were fearing to send goods into the mountains at all. It was pleasant for me. I began to think. I had only Buchanan to consult, and he had one great drawback, he always agreed that what I thought was likely to be right. It is an attitude of mind that I greatly commend in my friends and desire to encourage, but there are occasions in life when a little perfectly disinterested advice would be most acceptable, and that I could not get. Badly I wanted to cross Asia, but I should not cross Asia if I were stopped by tufeis, which is the local term for robbers. Were these rumours anything, or were they manufactured by my interpreter? There were the warnings of the missionaries, and there were the empty pack-saddles, and the empty pack-saddles spoke loudly. Still I thought I might go on a little farther, and James Buchanan encouraged me.