We went for walks together up and down the hill-sides, and the people got to know us, and laughed and nodded as we passed. The Chinese seem fond of animals, and yet you never see a man out for a walk with his dog. A man with a bird-cage in his hand, taking birdie for a walk, is a common sight in China, so common that you forget to notice it, but I have never seen a man followed by a dog, though most of the farm-houses appear to have one or two to guard them. Here, in the hills, they were just the ordinary, ugly wonks one sees in Peking, not nearly such handsome beasts as I saw up in the mountains. The farms in these hills evidently require a good deal of guarding, for I would often hear the crack of a gun. Some farmer, so my friend, the Language Officer, told me, letting the “stealer man,” and anyone else whom it might concern, know that he had fire-arms and was prepared to use them. At first the reports used to startle me, and make me look out into the darkness of the hill-side, darkness deepened here and there by a tiny light, and I used to wonder if anything was wrong. “Buchanan” always regarded those reports as entirely out of place, and said so at the top of his small voice. But then he was always challenging wonks, or finding “stealer men,” so I paid no attention to him.
At the first red streak of dawn, for the temple faced the east, I wakened. And all my fears, the dim, mysterious, unexplainable fears born of the night, and the loneliness, and the old temple, were gone, rolled away with the darkness. The crescent moon and the jewelled stars paled before the sun, rising in a glory of purple and gold, a glory that brightened to crimson, the pungent, aromatic fragrance of the pines and firs came to my nostrils, their branches were outlined against the deep blue of the sky, and I realised gradually that another blue day had dawned and the world was not empty, but full of the most wonderful possibilities waiting but to be grasped. Oh those dawnings in the San Shan An! Those dawnings after a night in the open air! Never shall I forget them!
And the valley was lovely that autumn weather. Day after day, day after day, was the golden sunshine, the clear, deep blue sky, the still, dry, invigorating air—no wonder everyone with a literary turn yearns to write a book in a valley of the Western Hills. And this valley of the San Shan An was the loveliest valley of them all. It, too, is a valley of temples, to what gods they were set up I know not, by whom they were set up I know not, only because of the gods and the temples there are trees, trees in plenty, evergreen firs and pines, green-leaved poplars and ash-trees, maples and Spanish chesnuts. At first they were green, these deciduous trees, and then gradually, as autumn touched them tenderly with his fingers, they took on gorgeous tints, gold and brown, and red, and amber, the summer dying gloriously under the cloudless blue sky. They tell me that American woods show just such tints, but I have not been to America, and I have seen nothing to match this autumn in the Chinese hills. And I had not thought to see beauty like this in China!
I counted seven temples, and there were probably more. Up the hill to the north of my valley, beyond a large temple that I shall always remember for the quaint and picturesque doorway, that I have photographed, was a plateau to be reached by a stiff climb, and here was a ruined shrine where sat calmly looking over the plain, as he had probably looked in life, the marble figure of a very famous priest of the long ago. It is ages since this priest lived in the hills, but his memory is fragrant still. He had two disciples. I wonder if the broken marble figures, one beside him and one on the ground outside the shrine, are figures of them. There came a drought upon the land, the crops failed and the people starved, and these two, to propitiate a cruel or neglectful Deity, flung themselves into a well in the temple with the beautiful doorway. Whether the rain came I know not, but tradition says that the two disciples instead of perishing rose up dragons. Personally I feel that must have been an unpleasant surprise for the devotees, but you never know a Chinaman's taste, perhaps they liked being dragons. The country people seem to think it was an honour. There was a farmhouse just beyond this shrine, a poor little place, but here on the flat top of the hill there was a little arable land, and the Chinese waste no land. Far up the hill-sides, in the most inaccessible places, I could see these little patches of cultivated ground. It seemed to me that the labour of reaching them would make the handful of grain they produced too expensive, but labour hardly counts in China. Up the paths toiled men and women, intent on getting the last grain out of the land. Off the beaten ways walking is pretty nearly impossible so steep are the hill-sides, but of course there are paths, paths everywhere, paved paths, in China there are no untrodden ways, and upon these paths I would meet the peasants and the priests, clad like ordinary peasants in blue cotton, only with shaven heads. My own landlord whom my boy called “Monk,” and generally added, “He bad man,” used to come regularly for his rent, and he was so fat that the wicked evidently flourished like a green bay tree. All the priests, I think, let out their temples as long as they can get tenants, and whatever they are—my landlord had beaten a man to death—much must be forgiven them. They have gained merit because, in this treeless China, they have conserved and planted trees. Some little profit, I suppose they make out of their trees because, one day in September, I waked to the fact that at my gate, how they had climbed up the toilsome, roughly-paved way I know not, was a train of camels, and they had come to take away the sacks that were stored in the sanctuary under the care of the god. What on earth was done with those Spanish chestnuts? They must have been valuable when they were worth a train of camels to take them away.
As far as I could see there was no worship done in my temple, the coolies, who carefully locked the sanctuary doors at night, were filthy past all description. I tried to put it out of my thoughts that they occupied a k'ang at night in the room that did duty for my kitchen, and I am very sure that they were the poorest of the poor, but at night I would see the youngest and dirtiest of them take a small and evil-smelling lamp inside along with the god, but what he did there I never knew. Only the lamp inside, behind the paper of the windows lit up all the lattice-work and made of that sanctuary, that shabby, neglected-looking place, a thing of beauty. But, indeed, the outside of all the buildings was wonderful at night. In the daytime when I looked I saw how beautiful was the lattice-work which made up the entire top half of my walls. At night in the courtyard when only a single candle was lighted their beauty was forced upon me, whether I would or not. Always I went outside to look at those rooms lighted at night. I walked up and down the courtyard in the dark—“James Buchanan” generally hung on to the hem of my gown—I looked at the lighted lattice-work of the windows, and I listened to the servants and the coolies talking, and I wondered what they discussed so endlessly, in voices that sounded quite European.