A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

Etiquette of the Chinese cart—Ruined city—The building of the wall—The advice of a mule—A catastrophe—The failing of the Peking cart—Beautiful scenery—Industrious people—The posters of the mountains—Inn yards—The heads of the people—Mountain dogs—Wolves—A slum people—Artistic hands—“Cavalry”—The last pass.

And now we were on the very borders of China proper. The road was simply awful, very often just following the path of a mountain torrent. Always my cart went first, and however convenient it sometimes seemed for the other cart to take first place, it never did so. Suppose we turned down a narrow path between high banks and found we were wrong and had to go back, the second cart would make the most desperate effort and get up the bank rather than go before me. Such is Chinese etiquette, and like most rules and customs when one inquires into the reason of them, there is some sense at the bottom of it. A Chinese road is as a rule terribly dusty and the second cart gets full benefit of all the dust stirred up.

The day after we had been to the Nine Dragon Temple we passed through the Great Wall at Hsing Feng K'ou, another little walled city. We had spent the night just outside the ruined wall of an old city, a city that was nearly deserted. There were the old gateways and an old bell tower, even an old cannon lying by the gate, but more than half the people were gone, and those who remained were evidently poor peasants, living there I should say because building material was cheap, and eking out the precarious existence of the poor peasant all over China. The hills were very close down now and the valleys very narrow, and on a high peak close to the crumbling walls was the remains of a beacon tower. Here by the border they had need to keep sharp watch and ward. I suppose they have nothing to fear now, or perhaps there is nothing to take, but in one ruined gateway I passed through they were tending swine, and in another they were growing melons. At least it would never be worth the raiders while to gather and carry away the insipid melon of China.

The Wall is always wonderful. It was wonderful here even in its decay. The country looked as if some great giant had upheaved it in great flat slabs, raising what had been horizontal almost into the perpendicular. It would have been impossible I should have thought for any man, let alone an invading army, to cross there; there were steep grassy slopes on one side, on the other the precipice was rough and impassable, and yet, on the very top of the ridge, ran the wall, broken and falling into decay in some places. I do not wonder that it has not been kept in repair, what I wonder is that it was ever built. Tradition says they loaded goats with the material and drove them to the top of the hills, but it seems to me more likely they were carried by slaves. All the strenuous past lived for me again as the sunlight touched the tops of the watch-towers and I saw how carefully they were placed to command a valley. And that life is past and gone, the Manchus have conquered and passed away, and the Mongols—well the Mongols they say, when they come in contact with the Chinese, always beat them, and yet it is the Chinese who, pushing out beyond the Wall, settle on and till the rich Mongol pasture lands. There is now no need of the Wall, for the Chinese, the timid Chinese have gone beyond it.

Inner Mongolia they call this country beyond the Wall, and worse and worse got the road, sometimes it was between high banks, sometimes on a ledge of the hills, sometimes it followed the course of a mountain torrent, but always the general direction was the same, across or along a valley to steep and rugged hills, hills sterile, stony, and forbidding, and through which there seemed no possible way. There was always a way to the valley beyond, but after we passed the Wall I considered it possible only for a Peking cart, and by and by I came to think it was only by supreme good luck that a Peking cart came through. There was a big brown mule in the shafts of my cart, and the fawn mule led, so far away that I wondered more than once whether he had anything to do with the traction at all, or whether it was only his advice that was needed. He was a wise mule, and when he came to a jumping-off place, with apparently nothing beyond it, he used to pause and look round as much as to say:

“Jeewhicks!” you couldn't expect much refinement from a Chinese mule, “this is tall No can do.” The carter would jump down from his place on the tail of the shaft. He would make a few remarks in Chinese, which, I presume, freely translated were:

“Not do that place? What 're yer givin' us? Do it on me 'ed.”

Then the fawn-coloured mule would return to his work with a whisk of his tail which said plainly as words:

“Oh all serene. You say can do. Well, I ain't in the cart, I ain't even drawing the cart, and I ain't particular pals with the gentleman in the shafts, so here goes.”

And the result justified the opinion of both. We did get down, but it seemed to me a mighty narrow squeak, and I was breathless at the thought that the experience must be repeated in the course of the next hour or so. At first I was so terrified I decided I would walk, then I found it took me so long—one mountain pass finished off a pair of boots—and there were so many of them I decided I had better put my faith in the mules if I did not wish to delay the outfit and arrive at Jehol barefoot. But I never went up and down those passes without bated breath and a vow that never, never again would I trust myself in the mountains in a Peking cart. Still I grew to have infinite faith in the Peking cart. I was bruised and sore all over, and I found the new nightgowns and chemises in my box were worn into holes with the jolting, but I believed a Peking cart could go anywhere, and then my confidence received a rude shock.