Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

House-boat on the Peiho.—Tientsin.—Chefoo.—A Peking Cart.—Camels.—British Embassy.—Walking on the Walls.—Beautiful Perspectives.

It was in 1888 we first arrived in Peking, and we felt at once convinced that, whatever wonders it might have to offer, nothing—no! nothing could surpass the wonder of the journey. And when it is considered that every high official throughout the empire had to travel this same way in order to be confirmed in each appointment, the wonder of it is enhanced. From Tientsin you could always ride to Peking, if you were strong enough. Sir Harry Parkes did it in the day, the year before he died. But if not equal to riding eighty miles at a stretch, or eighty miles relieved (?) by nights at Chinese inns, you had in 1888 to travel the way we did, taking boat up the Peiho as far as Tungchow.

We left Tientsin at two o'clock on Thursday, and reached Tungchow at 9 p.m. on Sunday, having been very lucky, as it appeared. We had a south-west wind all Friday, spinning us along certain reaches of the ever wriggling, rather than winding Peiho. Along the reverse reaches the men had to tow or pole us. On Saturday the wind was so high that we had to lie to in the middle of the day, the men being unable to make any way against it by towing. And we only made a very few miles that day. In the afternoon it rained, and was altogether cheerless. But on Sunday we had a fine westerly wind blowing us on. Although a river, the Peiho in this part of its course is decidedly more canal-like and uninteresting than the English canal down which I had had some thought of travelling the year before, till I decided it would be too tedious. But after all there is a charm about this exceedingly slow method of progression. The world does not really stand still with you, but you feel as if it did. You get interested in the boats you pass and meet; some coming down stream, laden with plants in pots—two dwarf orange-trees, with oranges on them, I saw once—or bringing down straw braid, or taking up brick tea—such quantities of brick tea, which had, I suppose, come all the way down the Yangtse from poor water-beleaguered Hankow of the willow avenues and ravening mosquitoes, and round farther by sea from Shanghai to Tientsin, and whose progress on strings and strings of dignified camels Siberiawards we subsequently saw. What brick tea costs in the original instance I do not know. But when I think of the labour expended on its transport I feel it ought to be precious indeed to the Siberians.

INTERIOR OF GOVERNOR'S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE AT HANGCHOW.

Every now and then we got out and walked along the banks, looking backwards at the long zigzagging procession of boats behind us, each with one large sail, or at times each with a bare mast, looking like a long line of telegraph-poles. And beside us was the line of real telegraph-poles, forerunners of the coming railway that has since been opened; and we knew that the foreigners who would approach Peking in the old historic manner were already numbered. For there will be nothing to tempt people to provide themselves with all the necessaries of life for a three or four days' trip, now that the railroad is open and you can book direct. There is nothing to be seen upon the road that cannot be seen as well elsewhere,—mudbanks, sandhills, millet- and sorghum-fields with poor crops, fairly nice trees, fences gay with convolvulus flowers, mud houses, mud roofs, and level mudbanks crowded with all the disreputable refuse of a poor Chinese village; then wood-cutters (one or two substantial coffins stood out prominently alongside of them; wood seems too precious for anything but coffins in those parts), a mule and a pony ploughing, or a donkey or an ox, never a pair of animals of the same kind. All these one looks at with a pleasant interest as one saunters or floats by. But you can see them elsewhere; or you can never see them, and yet be none the worse for the miss.

It is true that by the old method you could shut yourself into the boat cabin, and study colloquial Chinese according to Sir Thomas Wade, or write letters home to say how you were enjoying yourself, or drink tea, or smoke, just as your previous way of life disposed you to act, there being no restraining influence further than the size of the cabin. A native boat is not quite as luxurious as a Shanghai house-boat, though it is well enough, except in the matter of its being impossible to open the cabin door from the inside. So that when we were shut in, I always thought how, if the boat should heel over, we should be drowned inside like mice in a trap. Another exception must be made—not in favour of the cracks which grow portentously larger, as the boards shrink with the increasing dryness of the air, and which must let in an inordinate draught in winter, when the air is more cold than kindly. Even towards the end of September we found it hard enough to keep warm at night. We had two cabins, but one was pretty well all bedstead, being a raised ottoman sort of a place, under which boxes could be put, and on which mattresses were laid. We had to provide ourselves with everything we wanted, even to a cooking-stove. But then we paid only nine and a half dollars for our boat, including drink money. This at the then rate of exchange was under thirty shillings. The men fed themselves. So did we. It is tiresome that, travelling in China, nothing is to be bought by the way, beyond chickens and eggs, and sweet potatoes (delicious!) and cabbage (horrible!). It is tiresome, also, that the makers of tinned things do not put dates upon their tins; therefore in the outports—which Shanghai fine ladies always pronounce as if they were only peopled by "outcasts"—people have to put up with the tinned milk that somehow did not sell at Shanghai. It is a pity that the local representatives of the Army and Navy Stores do not see to this, and put dates on their tins. It would be well worth the "outcasts'" while to pay extra for recently tinned butter and milk, if they could rely upon the dates. As it was, our milk was very nearly butter, though it could not quite be used for that, and it certainly was not milk.

The Concession at Tientsin is either so far away from the Chinese town, or so satisfactory to its inhabitants, that they never stray away among the Chinese. On landing at the bridge of boats in the native city, while our servants made a few purchases, I found I excited as much interest as if there had not been a European colony within a thousand miles. It was, however, a particularly friendly crowd that accompanied me. A boy danced in front, clapping his hands, as if to bid the people in the street make way; another boy was very eager to point out all the sweet cakes he thought nicest; two old women and an old man went down on their knees to beg; an old man was washing very old shoes upon the bridge; another was selling odds and ends of old things, that looked as if they never had been new. There were sweet potatoes cooking; there were various other buyers and sellers, and crowds passing by, both on foot and in boats. Sometimes the bridge would be opened, sometimes closed to let the foot passengers go by. There was always a crowd; whichever way of progress was open, people were always progressing by it before it was ready for them. Nobody pushed, nobody was rude; every one appeared pleasant. But there, looking down the long straight reach of the river, was the tall tower of the ruined Roman Catholic Cathedral, recalling the massacre of 1870—a massacre that might so easily have embraced all the Europeans in the Concession, had not the rain mercifully come down in torrents and dispersed the mob. It did not seem possible, when we were there, to think of any danger of the kind threatening the exceptionally thriving-looking settlement.

I have not seen any Concession yet I liked the look of so well as that of Tientsin. There is a go-ahead look about the place, with all its goods stored in heaps on the Bund with only matting over them, instead of, as elsewhere, in warehouses; which makes it contrast especially with Chefoo, that sleeping beauty, whom no fairy prince has yet awakened. Perhaps, when he does, the merry wives of China, who used to resort there every summer, may find it hardly as charming as it was in its tranquillity and freedom from all restraint. But it was so tranquil, so absolutely uneventful, that our summer month there seemed only like a dream to look back upon. Its coast-line is beautiful; but it is a coast-line with nothing behind it, as it were—like the cat's smile in Alice in Wonderland, a grin and nothing more.