Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

We longed to walk along the great Szechuan Road, completed as far as the Hupeh frontier, sixty miles, at a reputed cost of £52,000, and really a road, though, as is usual in Szechuan, it is often long flights of steps, and several of its crossings over streams looked doubtful. The Chinese do not make roads sufficiently often to be good road-makers. Hupeh was to have continued this road through its gorges to Ichang; and the great Lo, the Marquis of Carabas of these parts, had just been up to inspect and chalk O where the road was to go. If it were ever finished and could last, it would rival the Corniche Road for magnificence of scenery.

But years have past since we first travelled on the Upper Yangtse, and no steps have yet been taken to carry the road down-river; the funds intended for this purpose are said all to have been absorbed in paying compensation for damage done to foreigners' property in the riots of one summer. Some day, perhaps, a railway will be cut out along the river-channel. In the meantime, my husband has proved the long-doubted practicability of steaming through the rapids, by himself taking a little steamer up without any foreign assistance to help him, only Ningpo engineers, who knew neither the Szechuan speech nor ways, and a Szechuan pilot, who had never been on a steamer before. That voyage will for ever rank among the most exciting experiences of my life; for all the population along the river turned out to see the steamer, so that the cities presented the appearance of having all their outlines heavily underscored with a blue pencil; whilst sometimes as many as five Chinese lifeboats and gunboats, with large pennants and burgees flying, and occasionally firing their cannon, all wanted her to tow them at once, since their mission was to protect her. And as the little steamboat could at the outside go nine knots an hour, it was, indeed, a business to get her up the rapids. In one case—the worst—she steamed all she could, and three hundred men, harnessed to tracking-lines, pulled all they could, till one great bamboo line snapped. But she got up safely after seven minutes, in which one felt as if one's hair turned white; for if she had once got her head round, she must have been lost, and every man aboard her. A more powerful steamer would make nothing of many of the rapids, and even that worst one at some seasons of the year is barely noticeable.

NEW AND GLORIOUS RAPID.
By Mr. Cecil Hanbury.

The chief points of interest, after passing through the Gorges, are Changfei's beautiful temple, a great place to spend a happy day at; the singularly beautifully situated city of Wanhsien; Changchow, with its graceful bamboo groves; and Fengtu, the Chinese Hades.

TREE MOVED 100 YARDS BY LANDSLIP THAT FORMED NEW RAPID.
By Mr. Cecil Hanbury.

To a Chinaman this last is the most interesting place along the river: for the Emperor of the dead is supposed to live on the little hill there, as the Emperor of the living does at Peking; and whenever a Chinaman dies, all the world over, a letter ought to be written to Fengtu announcing his death, and not dropped casually into the post, but solemnly burnt by a Taoist priest. It is the one place Chinese boatmen regard with awe, and they object to moving about at night near Fengtu. Pilgrims come in great numbers to see the well that is reputed bottomless; and every one burns a little paper and throws it in. So that when I saw it the well appeared quite full up to the top. There was an iron cover over it I longed to photograph; and as it was quite dark by the well, I asked whether the soldiers accompanying me might carry it outside into the daylight and to my surprise no objection was made to their doing so; and when I set up the camera, a priest said he would stand beside it with an incense-stick, as that would look better. There is a great sword at Fengtu; but we did not learn the legend about this. The whole hillside was covered with temples, all crowded with pilgrims; and my husband said if I would go photographing in Chinese places of pilgrimage, I really must not expect him to accompany me. But I was new to China then, and enthusiastic; so four soldiers linked their arms round me, and in that manner I photographed.