POPPIES AND TERRACED RICE-FIELDS.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.
For five days we travelled through a perfect flower-show of poppies, not the wild field-poppy of England, but like those we have in our gardens, standing up tall and stately about five feet high. Most were white, a delicate, fair, frail blossom; others were white, with fringed petals edged with pink; others altogether pink, or mauve, or scarlet, or scarlet-and-black, or, perhaps best of all, crimson, which, when looked up at on a bank standing out against the brilliantly blue sky, made our eyes quite ache with colour-pleasure. But how sad to hear in a letter from a friend in the Kweichow Province: "Ten years ago the price of rice per basin was 7 cash. Now, owing to the poppy taking the place of what ought to produce food for the people, the price is 20 cash for the same quantity of rice. And the people are wretchedly poor and ill-clad, whilst their poor bodies are wasting away from the constant use of the drug." One whole day we wandered along a pleasant path beside a limpid stream, beautiful, tall, bending bamboos making a refreshing breeze over our heads, with their cool green feathery foliage. If all the world could be traversed by paths like that, who would ever travel but on foot? But in the end we arrived at beautiful Chungking in a boat, as is usual with this river-encircled city.
CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN A CHINESE CITY.
Arrangement of a Chinese House.—Crowd in Streets.—My First Walk in Chungking City.—Presents.—Cats, Rats, and Eggs.—Paying a Call.—Ladies Affectionate.—Shocked at European Indecency.—Cost of Freight.—Distance by Post.—Children's Pleasures.—Precautions during Drought.—Guild Gardens.—Pretty Environs.—Opium Flowers, and Smokers.—Babble of Schools.—Chinese Girlchild.
Chungking has been so fully described in my husband's volume Through the Yangtse Gorges, I will not here enter upon a description of it further than to say it is situated, like Quebec, at the junction of two rivers. It a little recalls Edinburgh; it is about the size of Lyons; has walls all round it; and its gates are shut at sunset, all but two, which remain open an hour or two longer, except when the country is in commotion. It is built upon a rock; and as the summer progresses all the rock warms up, till the heat is very great indeed. The streets are mostly covered over, both as a protection against the sun, and the rain, which is very frequent. There is thus no possibility of fresh air getting into its streets, short of a gale occurring; and there is only very rarely any wind, as is shown by the large shade-trees on the tops of the hills, and the awnings to keep the sun off the houses, which are supported on bamboos, and which in this windless region are taken up even over the roofs of the houses.
CHUNGKING, COMMERCIAL CAPITAL OF WESTERN CHINA.
Now all the missions have built European houses; but a little while ago all foreigners lived in Chinese houses within the walls of the city. To describe one: You enter off a dirty alley by a large gateway, the only opening in the lofty fire-proof walls that surround the whole property; for fire is the great danger of a Chinese city, and a whole quarter of Chungking has been burnt down since we have lived there. You pass into a sort of courtyard; from that you proceed by a long passage to another gateway, thence into a courtyard ornamentally laid out with pots and flowers. The house door opens from this; and entering by it, you find yourself in the lofty entrance hall, used by Europeans as a dining-room. Passing through an ornamental screen with open doorways, over which hang portières, you find yourself in a sitting-room, of which one wall and two half-walls consist of paper windows, with occasional panes of glass. On either side of these two principal rooms are long narrow ones, only thirteen feet wide, which for convenience their English occupants had divided into two, the end wall being in both cases again paper windows with occasional glass. Paper ceilings had been put in to prevent the dust falling through from the tiled roof above; but the sun would shine through this as well as the tiles quite brilliantly at times. None of the partition doors had handles or latches, and the outer walls, as well as the inside partitions, were all alike of thin planks of wood, not overlapping, and which would shrink in dry weather so as to leave quite large openings between them. It will thus be realised that, whatever was the temperature outside the house, the same was the temperature inside, with the additional disadvantage of draughts on rainy, wintry days; and in winter it generally rains in Chungking. Europeans always took care to secure wooden floors for themselves; but these floors were not uncommonly rotting away under their feet. And picturesque though the houses are, with their lofty roofs, their solid wooden pillars, black rafters, and white plaster, their highly decorated exteriors, little pictures in black and white under the eaves, richly carved and heavily gilded ends to the beams, etc., it became increasingly evident each year that Europeans could not hope for health in them. Chinese in winter wear heavily wadded and fur-lined clothes, in which it is impossible to take exercise, and inside of which they loll about in a semi-comatose condition, much as if in bed.