Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

GREAT PRECIPICE OF MOUNT OMI.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

Many beautiful descriptions have been written of Mount Omi, that mountain that stands alone in its sacredness in the far west of China, with an all-round view from its summit, where the beholder stands on the verge of one of the most gigantic precipices in the world, said by Mr. Baber to be a mile deep. But it would be hard to surpass that of Fan Yü-tsz, of the Ming Dynasty, who tells how he saw the Wa-wu, and the snowy mountains "running athwart like a long city wall," and India, and the mountains of Karakorum, together with all the barbarous kingdoms, the great Min River, and the rivers of Kiating, the Tung, and the Ya; and winds up by saying: "The advocate and I clapped our palms, and cried out, 'The grandest view of a lifetime!'" The cloud effects from Fujiyama's top are different, but not finer; and Fuji has no snowy mountains of Tibet to look out upon. The all-round view from the ever popular and most beloved Rigi seems a plaything sort of pretty pigmy view by comparison.

And day after day, year after year, all the year round, pilgrims come and prostrate themselves on the different out-jutting bastions of the cliff upon boards laid in the wet grass for their convenience while they venerate Puhsien, who, they say, came up from India on his elephant and settled here; just as their ancestors probably came, before ever Buddha was, to venerate the sun-god, as we call him now, we not apparently having even yet learnt enough to say simply God, as if there were, or could be, God this and God that,—not one God, the Father of All—to use the simple comprehensive Chinese phrase, "The Above All!" The men and women of the province come in great numbers: the men with their brows bound with the white Szechuan handkerchief like Dante, and with mouths like the old Greek gods, with rich, regular curves; the women with their skirts only to their knees, and feet of the natural size or only slightly deformed, and in each case bound with Indian corn-husks, the better to contend with the steep stone steps that lead up and down the ten thousand feet of mountain-side. Men from Yunnan come too, with extraordinarily heavy and knotted young trees for walking-sticks, shod, not with iron points, but small iron spades, that they may if need be re-make the road as they go along. Military dandies even from far Ningpo are carried up the mountain in sedan-chairs (this last a work of great difficulty); whilst old men and very weak women manage to get up in a sort of basket carried on a man's back, their feet holding on round his waist after the fashion that children are carried pick-a-back. And in the winter the Tibetans come, men and women all together, all in furs, and saying, "Om Mani Padmi Hum!" instead of the familiar, "Omito Fo," the habitual greeting on the mountain-side. Some of the wild tribes also come, without pigtails, like decent people, but with their hair strangely sticking out in front of their heads, as if they wore their tails in front. And all prostrate themselves, and do reverence—unless it be the few Europeans who have strayed so far west through China—as they look over the edge of the great precipice, and there on the mist below see the circular halo of three primary colours, very brilliant, and in its central brightness the shadow of their own head and shoulders, or, if their heart be such, Puhsien himself riding on his elephant, as he came from India more than two thousand years ago. Where the pilgrims most do congregate some pious donor has had strong iron chains fastened between iron supports; and in another place there is a low stone wall: but so great is the indifference to its depth that so lofty a precipice inspires,—we ourselves once resided on a fifth story, and found many of our visitors unable to look out, and ourselves suffered somewhat from dizziness; but on moving to the eleventh floor of the same building felt nothing of the kind,—so great is the indifference to its danger that this great precipice inspires, that not a day passes but people are getting outside the chains, or standing on the top of the low wall, the better to see down below.

PRIEST AND PILGRIMS ON EDGE OF OMI PRECIPICE.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

And there, as we look down upon the beautiful trees far beneath us, and the flowers finding here and there a foothold, we become aware of a cave, that looks quite inaccessible now, although it may not always have been so; and below the cave, just a little way farther down the precipice, something—we cannot quite make out what. We saw it from the first, and then turned away to look at the city of Kiating, picturesquely situated at the junction of its three rivers, or to notice how swollen the rivers are with the recent heavy rains, or to catch a distant glimpse of the one Taoist monastery on the mountain, perched like an eyrie on its most picturesque out-jutting spur, or, as so often, to watch the mist roll up. Oftenest it comes flying up from the hot lowlands at our feet; but at times it crawls up like a great white bear, lifting first one paw, then another, yet always securing its foothold even on the sheerest edge of the precipice. At other times it comes up like a sinuous serpent; and sometimes, enfolding all the landscape, it flows over the precipice from the top like a Niagara of mist. But always as the mist lifts, and we lean over the precipice, scanning closely, we see that cave, which surely no man could ever reach, and, below, something curious lying aslant on an edge of the cliff; yet never is our curiosity sufficiently awakened to lift an opera-glass, and see what it may be: it looks so small and insignificant—just something out of place in the vast landscape, that is all.

Then we see other caves, and hear wild talk of aborigines, who live, or lived, in them. The coolies talk of nothing but aborigines and the unconquered Lolos. One of them has been two years among the latter as a soldier; and he tells how his general's wife was taken prisoner by them, and put upon an ox to ride, since she could not walk, and describes them as a sort of Highlanders, wearing a skirt and a wrap, and not rude at all to those they carry off—only wanting to get ransom-money. Then we meet a pilgrim, who is standing staring at some caves far below with protruding eyes; and he says, "There are tigers in there!" then stands speechless. But on our laughing we are told again of six men already this year eaten by tigers. It is a comfort to laugh even over tigers; for the high, rare air affects the nerves even of our coolies, and every one is asking for quinine as a cure for neuralgia. For foreign medicines are known in the West, and "They never cost anything," as some women with a sick child said with great energy, and confidence that we must be able to cure the child, and for nothing, as missionaries or foreigners (here the two words are treated as synonymous) always did. Then, as one coolie after another sickened, and we ourselves could hardly breathe or bear the aching of our heads, we were told a very dangerous air came up over the precipice, and how a Taoist priest, who was going to live in a cave on the mountain, dropped down dead of it. And none of our Chinese would hear of a cave being possibly full of gas, or that the air on the top of the mountain was so much lighter than that below that a little time is needed to get accustomed to it.

And whilst explaining scraps of modern science, we forgot all about the Taoist priest who died, till one day again we were hanging over the cliff, watching for the Glory of Buddha below, when we noted a Chinaman gazing down more intently than devoutly. "Do you see him?" he asked. "I could not find him this morning; and I would not believe what they all said, that a Taoist priest lay there. But what else can it be? Do you look through your far-seeing glass, and say what you see." So we looked at that something out of place, that had at once caught short-sighted eyes intently scanning, yet without arresting our attention sufficiently even to wonder what it might be. Yes! certainly there lay, across a fallen tree, what looked like a man with a hood on, like that the chief priest here wore, with an old basket at his feet. "Yes, that's it—that's it. All the Taoists wear that! With his feet in a basket! That is how they say he lies. He has lain there two years, they say; and last year his clothes looked blue, and now they look whitey-brown. Next year, I suppose, they will all fall to pieces. I suppose it must be a man. I would not believe it at first." "No, no; it is not a Taoist priest," said the young Buddhist, whose duty it was to be agreeable to visitors. "It is just some clothes people have thrown down." But, in the first place, no human hand could throw clothes so far. They must long before have, fluttering, caught upon some rugged edge. Next, nothing thrown could so exactly take the semblance of a man,—the hood worn just as the chief priest wears his, only the head fallen forward somewhat, and the lower part of the person in dust-coloured clothes evidently fast approaching decay, but even yet lingering on just where they would be if a man lay there wearing them. The idea of clothes thrown down certainly would not hold water. The idea of a sort of Guy Fawkes figure did at one time present itself; but whilst it seemed possible that some enthusiast might attempt to climb to that inaccessible cave, and so climbing fall and perish, it did not seem possible that any one would be foolhardy enough to climb there for the purpose merely of placing a lay figure there, or could do so, carrying a lay figure. Yet, not wishing to be too credulous, we approached the chief priest the next time his picturesque figure in grey silk gown and black hood appeared beside the parapet, and propounded the theory of clothes. His dark eyes grew luminous with a sad smile; his is a face in which a painter would delight, with its rich dark shades, well-marked features, and general air of an Oriental saint of the early Christian era. "Those are no clothes," he said, sadly smiling. "A Taoist priest lies there."