Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

SACRED SAI KING MOUNTAIN.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

Climbing the Sai King was rather a formidable affair. But for the guidance of a young priest, returning from one of those begging excursions by means of which he had bought the whole mountain-summit, we never should have reached the top before darkness set in; and in the dark no man would dare to move upon the Sai King. For not only are there all manner of wild beasts, but the path leads along the narrow edge of a col, and then up staircases, till at last you arrive at three ladders, one of twenty-seven rungs, before you find yourself at the top of the awful precipices that girdle it all round, in a sort of park with firs and rhododendrons, the latter at least twenty feet high, moss hanging from them in garlands, as well as a foot deep upon the ground. It is a veritable boys' paradise (and as such I have described it at length in the Nineteenth Century of January, 1896), with squirrels and deer and birds innumerable, large very sweet white strawberries in the greatest profusion, raspberries abundant, currants plentiful, mushrooms in bushels. There are glorious views from the brink of precipices, when you can break your way through the rhododendrons and look over, hearing the rivers murmuring some five or six thousand feet below, and seeing the Tibetan summits like a sea of mountains.

But I have mentioned nearly all there was to eat on the Sai King Shan, and our room was almost more cracks than room, so that we shivered inside it even when almost blinded by wood smoke. And when the wind howled and the rain poured in like a waterspout, it did occur to us to wonder what we should do if one of the ladders were carried away. Besides, by dint of thinking about it, the going down those ladders became increasingly terrible. I had paused in the middle of coming up, and, looking between my feet, had seen the mists moving and the cataract falling four thousand feet sheer below me, and through a rift in the clouds had caught a sight of the great precipice to the north, greater even than that on Omi. We found ourselves wondering whether it would be wise to look down and gaze on everything, if clear, when descending. When we had got as far as that, it seemed more prudent to go down at once. And it was then we saw from the bottom the great north precipice, that is the most glorious east end of a world's cathedral. Looked at from where one will, one could not but feel in comparison how poor was a temple made with hands. Yet there in the valley six thousand feet below was the chapel and priests' house, built by their own hands with their own money by the people of the wholly Christian village of Tatientze. And here, close to the summit of the mountain, where a cord used to hang over the precipice to get down by, was the cave where two Buddhist sisters, till last year, lived seven years "to purify their souls." There was a little platform in front of the cave where they could stand and look out upon the glories of the Creator's handiwork, if so minded. Did they stand there, those two sisters? Did they worship there? Did they in the end purify their souls? Or did they find it was a mistake, thus retiring from their kind? Their father used to send them rice, which was let down to them by the cord, and a stream poured over the precipice in a sort of waterfall hard by. And they only went away the year before because the tidings had come of their mother's death.

Again we wandered on, or rather walked hard, for one day across the mountains, till we came to a village full of conquered Lolos, women fearless and frank as American girls, riding and walking with a grace I have never seen equalled; their men with elaborate ceremonial of politeness, but, alas! too much given to the delights of drink. We would gladly have learned more about them. But now we heard six days more would bring us to Tachienlu, in Chinese Tibet, and all our following were wild to get there, and to get fur coats, the Chinaman's ambition. As for ourselves, we wondered if it were worth while to go on, but we were certainly in no hurry as yet to get back to Chungking. Our last news from there was that it was 100° in the shade, and cholera worse than ever. Thirty thousand people, we learnt afterwards, died of it in the course of the summer, and it was worse still at Chengtu, the capital of the province, by which we had purposed returning.

Not at all particularly anxious for fur coats, not at all distinctly remembering what we had read of Tachienlu, we decided to go on if we could get ponies, and thus decide for ourselves if it were worth while. But now came the difficulty. With ponies grazing all round, we never could succeed in hiring one. Certainly they were very small, and we very big by comparison. Every one told us we must get ponies at Fulin. So to Fulin we pushed on. But this was thirty-six miles, over any number of passes, one seven thousand feet high, so we were obliged to stop a little short of it that night. Next day, however, we got there for breakfast. We had formed high expectations with regard to Fulin. For six days we had seen men staggering along under crushing weights of salt, two hundred pounds to each man, too much exhausted by their burdens even to look up. And they had all been bound for Fulin. People may not want to be missionaries in China, but I do not think any European could travel there and not wish to undo the heavy burdens, and I have seen no beasts of burthen whose sufferings have so moved my heart to pity as these salt-carriers. Salt is such a hard, uncompromising load, and it was so pitiful to notice how they had to protect it from being melted by the sweat that streamed down their poor backs. Then the passes were so high, and the paths so narrow and so wild, and the heat so great. It seemed as if any human heart must break, if it contemplated beforehand all it would have to undergo to carry one load of salt from Kiating to Fulin. Then, however often we calculated it, what they were paid, how many days they spent upon the journey, how many days going empty-handed back, we never could make out that the poor carriers were any the better off at the end of all their exertions. Of course they must be, or they would not make them; but it must be by a miserable pittance indeed. It appeared now, too, that Fulin, though well-to-do enough, was but the distributing centre for two very rich prosperous valleys and the country beyond, and there were no ponies to be had there. Later on in the day, however, when we really did succeed in hiring capital ponies, we no longer wondered that it had been difficult to get any for such a journey as we were undertaking. For what road there had ever been had been carried away in several places, and so had the bridges. The mountains looked exactly as if, according to the Chinese saying, a dragon had really turned round at the top, and clawed and scored and gashed the mountain-sides. All the people were going to market, as they always are in Szechuan, and in one place was a crowd busy remaking a bridge in order to get over, whilst farther on three of the strongest men of the company had stripped, and, holding hands, were cautiously trying fording. Then the others followed their example, and for a moment or two were carried off their legs by the furious stream. The hills were terrible, and, clambering up one, a mule in our company failed to establish its footing, and, turning over and over, reached the bottom dead. Just the moment before I had been wondering whether my tiny pony could make the final effort necessary to attain the top of that hill.

BRICK-TEA CARRIERS ON THE GREAT BRICK-TEA ROAD.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

After Nitou, which proclaims on a stone tablet that it is the western boundary of the black-haired or Chinese race, Tibet seems to begin. We climbed a pass nine thousand feet high, then descended again for five miles, always in uninhabited country, full of flowers. Especially lovely in that September weather was the small but very luxuriant deep purple convolvulus twining round the acacia mimosas. Just as we passed out of the mist—it was unfortunately always misty at the tops of the passes—we met a Lama quite resplendent in crimson and old gold, and then passed troops of men carrying brick tea. One man carried seventeen bars, each weighing twenty pounds; others fifteen, thirteen, or eleven. A boy of fourteen, of ten, even one of seven, was carrying, the latter four half-bars, poor wee child! Just as we were sorrowing over the children, trees glorious with coral flowers flashed upon our sight. And on the second day after leaving Nitou we once more came upon the great Tung river, by the side of which we had before travelled for one whole afternoon, separated only by it from the unconquered Lolo country. Never a boat nor raft upon the Tung, except one to take people back into Lololand from a great theatrical performance, at which all the countryside had mustered. And once we saw a boat by the side of it, but hauled up high and dry. It was a round skin-boat, for all the world just like the coracles the ancient Britons used. We came also upon a terrible gully, descending by a severe slant directly into the river. A shower of stones was almost continuously rattling down, mixed with a little water; every now and then the shower slackened somewhat, and then first one and then another large stone would come down, wildly bounding from side to side; after that, the shower would be stronger than ever. When the erratic blocks came bounding down, no one put his feet in the footprints left by some one else across the shifting torrent of stones, that here constituted the whole of the great brick-tea road, the great main road between Peking and Lassa. At other times they paused behind a projecting rock, to watch for a good opportunity, and then ran for it. And the usual thing seemed to be to laugh. Our little dog had its misgivings in the middle, and paused, to be half kicked, half thrown across. For it was an anxious moment for our carrying coolies and the heavily laden brick-tea men. Meanwhile, our cook amused himself by pitching stones into the air, and it was eerie to observe that, wherever thrown, and however often they bounded, they all ended by falling into the deep, swift waters of the unnavigable Tung.