Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

The next wonder was the celebrated bridge, three hundred feet long, and with hardly any drop in the nine iron chains of which it is composed. Planks were laid loosely upon the chains, starting up at each of the ponies' steps, and the whole bridge swayed like a ship at sea. Two guardians of the bridge at once rushed forward, and placed their arms under mine to support me across, taking for granted that I should be frightened. But looked upon as a yacht pitching and tossing, the bridge really did not make bad weather of it, so I preferred to walk alone and to notice how sea-sick our coolies looked. Just at that point the Tung vividly recalled the Rhine at Basle, but with probably a greater volume of water. That afternoon the scenery began to be as wild and gloomy as we had anticipated, granite mountains increasing in size and narrowing in upon us, the road taking sudden drops down precipitous gorges of four or five hundred feet, and then at once up again. There were prickly pears all about, and pomegranate-trees in hedges, the air full of thyme and peppermint and aromatic scents. Tibetan villages, just like the pictures, were visible on the far left bank of the Tung,—two-storied houses, with tiny holes for windows, and door uncomfortably high up, so that no one could get in, if once the entrance ladder were drawn up; roofs set so as apparently to let in a free current of air. Not a tree visible, not a man moving: there never is in the pictures! Impossible, however, to get across the Tung to look at them; and when isolated houses were visible on our side, it was always in inaccessible eyries.

The little pony I rode, not one of those excellent ponies we hired the first day for a few hours only, had come down twice on both knees with me on its back. It was evident its little legs might have been stronger. And as I rode along these granite precipices, my hands were hot with terror, until at last I could bear no more. For some time beforehand I had been looking at the road in front, curving round two headlands—granite precipice above, granite precipice below—the road overarched by the rock, and had wondered how all our party would get by. "We met one hundred and fifty people coming from that direction before our luncheon," I said to myself. "I know it because I counted them. And if anything, I left out some, when the road was too alarming. They must all have got by alive! And all these brick-tea men now coming along with us, of course they are all intending to get by alive. It can't be so bad!" But it was of no use! I could not ride along that road, with the pony slipping and stumbling among the stones, and sliding down the little descents at the corners with both its hind feet together. Yet the road was good for those parts, being all of granite and painfully chiselled out; so the pony-boy, a most lively youth of fifteen, was greatly shocked at my dismounting.

We slept that night where the Lu joins the Tung, cutting a granite mountain in half to do so, the half that is left standing towering some three or four thousand feet above our heads. The Lu is the fullest glacier stream I have ever seen. It has a great deal more water to carry than the Thames at Richmond, and sometimes it is compressed into a width of six yards, with a tremendous fall, coming straight, we are told, from a lake at the foot of the great glacier we saw first with such delight from the summit of sacred Omi, about a hundred miles away as the crow flies. All day we rode or walked up the defile, that would have been too solemn but for this rollicking glacier stream tumbling head over heels all the way down it, with side cataracts leaping down, equally overfull of foaming water, equally in hot haste to reach the Tung. The road was all the way so bad that at last my only surprise was to find that there were places the ponies could not manage, and that on one occasion they had, twice in five minutes, to ford a stream with the water well up to my feet, as they stumbled among the big boulders in order to avoid a bit of road that all the heavily laden brick-tea men had managed. It seemed too absurd that those ponies could not, they had done so much already. But at last the pony-boy waved his arm, as if to say, "There's Tachienlu! I've got you there at last! You can't get into trouble now, I think, along what we call the bit of smooth road in front. And I wash my hands of you!"

We rode on, past our last Tibetan bridge. How often they had haunted my childhood's dreams! And now I saw a woman seat herself astride the stick hanging from the cord drawn taut across the stream, and, resting one arm upon a very smooth piece of bamboo that runs along the cord, hold with the other hand a series of loops of cords hanging from it, and allow herself to be pulled across. I longed to do likewise, and went the length of seating myself on the stick; but the foaming torrent below meant certain death if one could not hold on, nor did I know at all what reception the Tibetan men on the other side might give me, so I got off again. People say it is easy enough to go as far as the slope of the cord is downwards, but very hard to pull oneself up the other side, and that just at the centre the impulse to let go is almost overmastering. We passed flagstaffs with lettered pieces of cloth hanging from them inscribed with prayers, passed rocks with prayers chiselled on their smooth surfaces, into the little frontier town at the junction of three valleys, with granite mountains hemming it in all round, one terminating in a sharp little granite pyramid, quite a feature in the view, and in what looked exactly like a fortress with three big cannon pointed in different directions.

We had already met one most exciting party of Tibetans, the men fine-looking, one even more than that, the women rosy and pleasant-faced and very short-skirted, but evidently all thinking it an excellent joke not to let me look at them, and such fleet mountaineers that, though I ran, I could not keep up with them, and they were all out of sight, merrily laughing, before we had half seen them. But now at Tachienlu far more wonderful people became visible. It was as if every wild tribe on the borders of China were represented, and a piece of the garment of each patched into the garment of every other. And in and out among them strode the Lamas, right arm and shoulder bared, like Roman senators in dull-red togas, their arms folded and their attitude defiant. A beggar passed singing, with a face like Irving's, only glorified. He had bare feet, but his face was sublime. Then strode by what looked like a tall Highlander, with a striped garment of many colours draped round him, boots of soft woollen coming to the knee, and edged with a coarse stuff of brilliant red and yellow. Next, two wild-looking men, with blue hats, that were hats and hoods all in one, slouched upon their heads, a red disc in the centre of each, their most luxuriant hair, in innumerable very fine plaits, twisted round and round, and fastened at one side with large red and yellow rings. Tibetan women, with fine, rather Irish features, black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, were smiling on us from the doorsteps, their hair plaited with a red cord, and twisted in a most becoming coronal round their heads. They had large silver earrings with red coral drops, red cloth collars fastened by large silver clasps, always a lump of coral in the centre of the middle one, and a large turquoise in that on either side. They had silver châtelaines hanging from their waists, though often only a needlebook on the châtelaine, large silver bracelets and strings of coral beads on their arms, and their fingers covered with enormous rings.

Every one looked at us and smiled. Could anything be more different from the reception we were accustomed to in a Chinese city? Every one looked at us as if to say, "Are not you glad to have got here?" We felt more and more glad every minute, but a little bewildered too. It was all so strange; the streets were so full of corners and of strange-looking people, all looking and smiling at us. And they seemed to go on for ever. When were we going really to arrive?

CARAVANSERAI AT TACHIENLU.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

But when we reached the caravanserai, or inn, where Baber stayed and Mr. Rockhill and all the foreigners, where Prince Henry of Orleans and Mr. Pratt were shut up as it were, the place looked so forbidding we hesitated to enter, till reassured by hearing the strident tones of our Chinese butler inside. The rooms actually upstairs—after we had gone up the staircase, embedded in filth and hair—were a most agreeable surprise, almost as good as an attic in a London East-End lodging-house at first sight. Buttered tea was served at once, and before many minutes were over the lady of the inn, a very handsome Tibetan, had invited me to a little repast in her private room: tea buttered, of course—and really very good—Tibetan cheese like very fresh cream-cheese, and tsamba, a kind of barley-meal, and excellent when kneaded into a ball with buttered tea. Lamas strode in and out of the courtyard, and stared, swinging praying-wheels. All manner of men and women looked in. It was quite enough to sit at the window and look down at the kaleidoscope below, for every one came in and gave us a glance. And that was just what we wanted to do to them. But they would not sell their praying-wheels, and the Lamas would not let me look at the amulets which they carry on their breasts in square cases, sometimes crusted with turquoises. Surely never was there a people more bejewelled. The dirtiest man we saw would have a jewel or two stuck in his hair, and as likely as not a huge ring on his finger.