Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

The Roman Catholic priests here say that the people believe in nothing except their Lamas, and we feel a little inclined to think, if they believe in them, it is no wonder that they believe in nothing else. Whatever any one may think of missions in China—and I am grieved as well as greatly surprised to find how little interest people generally take in them—every one must wish well to missionaries to Tibet; for the priesthood must have an extraordinarily paralysing effect, that this physically gifted people, still with princes of their own, should have sunk under Chinese control, in spite of the impregnable natural fastnesses of their mountains, and the defence established by their climate. Whilst we were there, in September, the thermometer varied from 56° to 60°, but the winds blew so keenly off the glaciers that many people were wearing heavy furs, and the price of them had already gone up.

Buying, indeed, we found most exhausting work at Tachienlu. At home, when one feels like buying, one goes to the shops; but the people who have anything to sell drop in at Tachienlu from early morning till late, late at night, merry rosy little maidens with a keen eye to business, or wonderfully withered old crones. They ask any price at first; then just as they are going away say quietly, "What would you like to give?" after which they stand out by the hour for an additional half-rupee for themselves, to give which a rupee has to be carefully cut in two. An aged chieftain, with a most beautiful prayer-wheel and rosary, both of which, he says, are heirlooms and cannot be sold, brings a beautifully embroidered red leather saddle-cloth for sale; while a Tibetan from the interior brings first a Lama's bell, then cymbals, then woollen clothes of soft, rich colours, and little serving-maids appear with cast-off clothes, expecting us to buy them all. It is interesting to notice how very fashionable is a Tibetan lady's dress—a sleeveless gown, that opens down the front like a tea-gown, a skirt with box pleats so tiny and so near together as to be almost on the top of one another, carefully fastened down so as to lie quite flat, and lined at the bottom with a broad false hem of coarse linen, so as to avoid unnecessary weight. Yet even as it is, the weight of this silk skirt is prodigious. Over this is worn a jacket, and over this an apron girt round rather below the waist with a variety of girdles. But it is hard to say what a Tibetan girl really does wear, for the seventeen-year-old daughter of the inn, finding herself rather coming to pieces, began rectifying her toilette in my presence, and I lost count of the garment below garment that appeared in the process, all girdled rather below the waist. The finish of the toilette, even in ordinary life, seems to be an unlimited supply of jewellery and dirt, the finger-nails, besides being deeply grimed, being also tinged with red. The men wear turquoises in their hair, and often one gigantic earring, besides rosaries and big amulet-cases. And the general effect is so brilliant one rather loses sight of the dirt. But indeed, after travelling through China, it would be difficult to be much struck by dirt anywhere.

It is very trying that they have such a very quick perception of a camera. I have spent hours with a detective half hidden behind a pile of woollens at our window, and tried every expedient. But they are said to think the photographer gets their soul from them, and then has two to enjoy, whilst they themselves are left soulless. At last, however, after a great deal of coaxing, six Tibetan women stood up in a row, encouraged to do so by the elder daughter of the inn, who is married—though probably after the Tibetan fashion—to a rich Yunnan merchant, who occupied one wing of the courtyard, filling it with beautiful wild men, but himself absorbed in his opium-pipe. I was afraid to place them, or do anything beyond asking the aged chieftain to leave off turning his prayer-wheel for the one second while I took them, although I longed to arrange them a little, and was disappointed that the daughter of the inn had not put on any of the grand clothes and jewellery she had exhibited to me.

The last day or two the yaks were coming into town in droves to fetch the brick tea away. All those we saw were black, although the yaks' tails for sale were white. They were rather like Highland cattle for size, and seemed very quiet, although looking so fierce, with long bushy manes and tails, and long shaggy hair down their front legs. The last day we were at Tachienlu we got a perfectly clear view of the snowy mountains and glacier to the south, as we stood outside the north gate beyond the magnificent alders there. All that day we rode down the narrow granite defile that leads up from the Tung, and then we heard it really would be possible to cross the river and see the Tibetan villages on its left bank, if we could walk for two miles higher up to where there was a boat.

My husband was suffering from neuralgia, but he very heroically consented to my going without him, a proceeding which our Chinese servant so highly condemned, that he became almost violent before I started early next day with all four of the yamen runners, sent by the Chinese Government to protect us, and one of our soldier coolies to protect me from the yamen runners. As the Tung would not be passable again till we reached the city of the great chain bridge, I had thus a long day to look forward to through unknown country; and knowing how the Tibetans feel about photography, there was a certain amount of anxiety about the proceeding. But what a disappointment awaited me! We walked the longest two miles ever human being walked, till we came to the place where the boat was on the other side of the river. The coolie had run on ahead to hail it. But in spite of his shouting no one moved in the village opposite. We had been warned that nothing would induce the people to come across with the boat till they had breakfasted, so we sat down and waited.

We saw a man and boy come out to till the ground. The boy lay on his back, and looked at us and sang to himself. All four yamen runners shouted, and waved strings of cash. A shepherd came out with a herd of goats, another with cows and goats. We judged by the smoke that breakfasts were preparing. We even saw one man come out upon his flat roof with what we decided to be an after-breakfast pipe. We thought he must come now. Yes! Surely there was some one coming to the boat! No, it was a man with a basket on his back, evidently wanting to cross to our side. He sat down and waited. Presently another man came out and sat down beside him. They became quite happy, those two—setting to at once in what probably is a never-ending occupation for them, hunting 'mid their rags for vermin! Two other moving bundles of rags came slowly down and joined them—one apparently a man, the other looking rather like a woman. They also sat and hunted! At last the boy moved; he went to the village, we thought, to call some one. Our hopes rose. All my men shouted together. A man came to the water's edge! Another! They looked at us. They looked at the boat. They felt the boat, but they did not push it into the water; and they went away. We were in despair. We made feints of going, and then came back again. At last there was nothing for it but to go really. The beggars in their rags on the other side got uneasy then. They even shouted to us, begging us to stop; but it was of no use. Hours afterwards, as we coasted a granite headland, we saw that boat still high and dry. I would so gladly have risked my life in it.

But now, besides retracing our long two miles—now under a burning sun—we had twenty-two miles to get over in order to join the rest of our party and get shelter for the night. It was a comfort to find some more coolies with lanterns sent to meet us before we had to cross the chain bridge, for there are often planks missing in it and others with great holes in them. We went across in a phalanx. I held on to the coolie on my left, he reached an arm out to secure the man with the light, and the coolie on my other side supported my elbow. It seemed we got on best when we all went in step together, although I should not have thought so. On arriving, we found that, when our carrying coolies had crossed, some yamen runners had attacked them, and in the scuffle that ensued the fur coat of the coolie, who had gone with me, had been stolen out of a basket. So my husband was just starting for the yamen to tell the tale. "I know all about it," said the magistrate, "and it is quite true they were yamen runners, who acted very wrongly. You want them punished? Behold!" And the curtain behind him was drawn back, and there were two men with their heads in cangues. But the coolie from whom the coat had been stolen stood up before the magistrate, and stoutly maintained those were not the men. "How could you know in the confusion?" asked the magistrate. "Can you identify the men? If so, and these are not the right ones, I will punish the others also."

So there we were, but not the fur coat! What a comfort it was, though, to rest after that long, hot day! And how luxurious to be carried next day in a sedan-chair along the beautiful banks of the swift-flowing Tung! Then six days' travelling, against time now, along the great brick-tea road, through scenes of varying beauty, among gigantic ferns and waxen begonias nestling into the walls, past long ranges of black-and-white farm-buildings, shadowed by large, beautiful shade-trees; a day and a half on a bamboo raft down the exceedingly pretty but turbulent Ya, with the waves washing up to our knees at all the bad rapids; after which five days down the conjoined rivers Ya, Tung, and Yangtse; and then home in Chungking again, after the most adventurous and by far the most varied and interesting summer outing that it has yet fallen to my lot to make.

CHAPTER XXII.
ARTS AND INDUSTRIES.

Porcelain.—Bronzes.—Silver-work.—Pictures.—Architecture.—Tea.—Silk.—White Wax.—Grass cloth.—Ivory Fans.—Embroidery.