Three Years in Western China / A Narrative of Three Journeys in Ssu-ch'uan, Kuei-chow, and Yün-nan

by Sir Alexander Hosie

CHAPTER IV.

THROUGH NORTH-EASTERN YÜN-NAN TO THE YANG-TSZE.

The city of Yün-nan Fu—P’u-êrh tea—Opium-smoking chair-bearers and personal care—Exposure of robbers’ heads—Chinese school—Rainbow superstition—Entertainment at Tung-ch’uan Fu—A successful ruse—Stopped by a mountain torrent—Lodged in a byre—On the banks of the Niu-lan River—The Chao-t’ung plain and its lakes—Stories of Lolo bloodshed—Down from the plain—Narrow escape of a porter—Back to Ssŭ-ch’uan—Descent of the Nan-kuang River—Down the Yang-tsze to Ch’ung-k’ing.

Yün-nan Fu is a walled city, over three miles in circuit, 6420 feet above the level of the sea and at a short distance from the north-eastern shore of the lake, with which it was formerly connected by a canal. The southern half of the square is thickly populated, while the northern half consists of swamp and vegetable gardens. The city was shorn of its ancient glory by the outbreak of the Mohammedan rebellion, which raged for years round it and in the northern part of the province. The old and extensive suburbs are gradually being rebuilt from their ruins. Outside the south gate (there are six gates) there is now a long street of depôts for the salt, which comes from the wells to the north-west. The city itself is kept decidedly clean; bullock carts daily go round and collect the garbage from the streets, which are fairly broad for a Chinese town. What strikes the traveller most, in passing through these streets thronged with well-dressed and evidently well-to-do foot-passengers, is the large admixture of non-Chinese features. Here Mohammedans, Chinese, Shans, and Lolos, and mixtures of these races, jostle each other in the market place and in the daily business of the world.

COURTESY OF MISSIONARIES.

During my two days’ stay in the city, I received every possible kindness at the hands of the members of the two missionary bodies at work there—Les Missions Etrangères de Paris and the China Inland Mission. At the handsome palace of the French Bishop, I met a Father from Ta-li Fu, who gave me such a glowing account of Western Yün-nan, that I at once made up my mind to visit that part of the province on a future occasion, a resolution which I was fortunately able to carry out.

The good Bishop handed me a letter which he had just received from Mr. Colquhoun, from P’u-êrh Fu, stating that his funds were all but exhausted, and requesting a loan to enable him to proceed from Ta-li, whither he was bound, to Bhamo. I at once arranged with the Bishop to despatch a messenger with sixty taels of silver; but Mr. Colquhoun succeeded in obtaining funds from the China Inland Mission at Ta-li, and, ere my messenger reached that city, he and his companion, Mr. Wahab, had left on their westward journey.

To speak of Yün-nan Fu without a reference to the famous tea, for which it is the entrepôt, would be a serious omission. P’u-êrh tea, so named from the department in which it is widely grown, is the leaf of the Camellia thea Link., and for purposes of transit is steamed and made up into cakes, which find their way to the remotest parts of the Empire. Much of the leaf, however, is brought to the city of P’u-êrh from the Shan States, beyond the southern frontier of Yün-nan. It varies in price, according to quality, from tenpence to one shilling and fivepence a pound; but the cost of overland transit is so great as to virtually exclude it from the foreign market.