Soon after leaving Shun-ch'ing our road lay over an excellent four-arched bridge called the Jung An Ch'iao ("Everlasting Peace Bridge"), and we then began the ascent of a hill commonly known locally as the Hsi Shan, or West Hill. Here there are cavern-shrines, and a number of honorific portals and tablets, which indeed are exceedingly common along all the main roads of Ssuch'uan. Many of the inscriptions consist of "legends of good women," but the great majority commemorate the virtues of local officials. The carved figures on the buildings of the Hsi Shan are curious and interesting, and would probably repay study. Some distance beyond this point I observed a large flat rock close to the road, bearing the significant inscription: Ch'i ssŭ wu kao chuang ("Die of anger but don't go to law"). This is part of a well-known proverb which goes on to say: O ssŭ wu tso tsei ("Die of hunger but don't be a thief"). It would be well for the peasantry of China—who as often as not ruin themselves over their law-suits—if they would pay as much respect to the first of these injunctions as they generally do to the second.
On the 25th February my road descended from an undulating range of hills to the edge of the great plain, in the middle of which is situated the provincial capital, Ch'êng-tu; but it was not till the close of the following day, the fourteenth since leaving Wan-hsien, that we entered the city.
HIGHWAYMEN
As in all wealthy centres, the contrast between the rich and poor in the Ch'êng-tu plain is very striking. I never met so much evidence of great wealth elsewhere in China, and certainly never encountered so many beggars. One of them, seeing that I was alone and on foot—for I had left my chair some distance behind—offered to carry me to Ch'êng-tu on his back. Another tried to impress upon me the advantages of his wheelbarrow as a mode of conveyance, though its wooden wheel was nearly broken in half. The number of bad characters in the city and neighbourhood seemed to me unusually large, and I was constantly warned against highway robbers. I hardly expected to have the good fortune to meet so picturesque a villain as a real highwayman, but such was my fate during my last day's journey before entering Ch'êng-tu. There were two of them, armed with pistols that were not only loaded, but could be discharged—a feature that is not characteristic of all Chinese firearms. They were lurking behind some bamboos on the side of the road, apparently waiting for an opportunity to attack and plunder any one whose docility of appearance marked him out as a suitable victim. One of them took fright at the sudden apparition of the three soldiers of my escort, who were walking in front of my chair, and bolted. He was immediately followed by his companion, and close on their heels came my scarlet-coated warriors, emboldened, no doubt, by the knowledge of the fact that they were three to two. I caused my chair to be put down in order that I might the better observe the race, and the fight which I supposed would ensue. But there was no struggle. Both the highwaymen, encumbered by the weight of their unwieldy pistols and a couple of heavy knives, were speedily overtaken and captured, and, when brought back to me, threw themselves to the ground and made a piteous appeal to my generosity. They explained that they had found the knives and pistols in a field, and were trying to find the original owner in order to return them to him, and that they had no idea (until we demonstrated the fact by firing off the weapons) that the pistols were loaded. Whether they took up the same line of defence in the presence of the magistrate to whose care I consigned them, I do not know, nor have I learned their subsequent fate.
The Ch'êng-tu plain, with its marvellous system of irrigation and its three or four crops a year, is the richest and most populous district in the whole of the Chinese Empire. This extraordinarily productive plain is about 90 miles long by 70 wide, and supports a population estimated at no less than 4,000,000, of whom about 350,000 reside within the capital itself. It is studded with many prosperous towns and villages, and is cultivated to its utmost extent. Among the crops are rice, wheat, tea, tobacco, maize, the opium-poppy, which was not yet in bloom, and the yellow rape that turned hundreds of acres of land into seas of bright gold. The plain is connected by a navigable waterway (the Min) with the Yangtse, and it is in the heart of the richest province in China. The city of Ch'êng-tu has been identified with Marco Polo's Sindafu. "This city," wrote Marco in the thirteenth century, "was in former times a rich and noble one, and the kings who reigned there were very great and wealthy." Of the Min river—which had not then been subdivided to the same extent as at present into artificial channels for irrigation—he says: "The multitude of vessels that navigate this river is so vast that no one who should read or hear the tale would believe it. The quantities of merchandise also which merchants carry up and down this river are past all belief."[9]
CH'ÊNG-TU
Ch'êng-tu is a city of less importance now, but it is still one of the greatest and most prosperous in China. Its population is much smaller than that of Canton, but its general appearance is more attractive as well as far more imposing. Its streets are broad and clean, and its wall exceedingly well preserved. In mediæval times it was a frontier city of great political and strategic importance, for the Tibetan principalities extended then as far east as the lofty mountains that flank the Ch'êng-tu plain on the west. Even now large numbers of Tibetan traders are often to be seen in the streets of Ch'êng-tu, though most of their commercial transactions are carried on at the city of Kuan-hsien, about 30 miles away, a place which is also remarkable for the sluices which regulate the waters of the Min and divert them, as occasion demands, into the irrigation canals. The governor-general of Ssuch'uan, whose yamen is in Ch'êng-tu, is more like a real viceroy than any other provincial ruler in China, for he it is who, on behalf of the emperor, holds sway over, and receives the embassies of, the various Tibetan princes and tribal chiefs of the extreme west. There is at present a project to connect Ch'êng-tu by rail with a point on the Yangtse, probably in the neighbourhood of K'uei-chou-fu, a town which I passed on my way from Ichang to Wan-hsien. The provincial government—for the railway project is entirely a Chinese one—is at present actively engaged in trying to raise the funds necessary for so large an undertaking, one method being—so I was told—to compel every local official to take a definite number of shares, the number to vary according to the official's rank and reputed wealth, each shareholder being permitted to get rid of his shares in the best way possible by distributing them among the well-to-do people subject to his jurisdiction. In passing through the towns and villages of eastern Ssuch'uan, I noticed many Chinese proclamations giving the people an outline of the railway scheme, pointing out the great benefits to the trade and prosperity of the province that would result from its fulfilment, and inviting or commanding popular co-operation. It may be that this railway will offer one solution of the problem of the Yangtse rapids: in any case, the enthusiasm with which the scheme was being discussed in both official and commercial circles was another proof of the gradual breaking-down of the old Chinese prejudice against railways.
Though so remote from the sea-board, the people of Ch'êng-tu—or perhaps I should say the officials—are among the most progressive and enlightened in China. This is especially so in the matter of education. The city possesses a Provincial College, where about three hundred young men are now being educated in Western as well as in Chinese branches of learning. There is an Englishman who lectures on chemistry and physics, there are several Japanese lecturers, and a staff of Chinese teachers who have a knowledge of European languages. I have heard of an enterprising Chinese schoolmaster who once advertised that in his establishment English was taught "up to letter G." They are more ambitious than that in the college of Ch'êng-tu. Among the local industries the most important is that of silk-weaving. For this, as well as for other industrial purposes, foreign machinery and Western methods are being gradually imported and adopted.
BABER'S MONOLITH
Those who are acquainted with Baber's charming descriptions of Ssuch'uan and Yunnan[10]—descriptions which can never be superseded, though they are often neglected nowadays—will remember that he was much interested in a curious circular monolith which he discovered on the side of an artificial hill or mound in Ch'êng-tu. He was unable to get any satisfactory account of its history, though tradition said that it marked the grave of an emperor's son. It is, indeed, not improbable that the mound, which is oblong in shape, with a depression in the middle, and resembles, as Baber remarked, a half-buried dumbbell, was raised in memory of some distinguished prince or leader of old times, perhaps when the Ch'êng-tu plain was still occupied by the so-called Man-tzŭ. I visited the spot, and found that the stone was still lying in the position in which he saw it. The portion that appears above the soil presents something of the appearance of the tilted end of a huge stone barrel, badly damaged at one corner. The diameter of the circular face—of which barely half can be seen—I found to be about 17 feet. The greatest length of the visible body of the barrel is only about 2 feet 3 inches, but it is impossible to say how much of it is underground. An excavation of the mound at the spot where the stone lies might lead to some interesting results: but Baber was assured that any attempt to dig would cause the sky to darken and goblins to appear, so he left it alone, and I decided to follow his example.