Something of the grandeur of Ch'êng-tu in its most palmy days may be realised by a reference to extant Chinese books, as well as from the eulogies of Marco Polo. From the Shu Hua Shih[11] we learn that under the T'ang dynasty (618-905 of the Christian era) it was a great art centre, and a long list of paintings and frescoes relating to the Buddhist religion are mentioned in that work as hanging on the walls of the palaces of Ch'êng-tu. Some of the temples are worthy of a long visit, though the finest in the district is not in the city itself but in the neighbouring town of Kuan-hsien, where Li Ping and his son, the deified founders of the great irrigation system of the Ch'êng-tu plain, have had raised in their honour a temple that is said to be the most beautiful in China. But as has been well remarked of Li Ping by a recent English traveller,[12] the perennially fertile fields around Ch'êng-tu are his finest monument.
[CHAPTER V]
CH'ÊNG-TU TO OMEI-HSIEN
My next objective after leaving Ch'êng-tu was the sacred summit of Mount Omei, one of the most famous of the many historic mountains of China. I left Ch'êng-tu on 1st March in a small, leaky, and most uncomfortable craft, which took me down the Min river to Chia-ting in four days, the total distance being slightly over 130 miles. The Kuan-hsien sluices having not yet been opened to give the great plain its spring flooding, there was very little water in the stream till we reached Chiang K'ou[13] on the morning of the third day, and in some places it was necessary to pull the boat over some mud shoals. At Chiang K'ou the various subdivided waters (of which the branch that brought me down from the east gate of Ch'êng-tu was one) reunite and form a river which is broad and deep enough at all seasons of the year for cargo-junks of a considerable size. This is the Min river, which, as already stated, is regarded by the Chinese of central Ssuch'uan as the true Upper Yangtse. The far greater but unnavigable stream which rushes impetuously from the Tibetan mountains in the north-west and is joined by the Min at Hsü-chou-fu,[14] is known by the Chinese for a great part of its course as Chin Ho (Gold River) and as the Chin Sha Chiang[15] (the River of Golden Sand). The name Min being apparently unknown to the Chinese, Baber suggested that it had been invented by the early Jesuit geographers.[16] If so, it was no doubt derived from the range of mountains known to the Chinese as the Min Shan (岷山) in the north-west of the province, for it is there that the river rises. But all the rivers of China have a multitude of names; in fact the Chinese do not appear to be endowed with a proper sense of the continuity of rivers, and the country people who dwell on the banks of a stream from which they derive their livelihood are seldom aware of where it comes from or whither it goes. This circumstance has been a source of embarrassment to many European travellers, whose passion for geographical exactness is incomprehensible to the rustic mind in China.
The scenery of the Min is always picturesque. The river flows for the most part through richly cultivated districts, broken only here and there by low hills. Nearly opposite the town of P'êng-shan-hsien, on the third day from Ch'êng-tu I visited a fine twelve-storied pagoda (the So Chiang T'a or Lock-River Pagoda), which, unlike most buildings of the kind, is in sufficiently good repair to enable one to ascend it by a spiral staircase. The pagoda is built of hard brick and the staircase is of sandstone blocks. The scenery on the river becomes finer as one approaches Chia-ting. Well-wooded hills come close to the water's edge, and broken cliffs covered with verdure reveal openings into fairy vistas of greenery and mysterious grottoes that would have delighted the soul of a Keats.
A CHINESE WALLED CITY.
CHIA-TING-FU