CHINESE SHAN STATES
At T'êng-yüeh I paid off the Tibetan servant who had accompanied me from Tachienlu, and the muleteers who had come from Yung-ch'ang, and engaged new mules and coolies to take me to Bhamo. I resumed my journey on 8th June. The path soon leaves the plain and mounts through extensive graveyards and over barren hills. Later in the day we descended, gradually but steadily, to a valley, narrow, but very extensively cultivated with rice and dotted with many villages. In many cases the recent rains had caused the inundated rice-fields to overflow into the road, which was often quite submerged. I lunched at the small village of Jê Shui T'ang, which, as its name implies, possesses a natural hot spring. We had now left the Yunnan plateau behind us, and had descended to the plains that slope gradually downwards towards the Irrawaddy. For the rest of the way to Burma I found that the vast majority of the population were Shans and Kachins, whose picturesque dresses are a pleasant contrast to the drab-coloured garments that generally content the less æsthetic Chinese. The women are remarkable for their headgear, which is similar to that worn by the isolated Shans whom I had seen in the Salwen valley. It consists of a tall dark turban that looks like a kind of antediluvian gentleman's top-hat that has been cruelly sat upon. Unfortunately the Shans, both men and women, are much given to disfiguring their mouths by chewing betel-nut—a disagreeable habit of an otherwise charming people. The drinking-water in this part of the country—as is generally the case in a land of padi-fields—must be used with great caution. I passed a clear flowing stream, by the side of which was the notification, t'zŭ shui yu tu ("This water is poisonous")—a warning which must be disconcerting to a thirsty wayfarer.
We spent the night of our first day from T'êng-yüeh in a roomy temple in the large village of Nan Tien. The next day was uneventful. We traversed execrable roads. Often it was difficult to know whether we were on the path or in a padi-field, for both were inundated, and we spent the greater part of the day in wading through a series of shallow and very muddy lakes. We spent the second night in the market village of Kau Ngai, and the third in Hsiao Hsin Kai ("Little Bhamo"). The purely Shan villages were generally enclosed within fences, and we did not see much of them; but I noticed that the native houses in the Chinese Shan States are less picturesque, and also apparently less clean and commodious than those of the Lao-Shans in the French Shan States and Siam. On 11th June the swollen rivers caused us even greater trouble than the flooded rice-fields, and at one point I feared we should have to wait till the waters subsided. Between the villages of Hsiao Hsin Kai and Lung Chang Kai we came to a river which, though doubtless an insignificant brook in dry weather, was then a swift and muddy river about 60 yards broad. There was nothing in the way of boat, bridge or ford, and our mules, with all the obstinacy of their kind, for a long time refused to leave the bank. Finally, my two baggage animals were relieved of their burdens, which were carried across in separate light loads on the heads of coolies. The latter were stripped to the skin, for the water was almost high enough to take them off their feet. One of them lost his footing, and let his load fall into the water; it was recovered, but most unfortunately it contained some rolls of exposed photographic films. The comparatively poor results of my journey from the photographic point of view—for dozens of films were utterly ruined—are largely due to that unhappy accident. The fact that I had so nearly reached my journey's end and had so far escaped any such mishap rendered it all the more vexatious. I crossed the river without any disaster to myself, but the drenching to which I was unavoidably subjected gave me an attack of fever, which was not shaken off for several days. It is not so easy to get rid of colds and fevers in the steamy tropical valleys of the Shan States as it is in the exhilarating climate of the Tibetan mountains.
BRITISH-MADE ROAD IN CHINA
The latter part of the same day's journey (the fourth stage from T'êng-yüeh) was unexpectedly easy. I suddenly found myself on a good broad road, unmetalled, but well engineered. I followed this road the whole way to Bhamo, and it was not until my arrival there that I was given an explanation of so unusual a phenomenon as a carriage road in Chinese territory. It was the work of British engineers, and had been undertaken by the Government of Burma at the request and at the expense of the Government of Yunnan. The provincial funds have not yet permitted of the extension of the road to T'êng-yüeh, but it is to be hoped, for the sake of future travellers, and in the interests of trade, that something will be done to carry it over the rain-sodden plains. When we struck the British-made road we were about 70 or 80 miles from Bhamo, and between 20 and 30 from the British frontier. At 15 miles from the frontier we halted for the night in the village of Man-hsien, which is the administrative centre of a Chinese-Shan chief or sawbwa.[363] It is only a hamlet consisting of about thirty flimsy bamboo huts, several of which were shops for the sale of local produce.
On 12th June my day's journey began in Chinese and ended in British territory. Being too impatient to wait for my muleteers—who showed no emotion at the proximity of the British flag—I started on foot and walked the whole of the 15 miles to the frontier. There was a heavy shower in the early morning, but the sky soon cleared up, and for the rest of the day the fierce rays of a tropical sun beat upon me with all their strength, and taxed all the resisting power of the shilling umbrella I had bought at San Ying. The gradient of the road was excellent throughout, but being unmetalled it had been much damaged by the recent rains. In many places it was entirely blocked by landslips; at others it had been torn away by mountain floods. It was bordered by dense jungle on both sides. On the left, luxuriant vegetation covered the steep slope of a mountain; on the right was an abrupt descent into a ravine, in which one could hear but seldom see the roaring torrent below. In some places the landslips had brought down large trees, which lay across the road. My mules, I heard afterwards, had great difficulty in surmounting these various obstacles, and in some cases were forced to trample out a new road for themselves in the jungle. The road, good as it was, seemed to me a "fair-weather" road. There was a lack of bridges. Streams that might be non-existent in the dry season were then rushing over the road, wearing deep channels in its surface, or tearing it away altogether. There was also a lack of storm-water drains. These would at least do a little to prevent the torrential summer rains from making havoc of the roadway. Further, the wooded slopes adjacent to the road have not been sufficiently strengthened, and, under present conditions, serious landslips are bound to occur every year. Only an engineer has any right to speak with authority on such matters, but one may perhaps hazard the suggestion that the cemented roads of Hongkong, with their admirable and elaborate storm-drainage system, might with advantage be copied in Upper Burma in places where the roads are specially liable to landslips or floods. Probably, however, the great cost of such roadways would be prohibitive in a country which is, after all, thinly populated, and where there is little traffic.
THE BRITISH FRONTIER
In referring to the lack of bridges I must not forget the admirable iron bridge at Kamsa, 4 miles west of Man-hsien in Chinese territory. It spans a torrent which descends in a series of dazzling cascades. The highest of these, visible from the bridge, is a really fine waterfall, which would attract crowds of sightseers if it were in a more accessible country. The bridge is quite new, having been completed only in April 1905. Had it not existed, I should have found myself in a serious dilemma. The stream that flowed below it was a boiling torrent which neither man nor horse could ford or swim, and its course, above and below, was hidden by impenetrable jungle.
At the bottom of a narrow ravine 15 miles from Man-hsien there is a brook spanned by a log of wood. I saw no inscribed pillar, and no flags, nor was I challenged by any lynx-eyed Indian sentry; but this is the spot at which two great Empires meet. On the Chinese side were a few Shan huts, known collectively as Kulika. After climbing out of the ravine on the western side, I found the first evidence of British occupation: two small wooden bungalows surrounded by servants' sheds and outhouses. They were all empty and deserted, though some Shan pedlars were peacefully enjoying their midday slumber on one of the verandahs. The bungalows had probably been used by engineers and surveyors, but evidently they had not been occupied for some time. I took temporary possession of the one not selected by the Shans, and awaited there the arrival of my caravan.
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