An old name of Li-chiang was Sui (嶲), and its inhabitants, in the days of the Early Han dynasty, appear to have been known as the K'un Ming (昆明). Their fierceness and lawlessness were instrumental in preventing the Emperor Wu Ti, in the second century B.C., from establishing a trade route from China to India through their territory. (See T. W. Kingsmill's Intercourse of China with Eastern Turkestan, J.R.A.S., January 1882.)
NOTE 39 ([p. 259])
THE REBELLION IN YUNNAN
The best account of the Mohammedan rebellion is to be found in M. Émile Rocher's La Province Chinoise du Yunnan, vol. ii. pp. 30-192. The origin of the rebellion is to be traced to a comparatively trifling dispute among miners, which took place in 1855 in a mining centre situated between Yunnan-fu and Tali-fu. The Mohammedan section of miners, who all worked together, aroused envy and hatred because they had struck richer veins of metal than the "orthodox" Chinese miners in a neighbouring locality, and the result was a violent dispute which ended in blows. The official who was responsible for good order in the district was seized with panic and fled to Yunnan-fu, where he submitted reports that were unjustifiably hostile to the Mohammedans. The latter meanwhile had rendered themselves masters of the situation, and drove their opponents off the field. The people of the neighbouring town of Linan avenged this insult by attacking the Mohammedans in overwhelming force and expelling them to the forests. This was the beginning of a series of bloodthirsty combats, which in a short time set the whole province in a blaze, and caused the loss of millions of human lives.
So far as race went, the Mohammedans of Yunnan were no other than ordinary Yunnanese. They were marked off from their fellow-provincials solely by their religion. This, however, was sufficient to cause them to be treated almost as foreigners, for they had little intercourse with orthodox Chinese, and seem to have intermarried among themselves. Whether the Mohammedans of Yunnan and other parts of China were—and are—strict observers of the rules of their religion is a doubtful point. Rocher says of the Yunnanese Mohammedans that "they have preserved intact the beliefs of their ancestors, and they rigorously observe the rules imposed upon them by the Koran." Other observers, however,—including Mohammedan natives of India—have scoffed at their co-religionists of Yunnan, declaring that they know nothing of the tenets of Islam, and obey none of the rules of their faith except that of abstinence from pork. I have myself seen Chinese Mohammedan children undergoing the pains of having page after page of Arabic drilled into their little heads, though both they and their teachers admitted that they did not understand the meaning of a single word. The fact remains, however, that some Chinese Mohammedans do still occasionally make the pilgrimage to Mecca; and well-attended Mohammedan mosques may yet be found in at least half the provinces of China.
Chinese Mohammedans have often proved a thorn in the flesh of the official classes, not only in Yunnan, but also in Kansu and elsewhere. Yet it cannot be said that they have shown much of that fiery religious fanaticism which has sometimes characterised Islam elsewhere. The great rebellion in Yunnan did not originate in any religious dispute, and it would never have developed into a war that lasted nearly twenty years and laid waste a province, if only a few able and impartial officials had given their attention to the matter in its early stages.
Two circumstances helped to prolong the struggle. The first was the great T'ai P'ing rebellion in eastern China, which rendered the central Government powerless to deal effectually with the situation in Yunnan; the second was the military skill of the Mohammedan leaders, which led to the concentration of the whole Mohammedan strength in the hands of a few able men.
OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS OF WESTERN TRIBES
The history of the war cannot be sketched here. It may be sufficient to say that at one time nearly the whole province was in the hands of the Mohammedan rebels; even Yunnan-fu itself capitulated to their victorious arms. Before this took place, the great Mohammedan leader, Tu Wên-hsiu, had already greatly distinguished himself in the west of the province. Against the will of the viceroy, who committed suicide, the officials had in 1856 planned and carried out a massacre of all Mohammedans found within a radius of 800 li from the capital. The news of the massacre naturally roused in Tu Wên-hsiu intense feelings of indignation and hatred against the provincial Government which had sanctioned an act of such hideous barbarity, and his natural abilities and high reputation for courage and integrity soon singled him out for leadership. His first great victory secured him the city of Tali, which became the Mohammedan headquarters. In 1867 he was proclaimed Imam or Sultan, and Tali became the capital of a short-lived Mohammedan state. It was held till 1873, when Tu Wên-hsiu, faced by hopeless odds, surrendered it and poisoned himself. Before this time the genius of General Gordon had put an end to the T'ai P'ing rebellion, and the imperial Government was in a position to oppose the Sultan with an overwhelming force. Only one result was possible. With the capitulation of Tali and the death of Tu Wên-hsiu the Mohammedans were able to make no further headway against the imperial troops.
One of the most terrible results of this hideous civil war was the recrudescence of the deadly disease now too well known to us all as the plague. After the war the pestilence gradually spread far beyond the limits of the province, and is still the annual scourge of south China and India. It is probable, however, that plague has for many centuries been endemic in the valleys of western Yunnan. The accounts given of it by such writers as Rocher and Baber, who witnessed its ravages in Yunnan long before the fatal year when it was first observed in Hong Kong (1894), are of great interest. The curious fact that rats always seemed to be attacked before human beings was noted by Rocher many years before the disease began to be studied by medical experts. (See Rocher, op. cit., vol. i. p. 75; vol. ii. pp. 279-281.)