MONUMENTS NEAR ONE-SHE-CHIEN.
The people of Shan-si province are noted for their special thrift, but this quality we observed was sometimes exhibited at the expense of the higher virtue of honesty. One of the most serious of the many cases of attempted extortion occurred at a remote country town, where we arrived late one evening, after learning to our dismay that one of our remarkably few mistakes in the road had brought us just fifty miles out of the way. Unusually wearied as we were by the cross-country cuts, we desired to retire early. In fact, on this account, we were not so observant of Chinese formality as we might have been. We did not heed the hinted requests of the visiting officials for a moon-light exhibition, nor go to the inn-door to bow them respectfully out. We were glad to take them at their word when they said, with the usual hypocritical smirk, “Now, don’t come out any farther.” This indiscretion on our part caused them, as well as ourselves, to suffer in the respect of the assembled rabble. With official connivance, the latter were now free, they thought, to take unusual liberties. So far, in our dealings with the Chinese, we had never objected to anything that was reasonable even from the native point of view. We had long since learned the force of the Chinese proverb that, “in order to avoid suspicion you must not live behind closed doors”; and in consequence had always recognized the common prerogative to ransack our private quarters and our luggage, so long as nothing was seriously disturbed. We never objected, either, to their wetting our paper windows with their tongues, so that they might noiselessly slit a hole in them with their exceptionally long finger [pg 214]nails, although we did wake up some mornings to find the panes entirely gone. It was only at the request of the innkeeper that we sometimes undertook the job of cleaning out the inn-yard; but this, with the prevalent superstition about the “withering touch of the foreigner,” was very easily accomplished. Nor had we ever shown the slightest resentment at being called “foreign devils”; for this, we learned, was, with the younger generation at least, the only title by which foreigners were known. But on this particular night, our forbearance being quite exhausted, we ejected the intruders bodily. Mid mutterings and threats we turned out the lights, and the crowd as well as ourselves retired. The next morning the usual exorbitant bill was presented by the innkeeper, and, as usual, one half or one third was offered and finally accepted, with the customary protestations about being under-paid. The innkeeper’s grumblings incited the crowd which early assembled, and from their whispers and glances we could see that trouble of some kind was brewing. We now hastened to get the wheels into the road. Just then the innkeeper, at the instigation of the crowd, rushed out and grabbed the handle-bars, demanding at the same time a sum that was even in advance of his original price. Extortion was now self-evident, and, remonstrance being of no avail, we were obliged to protect ourselves with our fists. The crowd began to close in upon us, until, with our backs against the adjoining wall, we drew our weapons, at which the onward movement changed suddenly to a retreat. Then we assumed the aggressive, and regained the wheels which had been left in the middle of the road. The innkeeper and his friend now caught hold of the rear wheels. Only by seizing their queues could we drag them away at all, but even then before we could mount they would renew their grasp. [pg 215]It was only after another direct attack upon them that we were able to mount, and dash away.
MONUMENT NEAR CHANG-SHIN-DIEN.
A week’s journeying after this unpleasant episode brought us among the peanuts, pigs, and pig-tails of the famous Pe-chili plains. Vast fields of peanuts were now being plowed, ready to be passed through a huge coarse sieve to separate the nuts from the sandy loam. Sweet potatoes, too, were plentiful. These, as well as rice balls, boiled with a peculiar dry date in a triangular corn-leaf wrapper, we purchased every morning at daybreak from the pots of the early street-venders, and then proceeded to the local bake-shops, where the rattling of the rolling-pins prophesied of stringy fat cakes cooked in boiling linseed oil, and heavy dough biscuits cleaving to the urn-like oven.
It was well that we were now approaching the end of [pg 216]our journey, for our wheels and clothing were nearly in pieces. Our bare calves were pinched by the frost, for on some of the coldest mornings we would find a quarter of an inch of ice. Our rest at night was broken for the want of sufficient covering. The straw-heated kangs would soon cool off, and leave us half the night with only our thin sleeping-bags to ward off rheumatism.
But over the beaten paths made by countless wheelbarrows we were now fast nearing the end. It was on the evening of November 3, that the giant walls of the great “Residence,” as the people call their imperial capital, broke suddenly into view through a vista in the surrounding foliage. The goal of our three-thousand-one-hundred-and-sixteen-mile journey was now before us, and the work of the seventy-first riding day almost ended. With the dusk of evening we entered the western gate of the “Manchu City,” and began to thread its crowded thoroughfares. By the time we reached Legation street or, as the natives egotistically call it, “The Street of the Foreign Dependencies,” night had veiled our haggard features and ragged garments. In a dimly lighted courtyard we came face to face with the English proprietor of the Hotel de Peking. At our request for lodging, he said, “Pardon me, but may I first ask who you are and where you come from?” Our unprepossessing appearance was no doubt a sufficient excuse for this precaution. But just then his features changed, and he greeted us effusively. Explanations were now superfluous. The “North China Herald” correspondent at Pao-ting-foo had already published our story to the coast.
That evening the son of the United States minister visited us, and offered a selection from his own wardrobe until a Chinese tailor could renew our clothing. With borrowed plumes we were able to accept invitations from [pg 217]foreign and Chinese officials. Polite cross-examinations were not infrequent, and we fear that entire faith in our alleged journey was not general until, by riding through the dust and mud of Legation street, we proved that Chinese roads were not altogether impracticable for bicycle traveling.
