“Didn’t you find the roads very bad in China?”
This question was creditable to the viceroy’s knowledge of his own country, but to this subject we brought the very best Chinese politeness we could muster. We said that inasmuch as China had not yet adopted the bicycle, her roads, of course, were not adapted to that mode of locomotion.
The viceroy then asked us to describe the bicycle, and inquired if such a vehicle did not create considerable consternation among the people.
A CHINESE SEEDING-DRILL.
We told him that the bicycle from a Chinese point of view was capable of various descriptions. On the passports given us by the Chinese minister in London the bicycle was called “a seat-sitting, foot-moving machine.” The natives in the interior had applied to it various epithets, among which were yang ma (foreign horse), fei-chay (flying-machine), szüdzun chay (self-moving cart), and others. The most graphic description, perhaps, was given by a Chinaman whom we overheard relating to his neighbors the first appearance of the bicycle in his quiet little village. “It is a little mule,” said he, “that you drive by the ears, and kick in the sides to make him go.” A dignified smile overspread the viceroy’s features.
“Didn’t the people try to steal your money?” he next inquired.
“No,” we replied. “From our impoverished appearance, they evidently thought we had nothing. Our wardrobe being necessarily limited by our mode of travel, we were sometimes reduced to the appearance of traveling mendicants, and were often the objects of pity or contempt. Either this, or our peculiar mode of travel, seemed to dispel all thought of highway robbery; we never lost even so much as a button on our journey of over three thousand miles across the Chinese empire.”
“Did the governors you met treat you well?” he asked; and then immediately added: “Being scholars, were you not subjected to some indignity by being urged to perform for every mandarin you met?”
“By nearly all the governors,” we said, “we were treated very kindly indeed; but we were not so certain that the same favors would have been extended to us had we not cheerfully consented to give exhibitions of bicycle riding.”