Wandering in Northern China

by Unknown

Mohammedan school-girls, whose garments were a riot of color

A glimpse of Lanchow, capital of China’s westernmost province, from across the Yellow River

Looking down the valley of Lanchow, across several groups of temples at the base of the hills, to the four forts built against another Mohammedan rebellion

From the height of the despised pagoda the several walls of Lanchow, enclosing even its extensive suburbs, look like the graphic design on some large scale of relief-map of an over-ambitious draftsman; for not even those of Peking have as many sections and certainly no such angular afterthoughts. But the city lies well out on the further edge of the valley, as close as possible to the Yellow River, and to get anything more than a general view of it one must come down again from the pagoda. The south gate, nearest this, is the one by which all luck comes into the city, so that no coffin or corpse is ever allowed to pass through it. High up over the portal itself, in the most conspicuous place, is one of those huge wooden placards with a few large characters, bringing to any one who can read them the astonishing information, “Ten thousand li of Golden Soup.” This has no reference, as the first dozen incredibly naked and gaunt yellow beggars to accost the stranger will show, to any unusual abundance of nourishment; it is merely a poetic reference to the river close under the north wall, which one with a poet’s license might find golden, and which easily covers the distance mentioned in its vagrancy from the highlands of Tibet to the gulf of Chihli. Nor is it any great stretch of the imagination to call it soup, here in Lanchow, where every one, rich or poor, native or foreign, drinks it every day of his life.

Within the gate one plunges into the chaos of any large Chinese city. Outside the brilliant sunshine floods everything; within is mud and ice and gloom, and only rarely, in the narrow streets, the briefest glimpse of the low winter sun. The Yellow River is incessantly being carried to its consumers in two-bucket lots over the shoulders of tireless coolies, and these perpetually slop street, alley, and noisome lanes with delightful impartiality. The chief north gate of Lanchow, paved at a slight slope with big slabs of stone rounded off by the centuries, is impassable for animals and carts, and almost for pedestrians, during midwinter; for the water-carriers find it their easiest entrance and keep the pavement constantly sheeted with new ice. With Peking in mind the almost total absence of rickshaws would be astounding, had they not already been half forgotten in the long journey across the province in which they are virtually unknown. Bright red “Peking carts” hooded with the omnipresent blue denim and drawn by big sleek mules jolt the well-to-do about town. Officials still use the gaily colored sedan-chairs of viceregal days; some inhabitants bestride native ponies or occasionally a donkey; but the great rank and file, of course, ride shanks’ mare. The streets offer myriad Chinese sights, sounds, and smells, yet little that may not be seen, heard, and smelled in other Chinese cities, so alike have the centuries left this wide-spread race, so different is the land of Confucius from its neighbor, India, where districts a hundred miles apart are often quite diverse. The Chinese themselves assert that “every ten li has new customs,” but they refer to minor inconspicuous things which easily escape the attention of the most leisurely traveler.

Lanchow already boasted the rudiments of electric light and telephone systems which may in time improve beyond the exclusive, embryonic stage. Far more prominent were walking corpses who crawled into garbage-barrels by night and begged by day—before the winter was over Lanchow was throwing these into open trenches in the outskirts as they starved to death—precious padlocked boys, and the dull thump-thump of feng-hsiang, “wind-boxes” serving as bellows for cooks and craftsmen along every important street. The better-class women wore their feet only half bound, which was at least the beginning of an improvement. Manchu girls, we were informed, could be bought for eight ounces of silver each, which would be less than six American dollars; but there were no outward signs whatever of the profligacy which this appalling depreciation in human flesh must surely have abetted, for superficial decorum in some matters is the most outstanding of Chinese traits.

Many shops had closed, residents told us, because of the dreadful condition of the local currency. To our Western eyes there seemed plenty of them left, and the rattling of the “coppers” which had been forced upon the district made the narrow soggy streets sound like endless chain-lockers overwhelmed by an unprecedented run of business. The former Tuchun had printed paper notes and compelled the people to accept them at par, but the moment he left these had dropped to eight cents on the dollar and were gone now to the limbo of such things. The silver dollar was so rare as almost to be out of circulation, and besides the miserable molded brass and sand impositions of the present lord of the province—or of as much of it as he could reach with his own soldiers—there was nothing whatever but the tael, so that every one handling money must have scales in which to weigh out the irregular chunks of silver, throwing in bits of it resembling buck-shot to make the balance exact. Even then, of course, there were innumerable opportunities for disputes, for it would not be Chinese to have one system of weights, or scales which agreed, or which there was no easy way of manipulating according to whether the owner was buying or selling; and silver of course varies greatly in purity. Thus the people of Lanchow were able to indulge to their hearts’ content in the beloved Chinese pastime of squabbling over money matters, but it was a mystery how merchants could carry on at all.

Truly the money problem is fantastic in this western country. Our host had to send two hundred taels (about $143 in U. S. currency) to pay a week’s wages to the workmen who were building, with the remnant of American earthquake-relief funds, the bridge forty li to the eastward, and as the money had to be in “Lanchow coppers” it required eight pack-mules to get it there. When the great ditch for draining the largest lake we had seen in the earthquake district was being dug, seven tons of “cash” were required on every pay-day for the three thousand workmen.