One morning while we were still at breakfast, a little hollow-eyed foreigner in a strange uniform was brought in by the gate-keeper. He was a Polish captain who had once before escaped capture in some brush with the Soviet troops by making his way overland through Asia and back to Poland, only to be forced to repeat the experience. At least, that was what we gathered from a long conversation, in which we could not muster among us more than scattered single words that were mutually understood, and during which both sides were forced to resort mainly to gestures and intuitions. The captain and his wife, he said, were living in a Chinese inn, without money and with no other clothes than those they were wearing. That same day word drifted to our ears of a Russian lady who was offering for sale the carriage and horses in which she had reached Lanchow, and which might possibly do for our return journey. I found her a frail, visibly suffering woman probably still really in the thirties, speaking perfect French, and by no means stripped of that air of distinction which generations of well supplied leisure give. She was living in the mud room of an ordinary Chinese inn, facing upon the usual barnyard-and-worse courtyard, and evidently found it difficult even to pay for these accommodations, for the Chinese about the place had a surliness which could scarcely have been due to anything but disappointments in the matter of money. Her husband, a general once high in the czar’s armies, had, during the journey, died of typhus in the very coach that she was offering for sale. There was still with her an adult son in a shock of pale yellow hair, whose manner suggested more haughtiness than ordinary horse sense; and half a dozen Cossacks—at least she called them that—were left from the retinue with which the general had begun his flight. It was not uninteresting to see how these sturdy, peasant-faced fellows in worn and badly assorted civilian clothing snapped to attention when the general’s widow addressed them, and fell over one another in carrying out her order to show me carriage, harness, and horses. But the horses were not visibly different from the Chinese ponies for sale in the gully below the “thieves’ market”; the harness was more massive and intricately Russian than in good preservation; and the carriage would have taken first prize at any American fair as an example of the impossible contrivances which “furriners” inexplicably build for themselves. It was four-wheeled, which alone would have barred it from continuing any further eastward and aroused astonishment that it had been dragged this far; it had all those Russian conveniences which to any other race seem quite the opposite, such as a great yoke over the off horse and a roof which, if it had been repainted some brighter color, would not have looked greatly out of place on a Chinese temple; while the seats had been taken out by the roots, so that the interior of the coach was nothing but a bare wooden floor some six feet long and four wide. Two of us could stretch out on this, with our bedding under us, very comfortably, the lady said, as she and the general had done. The local Government was furnishing “Peking carts” for her party, but she was too ill to travel in those and was holding out for a mule-litter, hoping meanwhile to get together a little money for the long journey still ahead by selling her personal rolling-stock. I regretted that by no stretch of the imagination could we see ourselves making our way back to civilization spread out on the floor of what looked painfully like a hearse and which most certainly could not have been operated on the hundreds of miles of no roads that lay before us without a plentiful supply of Russian profanity.
Fully a thousand such cases a year, said our host, pass through Lanchow; but, like the scattered samples of central Asia to be seen in the streets, they are as nothing in the old familiar thronging Chinese crowd, in filthy quilted garments, hands thrust in sleeves in lieu of mittens, and cold, bluish running noses. It was hard to realize the fact, when some reddish-bearded Moslem, wholly free from Chinese features yet wearing Chinese uniform, came down from those distant regions and directed attention to it, that, far west as Lanchow is, China stretches for many weeks’ travel still farther westward, in a great tongue of land which at length opens out into the broad reaches of Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkestan, even though her assertion of total suzerainty of Mongolia and Tibet be disallowed.
The people of Lanchow struck me as less courteous than those of Peking, but still by no means deliberately unkind to foreigners. They seemed to be but slightly informed on anything more than their own immediate problems, at which of course there was no reason to wonder. For the whole vast province has no newspaper except one flimsy sheet of “official lies” spasmodically published in Lanchow; no students are sent abroad from this province, “because,” to quote a Chinese, “officials are more interested in filling their pockets”; and the “heathen” schools even in the provincial capital are so bad, in spite of some recent improvements, that missionaries feel they must have Christian schools for their converts, quite aside from any question of mere religious faith. There is no discipline left in Chinese schools since the revolution, they assert, and every one, from Tuchun to servants, is more avid for “squeeze” than before the republic was established. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of the population knows nothing more of the word “republic” than its pronunciation, and “voting” is so frankly a farce that ballot-boxes are calmly filled by order of the authorities days before and brought to “polling-places” from which soldiers exclude all citizens on “election day”; or the boxes are stuffed then and there by the soldiers, under orders from headquarters. Though the respect for foreigners or the fear of them is still so great among the rank and file that the little Belgian chief of the Salt Gabelle had more than once confiscated whole camel-caravans of smuggled salt which he came upon in his travels, it was not so easy to make officials honor either foreign rights or treaties. The Belgian, for instance, had deposited in the official bank six hundred thousand dollars income from the salt monopoly, which is designated by treaty for use in paying off China’s foreign indebtedness—and the next thing he knew it had been replaced with promissory notes of the provincial Government; in other words, with worthless paper. Peking has no real power in these back provinces, and even if provincial officials cannot connive with bank employees to their hearts’ content, all the Tuchun, or some Mohammedan general, or any official with audacity enough, has to do is to ask Peking to instruct the “salt man” to give them money, and neither he nor Peking can refuse. In a way China is more militaristic to-day than ever Germany was, but the Chinese are not a fighting race, depending rather upon the subtleties of graft and “squeeze” than upon force. Were they not so docile and passive and so lacking in community spirit, it would not be so easy for military governors, almost always coming from other provinces than the one they rule, to get rich quickly by all manner of tricks and then go home, or, if their peculations have been too notorious, to some foreign concession in the coast cities, where even a strong Central Government could not touch them.
There are few outward signs of disagreement between the two divisions of Lanchow’s population, but old residents say that the feeling is far deeper than appears to the casual observer. The Mohammedans also have much of the Chinese temperament, or at least of the Chinese outward attitude, and are inclined to temporize longer before they will fight than do their brethren farther west. They are particularly gentle when they are in a minority, as they are in many towns even of Kansu. But they are more progressive, more interested in outside news, than the mere Chinese, and they stick together, like most minorities. I heard of only one Christian convert from among them, and even the missionaries were not at all sure of him. After a long period of repression the Chinese Mohammedans have to a large extent shaken off the Chinese yoke in Kansu and, being better fighters, there is little doubt that they will win still more from their former oppressors, who are hopelessly divided. Already not only the orthodox headquarters of Hochow but other districts are virtually self-governing, and certain Mohammedan generals rule their sections much as they see fit. The “Hwei-Hwei” have long felt that the province of Kansu is their special domain and that they should be allowed to govern it, either as a part of China with a Tuchun of their own faith, as an independent state, or by joining hands with Sinkiang, its congenial neighbor on the west. During one of their rebellions Yakub Beg ruled the Chinese Mohammedans for ten years, until he was put down by troops sent from Peking. In the opinion, at least, of most foreign residents, the Chinese have been stupid in their handling of the Kansu problem, so that whereas, by just and generous treatment when they were powerful, they might have had a strong Moslem province as a more or less autonomous buffer-state on the west, yet still loyal to the rest of the country, now that they are weak they may easily lose a large part of the Mohammedan region.
Yet though one listens one is not so easily convinced. There comes to mind the unfailing suppression of “Hwei-Hwei” rebellions in the past, lighted up by the knowledge, sure to be picked up by any inquiring traveler, that there is much internal friction, not to say combustion, among the Moslems of Kansu themselves. Were they as strictly united as they pretend to be, they could probably now throw off the Chinese yoke entirely. But there are “Turk,” Arab, and Mongol “Hwei-Hwei,” not to mention the still greater number perhaps of purely Chinese Mohammedans, many of whom were “converted” during the rebellions of the last sixty years; some still adhere strictly to the Koran, while new sects hold later traditions or have incorporated elements of Buddhism and Christianity. In fact, all the big Mohammedan rebellions have been due to Chinese interference in “Hwei-Hwei” sect quarrels; that of 1895–96 began over the dispute as to whether or not a man under forty should be allowed to grow a beard! It is the old story of the champion of a beaten wife being fallen upon by both husband and consort. The day may not be far distant, whatever the casual traveler may conclude, when the world will wake up to find on its breakfast-table the news of the founding of a new Moslem nation, in which Chinese features will be in the majority. Meanwhile the “Hwei-Hwei” keep in form by fighting each other and by drubbing the Tibetan tribes along the Kansu border, from whom much of the metal was taken that has reappeared in the miserable “money” which the people have had forced upon them.
Turks and Arabs can talk with many of the Chinese Moslems without difficulty; which is the chief reason that our host was asked in 1914 by his home Government to sit where he was and keep his eyes and ears open instead of hotfooting it for Flanders. Mysterious delegations of Germans and Ottomans were constantly passing through Kansu while the war was on, and there are certain indications that their aborted plans were bold and carefully laid. But all that is over now, and such interesting similarities of tongue have become again merely of philological interest.
Up to the time of the republic even Mohammedans high in the government service could only live in the suburbs of Lanchow—whence its many walls. But to-day there is a more tolerant spirit on both sides, at least in every-day, peace-time intercourse. Some of the more reasonable and educated “Hwei-Hwei” make friendships irrespective of faith. There was “Mr. Donkey,” for instance, who was one of our host’s most frequent visitors, though he never sat down at his table. Like so many of his coreligionists, he bore the family name of “Ma,” which is derived from Mohammed, but which also is the Chinese word for “horse”; and, there being a distinct stratum of humor in our host’s make-up in spite of his calling, he had taken a slight liberty with natural history when his Moslem friend asked for the English version of his name. The joke had long since been shared with the victim, but he was still likely to startle foreigners to whom he was being introduced by displaying his entire knowledge of the English language at one fell swoop with, “Sir, I am Mr. Donkey.”
“Mr. Donkey” and a certain Taoist priest were bosom friends and were given to periodic sprees, in which they were now and then joined by a “Living Buddha.” Occasionally this convivial trio had irrupted into the mission compound during the small hours, in the hope that their good friend of still another faith might for once forget his little idiosyncrasies of doctrine and join them. Once news had come to the ears of our host that a “Britisher” had been confined in the Chinese jail; and, being the chief example, if not the official representative, of the British nation in Kansu, he could not of course permit this violation of extraterritoriality to continue. He demanded the immediate release of the prisoner, which his good friend the provincial governor granted at once—and turned over to him an Afghan. What was more natural than that he should have sent this fellow-national, for whom he had made himself responsible, to stay with “Mr. Donkey,” a fellow-Moslem? Being a good host, Mr. Ma promptly brought out a bottle of whisky, whereupon the Afghan, being a good Mohammedan who still took his Koran literally, walloped him severely on the jaw. The Chinese Moslems are more easy-going in these little matters. Many of them drink, and smoke not only tobacco but opium. The one rule to which they cling most fiercely—though even that, it is said, many of them will break if there are no coreligionists to tell on them—is the prohibition against eating pork. They never speak of a pig by its real name unless they are volubly cursing or shriveling up an enemy with an impromptu description of his family tree. If there is no avoiding mention of the unclean creature in polite intercourse, it is referred to as a “black sheep.” When the Moslem population of a Kansu town is in the majority, no one in it is allowed to keep or bring in pigs, which naturally tends to a further decrease of the minority. Chinese may eat in a Mohammedan’s house, but the latter cannot accept a return invitation, for fear not so much of being purposely insulted by being offered pork, as of being fed in dishes which have at some time or other been contaminated with pork or lard. The Chinese, when things come to the point where it is worth the risk, tell the “Hwei-Hwei” that their dislike of pork is merely a dread of eating their ancestors; and then the knives come out.
“Mr. Donkey” took me to an important mosque in which posters, depicting the Kaaba and similar scenes, and covered with Arabic text, had been pasted in and about the prayer niche. Pilgrims had brought them from Mecca, and the last little “Hwei-Hwei” in the group about me knew what these symbols represented. Yet in all our journey through the northwest I never saw a man bowing down in prayer toward Mecca, though others tell me that this was mere accident. Certainly no such accident would continue throughout a two months’ trip among the Moslems of the Near East. Only once, too, did I see a woman veiled; her face was completely covered with a thin black cloth, a curiously embroidered old-fashioned skirt hid what were no doubt her bound feet; and a small boy was seated close behind her on the donkey she rode, which a man on foot was urging across the country at unusual speed. There are Mohammedan as well as Christian schools in Lanchow, and they seem to rival each other in some of their superiorities to those of the Chinese, though the Moslem ones copy these in hours and uproar. I have seen Moslem children gathering before the sun was above the horizon, and have come upon roomfuls of boys loudly chanting in Chinese, though there was no evidence of a teacher still in attendance, when darkness was creeping over the mosque that raised its flare-roofed minaret above them. A certain amount of “Alabi” is taught in “Hwei-Hwei” schools, and any man who can read the Koran—which it is forbidden to have translated—is highly honored as an ahong, though many know only the sounds of the words they are reading and not their meaning.
“Hwei-Hwei” and Chinese customs are particularly at variance in the matter of burials. The former believe in a decent interment for all, while the Chinese see no reason why the bodies of mere girls and unmarried women should not simply be thrown out on a garbage-heap or into some convenient gully. Among the non-Moslems actual difficulties are often placed in the way of the proper burial of a still-born child or of a mother dying in childbirth, even if the family is willing to go to the expense and trouble. Yet the Chinese consider the “Hwei-Hwei” custom of disposing of their dead the height of barbarism, particularly in the case of male parents. In each mosque is kept one elaborately decorated coffin—without a bottom. When a “Hwei-Hwei” dies the body is bathed at the home, swathed in white cloth on which are written Arabic characters, carried to the grave in the coffin—and buried without it. Naturally such a custom is shocking to a people who are addicted to ancestor-worship and whose massive coffins are the chief cause of an advance of deforestation that is already well beyond the Tibetan frontier. In fact, though wolf, dog, otter, lynx, squirrel, fox, bear, leopard and snow-leopard, deer, and several other skins come down in considerable quantities from Tibet into Kansu and flow on into the rest of China, probably the Chinese resentment at England for abetting the Tibetans in throwing off the rule of Peking is due as much as anything to the fear of the rank and file that their forests will cease to furnish the coffins without which no genuine Chinese can either live or die. During the fighting in Shensi Province in 1911, it was a very common thing to see strings of pack-mules each carrying a frozen “Hwei-Hwei” corpse on either side, wending their way back to Hochow, the Chinese Mecca; but once the corpse has been taken home for burial there seems to be none of the Chinese desire to preserve it as long as possible.