The Chinese protect their boys from evil spirits (the girls do not matter) by having a chain and padlock put about their necks at some religious ceremony, which deceives the spirits into believing that they belong to the temple. Earlaps embroidered in gay colors are widely used in Kansu in winter
Many of the faces seen in western China hardly seem Chinese
A dead man on the way to his ancestral home for burial, a trip that may last for weeks. Over the heavy unpainted wooden coffin were brown bags of fodder for the animals, surmounted by the inevitable rooster
Our party on the return from Lanchow—the major and myself flanked by our “boys” and cook respectively, these in turn by the two cart-drivers, with our alleged mafu, or groom for our riding animals, at the right
There was nothing really unusual about Ningsia, except perhaps its distance from any other city. The only foreigners we found there—a Scandinavian lady and a Belgian priest who maintained one of the mightiest beards in captivity, bitterly rival propagandists of Christianity—both assured us that the people of Ningsia were a “bad lot,” but we had no personal experiences to bear out the statement. Of the forty-five thousand reputed to dwell within the walls, a generous third were Moslems, as in Kansu as a whole, but as usual they were credited with a more industrious, aggressive character than the others, and a more united front in spite of internal disagreements. The Mohammedan general, who ruled the place, nephew of the powerful Moslem Ma Fu-hsiang, looked and acted quite like any other Chinese official, perhaps because the percentage of Moslem blood that runs in his veins is the same as the proportion of people of that faith in the city and the province. His yamen and his extensive barracks were noticeably spick and span for China, and his soldiers seemed to be well drilled and disciplined, thanks perhaps to the Russian officer or two who were giving the general the benefit of their training. But there was much recent building all about the town; even two elaborate wooden p’ai-lous were in course of construction. These fantastic memorial street arches are without number in China, but it is a rare experience to see new ones under construction, or to find old ones undergoing repairs, for that matter.
Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, “and all the thieves and rascals from four directions,” to quote the hirsute Belgian, make up the rest of the population. Mutton-shops and sheepskins were naturally in considerable evidence, though there was no lack of black pigs to be seen from the wall. A slight yet conspicuous detail that we had not seen elsewhere was slats or small poles set upright at close intervals in front of many business houses, evidently as a protection against thieves, which would bear out, I suppose, the assertion as to the make-up of the population. “Lanchow coppers” had quickly died out and were virtually forgotten by the time we reached Ningsia, though in theory its ruler was subordinate to the provincial Tuchun; and “cash” was again everywhere in evidence. A half-circuit of the city wall showed much vacant space, and even some farming, within it. Of the two pagodas standing like lighthouses above the surrounding country, one proved to be far outside the city, toward the wrinkled mountain range beyond which lies the ancient capital of Ala-shan. Many-sided but plain-faced, certainly of no great age, they seemed as high as the Washington Monument, though this may have been an exaggeration of the imagination, and beneath each of them stood a temple covering a great reclining Buddha.