Wandering in Northern China

by Unknown

The usual kitchen and heating-plant of a Chinese inn, and the kind on which our cook competed with hungry coolies in preparing our dinners

The midwinter third-class coach in which I returned to Peking

No wonder I was mistaken for a Bolshevik and caused family tears when I turned up in Peking from the west

Hers was not the only complaint at our speed. The cook, who always sat huddled, nose in collar and hands in sleeves, on the front platform of one of the carts, a striking contrast to the cheery, well washed, and often-shaved driver beside him, confided to Chang one morning that he would not make this trip again, not even if we offered him a hundred dollars a month. As that is from five to twenty times the pay of a Chinese cook, even though he was speaking only in “Mex,” it may be surmised how bitterly he must have suffered during the journey. It never seemed to occur to him, however, that he would suffer less from cold, at least, if he would now and then get off and walk, like all the rest of us. Chang, on the other hand, prided himself on being a “coolie” able to endure anything, as well as having no “face” to lose, and though he visibly showed wear from his constant two months’ service under all conditions, he very seldom failed to produce not only whatever we asked for but a smiling countenance and a cheerful disposition in addition. It is considered bad form in China to show any human interest in one’s servants; in fact, it is usually unwise, as in much of the Orient, and likely to result in deterioration both of deportment and service. With Chang it was fairly safe, however, and I frequently indulged myself to the extent of inquiring whether he and the cook had a comfortable place to sleep. His unvarying reply was the smiling assertion, “Oh, I can sleep anywhere, master”; and the only night on the journey that I actually saw his quarters was this one in the crowded coolie inn. This he spent on a corner of the k’ang opposite our improvised chamber, where he could keep one eye on our belongings and the other on any of our fellow-guests overcome by curiosity to see how these wealthy and exclusive persons from some other world slept on the folding platforms they carried with them—as if the k’ang itself were not good enough for any one.

We covered a hundred and twenty li on Monday, across a stony half-desert, never far from the base of the crumpled range that stuck persistently beside us on the left. White Mongol lamaseries clustered here and there well off the road in less accessible places, such as half-way up the face of the mountain wall. Now and again a Mongol high lama and his followers, all in brilliant yellow or a slightly dulled red, rode by with the motionless motion of good horsemen, on sturdy, sweating ponies. Ox-cart-wheels were again small and were usually solid disks of wood, and numbers of them were leisurely bringing in from the rail-head boxes and bales, marked with such names as Hamburg and Shanghai. Once we passed one of the crudest of these conveyances, drawn by two small, gaunt red oxen and driven by a man and a boy, with no other cargo than a dead man on his way to his ancestral home for burial. Over the massive coffin, which left room for nothing else beside it, was thrown a big brown bag or two of fodder, and beside this stood the inevitable rooster, in a willow-withe cage. It was not the pure white cock required by Chinese custom, however, but one almost as red as the big brilliant paper label, daubed with black characters, on the front of the coffin. Probably this was the best color available, for we could not recall having seen white fowls for many days, and no doubt the gods in charge of the souls thus kept united with every Chinese corpse take the difficulties of such a situation duly into consideration. Besides, there were evidences that the journey before the dead man was a long one; perhaps his ancestral home was away down in Shantung, in which case, at this rate of travel, the cock might be bleached to an approximate white by the time the expedition reached its destination.

We finished the last seventy-five li on the run, and reached Paotou in time for a late lunch. Towns grew more and more frequent as we neared the city; the mountains closed in and began to push the Hoang Ho southward; a constant stream of traffic, of camels, cattle, donkeys, mules, horsemen, and pedestrians, grew up and increased in volume; our mafu climbed the steps of a little shrine in the wide dusty hollow that passed for a road to offer his thanks for his safe arrival—or for aid in avoiding work and gathering “squeeze” along the way; and at last the first suggestion of a city since Ningsia, twelve days behind, grew up out of the dust-haze ahead. Across the utterly treeless plain a poor makeshift wall climbed away up a barren hill colored with great patches of dyed cotton cloth drying in the sun. Some of this, which here and there brightened the town itself, was lama cloth, of saffron or maroon, contrasting with the blue so universally favored by the Chinese coolie. Perfect weather continued, but dust was thick as a London fog when we passed through the simple gate that separated an extensive suburb from the city proper, a gate on which hung the dried head of a bandit and inside which soldiers politely demanded some proof of our identity, such as a visiting-card, perhaps in order to be sure that we were real foreigners and not mere Russians, whom they might bully to their hearts’ content. For the last week of our journey there had been much talk of bandits. Earlier in the autumn many trips out from Paotou had been abandoned for fear of them; two or three times nervous innkeepers announced that tu-fei had been in their very courtyards a night or two ahead of us; several rumors that they were operating in the immediate vicinity reached our ears as we made our way placidly homeward; but that dried head on the gate was the only visible proof we ever had of their existence.

Paotouchen proved to be mainly a new town, built up by a constantly increasing population as the advance of the Suiyuan railway improves its importance as a trading-center. It is hilly enough so that we could see only portions of it at a time, and even those had nothing particularly new to offer. Moslems were here and there in evidence; Mongols rode silently through the soft earth streets; furs and sheepskins were a bit more numerous than the other wares, comprising everything sold in northern China, with which the principal thoroughfare was lined. Big shops, women with the tiniest of feet, extensive courtyards, some gaudy architecture, singsong-girls and the noisy hotel parties that go with them, and all the other attributes of a Chinese city, as distinguished from a village, even though the village be walled and populous, were to be seen in Paotouchen.