Wandering in Northern China

by Unknown

The three p’ai-lous of Hsi Ling, the Western Tombs

In Shansi four men often work at as many windlasses over a single well to irrigate the fields

Prisoners grinding grain in the “model prison” of Taiyüan

That would have been the end of the matter if Peking had not notified Jehol that the honorable investigator was coming. When I arrived, therefore, long after my mind had purged itself of any thought of my putative official capacity, I was startled to find that Jehol insisted on taking me seriously, even in the face of the scantiness of my wardrobe and the donkeyness of my escort. A day or two before, the official Chinese investigator also had come, by the direct route, with a fat English-speaking secretary and suitable retinue, in chaotze gay with red pompoms between mules important with jingling bells. He would remain a month or so, though also taking care not to be caught by the inhospitable poppy-growing peasants or their military beneficiaries and protectors up in the hills. We could both make our reports just as well without risking our lives, without ever coming to China, for that matter, so far as any real results through the League of Nations is concerned, so long as one of the nations bulking largest in that league continues to supply China with opium from her principal colony by a roundabout, oval-eyed route, though every poppy-plant in the erstwhile Middle Kingdom were uprooted.

But there is centuries-old precedent for feasting all “censors” or special investigators sent out from Peking, and this serious part of the affair Jehol did not overlook. My distinguished Chinese colleague and I had already met across the board before blood-red invitations a foot long confirmed the verbal rumor that we were to be honored with a feast by the “Tartar General” himself. Delightful little Mi Ta-shuai, with his chin-tickling mustache-ends and the inherent good nature that bubbles out even through his formal demeanor, is no more a Tartar than I am a Turk; he is an exact picture of a Chinese mandarin of the T’ang dynasty, in somewhat modernized garb. But the ruler of the special extramural district of Jehol has borne that title for centuries, just as his troops continue to be considered the native I-Chün, though they come chiefly now from Anhwei and Honan. Three of the four brand-new rickshaws that had just introduced that innovation into Jehol delivered the three male foreigners in town at the gate of honor of the former summer palace, more jolted than seriously hurt after all, and the eight or ten most distinguished Chinese officials joined us in one of the score of long low buildings through which the entrance to almost any yamen of importance stretches on and on, like a half-lighted tunnel.

The feast—but why go into unnecessary details? A Chinese feast is just what the name implies, with variations of no importance according to the latitude and the ability of the feaster’s cooks to give it such hints of foreign ways as their master may be able to specify. Suffice it to say that we gathered soon after four in the afternoon and were gone again by seven, that much more food was carried out again than was consumed by a company that did not rise needing a bedtime snack, and that I had no assistance whatever from the other two representatives of the Western world in replying to the toasts that were incessantly poured into our slender glasses, though they hailed respectively from Ireland and Scotland. There were several men worth talking with in the general’s suite, too, and all in all my official capacity was more endurable than it might have been suspected as we jolted homeward between unbroken lines of peering yellow faces eager for a closer glimpse of Jehol’s distinguished foreign guest.

The “Tartar General” insisted on sending two mounted troopers of the I-Chün with me on the way back to Peking. There was something in the bandit stories, it seemed, and though they were operating well to the north, the scent of a possible foreign hostage might give their legs double speed. No doubt the general knew as well as I that two lone Chinese soldiers, even of his unusually soldierly I-Chün, would be more likely to add two rifles to the arsenal of any respectable gang of brigands than to protect me from them, and he certainly knew that such escorts expect to live on the traveler’s bounty for at least twice as many days as they accompany him; but it would have been unseemly, of course, to let a special agent of the League of Nations, nebulous as that body may be to the mind of a Chinese militarist, depart without suitable honors.