A Chinese train, on the trunk-lines subject to the Ministry of Communications, is China in petto,—crowded confusion in the third class that makes up nearly all of it, the second only fairly filled, the first almost empty, except for the pass-holders, influential loafers, and important nonentities who congregate there. Petty anarchy reigns, and “squeeze” rears its slimy head everywhere. The passenger is taxed for the loading of his checked baggage, and then virtually required to tip the porters who load it. It is common knowledge that station-masters consider their salaries their least important source of income. Particularly are the trains, like the country, overrun with useless soldiers. They pack the better coaches until the legitimate traveler often can barely find standing-room; they stretch out everywhere, like a Chinese type of hobo, on the floors of the passageways as well as of the compartments; they fill the so-called dining-car to impassability, lying among their noisome bundles on the tables, the seats, the floors, even about the kitchen stove, like sewage that has seeped in through every opening. In theory they have their generals’ permission to travel, and pay half-fare; in practice the soldier who has a ticket at all, let alone one of the class in which he is traveling, is the exception. They not only ride on their uniforms but rent these out to hucksters and coolies who wish to make a journey. Whole flocks of railway officials in pompous garb come through the trains, but exert themselves only against the uninfluential. Soldiers without tickets are sometimes gently instructed to go back into third class, but no one has the moral courage to insist that they do so, and they ride on hour after hour, sometimes day after day. Police with a brass wheel on their arms are in constant evidence, yet control at the stations is almost unknown. Those getting on, and swarms of coolies hoping for a job of carrying baggage, sweep like a tidal wave into the trains before those getting off can escape; the battle for places is a screaming riot. In winter a car never gets comfortably warm before the overdressed Chinese throw open the windows. The cheap joker who mutilated the standardized sign to read, “Passengers are requested to report to the Traffic Manager any cases of cleanliness that come to their notice,” replaced an impossible task by a very easy one. The train that is on time is something to write home about, though now and then one sticks surprisingly close to schedule.
At Peking and the principal terminals the traveler often finds every compartment “Reserved.” Officially this cannot in most cases be done, but any one who knows the ropes can “fix it up,” merely for a tip to the fixer. Door after door down the corridor bears such signs as “Chi Wan-tao and Party,” or “Reserved, Member of Parliament,” and even foreign women may be left to stand in the passageway. Later, if the traveler is sharp eyed enough to see one of these doors unlocked, he will find one or two fat Chinese stretched out in the two seats which placards announce “shall be occupied by eight persons,” and unless he is by nature aggressive this condition may continue during the whole twenty-four-hour journey. At the end of the overcrowded train there is very likely to be a private car surrounded by a respectful throng of soldiers and railway police, which one learns upon inquiry is occupied, to give a single example, by a “minister” to some provincial city, who is “more higher than a station-master.” A sample of the Chinese way of doing things is the announcement in a time-table in French that has appeared in the foreign-language newspapers daily for years that certain “expresses” on one of the most important lines carry first-class, sleeping-, and dining-cars, whereas the best accommodations the unsuspecting traveler who takes this statement seriously can discover is two or three second-class compartments with two bare wooden benches and not a suggestion of heat. The only salvation of the civilized traveler is the daily and biweekly expresses respectively on the two lines between Peking and central China, on which, thanks to foreign pressure, neither passes, uniforms, nor influence can take the place of tickets. Even on these, rumor has it, the militarist overlords have of late found ways to accommodate their henchmen without producing actual money.
It is a relief, therefore, to get off on one of these side-lines which the Chinese do not yet pretend to have taken over, and which are still run like railroads. Shansi has her soldiers, too, but they do not spend their time riding in and out of the province. The simple expedient of requiring every coolie baggage-carrier to pay six coppers for a platform-ticket before he can pass the gates makes an astonishing improvement in the life of the traveler on this sprightly Taiyüanfu line; at the frontier two of the governor’s “model police” board the train in spotless khaki and with soldierly bearing escort it on into the capital.
A few of the 508 Buddhas in one of the lama temples of Jehol
The youngest, but most important—since she has borne him a son—of the wives of a Manchu chief of one of the tomb-tending towns of Tung Ling
Interior of the notorious Empress Dowager’s tomb at Tung Ling, with her cloth-covered chair of state and colors to dazzle the stoutest eye
