In the Protestant mission compound of Honanfu the missionaries had tied up this thief to stew in the sun for a few days, rather than turn him over to the authorities, who would have lopped off his head
Over a city gate in western Honan two crated heads of bandits were festering in the sun and feeding swarms of flies
A village in the loess country, which breaks up into fantastic formations as the stoneless soil is worn away by the rains and blown away by the winds
In this case all the foreign captives were released, gradually, within a week after the legations began to show real signs of life, not greatly the worse for wear, and with an absorbing after-dinner topic to last them for years to come. But it was easy to guess what splendid arguments stray foreigners are to prove in domestic Chinese controversies, of which they may be as supremely ignorant as uninterested, during perhaps years to come, now that this little scheme of the bandits had been crowned with such signal success. It is easier still to see how much bolder they will grow in gathering such arguments, how much rougher, when it serves their purposes, in the use of them, and how much the self-seeking militarists of China will care how far the acknowledged outlaws go in the matter, so long as a wishy-washy policy, supremely ignorant of the first rules of Chinese psychology, continues to represent the Western world in this matter.
Just what argument had been brought to bear on the brigands remained for several days a more or less profound secret; but the “old China hand” had his suspicions, which turned out to be fully justified. He suspected that temporizing, compromising, and weakly yielding had been the consecutive orders of the moves, for long experience has taught him the more outstanding features of the Chinese character. When it could no longer be concealed, word seeped up out of Honan that virtually all the demands of the bandits had been granted in full. Their chieftains were given high rank and official titles, and the men themselves were incorporated into the “national army,” whatever that means, any world agreements toward disarmament notwithstanding. Not only that, but their organizations had been left intact and given a corner of the province to rule, particularly to “tax,” instead of at least being split up among other organizations in which some slight curb might be put upon their activities. The Chinese populations involved protested, in so far as they dared, but of course in vain. That is another misfortune of the supine policy of foreign governments, that the law-abiding Chinese masses suffer all the more accordingly. But, after all, perhaps they are more or less responsible for the low state of authority in present-day China, and subject to a corresponding discount of sympathy.
Months later down in Yencheng, the center of the foreigner-capturing brigandage of Honan, I picked up a few details of their calling. Though the outside world hears much more of it, there is hardly, so far, one foreigner carried off by bandits to a thousand Chinese. The usual method is to attack a village and take a man of standing, or his son of fifteen or so, for ransom; but rather than run the dangers of dragging the captive about with them, the outlaws often hand him over to some resident of a neighboring village, perhaps only a woman, with the threat to burn the house and kill its occupants if the hostage is not there when they return for him. Many a helpless family is thus left stranded between the devil and the deep sea. Occasionally girls are taken, but the girl or woman who is kept overnight loses her reputation and is not worth ransoming. Therefore they are either returned after negotiations lasting a few hours, or are kept as camp property. When they are after money or material advancement, Chinese brigands do not mistreat women; these suffer more when soldiers run amuck and loot a town. Like banditry, this is old Chinese history; in the days of Kublai Khan, of whom we hear such romantic stories, Mongol Buddhist priests or lamas were given an iron ticket from the emperor which gave them the right to enter any house in China, drive out the men, and install themselves in their place. For a fortnight a year during the Mongol dynasty, popular Chinese history records that the country was given over to promiscuous debauchery; bearing these things in mind one is surprised at the comparative lack of abuse of women by Chinese malefactors.
On the way from the Peking-Hankow main line to Honanfu there had been much of that clay-sandy earth called loess, and in the rambling half-day from there to the rail-head there was more of it. Cultivation, rain, wind breaking this down to varying levels, leave fantastic forms of earth as striking as the rocks of Namur, precarious cliffs in which are cut cave-dwellings, shrines, even temples; indeed, for long stretches there were few other kinds of buildings. Hundreds of little fields, one could see even from the jolting train, were gradually but irretrievably wearing away to a common level that would eventually make cultivation out of the question. A doubly uncertain world this, where one’s home is a hole in the cliff-side that may any day slough off, where one must always walk cautiously along the edge of either field or veranda, lest it at any moment drop from under. We passed through many tunnels, always thankful to find them stone-faced. How this soil ever succeeds in holding together even as long as it does was one of the mysteries that beguiled all that morning’s journey.