WAN-HSIEN TO CH'ÊNG-TU

Wan-hsien, though one of the most beautifully situated cities on the Yangtse, is, like most Chinese towns, more pleasing at a distance than close at hand. It lies on a slope at a bend of the river 200 miles above Ichang, and 1,200 miles from the ocean. It is not yet an open port, though I was shown a spot said to have been selected by the British consular authorities as the site of the future Consulate. The only resident Europeans are a few missionaries and a postal agent. The trade of the city is brisk and developing, for the numerous roads that lead from here into the interior of the province are much used by the native merchants of Ssuch'uan for the conveyance of their goods to the river. In time to come Wan-hsien will no doubt reap a large profit from its advantageous position at the point of contact of several main arteries of traffic.

At Wan-hsien I was very hospitably entertained for a day and a night by the Rev. J. C. Platt, of the China Inland Mission, who was also most courteous in assisting me in the engagement of coolies for the next stage of my journey.

My caravan consisted of three coolies to carry my sedan chair (purchased at Wan-hsien), which I very seldom used, three to carry my baggage, and a temporary "boy," or personal servant, who was engaged to accompany me as far as Ch'Êng-tu, the capital of the province. I was also furnished by the chih hsien, or district magistrate, with the usual escort of two or three Chinese soldiers who, whether they are wanted or not, always accompany Europeans on overland journeys in China. From this point onwards my method was to engage temporary coolies and "boys" at various stages of my journey, discharging them as soon as I had passed out of the district in which their local knowledge rendered them specially useful. I lived entirely on native food, except on the rare occasions on which I enjoyed the hospitality of European missionaries. My knowledge of Chinese rendered me independent of interpreters or guides, though the changes of dialect were sometimes disconcerting.

The journey from Wan-hsien to Ch'Êng-tu consisted of fourteen long stages, the total distance being nearly 400 miles.7 The road lies through one of the fairest and most fertile portions of the great province of Ssuch'uan, and is one of the best I have met with in the interior of China: a circumstance which is partly due to the fact that Chinese officials generally use this road in travelling from the east of China to the provincial capital. The inns are numerous and—from the Oriental point of view—fairly comfortable. The innkeepers, so far from showing any aversion to entertaining foreigners, tout eagerly for their custom, and generally greet one with the amiable remark "_t'zu hou ta jÊn_" ("At your Excellency's service") as one enters their courtyards. The people are peaceful and industrious, and annoy foreigners only by their insatiable curiosity. Europeans have not very often travelled by this road, as they generally prefer—having a good deal of heavy baggage—to keep to the Yangtse as far as Chung-king, and thence ascend the Min river; but there are now several missionary stations between Wan-hsien and Ch'Êng-tu, and the country is quite well known to foreigners. The road lies partly over undulating hills, generally cultivated almost to their summits with rice, rape, wheat, maize, and many other crops, and partly over rich and densely-populated plains. The scenery is always picturesque, and sometimes,—among the hills—exceedingly beautiful. The villages, farm-houses, and temples are generally situated amid little forests of feathery bamboo. The hill-sides are studded with charming little chÂlets, and very often the submerged rice-fields in their immediate vicinity give the appearance of artificial lakes in an English park, especially when the banks or balks are lined with graceful vegetation. My dog, I was glad to find, attracted much greater attention than I did myself: for bull-terriers are unknown in China. Delighted cries of "_K'an yang kou_" ("Look at the foreign dog!") greeted us whenever we entered a village street, and in some places delight was tempered by amazement. "Call that a dog?" I heard a village patriarch remark rebukingly. "It's a bear!" My readers may rest assured that my four-footed travelling companion was no more like a bear than a unicorn.

Though the climate of Ssuch'uan is always comparatively mild, the mornings were generally chilly enough to make walking a pleasanter mode of progression than chair-riding. The method adopted by the peasantry to keep themselves warm struck me as distinctly novel. They carry in their hands little wicker-baskets, in which is a diminutive metal receptacle containing glowing charcoal. This is the Ssuch'uanese equivalent to a European lady's muff; but sometimes they hide it away under their clothes, in which case their appearance is apt to be rather comic.

My second night after leaving Wan-hsien was spent in the small district city of Liang-shan, where the late Mrs Bishop, as she relates in her Yangtse Valley and Beyond, was mobbed and assaulted. No such unpleasant experience awaited me, and I found the people orderly and good-humoured. The evening of the fourth day brought me to Ta Chu, where I found an unusually good inn. Those who have travelled much in China need not be reminded of the joy with which one finds comfortable quarters awaiting one at the end of a tiring day's journey; the experience is none too common. During the fifth day's march I passed several out-crops of coal. It seems to exist in great abundance, though mining operations do not appear to have been carried far below the surface. The coal is used in the inns of this district, and burns well. On the sixth day we crossed the Ch'Ü river in a ferry-boat. This stream, which is navigable for local craft, rises in the high range of hills in the north-east of Ssuch'uan, and for part of its course is known as the Pai Shui, or White Water. Ch'Ü-hsien and Kuang-an are the only fair-sized towns on its banks, the point at which I crossed being between these two towns. The river joins the Chia-ling, with other tributaries, at Ho-chou, and so goes to swell the Yangtse at Chung-king. The water is remarkably clear. The summer rise, judging from the appearance of the banks, is probably not more than 10 feet, if so much.

On the eighth day from Wan-hsien I reached the prefectural city of Shun-ch'ing-fu,8 once a prosperous industrial centre but now somewhat decayed. A great industry here used to be the preparation of vegetable dyes from the safflower, but the trade has been killed by the introduction of aniline dyes from Austria. Sericulture, however, is still a flourishing industry. Three or four years ago a disaster befell the city in the shape of floods, which destroyed whole streets and undermined portions of the city wall.

Soon after leaving Shun-ch'ing our road lay over an excellent four-arched bridge called the Jung An Ch'iao ("Everlasting Peace Bridge"), and we then began the ascent of a hill commonly known locally as the Hsi Shan, or West Hill. Here there are cavern-shrines, and a number of honorific portals and tablets, which indeed are exceedingly common along all the main roads of Ssuch'uan. Many of the inscriptions consist of "legends of good women," but the great majority commemorate the virtues of local officials. The carved figures on the buildings of the Hsi Shan are curious and interesting, and would probably repay study. Some distance beyond this point I observed a large flat rock close to the road, bearing the significant inscription: Ch'i ssu wu kao chuang ("Die of anger but don't go to law"). This is part of a well-known proverb which goes on to say: O ssu wu tso tsei ("Die of hunger but don't be a thief"). It would be well for the peasantry of China—who as often as not ruin themselves over their law-suits—if they would pay as much respect to the first of these injunctions as they generally do to the second.

On the 25th February my road descended from an undulating range of hills to the edge of the great plain, in the middle of which is situated the provincial capital, Ch'Êng-tu; but it was not till the close of the following day, the fourteenth since leaving Wan-hsien, that we entered the city.

As in all wealthy centres, the contrast between the rich and poor in the Ch'Êng-tu plain is very striking. I never met so much evidence of great wealth elsewhere in China, and certainly never encountered so many beggars. One of them, seeing that I was alone and on foot—for I had left my chair some distance behind—offered to carry me to Ch'Êng-tu on his back. Another tried to impress upon me the advantages of his wheelbarrow as a mode of conveyance, though its wooden wheel was nearly broken in half. The number of bad characters in the city and neighbourhood seemed to me unusually large, and I was constantly warned against highway robbers. I hardly expected to have the good fortune to meet so picturesque a villain as a real highwayman, but such was my fate during my last day's journey before entering Ch'Êng-tu. There were two of them, armed with pistols that were not only loaded, but could be discharged—a feature that is not characteristic of all Chinese firearms. They were lurking behind some bamboos on the side of the road, apparently waiting for an opportunity to attack and plunder any one whose docility of appearance marked him out as a suitable victim. One of them took fright at the sudden apparition of the three soldiers of my escort, who were walking in front of my chair, and bolted. He was immediately followed by his companion, and close on their heels came my scarlet-coated warriors, emboldened, no doubt, by the knowledge of the fact that they were three to two. I caused my chair to be put down in order that I might the better observe the race, and the fight which I supposed would ensue. But there was no struggle. Both the highwaymen, encumbered by the weight of their unwieldy pistols and a couple of heavy knives, were speedily overtaken and captured, and, when brought back to me, threw themselves to the ground and made a piteous appeal to my generosity. They explained that they had found the knives and pistols in a field, and were trying to find the original owner in order to return them to him, and that they had no idea (until we demonstrated the fact by firing off the weapons) that the pistols were loaded. Whether they took up the same line of defence in the presence of the magistrate to whose care I consigned them, I do not know, nor have I learned their subsequent fate.

The Ch'Êng-tu plain, with its marvellous system of irrigation and its three or four crops a year, is the richest and most populous district in the whole of the Chinese Empire. This extraordinarily productive plain is about 90 miles long by 70 wide, and supports a population estimated at no less than 4,000,000, of whom about 350,000 reside within the capital itself. It is studded with many prosperous towns and villages, and is cultivated to its utmost extent. Among the crops are rice, wheat, tea, tobacco, maize, the opium-poppy, which was not yet in bloom, and the yellow rape that turned hundreds of acres of land into seas of bright gold. The plain is connected by a navigable waterway (the Min) with the Yangtse, and it is in the heart of the richest province in China. The city of Ch'Êng-tu has been identified with Marco Polo's Sindafu. "This city," wrote Marco in the thirteenth century, "was in former times a rich and noble one, and the kings who reigned there were very great and wealthy." Of the Min river—which had not then been subdivided to the same extent as at present into artificial channels for irrigation—he says: "The multitude of vessels that navigate this river is so vast that no one who should read or hear the tale would believe it. The quantities of merchandise also which merchants carry up and down this river are past all belief."9

Ch'Êng-tu is a city of less importance now, but it is still one of the greatest and most prosperous in China. Its population is much smaller than that of Canton, but its general appearance is more attractive as well as far more imposing. Its streets are broad and clean, and its wall exceedingly well preserved. In mediÆval times it was a frontier city of great political and strategic importance, for the Tibetan principalities extended then as far east as the lofty mountains that flank the Ch'Êng-tu plain on the west. Even now large numbers of Tibetan traders are often to be seen in the streets of Ch'Êng-tu, though most of their commercial transactions are carried on at the city of Kuan-hsien, about 30 miles away, a place which is also remarkable for the sluices which regulate the waters of the Min and divert them, as occasion demands, into the irrigation canals. The governor-general of Ssuch'uan, whose yamen is in Ch'Êng-tu, is more like a real viceroy than any other provincial ruler in China, for he it is who, on behalf of the emperor, holds sway over, and receives the embassies of, the various Tibetan princes and tribal chiefs of the extreme west. There is at present a project to connect Ch'Êng-tu by rail with a point on the Yangtse, probably in the neighbourhood of K'uei-chou-fu, a town which I passed on my way from Ichang to Wan-hsien. The provincial government—for the railway project is entirely a Chinese one—is at present actively engaged in trying to raise the funds necessary for so large an undertaking, one method being—so I was told—to compel every local official to take a definite number of shares, the number to vary according to the official's rank and reputed wealth, each shareholder being permitted to get rid of his shares in the best way possible by distributing them among the well-to-do people subject to his jurisdiction. In passing through the towns and villages of eastern Ssuch'uan, I noticed many Chinese proclamations giving the people an outline of the railway scheme, pointing out the great benefits to the trade and prosperity of the province that would result from its fulfilment, and inviting or commanding popular co-operation. It may be that this railway will offer one solution of the problem of the Yangtse rapids: in any case, the enthusiasm with which the scheme was being discussed in both official and commercial circles was another proof of the gradual breaking-down of the old Chinese prejudice against railways.

Though so remote from the sea-board, the people of Ch'Êng-tu—or perhaps I should say the officials—are among the most progressive and enlightened in China. This is especially so in the matter of education. The city possesses a Provincial College, where about three hundred young men are now being educated in Western as well as in Chinese branches of learning. There is an Englishman who lectures on chemistry and physics, there are several Japanese lecturers, and a staff of Chinese teachers who have a knowledge of European languages. I have heard of an enterprising Chinese schoolmaster who once advertised that in his establishment English was taught "up to letter G." They are more ambitious than that in the college of Ch'Êng-tu. Among the local industries the most important is that of silk-weaving. For this, as well as for other industrial purposes, foreign machinery and Western methods are being gradually imported and adopted.

Those who are acquainted with Baber's charming descriptions of Ssuch'uan and Yunnan10—descriptions which can never be superseded, though they are often neglected nowadays—will remember that he was much interested in a curious circular monolith which he discovered on the side of an artificial hill or mound in Ch'Êng-tu. He was unable to get any satisfactory account of its history, though tradition said that it marked the grave of an emperor's son. It is, indeed, not improbable that the mound, which is oblong in shape, with a depression in the middle, and resembles, as Baber remarked, a half-buried dumbbell, was raised in memory of some distinguished prince or leader of old times, perhaps when the Ch'Êng-tu plain was still occupied by the so-called Man-tzu. I visited the spot, and found that the stone was still lying in the position in which he saw it. The portion that appears above the soil presents something of the appearance of the tilted end of a huge stone barrel, badly damaged at one corner. The diameter of the circular face—of which barely half can be seen—I found to be about 17 feet. The greatest length of the visible body of the barrel is only about 2 feet 3 inches, but it is impossible to say how much of it is underground. An excavation of the mound at the spot where the stone lies might lead to some interesting results: but Baber was assured that any attempt to dig would cause the sky to darken and goblins to appear, so he left it alone, and I decided to follow his example.

Something of the grandeur of Ch'Êng-tu in its most palmy days may be realised by a reference to extant Chinese books, as well as from the eulogies of Marco Polo. From the Shu Hua Shih11 we learn that under the T'ang dynasty (618-905 of the Christian era) it was a great art centre, and a long list of paintings and frescoes relating to the Buddhist religion are mentioned in that work as hanging on the walls of the palaces of Ch'Êng-tu. Some of the temples are worthy of a long visit, though the finest in the district is not in the city itself but in the neighbouring town of Kuan-hsien, where Li Ping and his son, the deified founders of the great irrigation system of the Ch'Êng-tu plain, have had raised in their honour a temple that is said to be the most beautiful in China. But as has been well remarked of Li Ping by a recent English traveller,12 the perennially fertile fields around Ch'Êng-tu are his finest monument.