CH TIM A 
 J^^tt ^JHki ~4fc9Ch j^^i* ^ ^^^& JH^fcnx 
 
 The Mysterious and 
 Marvellous 
 
 VICTOR MURDOCK
 
 China the Mysterious 
 and Marvellous
 
 APPROACH TO A CITY GATE, CHUNG KING
 
 China the Mysterious 
 and Marvellous 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH
 
 Copyright, 1920, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 Printed in th United State* of America 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
 
 THAT IS TO SAY 
 
 CHINA, after resisting change for forty cen- 
 turies, is at last changing. An oriental 
 republic has supplanted an ancient orien- 
 tal monarchy. The old dragon of dynastic mis- 
 rule is dead, and an age-old subject race is trying 
 to conform to the requirements of democracy. 
 The transition from the old way to the new way 
 is unique and so variously manifested that per- 
 haps the best record of the transition is by 
 flash a quick exposure of detached and fleeting 
 scenes in the every-day life of the people. So 
 the views in this volume seek to set down, topi- 
 cally and currently, the impressions of a travel- 
 ler to the far interior of China and incidentally 
 to Peking, the capital. 
 
 The cultural differences between the Orient 
 and the Occident render China to a westerner's 
 eyes mysterious as the factor of magnitude in 
 the country's area, its population and its works 
 render it marvellous. No change in government 
 
 5 
 
 2218682
 
 THAT IS TO SAY 
 
 will make China less so in either respect. With 
 stabilization of the democratic form, and with 
 the quickened growth of Christianity through- 
 out the Republic which I believe must follow, 
 China will change, but China, when changed, as 
 in the period of transition, must remain China, 
 mysterious and marvellous. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. V. M.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 I. The Orient, Labour and Christianity . 11 
 
 II. A Qualified Racial Friendship ... 18 
 
 III. A Film of New and Old Japan ... 24 
 
 IV. China's Joss Worship 29 
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 V. Crude Farming, Fanciful Legends . . 35 
 
 VI. Absorption, a Chinese Specialty . . 41 
 
 VII. Rain and Revolution 48 
 
 VIII. Wrongs of Chinese Women .... 55 
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 IX. Into the Bandit Country 62 
 
 X. The Home of a Dragon Prince ... 67 
 XL Handling the Yangtse Junks .... 74 
 
 XII. A Station Without a Railroad ... 80 
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 XIII. The Yangtse Gorges 88 
 
 XIV. Men's Battle With a River .... 93 
 
 XV. A Case of Human Nature .... 99 
 
 XVI. The Hope of Democracy 105 
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 XVII. Saving a Chinese City 112 
 
 XVIII. The Beggars' Hong 119 
 
 XIX. The Commerce of Szechuan .... 125 
 
 XX. The Doom of Geomancy 132 
 
 7
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 XXL A Chinese Party 139 
 
 XXII. A Strange Ceremony 145 
 
 XXIII. China's Enemies Dirt and Graft . . 151 
 
 XXIV. The Way of Chinese Bandits ... 157 
 
 CHINA WHICH IS NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 XXV. Land and Democracy 164 
 
 XXVI. Caravans from Thibet 171 
 
 XXVII. Wages and Living Costs 178 
 
 XXVIII. The Road to Cheng-Tu 185 
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 XXIX. China's Great Error 192 
 
 XXX. Cities That Never Die 200 
 
 XXXI. The Chinese Printer 207 
 
 XXXII. A Certain Rich Man in Wanhsien . 214 
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 XXXIII. The Evil Spirit of the Yangtse . . 222 
 
 XXXIV. The Courage of Caste Conviction . . 230 
 
 XXXV. A Chinese General's Job 238 
 
 XXXVI. The Fiction of Royal Blood .... 245 
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 XXXVII. A Chinese President 252 
 
 XXXVIII. The Dead Dynasty 258 
 
 XXXLX. A Chinese Congress 266 
 
 XL. The Habit of Breaking Loose ... 274 
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 XLL Politics and Nanking 281 
 
 XLIL The Lesson of the Great Wall ... 287 
 
 XLIII. China's Chief Reformer 293 
 
 XLIV. American Traders in the Orient . . 301 
 
 XLV. The Leaven of East and West ... 306 
 
 8
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Facing 
 Page 
 
 APPROACH TO A CITY GATE, CHUNG KING . . . Title 
 
 TRANSPORTATION IN INTERIOR CHINA 48 
 
 THE CARRIER COOLIE 48 
 
 JUNKS SAILING IN THE BACK CURRENT .... 88 
 
 THE TRACKERS OP THE YANGTSE 88 
 
 JUNKS WAITING AT THE TCHING TAN RAPIDS . . 112 
 
 A JUNK IN THE RAPIDS 112 
 
 THE TEEMING LIFE OF SZECHUAN 150 
 
 FAMOUS YEH-TAN RAPIDS AT Low WATER . . . 192 
 
 HSIEN-TAN RAPIDS, UPPER YANGTSE, AT Low 
 
 LEVEL STAGE 222 
 
 LIMESTONE CLIFFS OF THE BELLOWS GORGE . 282
 
 IF one of my trade union friends in America 
 should gather together all the organized 
 labour men of his acquaintance some Sunday 
 and see that they all went to church, they would 
 fill every church in their town to overflowing, of 
 course. They would also create a sensation. 
 Now, the organized labour men would do just 
 that thing if they could have seen what I have 
 seen in Tokyo, Kobe and other places in Japan. 
 
 There is an explanation to be tied to this sort 
 of a statement, of course. It is this: There is 
 so much to be seen in Japan that you haven't 
 any time to think, and the thought about organ- 
 ized labour was the first connected one I had had 
 for a week. In the first place, as you travel into 
 the Orient, you can feel the guy-ropes of civili- 
 zation giving away hourly; in fact, by the time 
 you have reached Japan you are cut loose for 
 fair and, bewildered, your mind refuses to work. 
 
 It is all different absolutely. The difference 
 11
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 can not be described. It never will be. I can 
 just give glimpses of it. For one thing, hu- 
 manity goes down on its heels. The nation 
 squats at work, at play and at rest. It sleeps 
 on mats, with pillows about as big as two bricks 
 and as hard. The ceilings are all low. Most of 
 the traffic is on long two-wheeled trucks. Every- 
 where you see a single man pushing as much as 
 a ton along, sometimes up very steep hills. 
 When this is varied, it is in the shape of a 
 similar truck pulled by a stocky, and invariably 
 vicious Siberian stallion. The majority of the 
 people are desperately poor. In the summer 
 season the labourers do not wear much, many 
 of them are all but naked. They make the thing 
 we know as modesty quite a complicated product 
 of society. The nation is chock full of people, 
 and they are all busy. They do not think as 
 we do, they do not dress as we do, nor eat our 
 food. Their worship is not intelligible to us in 
 any satisfactory degree it is idolatrous in 
 large part. Yet this civilization has the very 
 best of railroads, fine street car systems, the 
 smallest towns have electric lights, and there 
 are first-class water systems, and to back it up 
 is one of the best armies and navies in the world. 
 You take off your hat to Japan because she 
 has done so much, and so much more than the 
 
 12
 
 THE ORIENT, LABOUR AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 rest of the Orient, and then you put the hard 
 condition on her that she must do justice to 
 labour, and justice to labour on the occidental 
 standard. It is either that or a world cataclysm. 
 And I don't believe in the cataclysm. 
 
 I dug out this thought sitting in a sleeper. 
 All around me were Japanese in flowing gowns 
 and two-toed socks first-class passengers and 
 very prosperous looking and rather high- 
 headed. The porter was making down the 
 berths, which are almost as shallow as saucers, 
 and I was figuring on sleeping with my clothes 
 on. The man in the seat next to mine was put- 
 ting his pajamas on in the aisle unblushingly, 
 and just beyond him two pretty Japanese girls 
 were sitting on the floor smoking cigarettes. 
 
 This thought struck me like lightning out of 
 the blue that the Orient must either take over 
 Christianity and democracy (and they are the 
 same thing) or the west will have to make a 
 fight for it. 
 
 For you don't get very far into the Orient 
 before this Christianity idea strikes you like a 
 slap in the face. The east can use all the me- 
 chanical devices which make for progress as 
 easily and as effectively as the west but these 
 mechanical devices can not be absorbed into 
 society and assimilated by society without 
 
 13
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA-^TAPAN 
 
 Christianity and democracy. Now it is a two 
 and two make four proposition that a machine 
 which displaces a half dozen men in a country 
 like Japan, which has an overplus of labour, is 
 a dastard thing. There is only one way to meet 
 the problem and that is by caring for labour 
 and that can't be done by adding more machin- 
 ery or scrapping that already at work. There 
 is only one way to care for labour, and that is oft 
 the Christian basis that the labourer is worthy 
 of his hire and sequentially that all labour is 
 justly compensated only when the Christian 
 virtues and chief among them a practical, 
 workaday brotherhood are put into the equa- 
 tion. Or if you want it in more concrete form 
 a nation must work to bestow a living wage, 
 to shorten the hours of labour, to make working 
 conditions sanitary and decent, and to see that 
 all are employed, that children are not, and 
 above all to decree, not only in law, but in prac- 
 tice, that flesh and blood, that is labour is not a 
 commodity to be bought and sold, but is a right 
 inherent in the process of living. Whatever we 
 have of this in the west and we have consid- 
 erable we owe to Christianity. One is not so 
 apt to see it as vividly in the west as he is 
 when he moves away and looks back at it. It 
 is then plain enough. All the mechanical de- 
 
 14
 
 THE ORIENT, 'LABOUR AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 vices I saw in Japan and they are many were 
 being run with as much facility as you will see 
 them in America, but the labour conditions 
 are unnerving. They are unChristian. 
 
 Of course, I can hear somebody saying just at 
 this point, "He is overstating his point. He is 
 letting his sympathies run away with him." I 
 am doing nothing of the kind. I am stating 
 a perfectly demonstrable condition. I have 
 watched five hundred Japanese men, women and 
 children coaling a vessel at Nagasaki. They 
 started in at 9 o'clock in the morning and worked 
 until 5 o'clock that night. On each barge were 
 about fifty people. They ran the barge along- 
 side and put up a ladder. On the ladder they 
 stationed twenty-five men, women and children. 
 Twenty formed themselves in a row on the 
 barge. Two men loaded half-bushel baskets 
 with shovels, two others lifted them to the first 
 man, who passed them on to the second, and so 
 on up the ladder into the ship the line passing 
 thirty-six to forty baskets a minute for eight 
 hours. About half the time it rained pitchforks 
 on them. Are they used to it? Of course, they 
 are. But in the last two hours I saw young 
 girls, bright, intelligent, tender girls, who were 
 ready to drop in their tracks. 
 
 Several people told me that this was one of 
 15
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 the "most interesting sights" in the east. I 
 went up to Bishop Robinson of the Methodist 
 church (he is bishop of India) and asked: 
 "What do you think of this?" 
 
 He said: "I think it is awful." 
 
 I asked: "Was it ever intended that man 
 should be a beast of burden ?" 
 
 He answered: "It never was." 
 
 And it never was. If there is any unChris- 
 tian country in the world that doesn't make him 
 one, I never heard of it, and if there is a Chris- 
 tian country where the tendency is not always 
 away from that condition, I do not know where 
 it is. It was that thought which gave me the 
 fancy about the labour union men storming the 
 churches. Christianity is far and away their 
 best friend. 
 
 I believe the east will take Christianity. Of 
 course, the missionaries are few among the mil- 
 lions of the east, and they have a hard time get- 
 ting their seeds to sprout. But they will sprout. 
 It is a little leaven, but it will leaven the whole 
 lump. But if the east rejects the religion which 
 has dignified labour, then there is coming an 
 industrial war which will shake the world. 
 Japan is leading the way for the Orient to throw 
 its teeming millions into machine production 
 without limitation on hours of labour or restric- 
 
 16
 
 THE ORIENT, LABOUR AND CHRISTIANITY 
 
 tion on age of workers, and free from the cost 
 of decent conditions. Against this flood of pro- 
 duction the west must protect itself, but it must 
 also preserve that which has given labour its 
 right that is Christianity. The best way to 
 preserve it is to inoculate the east with it. 
 
 On the ship coming across the Pacific a good 
 deal of caste develops. There are a good many 
 missionaries aboard, and those who are not mis- 
 sionaries are terribly afraid that somebody will 
 mistake them for missionaries. There is, quietly 
 and under cover, a lot of fun poked at the mis- 
 sionaries by the commercial class. 
 
 It rather amuses me. For I think I know 
 that the east would eventually eat the west up, 
 industrially and commercially, were it not for 
 these quiet, praying, hymn-singing folk, these 
 self -same* missionaries. 
 
 17
 
 n 
 
 A QUALIFIED RACIAL FRIENDSHIP 
 
 ONE of the first things you run across in 
 Japan is the way the resident white peo- 
 ple swallow when the newcomer compli- 
 ments the Japanese in their presence. The 
 resident white man down under his skin doesn't 
 like the Japanese nation. Of course, he doesn't 
 confess it; in fact, ordinarily you couldn't pull 
 the confession out of him with a cork-screw. 
 But the dislike is there, just the same, and any- 
 body who can tell a ham from a hand-spike can 
 see that it is. 
 
 You begin to pick it up out in California be- 
 fore you start to the Orient. Any American 
 who visits the western coast will bear me out 
 in the statement that one of the favorite con- 
 tentions of the Californian is that a Chinese is 
 much more desirable than the Japanese ; that he 
 is more given to honesty and fidelity and so 
 forth. Well, that contention is given the loud 
 pedal in the Orient. The white man extols the 
 
 18
 
 A QUALIFIED RACIAL FRIENDSHIP 
 
 Chinaman, and takes on a grim silence when 
 someone extols the Japanese. 
 
 Now, the real trouble is that the Jap has 
 been seriously asserting his right to equality, 
 and that the white man doesn't like. 
 
 I spoke commendingly of Japan's progress at 
 Kyoto, and a theretofore quiescent white man 
 erupted with: "Don't do it; they're puffed out 
 of shape already." 
 
 An Englishman said to me: "We fought for 
 our progress; the advantages we have in the 
 sciences, in government, in industry, we Anglo- 
 Saxons bled for during generations. The Jap- 
 anese came along and appropriated the results 
 of our labour. I would not help them so much 
 as by raising my finger." 
 
 I do not find in books, and I have not found 
 here in Japan, the reason why Japan blossomed 
 forth as she did. As late as 1859 the country 
 was sealed; that is, foreigners were absolutely 
 barred, and had been for hundreds of years. 
 But Japan suddenly broke loose, and one of the 
 chief determinate factors in western civilization 
 appearing to be military power, she bought a 
 few ships and hitched up her chair. She swiped 
 the ancient empire of China across the face, and 
 then trimmed the mighty Russia with neatness 
 and dispatch, and has since been trying to find 
 
 19
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 the money to help pay the expenses of the picnic. 
 She butted into the European war long enough 
 to put a tap on the point of Germany's chin in 
 China, in memory of an old insult, but has other- 
 wise remained docile. And yet every ambitious 
 white nation on earth is keeping an eye on 
 Japan, and not the least watchful among them 
 are her dearest friends England included. The 
 attitude of the ' individual white man is the 
 same ; he is a friend of the Japanese, but 
 
 From the beginning of western civilization 
 the white man has used the same formula for 
 everybody. He assured the American Indian 
 that he was his friend, and bumped him off his 
 land. He also drifted down to South Africa and 
 became a friend of the Kafir and put him to 
 work for the white man. 
 
 And in the last thirty years China has loomed 
 up as a pretty good thing. The white man as- 
 sured the Chinaman that he was the China- 
 man's friend, and began grabbing his best 
 harbours. 
 
 Then Japan stepped in with a smile and a 
 sword and said she was a friend of the white 
 man but and the white man has been squirm- 
 ing ever since. The white man doesn't like 
 ,that "but" when the Japanese use it. It has the 
 look of a dangerous reservation about it. It 
 
 20
 
 A QUALIFIED RACIAL FRIENDSHIP 
 
 doesn't sound precisely sincere, and it is 
 impudent. 
 
 For the Japanese is the first Oriental people 
 since Tamerlane to put a "but" into its protesta- 
 tion of friendship for the white man. 
 
 While the white men have been fighting 
 among themselves, Japan has been trying busily 
 to hog-tie China for private use, China, the big- 
 gest undeveloped market on earth. 
 
 Will Japan get away with it ? I do not think 
 so. But it must be acknowledged that she has 
 been at the job in a workman-like way. She is 
 being a friend to everybody, but 
 
 Now, it is a pretty extreme thing to say, but 
 I do not believe that Japan understands one 
 thing that the white man will either survive 
 or perish that is, he will either dominate or 
 die. With this view in mind I have been study- 
 ing the Japanese here in Japan with a great 
 deal of interest. A bright, intelligent, capable 
 people they are, and since their truly wonderful 
 successes in arts, industries and arms, a very 
 proud people. And as this pride grows and it 
 will it will lead them to the precipice. Pride 
 is the most dangerous quality on earth in a man 
 or in a nation. There is always a trap-door in 
 its path. I don't think the Japanese know this, 
 certainly not as surely as the white man does, 
 
 21
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 and the white man is constantly forgetting it, 
 and if I were a Japanese I think I would sally 
 forth and preach the doctrine of an humble and 
 contrite heart, for the good of the nation. 
 
 For pride will lead Japan into the expansion 
 which is the mild word for aggression. It has 
 already begun with the Chinese policy. By 
 playing one white nation off against the other 
 Japan will undoubtedly make great headway, 
 and will convince herself that success has been 
 attained and will rise to new heights of pride. 
 And the day will come, as in this game it always 
 comes, when Japan will seek openly to compel 
 the west's friendship, as she compelled Russia's 
 friendship, and with that day will come Japan's 
 hour of humiliation at the hands of the white 
 man, who will either dominate or die. 
 
 From what I can pick up, the United States 
 could build up a lasting alliance with this nation 
 but only by a whole-hearted spirit of genuine 
 amity. It will have to be without guile. It can 
 not have reservation. And it will have to show 
 stronger foundations than fair words. The peo- 
 ple of the United States will have to recognize 
 that Japan has her problems among them over- 
 population that she is legitimately moved by 
 proper ambitions, and that she has her place in 
 the development of the east (China in particu-
 
 A QUALIFIED RACIAL FRIENDSHIP 
 
 lar), which must be respected. At the same 
 time Japan should be, in her attitude to Amer- 
 ica, eager to help the American in the Chinese 
 market, anxious for co-operation and to give up 
 once and for all the idea that America can be 
 frightened permanently into a timid, acquiescent 
 foreign policy. She ought to call her spies in 
 America home and keep them home. 
 
 I don't say that there will be any such perma- 
 nent, genuine fix-up between the two nations. 
 I think there could be. 
 
 Probably the statesmen of Japan want it so. 
 I do not know, of course. But the people of 
 Japan, once our unselfish friends, are drifting 
 away from us. A Japanese told me recently 
 how the sentiment was agitated. He said he 
 had heard a Japanese orator tell a crowd this : 
 
 He was on the back seat of an automobile in 
 San Francisco and his hat blew off. An Amer- 
 ican citizen, well-dressed and apparently well-to- 
 do, picked it up and started to hand it to him, 
 and then seeing he was a Japanese, threw the 
 hat on the ground. 
 
 Maybe, my informant told me, that Japanese 
 crowd didn't howl. 
 
 There is a better way than this both for 
 America and Japan. 
 
 23
 
 Ill 
 
 A FILM OF NEW AND OLD JAPAN 
 
 IT is easy moving around in Japan. In the 
 first place, the Japanese put directions in 
 English on sign posts. That helps. At 
 many of the stations there are big sign boards 
 bearing reading matter under the heading: 
 "Places of interest." I think it is a great idea. 
 The town tells what it has that the traveler 
 should see. It is a Japanese scheme, and worthy 
 of imitation everywhere. People have said that 
 the Japanese lack invention. I don't think so. 
 For instance, I found that if you want to go out 
 on the railroad platform to see a friend off, you 
 can buy a platform ticket for a cent and do it. I 
 would like to know if American station agents 
 have any kick on that, and I am sure the union 
 depot companies would like the revenue. 
 
 I have tried everything here in the way of 
 conveyances except automobiles, and the streets 
 are so crowded with children that I refused to 
 put my nerves on the rack. First I tried a rick- 
 
 24
 
 A FILM OF NEW AND OLD JAPAN 
 
 shaw. As you know, a rickshaw is an over- 
 grown baby buggy, mounted on two wheels, with 
 a man between the shafts. He runs. He always 
 runs, and in this country he throws his legs 
 away out behind so far out behind that at first 
 I expected my man to fall over on his face. If a 
 rickshaw man didn't run, he would cause excite- 
 ment. In fact, I had just that experience. I 
 wanted to shop a bit in Tokyo, and I wanted to 
 walk. My small daughter, aged ten, had gotten 
 the rickshaw habit bad and she rode. But I 
 told the rickshaw man to walk alongside. It 
 liked to have caused a riot among the other rick- 
 shaw men. They were convulsed at our man 
 walking. They kicked up their heels, fell into 
 one another's arms in sheer joy and hid their 
 smiles behind their hands. Our man was a 
 proud fellow, and sensible, too, and he kept his 
 head up in the air and never let on that he knew 
 they were guying him, but once he turned to me 
 and gave me a smile which was the Japanese 
 equivalent for a wink. 
 
 When we reached the store we tried to get in, 
 but were halted, and after a little I made out 
 what the trouble was. The porters at the front 
 door were checking shoes, and then I discovered 
 that we couldn't get in unless we took off our 
 shoes. Mine were high laced boots, and I was 
 
 25
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 about to turn back when I found that there was 
 a compromise scheme a porter would put velvet 
 overshoes on your feet without the necessity of 
 removing the regular ones. So I stuck out my 
 feet and he outfitted me with a pair of goloshes, 
 half green and half yellow, and we sallied into 
 the store. It was carpeted in spotless matting, 
 and was the finest store I have ever visited. 
 There is nothing in Paris to compare with it. 
 People didn't seem to be buying. They were just 
 wandering around and looking, and listening to 
 an orchestra made up of a piano and violins. 
 Now the piano was a normal one, and so were 
 the violins, and so was the music they were 
 playing "A Perfect Day," but the way they had 
 those musicians togged out was a caution. They 
 wore red coats, loaded down with gold braid, 
 and their hats were military helmets with white 
 plumes sticking up in the air like tassels of milo 
 maize. I couldn't hear the music for looking at 
 those tassels. 
 
 We made our purchases and went back along 
 the streets. The impression you get every- 
 where is that Japan is just peeking out of the 
 Oriental shell into the western world. You win 
 pass a Japanese, dressed in the height of west- 
 ern fashion; then another with a robe and a 
 lady's fan; and then another with nothing but 
 
 26
 
 A FILM OF NEW AND OLD JAPAN 
 
 a breech-clout and a hat on, and we passed one 
 fellow who didn't have any breeches on, but was 
 wearing a derby and twirling a cane. 
 
 Right beside this magnificent store, which I 
 have not in the least exaggerated, stood a shop 
 which sold dried fish so dry they looked like 
 shingles and canned goods. The ceiling was 
 so low that no one could get in without stoop- 
 ing, and the merchant was sitting on the floor 
 with his family around him and one little kiddy 
 stuck up on the shelf among the cans. 
 
 You will find a native newspaper office and peer 
 through into the press room and see and hear a 
 big press buzzing exactly as the perfecting press, 
 upon which an American newspaper is printed, 
 buzzes. Then next door will come a row of lat- 
 tice windows out of which will float the strum 
 of an instrument, the like of which you never 
 heard before, and the strains of a weird song 
 that might have been sung when they were 
 building the pyramids in Egypt, it is so utterly 
 different from anything that ever drifted to 
 your ears before. 
 
 That is, a Japanese city is a moving film of 
 new and old, of ancient and modern, a mixture 
 of the first century and the twentieth, a hash of 
 Rudyard Kipling and Marco Polo, and just walk- 
 ing about you get decidedly woozy in your 
 
 27
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 think-machine. Things don't connect. They 
 don't parse and you finally get to doubting 
 whether two and two in this country actually 
 make four. 
 
 Of course, you think I am overstating the 
 case. But I am not, and you will know I am not 
 when I tell you that in my rambles I paused out- 
 side a movie theatre to hear the "Sextette from 
 Lucia" on a Victrola for five minutes and spent 
 the next five minutes standing before a gold god 
 with about a hundred dirty cotton bibs tied 
 under his chin, while a priest knelt down in 
 front of him beating a gourd with a long drum- 
 stick and mumbling, like a bumble-bee, to him- 
 self a wail that was covered with moss centuries 
 before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.
 
 IV 
 CHINA'S JOSS WORSHIP 
 
 ONE comes to China through Japan as 
 through a vestibule. I am told that I 
 will change my mind about the vestibule 
 when I have seen the house. Perhaps. But 
 here is China. There was a big Chinese holiday 
 in progress when I arrived in Shanghai, and I 
 spent some time in a joss-house and saw many 
 curious things. But before I recount what I 
 saw I will have to make a little excursion 
 with your mind. 
 
 If you will go to any public school this after- 
 noon about four o'clock and follow a crowd of 
 small boys away and watch them at their play, 
 you will witness some things that you can not 
 explain. A good healthy boy of ten will take 
 an ordinary broomstick, straddle it, and after 
 riding it around for a few minutes, will turn it 
 into a better horse than Jehu ever drove. In 
 the same way if you will slip up on your small 
 daughter this afternoon you will probably find 
 
 29
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 her playing with a pillow which she ha& turned, 
 by the same magic, into a baby, to which she 
 will be talking a world of maternal nonsense. 
 
 That is, your own boy and girl have some- 
 thing you haven't. It is imagination but 
 imagination plus something else that some- 
 thing else is childhood. Now I have been rum- 
 maging around to find a common denominator 
 for China and America, and this is the only one 
 I can find childhood. China is in her child- 
 hood whether the first or second childhood I 
 am unable to say at this moment. I suspect the 
 second. 
 
 Shanghai is bifurcated the white folks have 
 one city and the Chinese the other. I made for 
 the Chinese city. First I tried to strike a bar- 
 gain with my rickshaw man, but I couldn't do it. 
 
 "What will you take me to the Chinese city 
 for?" I asked. 
 
 "You say," he said. 
 
 "But I won't," I said. "How much do you 
 want?" 
 
 "You say," he reiterated. 
 
 So I crawled into the rickshaw and set forth 
 and finally arrived near the temple. Then T 
 went through the whole thing over again. I 
 wanted to know how much I was to be stung, 
 and all he would answer was "You say." 
 
 30
 
 A FILM OF NEW AND OLD JAPAN 
 
 So I told him to wait, and made my way into 
 the temple through a crowd that was truly 
 motley and the noisiest bunch I have ever met 
 bar nothing, even a bulletin board crowd city 
 election night at home. A Chinese loves noise 
 with an exceeding great love. He will be walk- 
 ing along the street alone and will suddenly 
 break into oratory. In a trade, the clerks, who 
 sit at the only counter (it is cross-way of the 
 store and at the front), all snort at once and 
 the customer goes back at them like the boy 
 who is "it" in the game of "old sow." On the 
 street corner a man in rags was playing a gourd 
 with a single gut string and while he had a big 
 audience of ragamuffins, they were doing so 
 much talking that he wasn't making himself 
 heard. Along came a row of rickshaws with 
 every man whooping at the pedestrians and 
 back of them a carriage, the driver of which 
 was waving a whip with a feather-duster for a 
 cracker (all whips are so equipped here) and 
 whooping, and through it all slowly and majes- 
 tically moved a procession. In front of this 
 cavalcade were three men with gongs, which 
 they beat spasmodically, back of them was a 
 group of men carrying big paper lanterns, back 
 of them a seven-piece brass band, back of that 
 a carriage, closed, not with curtains, but with 
 
 31
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA-^TAPAN 
 
 shutters, and back of it more lanterns, and then 
 an open carriage with two pretty Chinese young 
 women. It was an even bet whether it was a 
 wedding or a funeral. The closed carriage held 
 either a corpse or a groom. There was no way 
 I could tell which and just then there was a 
 riot. In the upper room of a two-story house, 
 somebody hit another gong, there was a deafen- 
 ing outbreak of voices, and then a succession of 
 sounds as of breaking crockery like a man 
 would make hunting a rat in a china store with 
 a scythe. Now I was the only man on the scene 
 who was doing any listening. Everybody else 
 was making noise. I got into a big tea-garden, 
 which was deserted by the way, and finally 
 came up to a big benevolent bearded old man 
 who quickly shut two big black doors back of 
 him. I knew he shut them on purpose, so I said : 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 "You say," he said, or anyway I thought he 
 said it. So I fished out a coin (value, a nickel), 
 he bowed, opened the doors and let me in. 
 
 The chamber was crowded with human beings 
 worshipping ; in front of them were two rows of 
 "soldier josses." There were seven josses in 
 each row. They were made of pine, with faces 
 fairly sculptured, the tops of their heads painted 
 black to represent hats, their skirts painted red. 
 
 32
 
 A FILM OF NEW AND OLD JAPAN 
 
 It was a poor job of painting, for they were 
 terribly blistered and all smoked up. Each 
 wore a club-like beard, such as you see in Egyp- 
 tian sculpture. In front of each row was a 
 trough in which little pieces of silvered paper 
 were being burned and also in front of some of 
 the favorites a few odd-looking candles. There 
 was at once a great clamour that I buy some of 
 those little pieces of paper and burn them. I 
 bought a handful for a penny and picked out my 
 joss. I wanted to get a real good looking god, 
 but when I glanced them over, they all looked 
 alike finally I picked out one whose left eye had 
 scaled off and burned my offering before him. 
 
 You would naturally suppose that this action 
 of a foreigner would cause some surprise. It 
 did not. I suppose that my action was as inex- 
 plicable to those Chinese as their worship was 
 to me. 
 
 Your first thought is this: How can any 
 mature human being, even if he is heathen, 
 believe in a block of wood? These people are 
 good tradesmen, they are bully seamen, within 
 their lights they are virtuous, in commerce 
 they are honest, they are faithful to a trust, and 
 in certain conditions courageous. They have 
 wills, consciences and souls. Then why don't 
 they know that these fourteen old blocks of 
 
 33
 
 THE VESTIBULE TO CHINA JAPAN 
 
 wood were fashioned by human hands, and are 
 blocks of wood just as much as they were when 
 they grew in the forest? Why doesn't it occur 
 to them that intercession for help to one of 
 these effigies is as useless as picking out a tree 
 anywhere and crying to it for help? On my 
 way back out of the Chinese city I fumbled 
 around a long time to get the answer, and the 
 one thing I struck upon that was at all satisfac- 
 tory was that idea of childhood which turns a 
 broomstick into a horse. And then I had an- 
 other idea how modern civilization turns gold 
 and power and place into idols and gets down on 
 its marrow bones before them and I quit. 
 
 34
 
 V 
 
 HANKOW is up in the interior of China. 
 It is on the way to Chung-King. I 
 am bound for Chung-King, which is 
 about eighteen hundred miles from the coast. 
 
 Now, the only way to get to Chung-King is 
 to keep going. Our instructions before starting 
 were: "Listen to no one. Keep on coming." 
 That takes nerve. When we were nearing 
 Shanghai the captain of the trans-Pacific ship 
 called me to him and said : "I have bad news for 
 you; the pilot says that you can't reach Chung- 
 King ; the boats on the upper river have all been 
 commandeered by the Chinese government to 
 move troops, on account of the rebellion. You 
 might take a junk, but I want to tell you it is 
 dangerous." 
 
 When we reached Shanghai and notified the 
 steamboat offices that we were traveling to 
 Chung-King, the men there threw up their 
 hands and said : "You can't make it, and even if 
 
 35
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 you did you can't get back until next spring." 
 
 But we put up our banner emblazoned : "Keep 
 on coming," and said we were going anyway. 
 And we suspected that at Shanghai they don't 
 know as much about Chung-King as a cat knows 
 about astronomy. And they don't. They know 
 about Hankow, and at Hankow they know about 
 Ichang, which is six hundred miles farther up 
 the river, and at Ichang they know about 
 Chung-King. In another week we would be at 
 Ichang, and then we would begin to find out 
 about transportation to Chung-King. But you 
 can't find out about it at Hankow. You simply 
 have to wait till you come to the end of one 
 journey before you find out what is at the other 
 end. A line of boats runs from Shanghai to 
 Hankow. Another line runs from Hankow to 
 Ichang, and then a boat is rumored to run from 
 Ichang to Chung-King. If the rumor is correct, 
 you can make the journey from Shanghai to 
 Chung-King in a little less than three weeks. 
 
 Meanwhile between Hankow and Shanghai I 
 saw what is to my mind the most beautiful agri- 
 cultural country in the world. We were the 
 only white passengers on board, so there was 
 nothing to do but to sit and look at the shore 
 as we glided past. 
 
 When I studied geography, we knew a little 
 36
 
 CRUDE FARMING, FANCIFUL LEGENDS 
 
 line that wiggled straight westward through 
 China as the "Yangtse-Kiang." Over here they 
 drop the "Kiang" and call it "Yangtse." It runs 
 westward through China up to the Himalayas 
 (accent over here on "mal"). It divides the 
 country into North and South China. What- 
 ever foreign nation ever seizes it will control 
 China. Up to Hankow it runs through a yellow 
 alluvial soil. Its water is tawny much more so 
 than the Missouri. It is more nearly straight 
 than the Mississippi its current is about four 
 miles an hour, and it is over a mile wide at Han- 
 kow and this is 800 miles from its mouth. It 
 seems to be free from the eddies and boilings 
 which one sees in the Arkansas river. Its chan- 
 nel runs about fifteen fathoms. On its lower 
 reaches it is fed by thousands of creeks, upon 
 which ply thousands of native boats, so that, 
 looking from the river, the fields all about you 
 seem to be growing sails and masts. Near the 
 sea there are no levees, and the country, being 
 subject to inundations, is not put to much use. 
 But on the second and third days' journey up, 
 the banks become a little higher, and the second 
 bottoms are well up out of the reach of floods. 
 Nearby all along the bottoms are low hills, and 
 ten or twenty miles back from the river beauti- 
 ful mountains. I should say that anything that 
 
 37
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 will grow in the temperate zone will grow along 
 this river. I don't believe there can be a more 
 fertile soil on the earth. The farmers of the 
 Mississippi valley could make it a Garden of 
 Eden. The Chinese have not. Much of it ap- 
 pears as waste, or devoted to such volunteer 
 crops as rushes. I saw no clovers. The only 
 cattle visible were a few water-buffalo. In eight 
 hundred miles I saw but two horses. There was 
 not as much rice as one would expect. I saw 
 many fields of Indian maize, but the Chinaman 
 has let the grain deteriorate, and the ears I saw 
 were not much bigger than our pop-corn. All 
 sorts of garden truck is first-class, although the 
 Irish potato is undersized which, again, is not 
 the fault of the soil Peanuts, which are raised 
 in abundance, are also undersized. By the way, 
 these are harvested by running the whole top 
 soil through sieves. All that doesn't go through 
 are peanuts and stones. I saw no farm machin- 
 ery of any kind. Everything, of course, is done 
 by the crudest of hand labour. The tree growth, 
 which in appearance is much like that along the 
 small streams in America, is abundant. 
 
 We passed many Chinese cities on the way up 
 to Hankow. They all look pretty much alike. 
 The first thing in view is the pagoda, usually 
 located on top of a hill and usually with a 
 
 38
 
 CRUDE FARMING, FANCIFUL LEGENDS 
 
 bunch of weeds or a bush growing out of the 
 crumbling roof. Beneath it one will see an 
 ancient wall as thin as a strawberry box and 
 inside a two-story house the home of the 
 priest. Over on another hill will be a preten- 
 tious American-looking structure the school or 
 the hospital of the missionaries. The mass of 
 the city is made up of one-story, low-ceilinged 
 houses without eaves. The streets, of course, 
 are narrow, roughly paved and crooked. 
 
 There is no more majestic river under the sun 
 than this Yangtse. But China hasn't done much 
 for it. While it is a little early for me to pass 
 judgment on the Chinese, I can't help but think 
 that it is time that more contact with steam, 
 electricity and the hundred other agencies of 
 civilization should be taking hold. Perhaps 
 John D. Rockefeller will lead the way. He is 
 selling them kerosene, and it may bring them 
 around gently to our ways. For at all the larger 
 points along the river you will see a group of 
 familiar tanks, enclosed in a neat fence and a 
 sign above bearing two Chinese characters 
 which look like the model of a patent gate. 
 Translated, this means "The Beautiful Oil Com- 
 pany," there being no Chinese word for Stand- 
 ard. The Standard Oil establishments are by 
 far the niftiest things one sees in the Orient
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 they spell order, cleanliness and light. 
 
 And China needs light. She is living in 
 legends. Legends are all right, but no people 
 has a right to believe them. 
 
 We passed on the river the city of Tai-Ping- 
 Fu with its three-story pagoda. A little way up 
 the river is an island with two stories of a 
 pagoda on it. The tale runs that the devil came 
 along one night and stole these two bottom 
 stories from under the Tai-Ping-Fu pagoda and 
 made off with them. Dawn, however, overtook 
 him, and the devil, not being able to stand 
 light, let the two stories drop. Farther up the 
 river we passed Ngan-King with a fine seven- 
 story pagoda, and stuck in the ground at its 
 base were two big anchors to which the tower 
 is chained. A thousand years ago or so the 
 Ngan-King crowd heard about the devil's 
 monkeyshines down at Tai-Ping-Fu, so they de- 
 cided to take no chances and added the anchors. 
 
 That was all right a thousand years ago 
 and it is a bully legend, as legends go, but no- 
 body has a right to believe in these anchors 
 to-day. And somehow I can't help but believe 
 that if these folks get enough kerosene mixed 
 up in their daily economics they will light up 
 the pagoda at night, scare the devil away, and 
 surrender their faith in those anchors. 
 
 40
 
 VI 
 ABSORPTION A CHINESE SPECIALTY 
 
 WHILE you will gather from the news- 
 papers and the magazines from time to 
 time that there is great official fear in 
 China over the designs of Japan upon the integ- 
 rity of China, and it is true, there is a consid- 
 erable party or school among the Chinese who 
 favor letting the Japanese come in and do 
 their worst. 
 
 The position of this school is as follows : "Let 
 the Japanese take China if they want to. They 
 will help us, and in the end we will take the 
 Japanese, as we have taken everybody else, and 
 as we will always take everybody." 
 
 That is, the Chinese believe that they will 
 simply absorb anybody who comes in contact 
 with them, as indeed they have absorbed their 
 successive conquerors the Mongolians and the 
 Manchus. 
 
 Their attitude we are apt to ascribe to a 
 gigantic apathy, a national docility, when, in 
 
 41
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 truth, it is national persistence and tenacity. 
 The trait, as I found it here, was not precisely 
 new to me. Sometimes one may see a whole 
 nation through one man. In my boyhood I lived 
 in a frontier town. Charley Sing came to dwell 
 among us. Instead of renting a twenty-five-foot 
 building, he got himself a shanty between two 
 normal store rooms. Charley Sing's laundry 
 was about four feet wide. Its front was painted 
 a porcelain blue. Inside he had the picture of a 
 joss, and before it he burned sticks of incense. 
 He prospered mightily in the old days, before 
 the steam laundries, and finally went back to 
 China, trading his laundry and his name with it 
 to a new Chinese. I knew the original Charley 
 Sing well. He gave me little presents, and the 
 first preserved ginger I ever tasted was at his 
 hands. Now the thing I noticed most about 
 Charley Sing, when I was a boy, was the fact 
 that we didn't change him. He got so he spoke 
 pretty good English, and he wore our clothes, 
 but he kept his pig-tail, gave out Chinese script 
 for checks and receipts, sprinkled the clothes by 
 squirting water between his teeth and observed 
 Chinese New Years in February with as much 
 ceremony as though it were a national American 
 holiday. He remained Chinese, and, similarly, 
 China will remain China. 
 
 42
 
 ABSORPTION A CHINESE SPECIALTY 
 
 There is a lot of plain, unadorned pig-head- 
 edness about it. Every nation in the world in 
 the last thirty years has used China as a door- 
 mat. They have seized her ports, grabbed her 
 land, battered her capital, looted her palaces, but 
 many of the Chinese officials still imagine that 
 all nations in the world are subject to China. 
 In the same way, the Chinese themselves defend 
 their customs when reason is clearly against 
 them, as, in their topsy-turvy way of^doing 
 things, it frequently is. There is no argument 
 against them if they want to use white instead 
 of black for mourning; or if they like eating their 
 pie before their meat ; or if they persist in put- 
 ting the caboose at the head of the freight train 
 and the engine at the rear, or doing any of the 
 thousand upside down things they do which are 
 mere matters of taste. But when they bump 
 into scientific principles, the argument is against 
 them. They eat their fruit green, for instance, 
 and die of colic. But they insist that the white 
 man is wrong; that when fruit is ripe it is 
 rotten. But the white man eats ripe fruit and 
 escapes stomach troubles. The white man is 
 right in this, as he is when he makes the sharp 
 end of his ship the front end, and not the blunt 
 end, as do the Chinese. 
 
 However, the Chinese maintain that they are 
 43
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 right in everything, and they preserve them- 
 selves nationally by this method. This idea runs 
 clear through the people. I have talked with a 
 good many white people over here, and about 
 the last thing any one of them would under- 
 take would be to change a Chinaman. As a 
 matter of fact, the average white man doesn't 
 even make the attempt. If he is to have deal- 
 ings with the Chinese, he employs a middleman 
 who does understand them. So it happens that 
 one of the first things you run across over here 
 are the expressions "Comprador" and "Number 
 One Boy." A comprador is apparently a 
 Chinese who serves as a general go-between for 
 an employer and other Chinese. A "Number 
 One Boy" is the boss of the servants. All 
 Chinese servants are called "boys"; no one ever 
 thinks for a moment of learning a Chinese' 
 name. He is simply "boy," although he may be 
 sixty and wear whiskers. And, with a few ex- 
 ceptions, it is hopeless to try to get anything 
 through the noggin of one of these "boys." One 
 must call the "Number One Boy," prefer the 
 request to him, and he will pass it on. Now, 
 "preferring the request" is a little strong. I 
 have not yet heard any one prefer a request. 
 If you are eating at an American restaurant, 
 you will probably say to the waitress, "May I 
 
 14
 
 ABSORPTION A CHINESE SPECIALTY 
 
 have the sugar ?" Over here you take on Napo- 
 leon Bonaparte's best manner at Austerlitz and 
 say in tones of mighty command, "Sugar. Go 
 get." This dictatorial, high-and-mighty atti- 
 tude over here, and you don't want to forget 
 that in a way it is pardonable, is universal. I 
 have a suspicion that if a man spent twenty-five 
 years in China and then returned to America, he 
 would have four or five fist fights a day with 
 servants. All his "mays" and "if you pleases" 
 and "kindlys" would have dropped out of his 
 vocabulary, and there would be something doing. 
 Now, all this bossy language and manner slips 
 off a Chinese as water glides from a duck's back. 
 He doesn't seem to know that you are ordering 
 him. When you say: "Sugar. Go get," and he 
 moves forward three minutes later with a can 
 of pepper, all you have to do is to gnash your 
 teeth and yell : "No. Pepper. Sugar. Go get," 
 and to keep on repeating it until he gets the 
 sugar. Now, this would indicate great docility 
 on the part of the Chinese. But it is probably 
 not that at all. On the contrary, his secret 
 thought is that you are all kinds of an unmiti- 
 gated idiot, and it is the part of superior wis- 
 dom, on his part, to be gentle and kindly with 
 you. For, make no mistake, the Chinese knows 
 his rights and he grabs for them like a hungry 
 
 45
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE \ 
 
 boy after pie at a picnic. If he is "Number One 
 Boy," he would die before he would sweep the 
 floor. He orders another boy to do that, and if 
 you order "Number One Boy" to do anything 
 not on his shift, he will quit. The captain on 
 our boat from Shanghai to Hankow told me that 
 just before he started on his last trip up the 
 river, he told "Number One Boy" to wash six 
 teaspoons which the children had used. He said 
 it wasn't his job, that he wouldn't do it. The 
 captain, who is a double-fisted sort of an indi- 
 vidual, took the Chinese by the nape of the neck 
 and led him up to the spoons, but the Chinese 
 wriggled loose and quit the job. 
 
 On the way up the river I watched a Chinese 
 take the soundings for the channel. This con- 
 sists of swinging a three-pound lead into the air 
 and dropping it, and crying out the depth of the 
 channel found. It is a light task at best. But I 
 noticed that this Chinese had at his side another 
 Chinese of lower caste who did the menial work 
 of pulling the lead up out of the water. 
 
 The white man undoubtedly would order it 
 otherwise if he could. But the white -man can't, 
 and long residence here discourages him in the 
 effort. For attrition against the Chinese saps 
 him, takes away his punch and puts slack in 
 his nervous energy. After a long period in 
 
 46
 
 ABSORPTION A CHINESE SPECIALTY 
 
 China all white people grow sallow, and dragged- 
 down and infinitely and unspeakably tired. So 
 the Chinese who say to the ambitious: "Wel- 
 come to our city, oh, ye conquerors," may not 
 be so very much wrong. For, while Phillip would 
 be a stranger in Athens, and Caesar lonesome in 
 Rome and Harold a hopeless alien in London, and 
 even George Washington might feel himself a 
 good deal of an intruder in modern America, 
 Confucius could return to Shantung today and 
 find himself completely at home. His kin, if 
 they had mixed during his absence wouldn't 
 show it. 
 
 47
 
 yn 
 
 RAIN AND REVOLUTION 
 
 TO those of you who are inclined, having 
 read what I have here presented, to dis- 
 believe it, I would like to say that I have 
 exercised every care not to admit anything into 
 the narration which is improbable. And I hope 
 that it will be accepted because it gives a fair 
 view, from one angle, of a political situation in 
 China which is always threatening an explosion 
 with international complications. 
 
 Recently a tract in the city of Hankow a half 
 mile square was burned, bombed and looted. 
 About 200 people were killed and burned. In 
 the midst of this conflagration was an American 
 lumber yard, occupying something like an acre. 
 It is, in appearance, an ordinary lumber yard. 
 It escaped absolutely unscathed. 
 
 Anyone who will take the trouble to under- 
 stand this fire may comprehend, without 
 trouble, the danger of the explosion aforesaid. 
 For some time there has been a political society 
 
 48
 
 TRANSPORTATION IX INTERIOR CHINA 
 
 THE CARRIER COOLIE
 
 RAIN AND REVOLUTION 
 
 in Hankow known as the Ming party. It wanted 
 office. Its leaders landed. The following didn't. 
 The bunch, for something better to do, grabbed 
 the son of a rich Peking official and held him 
 for $10,000 ransom. Otherwise, also, they got 
 themselves disliked. 
 
 Finally this unhappy band hid itself away in 
 the Japanese concession. Now, a word about 
 the concessions. For a mile or so along the 
 river at Hankow are the consular offices of for- 
 eign nations, America included. But America 
 rents her building. The other nations own their 
 own buildings and a lot of ground which, in 
 times past, they politely grabbed. Japan has 
 two concessions, an original plot and an exten- 
 sion. These various concessions are not only 
 occupied by consular buildings, but by business 
 blocks, some of them quite large. Each con- 
 cession has its own police force. The British 
 have a volunteer fire company, and recently the 
 Japanese garrisoned a troop of some six hun- 
 dred regular soldiers on their ground. Back of 
 these concessions is the Chinese city, part of 
 which was burned. 
 
 It should be understood that the inhabitants 
 of these concessions underwent quite a strain 
 when the war broke out in Europe. Germans, 
 British, French and Russians meeting daily in 
 
 49
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 those times would naturally prove a little defi- 
 cient in furnishing the ingredients for a first- 
 class cup of joy. But they are all agreed on 
 one proposition and that is the condemnation 
 of the Japanese. There may be several white 
 men in China who regard the Japanese in a 
 kindly light, but friendly Japanese sentiment 
 doesn't overwhelm you. 
 
 Those who do not fancy the Japanese allege 
 that the Japanese harbored the Ming party and 
 insidiously stirred them up to riot for a specific 
 purpose. At nine o'clock in the evening of the 
 riot a newspaper reporter attended a meeting of 
 the Ming party. The crowd carried bombs, 
 lighted torches and a gun for every six men. 
 There were from two hundred to three hundred 
 of them. 
 
 Shortly after nine o'clock the Mings set fire 
 to the town back of the concessions and nearest 
 the Japanese section. As the sparks flew and 
 the bombs exploded the mob grew. The rioters 
 attacked the Chinese police station and captured 
 it. Most of the policemen got out of their uni- 
 forms and hid out. The Chinese chief of police 
 escaped to the French consulate. The beginning 
 of one first-class revolution was in motion when 
 something happened, and that something was 
 decidedly Chinese. It began to rain. 
 
 50
 
 RAIN AND REVOLUTION 
 
 Now, to Chinese, rain is "bad joss pidgin"; 
 that is, the signs were not right, and the riot 
 and the fire ceased. It didn't rain much, but it 
 halted the game through the power of supersti- 
 tion. Meanwhile the foreigners were calling for 
 the Chinese troops, and were receiving repeated 
 assurances that troops had been sent. But the 
 troops were not in sight, and the foreigners pre- 
 pared to sell their lives dearly, if it quit raining. 
 And it did quit. Immediately the rict and fire 
 resumed. Looting began. Now, the fire did not 
 begin where it had ended, but a considerable 
 distance away from the Japanese concession. 
 From this moment onward, from what I gath- 
 ered, the Japanese interest in it waned. If the 
 charges made against the Japanese are true, 
 they wanted the fire near them a fact which 
 conceals a plot in this story. The rioters, mov- 
 ing away from the Japanese concession, en- 
 croached on the French tract. The French 
 authorities, backed with a squad, issued a warn- 
 ing which the rioters disregarded. The order 
 to fire was given, and about a hundred Chinese 
 fell. The Chinese troops came late, being very 
 foxy, as will later appear. At one time, one of 
 the foreign concessions asked aid of the Japan- 
 ese, and the Japanese sent a troop. A machine 
 gun detachment was landed from an American 
 
 51
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 gunboat. The thing was well over by two 
 o'clock in the morning. The scene was one of 
 great desolation and misery. In the midst of 
 it, immune, stood that American lumber yard. 
 
 What was it all about? If the Japanese 
 started the rioters, why did they get them to 
 begin near the Japanese concession? Why did 
 the Chinese troops hold back? Why should a 
 lumber yard go through a conflagration like this 
 untouched ? 
 
 Your guess may be all right. I don't know, 
 and I will not be able to say for certain. The 
 international politics of the Orient doesn't admit 
 of anything but guesses, and even when you 
 guess, you are not given the answer. You 
 simply grope in the first place, and in the second 
 place you keep on groping. 
 
 Let us take a common guess in Hankow. 
 Firing on a foreign concession is a serious busi- 
 ness. Drop a shrapnel shell into a foreign con- 
 cession and the offended nation indignantly 
 grabs a section of land from China to punish 
 her, and calls it an extension of the original 
 grant. About the last thing a Chinese patriot 
 would think of doing would be to shoot up a 
 foreigner's property. That explains the mir- 
 acle of the lumber yard. And it also explains 
 the whispered view of a lot of people in Hankow 
 
 52
 
 RAIN AND REVOLUTION 
 
 that the riot was a Japanese scheme to get the 
 Chinese troops onto the scene and have them 
 wallop, through mistake, a few shells into the 
 Japanese concession, and seize some more land. 
 It will also explain how the Chinese generals, 
 foreseeing the game, refused to bring their 
 troops up until the riot had moved away from 
 the Japanese section of the town. There is a 
 missing link in the story: If the Japanese were 
 manipulating this game, why did they let the 
 rioters get out of their part of town? The 
 answer is: The rain. It stopped the growth of 
 the riot at the beginning. And when the rain 
 quit, the rioters had to start all over again, and 
 they moved into fresh and unlooted territory. 
 
 If the guess is a correct one, the Japanese 
 were seeking to win by means of an accident, 
 and they lost through another accident instead. 
 I don't say this is true. It is one guess. 
 
 Some of you are no doubt inclined to think 
 this story is involved. You are right about 
 that. It is involved. And so is the game the 
 nations are playing over here. I should say 
 that the whole thing is a volcano and that the 
 lid may be blown off with a bang as long as 
 the international rivalry within China obtains. 
 And you would also if you walked into a place of 
 business as I have, and saw a rack of rifles stand- 
 
 53
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 ing near the front door, or if you could hear the 
 general suppressed roar over the fact that the 
 Japanese have recently erected a wireless appa- 
 ratus on their concession and are supposed to be 
 grabbing off other people's messages. For, be 
 it known, the wireless has stretched its invisible 
 fingers thus deep in the interior and far from 
 serving as a tie to bind the human brotherhood 
 together, and establish amity, bids fair to break 
 the brotherhood asunder and breed discord. 
 
 54
 
 VIII 
 WRONGS OF CHINESE WOMEN 
 
 THERE is no "woman question" in China. 
 There ought to be. And I wish I could 
 live long enough to see the women of China 
 rise, demand their rights and take payment in 
 full for centuries of cruelty. The thing wouldn't 
 look square without that payment in full. If the 
 men simply said: "All right, here are your 
 rights," it would be a rank cheat. The only 
 thing that would balance the books would be a 
 big, bloody revenge. 
 
 It is pretty hard to do this thing justice. Of 
 course, the nice, easy, courteous thing to do is 
 to take the Oriental view, as some writers of 
 books do, and show that the system makes the 
 Chinese woman a very happy, contented being. 
 That sort of talk goes down with the kind of 
 politician who says it is a mistake to educate 
 the negro because it will make him unhappy. 
 Of course, I understand that the view I take, 
 grounded in Occidental culture, is liable to get 
 
 55
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 too much emphasis on certain features of 
 woman's condition in the East, and yet I con- 
 tend that my indignation of soul is justified. 
 
 Now, the Occidental mind, when it comes to 
 dealing with the relation of the sexes in the 
 East, has a head-on collision with facts, before 
 the caboose is well out of the yards. 
 
 For instance, when President Yuan Shih Kai 
 died President Wilson undoubtedly telegraphed 
 Madame Yuan Shi Kai the condolences of Mrs, 
 Wilson and himself. Everybody in China 
 laughed and asked: "Which Madame Yuan Shih 
 Kai?" There were, I am told, eight or ten 
 widows. 
 
 I am not going to deal logically with the con- 
 dition of women in China. I am going merely 
 to make the bald statement that promiscuity by 
 a man or a woman of whatsoever breed is not 
 only unmoral, but immoral, and then spread be- 
 fore you little things I have picked up over 
 here. Maybe I have been "stung" on some of 
 these tales. I don't know. You will have to 
 exercise your own judgment about that. 
 
 Generally speaking, the more wives a Chinese 
 has the greater his credit at bank. Concubines 
 cost money. The cost of installation is heavy 
 (a concubine of the first class goes as high as 
 $4,000 gold), and the upkeep is considerable. 
 
 56
 
 WRONGS OF CHINESE WOMEN 
 
 Weddings are expensively elaborate. Frequent 
 marriage makes for prestige. The first wife, 
 usually betrothed in infancy, is the boss of the 
 other wives, and she is legally the mother of all 
 the other women's children. Sometimes she is a 
 paragon as such and sometimes she is not. A 
 missionary doctor of Kweichow told me this 
 story: A rich Chinese who was single-minded in 
 his devotion to his spouse, was, with her, greatly 
 concerned because no son was born. They talked 
 it over and determined that he should marry a 
 young woman they knew. He did. To them a 
 son was born. The first wife took over the care 
 of the son and had every solicitude that the 
 boy's own mother could possibly feel for him. 
 
 The doctor also told me this tale: One day 
 while he was administering to .a convert, the 
 village telegraph operator, who spoke a pidgin 
 English, called and said: "My concubin-o take 
 sick. Want medicine." The convert took the 
 operator to one side and chided him. "You 
 ought to be ashamed," he said, "talking to a 
 Christian about your concubin-o." Then the 
 operator turned to the doctor and said : "Makee 
 one mistake. Want medicine for Number Two 
 wife." 
 
 On the main street of Hankow it was pointed 
 out to me that girls with banged hair were un- 
 
 57
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 married, and those with the hair of the forehead 
 squared pretty well back on the scalp were 
 married. This front hair is pulled out of a 
 bride's head, a hair at a time, and the mother- 
 in-law does the job. "What is the idea?"I asked 
 my informant, a woman. 
 
 "It's cruelty, sheer cruelty," she replied; 
 "cruelty that teaches subjection. The bound 
 foot is the same thing. It crushes the spirit as 
 well as the feet. Of course, one of the reasons 
 for its origin was to keep the wife from being 
 stolen, for they kidnap afoot in China, but the 
 basis of the custom is cruelty." 
 
 Along this main street in Hankow I saw many 
 girls who did not appear to be over nine or ten 
 years of age who were married and were work- 
 ing at benches. One girl, not over ten, was 
 sitting by the side of her husband, a merchant. 
 He could not have been under sixty. 
 
 The boy is the whole thing in China. The 
 more boys the greater the honor of the father. 
 This ambition for a multiplicity of sons results 
 in an over-production of all children, a dissipa- 
 tion of masculine strength and a surplus of girls. 
 I know there are people who will scoff at this 
 idea. But I stand for the idea with both feet, 
 and if I were so minded I could put up an argu- 
 ment for my side that would make the Roose- 
 
 58
 
 WRONGS OF CHINESE WOMEN 
 
 velt idea about race suicide look pretty sick. 
 
 The large and polygamous family in China is 
 against the vigor of the male, but it is more 
 against the female girl or woman. 
 
 There is a bit of relief from the sombre view 
 in the fact that China is improving. Girl infan- 
 ticide is decreasing. It is nonsense to say that 
 it has disappeared. 
 
 I asked the missionary doctor about this. 
 "The practice has decreased," he said. "There 
 is no doubt about that. But why don't they tear 
 down their girl towers? It would be more 
 reassuring if they did." 
 
 "What is a girl tower?" I asked. 
 
 "It is a stone turret with a small opening at 
 the top, so small that once an object is dropped 
 into the tower it can not be recovered. They 
 used to drop their surplus girls into these recep- 
 tacles. The practice is now absolutely prohib- 
 ited but they ought to tear these towers down." 
 
 Another thing: the custom of crushing the 
 women's feet is going out. It isn't gone by a 
 long shot, but it is passing, and that is some- 
 thing. I counted the women I passed in one 
 street in Hankow, and those with crushed feet 
 numbered two out of every eleven. 
 
 The higher class women of China are not 
 often visible. What their estate is I do not 
 
 59
 
 LIFE ALONG THE YANGTSE 
 
 know except as I read about it in books, and 
 there it is described in glowing colors. It may 
 be true enough. I have been dealing with the 
 women and children of the people. 
 
 What does the woman of China think of her 
 estate ? Probably nothing. Down in her heart, 
 I would like to bet a dollar to a doughnut, she 
 doesn't like promiscuity in her husband. I 
 don't think any normal woman ever did or ever 
 will. If that isn't true, why the human emotion 
 of jealousy? History, ancient and modern, Ori- 
 ental and Occidental, has never been without it. 
 And it is still in good working order in the breast 
 of our Chinese sister make no mistake about 
 that. 
 
 The Chinese women have a lot to learn, how- 
 ever, on the purely feminine side. It isn't their 
 fault that they haven't learned. They haven't 
 had the chance. Their features are lacking in 
 the charms that intellectuality imparts. Their 
 enforced inactivity has taken away many seduc- 
 tive lines of limb and body. Their greatest care 
 of coiffure or silken gown and they have all- 
 sufficient vanity to bestow worlds of attention 
 on both do not get the results such efforts 
 should get. I could go on and say that if the 
 Chinaman only knew it, he would be the winner 
 by her emancipation. But I am not going to do 
 
 60
 
 WRONGS OF CHINESE WOMEN 
 
 anything of the kind. The Chinese husband 
 has nothing coming to him except a long- 
 deferred punishment which, of course, he will 
 escape. 
 
 At the same time I think time will bring the 
 Oriental woman her emancipation. I am dead 
 sure that China can not mix very much of this 
 republican form of government up with her 
 daily life without starting something in the 
 kitchen, and heaven speed the day! 
 
 61
 
 IX 
 INTO THE BANDIT COUNTRY 
 
 WHEN we were about to begin the third 
 stage of our journey into the interior 
 of China we had warnings in plenty. 
 "I advise you not to go," said the consul general 
 at Hankow. Then, having done his official duty, 
 he lit a cigar and said: "I surely would like to 
 take that trip myself." 
 
 Everywhere in China white people talk about 
 the trip beyond the gorges. Everybody dreams 
 of the day when he will make the trip, and then 
 shivers at the prospect of doing it. "What!" I 
 have been asked a hundred times, "do you mean 
 to say that you are going beyond the gorges? 
 You're going to take the risk ? Well, I envy you." 
 Of course, that sort of an attitude makes you 
 eager to take the trip. Yet you do demand par- 
 ticulars about perils and don't get them. As 
 nearly as you can make out, the dangers are 
 two navigation and bandits. I hope to be able 
 to describe the dangers of navigation later. 
 
 62
 
 INTO THE BANDIT COUNTRY 
 
 This last stretch of the river, from where it 
 comes tumbling down out of the center of Asia 
 to Ichang, is infested with robbers. They have 
 a weakness for holding up boats bound for 
 Chung-King. Their object is money, but they 
 are miserably careless with fire-arms and noto- 
 riously poor shots, and accidents do happen. 
 The captain of the Siangtan, which brought us 
 from Hankow to Ichang, said that the boat from 
 Chung-King which arrived before his last trip 
 was held up four times. A major of the 
 United States army, who came down in Febru- 
 ary, was held up seven times. When he ap- 
 peared at this end, there was great rejoicing, as 
 his friends understood that he had been killed. 
 It was, however, another white man who met 
 that fate. 
 
 Now, I had this thing in mind twenty years 
 ago if I had wanted to travel across Oklahoma 
 near which I lived, I would have done so, 
 although the air at the time was full of the 
 exploits of Bill Doolin. And while I wouldn't 
 have lost any sleep, it is a cinch that the pas- 
 senger from New York on the same train would 
 have held his breath while he was crossing 
 Oklahoma. In other words, these bandit perils 
 are always a great deal more terrible when you 
 hear about them from a distance. 
 
 63
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 Perhaps this feeling of assurance, as arrived 
 at, was weakened a bit by the thought that a 
 Chinese bandit, like everything else in China, 
 might be a different brand from his brothers in 
 other parts of the world. 
 
 For nothing in China is the same. Recently a 
 Japanese patent medicine firm decided to open a 
 field in China. It came away up the river and 
 planted a big sign advising Chinese to use So 
 and So's pills for the liver and heart and so 
 forth. The Japanese are nothing if not enter- 
 prising, and they are some advertisers. But 
 they are not onto the curves of the Chinese. 
 The minute that sign went up the Chinese got 
 out the story that the Japanese government was 
 engaged in a gigantic conspiracy to get the 
 Chinese to take these pills and kill the whole 
 nation off. There has been no sale for these 
 pills since. 
 
 It is so in everything. A few years ago there 
 was a tremendous famine in this district. Peo- 
 ple by the hundreds of thousands died of starva- 
 tion. All the nations of the world sent aid. 
 From America came cheese. Many Chinese died 
 of starvation rather than touch it. They will 
 not eat cheese, any more than you would eat 
 kitten. 
 
 The chief engineer of the Siangtan told me 
 64
 
 INTO THE BANDIT COUNTRY 
 
 about the Chinese method of revenge whjch is 
 to kill yourself on the door-step of your enemy; 
 this puts the kibosh on him right it glues the 
 evil spirit to him and he might better commit 
 suicide himself to get out of the deal, and he 
 frequently does. The chief engineer said that 
 on one of the trips up the boat carried the wife 
 of a Chinese general and six or seven concu- 
 bines. The concubines fell to nagging the wife, 
 and they had a first-class family row. But the 
 wife won out over the concubines all right by 
 rushing to the rail before them all, casting her- 
 self into the river and drowning before their 
 eyes. That put the fixings to the concubines. 
 The boat put out and fished up the body. But 
 the big job on that trip the rest of the way was 
 to quiet those concubines. They weren't sorry, 
 but they were scared. The wife had tied a 
 "haunt" on them, and life wasn't worth living. 
 
 The Chinese will not rescue drowning persons 
 in the Yangtse. The idea is that the spirit of 
 the Yangtse is claiming a soul, and interference 
 would cause the spirit great offense. Nice 
 philosophy, that; nice kindly philosophy. 
 
 As we shoved our way up the river, I thought 
 a great many times how it would be possible 
 to describe the landscape to folks in America. 
 To tell you there were fertile plains, green and 
 
 65
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 beautiful, dotted with little white settlments and 
 backed by blue mountains in the distance does 
 not mean much. I have wondered if I should 
 give a list of the things which are absent, if it 
 wouldn't give you a better idea of the country. 
 I'll try. There is, first of all, no smoke from 
 railroad and factory. There are no windmills or 
 silos or haystacks. There are no herds, no 
 roads, no chimneys, no lawns, no fences, no rec- 
 ognizable barns. I have seen chickens, but no 
 coops, sheep but no pastures, pigs but no pens. 
 There are no swinging doors to the houses, and 
 precious few windows that is, an almost entire 
 absence of glass. I have seen but little leather 
 of any kind, and no rubber. The average town 
 along the Yangtse is either white or without 
 paint at all. There is no artificial color in a 
 Chinese landscape. The temples and the pago- 
 das may have been brilliant once. They are not 
 now. This is a primitive people. They have 
 little, and they are not in the way of getting 
 more. They have, to my mind, the richest land 
 on earth and the most poverty I have ever seen. 
 It is a condition that ought to make robbery a 
 seductive sort of a calling. But notwithstand- 
 ing, I did not expect to meet any bandits on the 
 upper river, as I had been warned. 
 
 66
 
 THE HOME OF A DRAGON PRINCE 
 
 I TRACKED the Chinese dragon to his lair, 
 and I had blistered feet to show for it. It 
 came about in this way: There was a ten- 
 day wait in the city of Ichang for a steamer up 
 the Yangtse river, and while there I heard 
 about the home of the dragon, and set out to 
 visit it. The trip is accounted eleven miles, and 
 as a precaution against exhaustion we had 
 chairs go along, although we did not use them 
 much. I tried mine. For safety, I would rather 
 use a Ford any day. There were four men ahold 
 of my chair, the poles of which were about six- 
 teen feet long. Two men were in front of me 
 and two behind. They dogtrot a short distance 
 and the first man yells "ban-go," the chair is 
 balanced on an upright stick and the poles are 
 shifted to a new place on the carriers' shoul- 
 ders. On a level piece of ground it is a nice 
 swinging ride, and I was approving it when we 
 struck out suddenly on a narrow mountain trail 
 
 67
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 and as suddenly came upon a sharp turn around 
 a boulder and over a chasm. Just what the rear 
 men did I can't tell; I couldn't afford to look 
 back, but the two front men had a dickens of a 
 time. They all yelled at once and the two front 
 men backed and filled and in some inexplicable 
 way swung out into the air and then swung me 
 out after them. I didn't like it, and I let out a 
 protest myself. It would be an awfully humili- 
 ating thing to be killed riding in the most primi- 
 tive mode of conveyance a chair. We had to 
 do several break-neck bits, and I preferred, for 
 the most part, to walk. 
 
 We traveled up a valley which slashes through 
 the mountains with a small chattering brook at 
 the bottom. This valley is in the interior of 
 China, the trail is never over twenty inches 
 wide, and most of the things I saw were exactly 
 as they have been for four thousand years. Men 
 were ploughing with bullocks ; the plow a wooden 
 stick. I saw harrows about three feet square, 
 a boy spread out, face downward, on the imple- 
 ment. Fields of paddy rice, in terraced lakes, 
 reached to the top of the hills, and there was a 
 sort of kafir corn, little patches of poor cotton, 
 sweet potatoes, red peppers and a few pumpkin 
 vines. The average field could not have been 
 over a third of an acre. 
 
 68
 
 THE HOME OF A DRAGON PRINCE 
 
 The houses were fairly good. We had a close 
 view of them, as the trail we followed went 
 through front yards, over front and back 
 porches, and occasionally straight through a cot- 
 tage. In a good many instances fire-crackers were 
 touched off, either to overcome our influence 
 or to welcome us I got both explanations. At 
 very frequent intervals we passed little wayside 
 shrines, coops of stone in which four or five 
 plaster gods stood. The people looked prosper- 
 ous in a way. We passed many of them on the 
 trail once a jolly farmer carrying his twin 
 girls, each in a basket, and the two swung to a 
 pole across his shoulders. At another point we 
 came upon a country belle, clad in beautiful blue 
 embroidered trousers, and she stumped ahead of 
 us on her bound feet with great fear. Some of 
 the older men saluted us, but generally there 
 was a retreat by the whole family indoors, and 
 then a cautious and curious issuing forth after 
 we had passed. 
 
 As we mounted higher into the hills we saw 
 many blue-jays, with tails ten or twelve inches 
 long and vividly green and red dragon flies and 
 many praying mancas, a sort of Chinese grass- 
 hopper. The echoes of the valley were marvel- 
 ous at places, and at one point we listened to a 
 Chinese girl shaking rice in a sieve fully a mile 
 
 69
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 away. Farther along we came upon a dog, 
 perched upon a rock, and awaking in the dis- 
 tance a whole world of canine echoes. He 
 seemed possessed and gaunt evidently indus- 
 triously barking his life away at foes who did 
 not exist. 
 
 Our objective was Lung- Wan-Tung the cave 
 of the dragon prince; that is, the home of the 
 king of the dragons. It would be difficult to tell 
 where China got this dragon idea. Politically, 
 China is trying to get rid of it. The republic 
 has put it off the flag and postage stamp, but it 
 persists everywhere else, and the people up in 
 this valley believe that the old he-dragon of the 
 whole outfit lives in a subterranean cave up in 
 these mountains. They have so believed for 
 centuries. No one has ever seen him, but that 
 makes no difference. 
 
 The mountain-side at the head of the valley is 
 broken off and a great ledge of rocks sticks out 
 over the entrance to the cave. Beneath this 
 ledge, and completely roofed by it, stands a very 
 large and beautiful temple. In the front yard 
 of this temple is a big stone fountain, and into 
 this fountain pours a stream of water from the 
 edge of the ledge two hundred feet above. This 
 water sparkling in the sunshine gives a really 
 beautiful effect. 
 
 70
 
 THE HOME OF A DRAGON PRINCE 
 
 The priest of the temple gave us a cordial 
 welcome. I didn't get him right at the start, 
 but eventually got onto his curves. I thought 
 he wanted to take my hat. But that wasn't it. 
 He wanted to shake hands. I did shake hands 
 with him, but his finger nails were so long that 
 I had the sensation of feeling around in a 
 bureau drawer full of razors. We passed on 
 through the temple. The gilded gods in double 
 row in front of the altar were on hand, a deep- 
 toned bell which I tried, and also a barrel-shaped 
 drum which I thumped once for luck. There 
 also appeared in this shrine three umbrellas of 
 "ten thousand memories." These are umbrellas 
 hung over with thousands of labels carrying 
 Chinese characters. At some former period 
 several thousand admirers of some priest each 
 contributed a label and presented the whole 
 business to the temple. They were very old, 
 dilapidated and discolored, these umbrellas. 
 
 The priest did not accompany us to the cave, 
 immediately back of the altar why he did not, 
 we could not make out. Boats floated at the 
 edge of the lake, but the water was up to the 
 roof of the cavern, and we could not push back 
 into it. It has never been explored. That 
 keeps the dragon story good. 
 
 Now, it is impossible to understand China. 
 71
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 One soon wearies of asking why. The country 
 simply does not parse. If a procession passes 
 along the river bank at night, firing crackers, 
 beating gongs and yelling, you can't find out 
 why, and you quit trying. If a boatload of men 
 at 8 o'clock in the morning come drifting down 
 the current in a row boat, beating gongs and 
 playing pipes, you want to know what it is all 
 about. You won't find out. I am convinced 
 that a lot of these Chinese do things they can't 
 explain themselves. But although your curi- 
 osity is likely to callous, China remains the coun- 
 try of constant surprises. 
 
 Here I was in an unfrequented valley in the 
 interior of China at an ancient shrine. My host 
 was a holy man far removed from contact with 
 civilization. Whatever Greece had given to the 
 world, whatever Rome had contributed to life, 
 he remained innocent of. He, his shrine and 
 his parishioners, their faith, their works, their 
 lives and labors and loves were all alike alien to 
 this age as I know it. My coat, my shoes, my 
 hat, even my nose glasses, had been the objects 
 of the closest but most polite scrutiny. I might 
 as well have dropped from Mars or Saturn. 
 
 And then the old priest, before we said good- 
 bye, produced from the bottom of a chest a 
 photograph yellow with age a photograph of 
 
 72
 
 THE HOME OF A DRAGON PRINCE 
 
 himself taken in his youth. He showed it to me 
 with pride. It was a good likeness and unmis- 
 takably my host in his younger days. And in 
 the photograph he was wearing pointed shoes, a 
 sack coat, a standing collar and a derby. Where 
 had he been in his youth? I don't know. But 
 he had come back in his old age to be the guard- 
 ian of the dragon. 
 
 73
 
 XI 
 HANDLING THE YANGTSE JUNKS 
 
 ALL the big Yangtse river steamers stop 
 at Ichang, for the gorges are beyond, 
 and the gorges stop things. Everything 
 in the way of cargo the steamers bring this far 
 is unloaded, repacked in smaller packages and 
 put on junks for the trip over the rapids. 
 
 Here is a junk as she raises anchor for the 
 trip up through the gorges. A man climbs to 
 the top of the sixty-foot mast and ties a delicate 
 little ornament to it, the daintiest things I have 
 seen in China. Simultaneously someone on 
 board turns loose a lot of fire-crackers, and im- 
 mediately after the gongs are going. It is no 
 use to ask why, but no self -respecting junk ever 
 starts without this racket. After this Fourth 
 of July celebration, the men all lay hold of the 
 ropes (they are made of braided bamboo) and 
 begin a song, and the sail spreads to the breeze. 
 Usually the skipper plants himself well forward 
 and sounds a tin whistle. This is whistling for 
 
 74
 
 HANDLING THE YANGTSE JUNKS 
 
 the wind. You may think this is Chinese. It 
 is not. Skippers have whistled for the wind 
 since the days of Ulysses. When the junks 
 reach the gorges they are dragged through by 
 the sailors. 
 
 Now, what do they carry? Cotton, tobacco, 
 cinnamon bark, ginger, in season tea, silk and a 
 good deal of cotton piece goods and medicine. 
 The Chinese are some medicine takers. About 
 every fourth door in a Chinese city is a medicine 
 shop. The stuff is almost always dry, and it 
 is set out in little dishes. It includes every- 
 thing on earth and then some dried skin, 
 powdered scorpions, granulated lizard and all 
 the herbs that grow. Ask a Chinese what some 
 queer looking object is, and if he doesn't know 
 he will answer "medicine." He figures that it 
 is a good guess, and it usually is. The highest- 
 priced medicine in China is the stomach of mos- 
 quitoes. It is given for kidney trouble. As a 
 good deal of the medicine is vegetable, it prob- 
 ably does very little harm, and I have met some 
 white men who say that, for ailments like 
 fevers, it is sometimes efficacious. 
 
 When a junk arrives at Ichang on its down- 
 river trip it is a great occasion for those on 
 board ; that is, for the men. They get to see the 
 town. I have never seen a Chinese woman or 
 
 75
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 the children get off a junk, so all they get to see 
 is from the river. A junk costs somewhere 
 around $500 gold, and it is usually owned by one 
 family that is, grandfather, father and son. 
 Their children are born on the junks, and they 
 live and die there. You will see chickens, pigs' 
 and dogs aboard; everything, in fact, necessary 
 to keep a household going. The only creatures 
 who enjoy a square deal are the men and the 
 ducks. Both get away from the junks occa- 
 sionally. Nobody else does. 
 
 When the junks arrive, they line up along the 
 shore about eight deep, with an occasional lane 
 left between them. This lane is for the sam- 
 pans. The sampan is a small row-boat, manned 
 by two oarsmen, usually an old man and a boy. 
 They do all the traffic between boats. The cur- 
 rent of the river is very swift, and the handling 
 of these sampans is worth crossing the Pacific to 
 see. The sampan goes down stream like a 
 rocket, and about all the labor necessary is with 
 the rudder. But up-stream is another matter. 
 The up-stream thing is accomplished by a bam- 
 boo pole on one end of which is a hook, on the 
 other a sharp point. The sampan itself is about 
 twenty feet long; the bamboo pole about ten. 
 Let us say that a sampan bound up-stream 
 comes to a place where the end of one junk is 
 
 76
 
 HANDLING THE YANGTSE JUNKS 
 
 forty-five feet away from the end of another 
 junk. It is necessary for the sampan to cross 
 this open space. The sum of the length of the 
 sampan and two poles is forty feet. That 
 leaves five feet to be negotiated in swift water. 
 The man on the rear shoves his pole against one 
 junk and gives the sampan headway across the 
 five feet, and the man on the prow grabs the 
 next junk with his hook and drags the boat up 
 to the junk. Now, it is etiquette to jab and 
 hook other sampans, and the result is one of the 
 most amusing things on earth. One sampan 
 may get a good forward start when plunk! a 
 hook from another sampan will stick into his 
 boat and drag him back. There is but one thing 
 to be done, and that is to throw his hook into 
 anything in front of him. This he usually does, 
 and the next boat has to find something to hold 
 onto. The head boat in a procession like this 
 naturally has a dickens of a time. The whole 
 river traffic seems to be tied up to him and to 
 be dragging him back. But he yells at the whole 
 pack and rushes for something to hook onto, 
 and I have never yet seen him fail to grab hold 
 of something. Occasionally one will see a line 
 of twenty sampans hanging onto a vessel under 
 sail and stealing its power. With any other 
 nation on earth, this continuous appropriation 
 
 77
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 of power and interference with boats would 
 lead to a riot. 
 
 Even as it is, the Chinese quarrel a lot along 
 the river bank. I have seen at least fifty fights, 
 and I had one interpreted. The Chinese do not 
 strike; they shove with open hands. But be- 
 fore they begin pushing, they talk. They are 
 positively the noisiest talkers on earth. They 
 have the worst of tempers, and they soon lose 
 all control of themselves. After they have 
 argued for a while, one of the combatants shoves 
 the other, and the man who has been pushed 
 simply throws a fit. He jumps up and down 
 and screams. It must be that touching is 
 equivalent to a blow. Then the man who has 
 pushed walks away, apparently satisfied. At 
 once the man who was throwing a fit follows the 
 other up and says something to him and re- 
 treats, and the pusher runs back at the pushee, 
 and the air is eloquent of murder. But I soon 
 learned to quit holding my breath. It only 
 meant a renewal of the argument. There is 
 charge and answer a regular debate, and the 
 crowd, which forms a good old civilized circle, 
 laughs at the shots given. The pusher calls the 
 pushee's father a cock-roach, and the pushee 
 says the pusher's father was a scorpion. Then 
 the pusher charges that the pushee's great- 
 
 78
 
 HANDLING THE YANGTSE JUNKS 
 
 grandfather was a cross-eyed tarantula and so 
 on, exhausting the whole insect world (they do 
 not bring in the dog). Finally the man who 
 first denounces the other's eighteenth ancestor 
 wins. But he mustn't jump any in between. 
 He must come up to it regularly and in order. 
 And when the winner does it, he puts his nose 
 up in the air, pulls up his skirts and stalks away 
 triumphantly a real Yellow Hope. 
 
 79
 
 XII 
 A STATION WITHOUT A RAILROAD 
 
 I CHANG is a city of some fifty thousand 
 souls, and now that they have moved 
 some of the graveyard, it is on a regular, 
 rip-snorting boom. It will be a cracker-jack 
 place if they ever get any cars on their rail- 
 road. Three big things have happened here in 
 the last few years that have stirred the commu- 
 nity to its depths. 
 
 The first thing was this : For a couple of thou- 
 sand years or so, Ichang failed to land a schol- 
 arship of the first degree. Time after time it 
 sent students to Peking to take the examination, 
 but the bunch always came trapsing home with 
 second, third and tenth degree scholarships, and 
 in the course of a century or two the town got 
 all fussed up about it. Eventually the people 
 appealed to the priest and after twenty or thirty 
 years' study the priest hit upon the nigger in 
 the wood-pile. Right across the river from 
 Ichang is a pointed hill called the "Pyramid." 
 
 80
 
 A STATION WITHOUT A RAILROAD 
 
 The priest said that the evil influence of this hill 
 was certainly putting the kibosh on the place. 
 The hill is too big to be cut down, so the priest 
 suggested that the community select another 
 hill on this side of the river and build a temple 
 on it and thus overcome the devilish voodoo of 
 the Pyramid. It worked, all right. The very 
 next examination Ichang landed a first scholar- 
 ship, and things from that moment began mov- 
 ing. And this led to the second factor in 
 Ichang's prosperity. 
 
 The second thing was road-building. As 
 Ichang prospered after putting a quietus on the 
 Pyramid, revenues accumulated and it became 
 necessary to spend them. Somebody thought of 
 roads chiefly because there is no place for 
 roads and no traffic for them. It took like wild- 
 fire this road idea, and like wild-fire it spread. 
 For it was perfectly plain that if any roads were 
 to be built, the graveyard must be moved, and it 
 was equally plain that if the graveyard was 
 moved that the plain, common people would pull 
 some coin out of the deal. This requires expla- 
 nation. A Chinaman's relation to his dead is 
 the biggest thing in life. Ordinarily the dead 
 are not immediately buried. They are stuck 
 around until the survivor can get enough money 
 together to pull off a first-class funeral It 
 
 81
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 doesn't make much difference where the late 
 lamented are stuck, either. There is one corpse 
 on a scow in this river port that moves out to 
 the ships with every load of cargo, and the cap- 
 tain of this boat tells me that this coffin has 
 been on this particular scow now for over a year. 
 When the funeral is finally pulled off, a big 
 round mound, four feet high, eight feet in 
 diameter, is built over the coffin and the place is 
 considered inviolate. It must not be disturbed, 
 and no shadow must fall across it. Now, peo- 
 ple in Ichang have been dying with great regu- 
 larity for a long time, and the way the grave- 
 yard spread in the course of centuries was a 
 caution. It elbowed up against the city's walls 
 and then flooded out over hill and dale. Here, 
 then, was a proposal to get rid of a part of it, 
 for the purpose of putting in some rock roads. 
 How could this be done in face of the ancient 
 Chinese prejudice against disturbing the dead? 
 Well, they could be moved, and the families of 
 the deceased could be recompensed for the ex- 
 penses of the removal. It was a clever idea of 
 the politicians, and it had everybody excited. 
 About seventy-five cents silver was allowed for 
 every grave removed. The whole population got 
 busy locating its ancestors. There were hot dis- 
 putes over many of the mounds, and there were 
 
 82
 
 A STATION WITHOUT A RAILROAD 
 
 some cases where one skeleton was palmed off 
 twice on the authorities. However, on the 
 whole it worked out fine. Everybody got his 
 money, and the market quotations on ancestors 
 will probably never rule as strong in China 
 again. Coolies dug up the dead, and in instances 
 where corpses were ornamented with rich and 
 ancient jewelry, had first-class scratching 
 matches over the booty. The dead were all 
 dumped together somewhere just where I have 
 found no one willing to testify. At all events, a 
 township was cleared off and the authorities 
 started in to build the roads. A good many 
 white men have been out to see these roads, and 
 they usually come back with the feeling in their 
 heads that a boy has after he has finished his 
 first lesson in geometry. I tried some of the 
 roads. They don't lead anywhere, except that 
 one I tried came back eventually and landed me 
 where I started. I felt really grateful about 
 that. It seemed reasonable. This road con- 
 struction has given a lot of poor people work, 
 and is really a meritorious public work. You 
 will realize what I mean when I tell you that I 
 saw many a woman nursing a baby on one arm 
 and pounding rock with the other, and glad of 
 the chance. The roads are about sixty feet wide, 
 and a sort of a Belgian block, and well curbed. 
 
 83
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 Now, this road activity has done a lot for the 
 town, and it supplements in a way the railroad, 
 which is the third factor in the new era in the 
 history of Ichang. The railroad station is a big 
 two-story building one of the best in China 
 and the round house is a wonder. The station 
 has never seen a passenger, or the round house 
 a locomotive, for the railroad isn't built yet. 
 Some years ago a Chinese company was formed 
 and started in to build a line up to Chung-King, 
 four hundred miles away. Fifteen miles out of 
 town they ran up against a mountain and 
 couldn't get over and had to quit. The national 
 government concluded to take over the property 
 and the stockholders howled, and I have been 
 told that it was these same stockholders who 
 called President Yuan Shih Kai's hand when he 
 tried to switch himself into an emperor. At any 
 rate, the government did not get the railroad. 
 What happened was this: You remember that 
 five big nations, America included, agreed to 
 make China a loan. This was during one Amer- 
 ican President's administration. Our Wall street 
 crowd got in, and as part of their concession 
 were given the right to construct this line from 
 Ichang to Chung-King, which is in Szechuan, the 
 richest State in China. The railroad will be a 
 gold mine. American engineers got over the 
 
 84
 
 A STATION WITHOUT A RAILROAD 
 
 mountain difficulty by planning a three-mile 
 tunnel through the hill, at an estimated cost of 
 $1,000,000. Then bang! Another American 
 came in as President, and it is said refused to 
 back the American financiers in their railroad 
 loan deal with China, and the whole thing fell 
 through. 
 
 All this delay doesn't disturb the Chinaman. 
 True, he hasn't a railroad. But look at that 
 station, and behold that beautiful roundhouse. 
 The Chinese population go and walk around it 
 and admire it and exclaim among themselves 
 over what a truly wonderful thing a railroad is, 
 and how it develops the country. They don't 
 exactly figure out what the station and round 
 house are for, but a little thing like that doesn't 
 disturb the citizens of Ichang. And if some- 
 body should come along and announce that a 
 locomotive was building and would be sent to 
 occupy the round house in 2216 A. D., they 
 wouldn't bat an eye. 
 
 But the town is booming all right on the 
 prospects. The only thing which really surprises 
 me is that all these signs of prosperity don't kill 
 the place deader than a door-nail it would be 
 so beautifully contrary and so typically Chinese 
 if they did. 
 
 For things are certainly upside down in this 
 85
 
 NEW AND OLD IN THE INTERIOR 
 
 town. Every night I heard the watchman go 
 through the streets whacking a gong. I dug 
 out of the chief of police what the idea is. It 
 was to notify the thieves that someone was on 
 guard and they might better beware. 
 
 Every day there passed us a blind beggar 
 carrying a little tinkly bell. I gave him a penny 
 one day, and he turned upon me a face that was 
 as impressive as a graven image. Was he 
 thankful? Not on your life. It was my place 
 to be thankful. Why? Because the obligation 
 was on me to be thankful to him for giving me 
 the opportunity to be generous. Do you get 
 that? 
 
 There was a gambling resort across the way, 
 and every night the gang had a noisy game 
 which kept me awake. The game is this: A 
 Chinaman throws his hand into the air with a 
 certain number of fingers showing two three 
 four. Simultaneously and it must be simul- 
 taneously the gang yells out its guess two 
 three four. The fellow who misses the guess 
 that is, yells two when three fingers are 
 shown is forced to take a drink. In any other 
 country on earth the loser has to set up the 
 drinks. Here in Ichang the winners make the 
 loser drink. 
 
 I suppose the law of contraries is limitless. I 
 86
 
 A STATION WITHOUT A RAILROAD 
 
 stopped to watch some Chinese children playing 
 hop-scotch in the street. I hadn't seen a game 
 for thirty years, but I remembered the figure 
 we used to scratch on the ground, or chalk on 
 the sidewalk, and I wasn't surprised to find that 
 the Chinese figure was the same, except that 
 they had it turned upside down. 
 No wonder Ichang built the round house first. 
 
 87
 
 XIII 
 THE YANGTSE GORGES 
 
 I TRAVELED twelve thousand miles to see 
 the most tremendous piece of natural scen- 
 ery in the world. If it had proved a lemon, 
 it would take more fortitude than I have to own 
 up to it. But as the scenery proved better than 
 the advertisement, I feel that a lot of people will 
 say that I am over-stating in order to justify 
 the journey. 
 
 I am not going to over-state. I think I can 
 under-state and make my trip seem worth- 
 while. Indeed, I hope I can induce some of my 
 readers to make the trip, and some of you will, 
 because once they get a railroad up into this 
 country, the world will flock here to fill itself 
 with awe over the gorges of the Yangtse. 
 
 The Yangtse stretches practically across 
 China. For one hundred and twenty-five miles 
 it bores through a mountain range which lies 
 across its path about half way down to the 
 sea. On this stretch the river is bordered by 
 
 88
 
 JUNKS SAILING IN THE BACK CURRENT 
 
 THE TRACKERS OF THE YANGTSE
 
 THE YANGTSE GORGES 
 
 high mountains all the way, and at eight dif- 
 ferent places in this stretch the mountains 
 crowd the river into a mere thread. It is all 
 gorge, although there are eight places of sur- 
 passing interest. 
 
 The eight gorges have the following names. 
 Curiously, the mountain range in which they 
 are located is, Chinese fashion, un-named: 
 
 1. Yellow Cat. 
 
 2. Lampshine. 
 
 3. Ox Liver and Horse Lungs. 
 
 4. Mitan. 
 
 5. Iron Coffin. 
 
 6. Witches' Mountain. 
 
 7. Bellows Gorge. 
 
 8. Gorge of the Eight Cliffs. 
 
 This uncovered tunnel cuts the province of 
 Szechuan off from the rest of China. Szechuan 
 is about twice as big as Kansas, and its popula- 
 tion nearly that of the whole of the United 
 States. For four thousand years only about one 
 man out of every 500,000 born in this province 
 has ever gotten out of it. It is the richest State 
 in China, and is absolutely isolated from the 
 rest of the world. These gorges do it. 
 
 The Yellow Cat and Lampshine gorges are 
 towering hills of limestone and sandstone, some- 
 thing like the Columbia Dalles in Oregon, and 
 
 89
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 not quite as imposing. The river narrows to six 
 hundred feet at Ox Liver gorge, and the water 
 deepens at places to three hundred and fifty 
 feet. A peculiar stalactite formation sticks out 
 on the face of the sheer cliff and, overhanging 
 the river, gives the place its name. The fourth 
 gorge, Mitan, is a very short one four miles 
 and the mountains rise to a height of 3,500 
 feet. Between this gorge and the next are the 
 Stone Gates, two shelf rocks, which run out into 
 the river and leave only a little passage way 
 for traffic. This gate passed, the world is left 
 outside. The next gorge is the Iron Coffin. 
 The approach to this shows two box-like ledges 
 of calcareous rock, discolored by water. The 
 Witches' Mountain gorge is a very long affair 
 twenty-four miles. The sun is shut out and the 
 defile is full of floating mists, which touch the 
 whole scene with an air of gloom, and this is 
 intensified by the appearance on all sides of 
 yawning caves, high up and low down. This is 
 followed shortly by the Bellows gorge, by far 
 the most tremendous of the lot, and probably 
 the most awe-inspiring piece of work that 
 nature has turned out. The mountains pile in 
 upon the river and cramp it down to a span. 
 The cliffs rise sheer on either side, the highest 
 going to 5,000 feet. Great rifts in the face of 
 
 90
 
 THE YANGTSE GORGES 
 
 the rock open black depths, and dark mouths of 
 caverns show on both sides. Photography is 
 out of the question for an amateur. Almost 
 instantly, the pall of the thing descends upon 
 your soul. In the dark sides of the gloomy 
 walls, a cleft is suddenly revealed four hundred 
 feet above and in it two clay pots. The place is 
 inaccessible, and the pots were fashioned by 
 human hands. How did they get there? No 
 one knows. They have been there for centuries, 
 beyond the record of history. The legend is 
 that the devil put them there. I asked the cap- 
 tain about it, and he said that the river must 
 have risen that high once upon a time. Yet he 
 confessed that that explanation didn't seem 
 reasonable. Can it be that the Chinese, the 
 inventors of gun powder, the printing press and 
 so many other things, once had a flying machine 
 and forgot it ? It might be. And whether that 
 be true or not, I can foresee a day when a China- 
 man in an Occidental aeroplane will hook those 
 pots down, just to spite the devil. 
 
 Out through the deepening shadows of the 
 rrorge in the distance looms on a mountain crest 
 :; great white pagoda, and beyond it, plastered 
 like a painted toy against the side of a beetling 
 hill, a yellow temple, and below it a city, its 
 crenelated wall reaching from the water's edge 
 
 91
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 far up the hill-slope and making the city look 
 like shot that has fallen into one end of a bag, 
 for the wall encloses not only the city, but farms 
 beside. Above this humps a high-arched 
 bridge at the foot of a cataract. It makes a 
 pretty picture seen from out the overtowering 
 crags and framed in the black edges which form 
 the mouth of the gorge. Here the rugged cinder 
 of one of nature's hot passions grown cold, and 
 there the ordered picture of man's handicraft. 
 Then of a sudden, as if nature had felt the chal- 
 lenge, the tips of the cliffs of the gorge burst 
 into living flames of purple and red. The sink- 
 ing sun has set them afire with a thousand 
 dancing prisms of liquid light. The deepening 
 shadows of the gorge are shot through and 
 through with films of gold inlaid in violet. And 
 as the reds and purples fade and faint, and at 
 last beat out, as a beautiful butterfly dies, in the 
 golden glory of a waning day, nature, as usual, 
 comes out winner. 
 
 92
 
 xiy 
 
 MEN'S BATTLE WITH A RIVER 
 
 EVERY boy who was fortunate enough to 
 be reared on the banks of a swift-running 
 river, has a normal curiosity about and a 
 rather intimate^ knowledge of the mysteries of 
 moving water. The gentlest element on earth 
 when left alone is water. Even the tiniest 
 flame will burn. A zephyr can keep you from 
 unfolding a newspaper. But for real docility, 
 water, in a bucket, is a perfect picture of peace. 
 But start water down hill and it wakes up. And 
 slap it alongside the jaw, trip it up, pound it 
 over the head and kick it from behind, and this 
 self -same, calf -eyed, purring water can go 
 crazier than anything on this mundane sphere. 
 
 I have seen a good many delirious actions by 
 water in my time, but I never saw anything 
 quite so violently insane as the Upper Yangtse. 
 
 As the Yangtse comes down out of the snows 
 of the world's roof and cuts across Szechuan, it 
 
 93
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 jumps from rock to rock in a joyous, light- 
 hearted way, at peace with the world, and by 
 the time it reaches Chung-King it has become a 
 big, dignified river with a strut. Its bed is wide 
 and deep, and it moves along with the easy grace 
 of a man accepting a renomination for office. 
 But below this city things begin to happen to 
 the river. The mountains sneak up on it and 
 squeeze it. Even that wouldn't be so bad if the 
 river kept straight, but the mountains twist it 
 into right angles, and the water begins to snort. 
 Still it could keep its head, if that were all. It 
 isn't. Rocks jam out into it from the sides and 
 boulders jab it up from underneath. The 
 Yangtse stands a good deal of this and keeps 
 steady for a while, but when it has been basted 
 and blasted and beaten sidewise about five or six 
 hundred times, it simply goes off on the wildest, 
 eerie-eyed, fire-breathing shindig that it is pos- 
 sible for anybody outside an insane asylum to 
 imagine. 
 
 Between Chung-King and Ichang, down the 
 river four hundred miles, I quit counting the 
 rapids they were too numerous, but I watched 
 with renewed interest the skill of the junkmen 
 in handling the current in this stretch the 
 most difficult navigation in the world. 
 
 It takes a junk about thirty days to travel 
 94
 
 MEN'S BATTLE WITH A RIVER 
 
 from Ichang to Chung-King. At places, if four 
 miles is made in twelve hours, it is considered 
 great luck. There is only one thing in favour of 
 the junk, usually the wind is blowing up the 
 gorges the Chinese say this is a gift of the 
 gods. The sail helps a little. 
 
 To my eye the water seemed to have five 
 actions. First, the swirl, which makes the river 
 for four hundred miles look as if it were covered 
 with vaccination marks; second, the straight 
 rush down a slope; third, the whirlpool, and 
 some are enormous and deep; fourth, the eddy, 
 which carries the water at the banks up-stream, 
 and fifth, the undertow, which is powerful. 
 Frequently all five of these movements are in 
 operation simultaneously. No light craft couM 
 live in it, and only one steamer succeeds in 
 reaching Chung-King under its own power. 
 The alternative is to drag the craft up, and that 
 is what the junkmen do and have been doing for 
 four thousand years. The men who do the drag- 
 ging are called trackers. Cut into the mountain 
 walls are trails, mostly stone stairs, up and 
 down interminably. The trackers line up along 
 this track, take hold of a bamboo rope and haul 
 away. It sounds simple. And it isn't. It is 
 a long, continuous dead pull, when the river is 
 straight, and it is a back-breaking performance 
 
 95
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 whenever a rapid is encountered, and when a 
 turn in the river and a rapids are both present, 
 one sees one of the most interesting spectacles 
 of the whole Orient. 
 
 I watched a junk round a point called Ye 
 Tan, and I want, if I may, to tell you about it. 
 A big, rocky point sticks out into the river. Oh 
 this point is the only mechanical device I saw 
 on the whole river trip two wooden rollers set 
 in a frame. The rope runs over this and is thus 
 saved from being torn. The Chinaman who owns 
 it charges four cash a junk for its use less 
 than half a cent. On the lower side of the Ye 
 Tan Rapids, a great fleet of junks had gathered, 
 waiting their turns. Finally the one with the 
 right of way was swung out. The man at the 
 rudder stood ready ; twenty men had hold of the 
 forward sweep, the telegraph pole which sticks 
 out in front to steady the boat and two boys 
 stood by the sail. Out in front ran a bamboo 
 rope, and at the other end of it on the bank, 
 were one hundred naked men with smaller 
 ropes attached to this main line and fastened 
 around their chests. All was ready. Suddenly 
 there sounded above the crash and roar of the 
 water, the roll of a tattoo, rapid and incessant. 
 It was made by a small boy at the foot of the 
 mast. He was beating a skin stretched across a 
 
 96
 
 MEN'S BATTLE WITH A RIVER 
 
 big pot. This tattoo can be heard above all 
 other noises, and is a signal that all is well. 
 As the drum began to rattle the trackers 
 bent to the task and started their song 
 a mournful chant that echoed through the 
 chasms in endless repetition. The junk swung 
 out in the rapids. The river clutched her, shook 
 her, dragged her back and down. The long 
 bamboo rope vibrated like a fiddle string. The 
 men were screaming their song now. They 
 moved forward a foot, two, three, four. The 
 junk shivered under the twist of the water; the 
 drum beat sounded louder. It was a magnifi- 
 cent battle between the mad river and the frenz- 
 ied trackers. The river was winning. The steps 
 of the trackers grew shorter. They made a foot 
 now ; six inches only that time, an inch the next. 
 The boss was at their side, rushing wildly back 
 and forth, yelling like mad and brandishing his 
 whip. The junk swung full into the current. 
 She shook like a living thing struck in a vital 
 spot. Bang! The river was winning. The boat 
 stopped and careened in the roaring rapids. 
 Down, one after another, went the trackers. 
 Now the whole hundred were on all fours 
 every mother's son of them, like big dogs. Their 
 chant was desperate now, a screaming frenzied 
 chorus of rage and defiance. Still the drum 
 
 97
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 sounded. Up and down the line of prostrate, 
 sweating men, the sinews of their bodies swell- 
 ing like whip-cords, tore the boss, brandishing 
 his whip and striking now right, now left. The 
 lead man was up. He had gotten his hands off 
 the earth and was getting back to upright again, 
 inch by inch. Then the next coolie to him lifted 
 a hand from the ground, then two, and worked 
 back to the attitude of a man again ; and so on, 
 one by one the hundred trackers gained their 
 feet once more. They felt the forward move of 
 the long line, the quivering junk straightened, 
 started, moved forward, first an inch, then two 
 and the Yangtse had lost. 
 
 98
 
 XV 
 
 IF you want strange experiences, the Upper 
 Yangtse is the place for you. Above the 
 gorges, on the other side of the world, life 
 isn't merely a succession of days dovetailing 
 nicely into one another. Not by a long shot. 
 And for that reason a problem in the interior 
 of China becomes a problem. When we reached 
 the city of Wanhsien there came out to meet us 
 a young American representative of an Ameri- 
 can corporation, a blonde young man with a 
 jovial, cordial way about him that made you his 
 friend before he shook your hand. Now this 
 young American appears for the moment the 
 most popular man in China. Wanhsien is the 
 center of the bandit district and they have been 
 kicking up dust all summer. Twice the young 
 American argued the bandits out of the idea of 
 looting the city, and everybody in town knows 
 it and bobs, like Punch in the show, when he 
 passes. Well, two weeks ago the leading citizens
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 of Wanhsien foregathered and decided to give 
 their deliverer something. And as the young 
 man got the rumor, the decision was to present 
 him with a wife. The prominent citizens, noting 
 he wasn't married, determined among them- 
 selves that this would be a fine gift. At least, 
 so he heard. And he went up in the air, natu- 
 rally. He wasn't looking for any gift and least 
 of all for a Chinese wife. But how to refuse a 
 gift that was the question. Here was all this 
 popularity and if he refused the wife well 
 puff out would go all this popularity like an 
 explosion of gun-cotton. He must not give of- 
 fense. And while he was debating the thing 
 up came the delegation of prominent citizens 
 and presented him, not with one, but with 
 two wives. They have the story up and down 
 the whole river, and they have said so much 
 about it that he wants to fight when it is men- 
 tioned. So I didn't say anything about it when 
 I met him, but from a friend on the boat I 
 learned that he immediately put the two dona- 
 tions into a school and has given them their 
 freedom. But that doesn't satisfy me on one 
 point what kind of a story did the young man 
 put up to the prominent citizens to satisfy 
 them ? There is probably only one man on earth 
 who speaks English who is in the know on that 
 
 100
 
 A CASE OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 and that is the young man himself. And 
 I don't blame him for not telling. He side- 
 stepped the wives and he kept his popularity, 
 for every time he leaves town the whole popula- 
 tion turns out and fires crackers, and when he 
 returns the people repeat it. 
 
 I don't know whether I have given the im- 
 pression that the interior of China is another 
 world to such an extent that you will think that 
 human nature isn't human nature. For it is. 
 Our boat passed two towns side by side. Don't 
 dodge at the names. One was Fung tu Chang 
 and the other Fung tu. For short, we will call 
 one Fung; the other Chang. Chang is an old, 
 black, dilapidated down-at-the-heel city. Fung 
 is a spick and span, up-and-coming metropolis. 
 The temples of Chang are tumbled-down ; the 
 temples at Fung are shining jewels of liquid 
 light. There is no wall around Chang Fung is 
 surrounded by as fine a piece of white limestone 
 masonry as you will see in a day's travel. Chang 
 is packed and crammed and jammed with peo- 
 ple. Fung, the beautiful, hasn't a single inhabi- 
 tant. Chang, the ugly, is a bedlam of noisy ac- 
 tivities. Fung is so quiet that the chance dog 
 who gets into it is afraid to bark. Well, what 
 has human nature to do with all this ? Just this. 
 In 1870 a great flood swept down the river and 
 
 101
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 wiped Chang out. It literally obliterated it. 
 Now the chief magistrate in those days in this 
 locality was a wily old politician named Ma. He 
 owned a farm in the second bottom next to the 
 town. Here was a chance to turn a pretty penny 
 and he proposed that the town move over on his 
 real estate. The population of Chang didn't 
 move. It began to rebuild the town on the 
 flooded site. Ma was a fighter right and he built 
 his town Fung anyhow. He constructed a 
 splendid wall, he built beautiful temples, hand- 
 some residences, tempting stores; he hired peo- 
 ple to come and live in his town. But the real 
 people of Chang passed him and his town up. 
 They didn't like it. No one ever discovered just 
 exactly why, until I came along and gave the 
 answer. It was human nature. 
 
 Not very far below this live and dead city 
 I had a view of the official residence of the devil. 
 This is Tsien tse Shan, a high hill, which is 
 probably the best known mountain in China. 
 The Chinese religion has a sort of a purgatory 
 scheme in it. Everybody has to have a prelim- 
 inary dose of Hades after he dies. So when a 
 Chinaman passes in his checks, the officiating 
 priest writes a letter to the superior of Hell an- 
 nouncing the name of the new-comer and put- 
 ting in a few words of recommendation and a 
 
 102
 
 A CASE OF HUMAN NATURE 
 
 suggestion that the stranger be shown any little 
 courtesies possible, such as lowering the boiling 
 oil a few degrees Fahrenheit, or giving him an 
 extra drop of water between broils. The priest 
 then sends the letter to this hill by burning it. 
 The smoke from the letter and the spirit of the 
 dead man are supposed to reach the place at the 
 same time. There are temples here and carv- 
 ings showing devils punching sinners up with 
 red-hot pitchforks. The place, of course, is lit- 
 erally chockf ul of ghosts, and no Chinaman will 
 approach it at night. Not so very far away are 
 two big stone statues of Mr. and Mrs. Han. 
 They were simply honest merchants, so honest 
 that these statues were given in testimony of 
 them. 
 
 Along the Upper Yangtse there is some- 
 thing like this every few minutes, and the coun- 
 try is alive with bandits. They did not trouble 
 us, just as I suspected. The captain of our boat, 
 the Shu-Hun, told me that there were plenty of 
 bandits all right, but ordinarily they didn't 
 monkey with the Shu-Hun. 
 
 As a matter of fact nothing monkeys with 
 the Shu-Hun. She is the only thing in this part 
 of the world that is Chinese that laughs at the 
 Upper Yangtse and its terrors. Everything else 
 in the steamboat line that braves the rapids in 
 
 103
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 the gorges has to be hauled up part of the way. 
 The Shu-Hun, with 2,000-horse power and a 
 superstructure light as tissue paper, and a bot- 
 tom as flat as a pie-plate, makes the trip with- 
 out assistance. A German steamer tried it, hit 
 a rock, and ten minues later there wasn't as 
 much as a toothpick left of her. Recently the 
 British tried a new steamer, the Hua Li, on the 
 Upper river. About the third rapid, she blew 
 out a cylinder head, bent a piston, twisted an 
 eccentric and had the time of her life getting 
 out with her hide whole. I don't know what 
 virtue is in the Shu-Hun, but I think it consists 
 of her captain, a Mr. Brandt. During the trying 
 four days of the trip (the boat is tied up to the 
 cliffs at night) Brandt was as busy as a man 
 acknowledging money from home. He dashed 
 from captain's bridge and pilot to engine room 
 and back again. And he kept his eye on the 
 river, the most treacherous body of water in the 
 world. And he brought us through whole, as he 
 does all his passengers from April to October, 
 the half of the year the Upper Yangtse is 
 navigable. 
 
 104
 
 XVI 
 THE HOPE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 I TOOK part in a Chinese Fourth of July at 
 Chung-King, and my mind naturally turned 
 to my own country and the prodigious prob- 
 lems before it. Every time I looked at China's 
 job in government and felt a flood of hopeless- 
 ness overwhelming me, I took a look at my own 
 country and remembered that we have some jobs 
 at home and when it comes to some of them 
 equalizing the rights of special interests and the 
 individual, for instance the prospect of a suc- 
 cessful solution is not blindingly bright. It will 
 not be solved by increased poverty, extreme 
 partisanship or the cultivation of caste. 
 
 A long pink slip of paper came to me. It 
 proved to be an invitation from Mr. Chen, a high 
 Chinese official, to a reception in celebration of 
 the proclamation of the republic five years pre- 
 viously at Nanking. This event took place on 
 the fifteenth day of the ninth moon, the Chinese 
 calendar being catawampus with ours. The re- 
 
 105
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 ception lasted from eleven in the morning until 
 one o'clock. The guest of honor was General 
 Tai, who helped set up the republic and who 
 insurged when later the President Yuan Shih 
 Kai tried to turn it into a monarchy. 
 
 I had a great time getting to the reception. 
 In the first place, the streets are not as wide as 
 a city sidewalk in the United States, and 
 they are always crowded. Besides, a lot of the 
 people get out in the streets to work mending 
 shoes, pumping sewing machines, working 
 leather and so forth. Today they had a lot of 
 flags over the streets leading to Mr. Chen's 
 house, and this had brought a crowd of sight- 
 seers. There was no room for them, of course, 
 and they were soon packed in. Now the chair 
 coolies who were carrying me knew they were on 
 an important mission, and they proceeded to 
 rush that crowd. The outrunner shoved men 
 and women aside roughly, the bottom of my 
 chair scraped the heads of children in the street 
 and everybody yelled in Chinese something 
 equivalent to, "Hold your horses, the elephant 
 is coming !" My coolies could have knocked down 
 most of the population and nobody would have 
 said a word. They were of higher caste than 
 most of the onlookers and, in China, that set- 
 tles it. China has caste; has had it for four 
 
 106
 
 THE HOPE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 thousand years, and it just naturally persists. 
 When I reached the outside court of the 
 Chen house, we worked our way through a herd 
 of saddled ponies which had brought guests. I 
 gave my card to a Chinaman who looked like the 
 man who wanted it, and he preceded me into the 
 house, holding my small calling card above his 
 head. Mr. Chen, attired in a very long Prince 
 Albert coat, greeted me and introduced me to a 
 line of waiting gentlemen, General Chan, in 
 rather modest uniform, a judge of the supreme 
 court, in Chinese dress, the head of the Chinese 
 Red Cross hospital, a doctor in a Prince Albert, 
 the president of the Chamber of commerce, in 
 Chinese dress, and so on, about half the crowd 
 being in Occidental dress. All of them bobbed, 
 that is, did not bow. Presently the consuls be- 
 gan to arrive very much gold-laced, and the 
 officers from the American gun-boat, likewise in 
 regalia. The Japanese consul had on more gold 
 lace than anybody else. When about a hundred 
 guests had arrived, and they were a long time 
 doing it, some one announced that lunch was 
 ready and in the language of the society page, 
 we "repaired to the dining room." 
 
 Now during all this ceremonial I had been 
 looking around for the Chinese republic. I think 
 I found it. It was embodied in Mr. Gurnier's 
 
 107
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 Number One Boy. Mr. Gurnier is commissioner 
 of customs here. That needs explanation. China 
 borrowed money and pledged part of her rev- 
 enue for payment. To be sure they get it, the 
 Occidental nations have men here who collect it. 
 Mr. Gurnier comes from France. At his home, 
 he told me his Number One Boy had been bor- 
 rowed by Mr. Chen to superintend the reception, 
 and Madame Gurnier said that he was very 
 proud because of this. He was a bandy-legged 
 Chinese boy, about twenty, with a good head on 
 him. He was Old Business through and 
 through. He didn't talk much, but he made 
 things fly. He had all those servants at Mr. 
 Chen's moving like clock-work, and he kept 
 them at it. They looked on him with wonder, 
 and so did I. Of course, I knew that he was 
 merely Number One Boy, and not much in 
 China's four thousand years' incrustation of 
 caste, and I knew, moreover, that he had never 
 given a thought to the political aspects of caste 
 in his life, but just the same I saw the Chinese 
 republic in him, because if a Number One Boy 
 could handle a reception like that, there is com- 
 ing out of China's four hundred millions, some 
 day, a Number One in the president's chair who 
 will order things in this vast country with pre- 
 cision, decision, vision and success. It will not 
 
 108
 
 THE HOPE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 result in a republic such as ours. In this dawn- 
 ing day of democracies, there will be republics 
 and republics one kind for Europe, another for 
 Anglo-Saxon America, another for Latin Amer- 
 ica and still another for Asia. But all of them 
 will have the germ of Washington's and Hamil- 
 ton's and Jefferson's and Lincoln's idea which 
 is, you cannot get away from it, that the evolu- : 
 tion of a republic is to democracy, the evolution 
 of democracy to the rule of majorities, through 
 spiritual and mental enlightenment, to the rule 
 of the voice of God. 
 
 In the dining room we found two long tables, 
 parallel. At the head of one stood Mr. Chen, the 
 host; at the head of the other the guest of 
 honor, General Tai. The latter was appareled in 
 a tuxedo and a pleated white shirt and patent 
 leather pumps. Evidently he was no public 
 speaker at all, for the first man to open his 
 mouth was the interpreter, a bright-eyed youth 
 in Chinese dress. This interpreter evidently had 
 had a private conversation with General Tai, for 
 he said that the general wished to say that he 
 was much honored and that he was glad to meet 
 them all. Next Mr. Chen, from his place, made 
 a fluent response, extremely brief. The same 
 interpreter therefore translated into English 
 what Mr. Chen had said. Its chief point was that 
 
 109
 
 DEMOCRACY BEYOND THE GORGES 
 
 the Chinese republic hoped to maintain relations 
 of amity with the nations across the seas. After 
 he had concluded, the American consul read a 
 speech in Chinese, which was not interpreted, 
 but which we understood to be felicitations to 
 the Chinese republic, and a wish for long life to 
 its president. None of the responses were ap- 
 plauded. 
 
 After this the luncheon was served. In this 
 part of the world it is invariably called tiffin. 
 The table decorations consisted of long borders 
 of colored daisies, the center of the board bear- 
 ing occasional designs in Chinese characters, 
 formed of rice, colored green. From the ceiling 
 hung multitudinous flags a good many of them 
 apparently fanciful as I judged from one a 
 blue flag with a horse in the field. About the 
 only flags I identified for sure were the Chinese 
 and the Star-Spangled Banner. The food con- 
 sisted of sliced chicken and beef, small sweet 
 cakes and several large pink affairs, built in 
 stories, like wedding cakes. Sweet wine was the 
 beverage. There was much conversation 
 throughout the meal, and a little jollity but not 
 much. General Tai shook hands with the host 
 early and departed and we all followed. 
 
 As we passed out of the big courtyard, 
 through the herds of stamping stallion ponies 
 
 110
 
 THE HOPE OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 and the tangle of long-horn chairs, into the 
 midst of the ragged, half -naked, dirty, gaping 
 multitude outside the gate, I caught, over my 
 shoulder, a glimpse of Number One Boy, busy 
 as a bee, overseeing the dispatch of the guests. 
 And on my way home I bought a bushel bas- 
 ket of fire-crackers for 1600 cash (one-half dol- 
 lar) and when I reached home I fired 'em all in 
 one lot, for hope of a universal democracy. 
 
 Ill
 
 XVII 
 SAVING A CHINESE CITY 
 
 I NEVER went anywhere in my life that I 
 didn't run across somebody from home. So, 
 sure enough, out here in Szechuan but 
 that isn't the way to stage this episode. Let 
 me try it another way. I run the curtain up on 
 two scenes: 
 
 Scene I. A Methodist church in an Ameri- 
 can town twenty odd years ago. The pastor con- 
 ducting a smashing revival and stirring things 
 up with both ends of a long pole. Among his 
 converts, a slender young fellow, a newspaper 
 reporter. 
 
 Scene II. A beleaguered Chinese city, its 
 gates closed, its population cowering in clouds 
 of battle-smoke. Across a river an advancing 
 army, firing as it marches. Crossing that river 
 a middle-aged man carrying a strange flag, stop- 
 ping the army therewith and saving the city. 
 
 Ray Torrey has been out here as a missionary 
 ten years. His post is Tzechow. Torrey has a 
 
 112
 
 JUNKS WAITING AT THE TCHING TAN RAPIDS 
 
 A JUNK IN THE RAPIDS
 
 SAVING A CHINESE CITY 
 
 barrel of horse-sense and the folks at Tzechow 
 soon came to have great confidence in him. 
 
 You will remember that China's early presi- 
 dent, Yuan Shih Kai, threw out an intimation 
 that he would like to help China out by becom- 
 ing its emperor. He also bounced all governors 
 who weren't in sympathy with this view. The 
 cradle of Chinese liberty is out here in the West, 
 and its particular guardian is the state of Yun- 
 nan. The Yunnan men are democratic and they 
 are not foolers, and they called Yuan's hand and 
 called it hard. They rushed an army up into 
 Szechuan to seize its cities and valuable salt 
 mines. Keep in mind that this army was 
 marching northward towards the city of 
 Tzechow. It is necessary to keep this in mind, 
 because the story now grows complicated. When 
 Yuan showed his monarchial symptoms, the 
 governor of Szechuan "stayed with the gang," 
 but when Yuan Shih Kai's Peking army was 
 shipped up the river, fifty thousand strong, the 
 governor fluctuated. Part of the governor's 
 army held the city of Tzechow, where Torrey 
 was. The Yunnan crowd was after this army, 
 and it was marching on to the town to capture 
 it. Rumors of its approach preceded it. A 
 Chinese priest who was attached to a French 
 mission proposed that he take the French flag 
 
 113
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 and Torrey take the American flag and both go 
 across the river and see if they couldn't arrange 
 terms and save the city from the devastation of 
 a battle. 
 
 The Chinese magistrate and the Chinese gen- 
 eral in Tzechow were agreeable to this. But 
 Torrey said: 
 
 "No. You have no right to use the French 
 flag to stop a battle and I have no right to use 
 the American flag. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll 
 make a flag a church flag. 
 
 Now the Chinese priest didn't like the idea 
 and he quit and Torrey conducted the proceed- 
 ings alone. 
 
 At nine o'clock on the morning after, the sol- 
 diers in Tzechow opened up a big cannon on the 
 Yunnan men across the river. It was a big can- 
 non, and it roared something awful. Everybody 
 hid away, for the Yunnan men began to pepper 
 the town with rifle-fire. 
 
 With this opening shot began the busiest day 
 of Torrey's life. If he was to do anything, that 
 cannon must be stopped. It wasn't hitting any- 
 thing it was simply making noise but as long 
 as it kept up the Yunnan men would fire back 
 and nobody could cross the river. 
 
 So Torrey said: "That cannon has got to be 
 stopped. As long as it is whanging away, I 
 
 114
 
 SAVING A CHINESE CITY 
 
 am absolutely powerless to do anything at all." 
 The general said : "We can't stop the cannon. 
 The minute we stop the cannon, the other side 
 will think we are helpless, and all will be lost." 
 So the cannon kept roaring away, its solid shot 
 tearing things up on the other side. After an 
 hour and a half of this, the Yunnan men lost pa- 
 tience and they unlimbered a cannon of their 
 own and let fly at the town. That began to sober 
 things, and finally at eleven o'clock, the gen- 
 eral agreed to Torrey to cut the cannon out. 
 Then the Yunnan men quit and Torrey was 
 ready for action. He had been getting ready. 
 He had been inventing and building a flag. Tor- 
 rey made the flag big. Then he put at each end 
 of it a big red cross. Then in the field he painted 
 three Chinese characters two blue and one 
 green "you could see 'em a mile," says Torrey. 
 The Chinese characters read: "The Church of 
 the Gospels." 
 
 With this flag stuck in the prow of a row- 
 boat, Torrey moved across the river, with the 
 whole Yunnan army spelling out his flag. When 
 he reached the other side, he sent word to the 
 general that he would like to treat. So the gen- 
 eral sent a representative who stood up straight, 
 and without any ifs and buts about it, said: 
 "We don't want to hurt anybody. But we do 
 
 115
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 want the republic. We won't have anything 
 else. We are fighting for our country. That is 
 our one object. We don't want to kill people; on 
 the contrary we are fighting for the people. If 
 the other side will move out, we will move in 
 and nobody will be hurt, and nothing destroyed." 
 
 So Torrey, who liked the manner of this pa- 
 triot very much, said he would take the proposi- 
 tion to the other side. He did. The other side 
 wanted to get away, but it feared treachery. 
 "If I try to move this army out," said the gen- 
 eral, "the other side will rush in and there will 
 be an awful fight." 
 
 Thereupon Torrey proposed that the general 
 agree, first to open all the gates of the city the 
 next morning at six, and, second, to have his 
 army by nine o'clock ten miles away from town. 
 
 "I agree," said the general. 
 
 And then Torrey showed his newspaper train- 
 ing, all right. He said : "Put it in writing." 
 
 And the general did put it in writing and Tor- 
 rey pocketed the document. So armed, Torrey 
 traveled back across the river and submitted 
 the agreement to the Yunnan general. 
 
 Now everything takes time in China. This 
 had taken time. It was two o'clock in the after- 
 noon when Torrey got the first agreement out of 
 the Yunnan general. It was midnight before 
 
 116
 
 SAVING A CHINESE CITY 
 
 he got the written document from the Tzechow 
 general. He had taken the precaution to tell the 
 Yunnan general that it would be late before he 
 returned, and not to grow uneasy. Therefore, 
 it was early in the morning when Torrey re- 
 turned to Tzechow and sat down to wait. The 
 Chinese urged him to go to bed. The Chinese go 
 to bed in a crisis. Torrey didn't. He wanted 
 that thing signed, sealed and delivered before 
 dawn. And it came back 0. K. at two o'clock. It 
 had been a long day's work, but it had saved the 
 city. Torrey wasn't taking any chances. He 
 jumped up at five o'clock and hustled around to 
 see if the gates had been opened. They were, all 
 of them. Some of them hadn't been opened, 
 apparently, for centuries. And the army was 
 moving out. But Torrey's work wasn't over. 
 The Chinese Red Cross chief came to him and 
 said: 
 
 "There are thirty-seven wounded men in the 
 hospital. They are too badly hurt to be moved. 
 The Yunnan men will kill them unless you can 
 save them." 
 
 Post-haste Torrey hustled over to the Yun- 
 nan general and said: 
 
 "General, the other matter is now arranged, 
 and I have a personal favor to ask of you." 
 
 "I will do anything within reason," said the 
 117
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 general. "State it." 
 
 Torrey explained about the wounded men. 
 
 "It is all right," said the general. "They will 
 not be touched." 
 
 And they were not. 
 
 The people of Tzechow make much over Tor- 
 rey, and they are preparing some memorials for 
 him. 
 
 But that day Torrey wasn't thinking of me- 
 morials. He took off his clothes, folded his im- 
 promptu flag up, shoved it under his pillow and 
 crawled in and took the best sleep of his life. 
 
 118
 
 xvni 
 
 THE BEGGARS' HONG 
 
 IF I had not made up my mind to give you 
 the picture of China, as I saw it, I would 
 not write that which follows, and even 
 writing it, I feel bound to advise those who 
 are supersensitive to human miseries to pass it 
 over. It has to do with beggars. Not so very 
 far away from the place where I stopped in 
 Chung-King is a "beggars' hong," a beggars' 
 headquarters. 
 
 Every morning about sun-up the beggars is- 
 sue forth from this place and every night they 
 swarm back to it. They are given a small per 
 cent, of their collections if they are successful, 
 and they are fed if they collect nothing and 
 many of them come in empty-handed. 
 
 The population of Chung-King is not in a posi- 
 tion to give bountifully. For the most part it 
 must be held up in the name of sweet charity. 
 The poverty of the run of the people in this in- 
 terior city is a thing that cannot be described 
 
 119
 
 by anybody except some one who has suffered it. 
 Economically I suppose the cause is over-popu- 
 lation if you take the superficial view of it. In 
 fact, the trouble is under-production. Men give 
 their brawn to the most laborious drudgery, 
 they are sober China being the most abstem- 
 ious country I have ever seen and there are no 
 loafers for even the children work. But the 
 sum total of all their labours is a heart-sickening 
 product pinching poverty. I am not going to 
 give prices they could not mean much. Here 
 is a thing which will give a glimpse into the 
 desperate conditions. Some Chinamen smoke 
 opium not many proportionately and mostly 
 the well-to-do, for opium is expensive. Long 
 use of opium weakens the stomach and makes it 
 difficult to retain food. One thing that can be 
 digested is milk from a woman's breast. And 
 it is possible to send around the corner and bring 
 a young mother to be milked. 
 
 Outside the silk shops, I should say that the 
 average shop in Chung-King would invoice less 
 than five dollars gold. The family lives in the 
 store. Each family has a cat, invariably teth- 
 ered, usually a dog, nearly always mangy and 
 supported on offal, about three or four children, 
 often with skins as black as the ace of spades, 
 and one or two pot-bellied pigs. These animals 
 
 120
 
 THE BEGGARS' HONG 
 
 divide their time between the street and the 
 store. The beasts and their owners are covered 
 with vermin, and disease is rampant. I should 
 say that seventy-five per cent, of the people are 
 pock-marked. The death rate from tubercu- 
 losis is known to be high, and the streets are 
 vile with spittle. 
 
 These conditions are the result, in my opinion, 
 not of racial ineptitude for better things, but of 
 age-old poverty the fecund mother of all dis- 
 ease. In the midst of this civic cess-pool, the 
 population is a smiling one. The people call 
 across the street from shop to shop cheerily. 
 The children frolic in the streets. Every court- 
 esy is extended a stranger. There is no open 
 brutality to man or beast; there is no drunken- 
 ness ; and there is very little homicide. 
 
 The people are not meat-eaters. They live on 
 vegetables mostly, and eggs. The beef animal 
 is a beast of burden, or is used for draft pur- 
 poses. And in this connection, the Chinese cow, 
 having been put to the plow, has turned per- 
 verse. She will not enter into economic rela- 
 tions with the milkman. She will give down 
 milk for the calf, but not for the trade. As a 
 consequence, one of the most common sights in 
 this city is the milkman's procession. It usu- 
 ally consists of the milkman in front with a 
 
 121
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 couple of tin-cups and a folded calf -skin over 
 his arm. Follows a cow with a calf ; a cow with- 
 out a calf and another cow with a calf. You 
 may order a quart of milk from the milkman. 
 So far as the cows with the calves are concerned 
 it is a scrap between the calves and the milk- 
 man for the milk. The milkman usually comes 
 out second. Better results are obtained from 
 the calfless cow. This is accomplished by rank 
 trickery. When all is ready, the milkman un- 
 folds the calf -skin and holds it up to the nose of 
 the cow, who sniffs it and begins to lick it; at 
 the same time a boy takes a stick and scratches 
 the cow behind the ear to make her feel good, 
 and simultaneously a third Chinaman gets to 
 work on the udder. A good yield from the three 
 cows is a quart. It will rarely go more. You 
 can hardly blame the milkman, if the local gos- 
 sip is true, when he conceals a bulb of water up 
 his sleeve and helps fill up the tin-cup. A quart 
 of milk costs about 336 cash, or nine cents gold. 
 As the meal of the average Chinese here costs 
 about twenty cash a little over one cent gold 
 you can see that the run of Chinese never have a 
 taste of milk after they are weaned. 
 
 This contribution to the dairy statistics of the 
 world which I have made has been for the pur- 
 pose of indicating in a graphic way just how 
 
 122
 
 THE BEGGARS' HONG 
 
 poor a Chinese population can be and just how 
 desperate the situation an ordinary, that is an 
 unorganized beggar, would face. In truth a 
 lone, independent beggar in Chung-King would 
 not be a beggar long he would starve. Hence 
 the beggar's hong. 
 
 The hong keeps books. The beggar is sent 
 out in the morning to haunt a shop which the 
 books show hasn't whacked up for a certain 
 number of days. The beggar strolls down to the 
 appointed place and stays until the proprietor of 
 the shop comes across with the coin. The beg- 
 gar thereupon reports to the hong, and the mer- 
 chant's name is checked off and he is granted 
 immunity for a certain period of time. The dose 
 is then repeated. There is nothing in China 
 which is at once so funny and so terribly re- 
 volting as this operation. I posted myself on a 
 certain corner and watched the game. I didn't 
 look at the beggar at first I had to brace my- 
 self for that, but I knew he was a beggar and 
 then watched the merchant, his staff and his 
 family. Chinese clerks have a curious way of 
 standing in a row in a shop. This row of Chin- 
 ese on this occasion went into a violent state of 
 argumentative eruption. There was the beggar, 
 crouched on his hunkers and, there he would 
 stay until he was paid. Every Chinese in that 
 
 123
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 shop knew this was true, but no one wanted to 
 give up any coin. From a state of violent argu- 
 ment, a shadow of deep and silent disgust grew 
 and enveloped the store. It seemed to be set- 
 tling solidly and solemnly into their Chinese 
 souls that the beggar would not go away unless 
 he was paid, and that the longer they delayed in 
 paying him the less they would have to pay him 
 with. For it was a moral certainty that the 
 presence of the beggar would kill off trade 
 would absolutely paralyze it. While a China- 
 man can usually smile, a Chinaman who can't 
 is a truly amusing spectacle. And there the ab- 
 surdity of the scene before you ends. For you 
 are certain to look at the beggar, and if you do, 
 you will find yourself under the necessity of 
 bracing every nerve in your body. 
 
 The merchants were not long in making up 
 their minds. After a short confab, they drop- 
 ped a few coppers in the beggar's bowl. He 
 counted them, struggled to his feet and moved 
 away in the direction of the hong, a spectre of 
 life more terrible than death ever sent from the 
 grave to affright mankind. 
 
 124
 
 XIX 
 THE COMMERCE OF SZECHUAN 
 
 YOU never really realize how difficult it is 
 to get completely out of touch with the 
 world until you come to the Far West of 
 China. Just beyond are the forbidden stretches 
 of Thibet and the unexplored crags of the Hima- 
 layas. Chung-King itself, is in barbarian terri- 
 tory. There isn't a wheel in the city every- 
 thing goes in baskets or in chairs nor a 
 telephone, nor a faucet. And yet about twenty 
 million dollars' worth of trade annually filters 
 through the town to the outside world. 
 
 I don't suppose there is a normal school-boy in 
 America who doesn't go through the stage of 
 curiosity that I did when seated at the table 
 he begins to pop questions at his father about 
 the food what is cinnamon? Where do they 
 get pepper? Of what is the table-cloth made? 
 The answers to these and similar questions 
 take the average youth into imaginative travels 
 all over the world. I think my first desire to 
 
 125
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 see China awoke in a grocery, where some 
 highly ornate tin-boxes with teas and spices 
 from the Celestial kingdom stood in a row. 
 
 Now, in China, I found my old-time interest 
 in the origin of many articles of every day use 
 reviving, and the more so because this province 
 of Szechuan, known as the "garden of China," 
 has such a great variety of products. 
 
 Take, for instance, white wax. If you go over 
 to the drug store you will find a bottle full of 
 white crystals. It is white wax and it is used 
 for coating pills. Now you may be dead sure 
 that wax came from Szechuan. But in a thou- 
 sand guesses you wouldn't be able to hit upon 
 the way it is made. Once a year thousands of 
 Chinese from the outlying districts pour into 
 town carrying curious cocoons. They all arrive 
 in the period of a few days. Then one night 
 and it is always the same night the cocoons 
 hatch out grubs. Every man takes the grubs 
 and puts them on the mulberry trees. The 
 grubs get busy and chew up the mulberry 
 and spit out this white wax. It is gathered, col- 
 lected and sent abroad and eventually winds up 
 in those drug store bottles. 
 
 In the same drug store you will find a row of 
 pretty bottles on a show-case, and presently a 
 young woman will come in, sniff daintily at the 
 
 126
 
 THE COMMERCE OF SZECHUAN 
 
 bottles and exclaim over them. It is perfume. 
 The basis of it is probably civet, and it comes 
 from this province. The mountains in the west 
 are full of all kinds of wild animals, but more 
 numerous than all the rest are deer. The sup- 
 ply is inexhaustible. A big part of the popula- 
 tion live by hunting these deer. From every 
 deer killed they extract a little sack of civet. 
 These sacks are collected, put into packages 
 which weigh about a pound and are exported. 
 The native gets about seven dollars (gold) for 
 one of these sacks, and it is a lucrative business. 
 France takes more of it than America does. 
 
 Of course, the biggest export is silk. Like 
 everything else, the silk business is a family 
 affair. Every family has its herd of worms artd 
 its mulberry trees. Most of the silk is spun into 
 yarn and the yarn is sent abroad. That isn't 
 saying that the Chinese do not weave a lot of 
 silk themselves, for they do. You can't poke your 
 head into a house without seeing a Chinese boy 
 (I see no girls at it) throwing the bobbin. But 
 the Chinese silk fabric doesn't catch the eye like 
 ours. It is either white or solid color. They 
 don't know the fancy silk. I tried to buy some 
 for shirts and I know. I have haggled over a 
 good many pieces, and I have found that 
 Chinese silk comes in Chinese feet about thir- 
 
 127
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 teen inches and is only half the width of ours. 
 It costs on an average about fifty cents (gold) a 
 yard. There are wild silk-worms here. Their 
 product is pongee. 
 
 That brings up the matter of dyes. The 
 Chinese dyes are vegetable and very vivid 
 and I suppose lasting. They not only use them, 
 but they send the stuff out of which they are 
 made to other lands. Red comes from a flower 
 called saf -flower. It is exported in large quan- 
 tities. Indigo gives them their blue, and their 
 green comes from a seed of which the world 
 takes a lot. 
 
 One of the heaviest productions for America 
 in this part of China is rhubarb. It is sent to 
 the United States apparently by the shipload. 
 It is used in medicine and seems to be a stronger 
 article than that which we grow at home. 
 
 Bristles from pigs are collected, sorted into 
 lengths, tied into bunches, like shaving brushes 
 and sent abroad. I see no evidences of the sale 
 of human hair, but the export of it when the 
 Chinamen cut off their queues, as they have 
 done, must have been awful. If I were a wo- 
 man and had a switch, I would have it disin- 
 fected just as a factor of safety. Duck feath- 
 ers are shipped out to the United States by the 
 ton and a ton of duck feathers is some ton. Of 
 
 128
 
 THE COMMERCE OF SZECHUAN 
 
 course, eggs are sent also. Turmeric, a small 
 root, which gives prepared mustard some of its 
 color, is another exportation from here. 
 
 One of the richest products of this province 
 is wood oil. It is pressed from a nut of a tree. 
 The nut has four pods and these are crushed 
 and the expressed oil shipped to America, the 
 heaviest consumer. It is used by the big paint 
 manufacturers. 
 
 Tea is one of the important exports. By the 
 way, I had a lot of sport with an expert tea- 
 taster. I took a lot of different teas and num- 
 bered them. Then I made the whole lot into 
 tea in different cups which I also numbered on 
 the bottom. The tea-taster, who was doing all 
 this for my especial benefit, would taste a cup 
 of tea and then call out the number to me. He 
 hit the right number every time, but it made 
 him smack his lips several times and think hard. 
 After I had finished my test, this taster told me 
 that in the busy season, when he would test as 
 many as 1,200 cups a day, the mental strain 
 not the tea, for he never swallows any but just 
 the mental strain of trying to grade it right 
 would give him insomnia. I wasn't missing any 
 bets about tea for I have used it for years in- 
 stead of coffee and I had this expert make me 
 a cup of tea. He weighed the tea a very small 
 
 129
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 amount, by the way, and brewed it in water for 
 five minutes in water that had just come to a 
 boil and this is of the utmost importance in 
 water that had never been boiled before. I 
 might say, in passing, that if you don't watch 
 these three points (1) weigh your tea, (2) 
 brew by the watch, (3) use fresh-boiled water 
 you do not know what tea tastes like. They 
 don't use sugar and cream. 
 
 There are many other things sent into the 
 world by this people, but most of them are prod- 
 ucts which we have at home. Among them are 
 asbestos, mica, copper, antimony, coal, sulphur, 
 hemp, salt and sugar (the crude brown variety 
 being three cents gold a pound; refined, six 
 cents). Incidentally I ran across a stuff here 
 the other day that the Chinese cannot sell, but 
 it looks to me as if an enterprising American 
 could put it on a commercial basis. It was a 
 vegetable asbestos a flat fungus which appears 
 on rocks. It looks like toadstool, only it is 
 tougher. No market has been found for it. It 
 does not burn. 
 
 Two other products interested me one, vege- 
 table tallow, made from a plant and looking and 
 smelling like animal tallow. The United States 
 buys huge quantities of it. The other, the oil 
 from the soy bean, which is used in cooking, and 
 
 130
 
 THE COMMERCE OF SZECHUAN 
 
 which is said to be the basis of most of the 
 bottled table sauces for meats we have. 
 
 Most of the farm products of the province are 
 consumed there. There are many varieties of 
 rice. Wheat and buckwheat are abundant. You 
 see kialong (millet) everywhere. Sweet pota- 
 toes are fine, and Irish potatoes, while small, 
 are sound and mealy. Peanuts flourish, and the 
 oil from them is used in cooking. There is 
 much cotton, but it is pretty short staple, as a 
 rule. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Szechuan has every- 
 thing save one thing up-to-dateness. That is, 
 it hasn't organization. Every home is a factory. 
 That doesn't go in this world any more. Theo- 
 retically it looks good, but it won't work. The 
 lesson you learn in China is that associated effort 
 is the greatest find humanity has made, in an 
 industrial way, and if we in the United States 
 had the corporation idea properly harnessed, 
 which we haven't, we would find ourselves lining 
 next door to heaven. 
 
 131
 
 XX 
 THE DOOM OF GEOMANCY 
 
 CHINA is changing, and the thing which is 
 bringing the change is a republican form 
 of government. The fact that change is 
 coming is a striking tribute to the potency of 
 the republic idea. For the republic idea will 
 probably never be called upon to go up against 
 a fiercer proposition than China. 
 
 China is the last word in conservatism. In 
 comparison with China, a stand-patter in the 
 United States is a raging, torch-bearing, fire- 
 spitting radical. China has been traveling the 
 reactionary circle for four thousand years. A 
 thing was right because it was old, and wrong 
 because it was new. Sequentially the Chinese 
 way was the correct one, and the manner of 
 other nations erroneous. 
 
 When I say that this ancient spirit is break- 
 ing down, I do not want to carry the impression 
 that it is being swept away far from it it is 
 being eaten away as by a slow acid. But it is 
 
 132
 
 THE DOOM OF GEOMANCY 
 
 certainly crumbling around the edges, and I 
 want to give you some instances of it. 
 
 The first thing to get brittle and break off is 
 ceremony. It will be followed by the evapora- 
 tion of the pig-headed idea of national supe- 
 riority, and the substitution of a rational 
 patriotism. And when the hour strikes that 
 China ceases merely to know that she is superior 
 and moves restlessly with the desire to prove 
 she is superior, it will be a new day in the great 
 East. I do not despair of the event. I confi- 
 dently expect it. 
 
 Since the beginning of recorded time China 
 has considered all the other nations of the earth 
 vassals. The name "China" is not known to 
 the Chinese. The country is the "middle king- 
 dom." This middle kingdom is supposed to be 
 central in four seas, and in these seas the 
 inferior nations exist. Virtually all the Chinese 
 to-day believe that Europeans and Americans 
 are inferior to Chinese. This is their attitude 
 of mind. But it meets with frequent contradic- 
 tion. A white foreigner enjoys privileges and 
 immunities which even the humblest Chinaman 
 must note. In Szechuan, where the bandits are 
 active, they let white people alone. Annoyance 
 of these means trouble from the nation to which 
 the white man belongs. The licking Japan gave 
 
 133
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 to China in 1894, and the high-handed demands 
 Japan has latterly made of China, have added to 
 the growing impression the Chinese have that 
 China is not necessarily the whole thing. 
 
 This impression, of course, is a vague one 
 popularly, but it exists. The average Chinese 
 has no more idea of international relations than 
 a goat has of geometry, but he does gather some 
 inklings of it, nevertheless. I rarely walked 
 down the street in Chung-King that I did not 
 feel the whole population had a feeling of kindly 
 condescension towards me because I was not a 
 Chinese, but at the same time they knew and 
 showed that if anything should happen to me, 
 somebody would answer for it. They were more 
 certain about this than I was. 
 
 The Chinese in this province have been closed 
 up for forty centuries. This is all they know, 
 and naturally they believe it is the center of 
 things universally, just as they believe that a 
 man who doesn't believe in "f eng-shui" (which I 
 will treat a little later on) is mentally deficient. 
 
 A people of this outlook naturally believe that 
 all their customs are best, and therefore resist 
 change. And when people get into this frame 
 of mind, ceremony thrives. 
 
 Now, ceremony is the very thing in China 
 which is giving way before the new order. One 
 
 134
 
 THE DOOM OF GEOMANCY 
 
 of the first things we associate with any idea of 
 China is the kowtow. For a good many cen- 
 turies, Chinamen were expected to throw them- 
 selves on their marrow bones and bump their 
 foreheads on the ground before a person of high 
 official rank. The emperor demanded three 
 kneelings and nine bumps. I haven't seen a 
 kowtow in China since I came. They are cut- 
 ting it out, and it will soon completely disappear. 
 
 Then there is the matter of queues. A few 
 years ago virtually the whole male population 
 wore them. The old idea that they were a 
 badge of serfdom, instituted by the Manchus as 
 a tribute to their horses, on account of the 
 resemblance of the queue to a horse's tail this 
 old idea had disappeared in the course of two 
 hundred and fifty years, and the average Chinese 
 felt a pride in his hair. But when the edict to 
 cut them off came, the Chinese almost univer- 
 sally complied. From generations of devotion 
 to long hair, the Chinese has now gone to the 
 other extreme, and delights to have the clip- 
 pers used over his entire noggin. 
 
 I came across a merchant who told me that he 
 would not stand any longer for conventional 
 nonsense. That is, he wanted to get down 
 directly to business. 
 
 The old style in China was somewhat like 
 
 135
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 this. A man wanted a suit of clothes and called 
 on his tailor: 
 
 Man "How is my honourable and distin- 
 guished friend this morning?" 
 
 Tailor "Your despised friend is pleased to 
 greet his most virtuous patron." 
 
 Man "In my poor and humble way, I have 
 been noticing that my clothes are getting 
 thread-bare." 
 
 Tailor "I notice that the very fine clothes of 
 my distinguished patron are splendid, and not 
 to be duplicated by so poor a workman as 
 myself." 
 
 Man "I have said to myself that I ought to 
 have a new suit, and that my honourable and 
 distinguished friend would be the very man to 
 supply me from his honourable stock." 
 
 Tailor "If my friend will be pleased to look 
 at my inferior stock, I shall have great pleasure 
 in showing him." 
 
 The extent to which this sort of flub-dub was 
 carried in China is really beyond belief. If you 
 went directly at a point, you seemed to palsy a 
 Chinaman mentally. Ask him a question point 
 blank, and his mind stopped working. He 
 couldn't think without the preliminaries. Bar- 
 ter became absurd still is. When an object is 
 known to be worth ten dollars, the merchant 
 
 136
 
 THE DOOM OF GEOMANCY 
 
 starts at fifteen dollars and the purchaser at 
 five. They quarrel their way upward and down- 
 ward to ten dollars. It wastes time. And it 
 isn't good merchandising. But already you run 
 across one-price stores in China, and this mer- 
 chant to whom I was talking said that when he 
 went to his tailor now he said : "Good morning, I 
 want a suit of clothes." If the tailor went info 
 a state of mental catalepsy, he hunted up 
 another tailor. 
 
 The greatest victory over convention in China 
 up to date, however, is in the matter of feng- 
 shui. No white man has ever understood feng- 
 shui. I heard a missionary in America, thirty- 
 five years ago, try to explain it. He didn't 
 succeed. No white man can. Feng-shui means 
 wind and water. It is the science of knowing 
 what is an auspicious place, and the art of find- 
 ing it. Let us say that a man in an American 
 town wanted to locate a new hotel in his town 
 according to feng-shui. He would consult, if he 
 were Chinese, the priests. Let us say they 
 made a scientific survey and decided on a certain 
 corner. Now, suppose a rival builder didn't 
 consult the priests and resolved to put up a 
 business block across the street and it was a 
 story or two higher than the hotel. The priests 
 might say that this was not according to feng- 
 
 137
 
 FAR WEST OF THE NEW REPUBLIC 
 
 shui and there would be a riot, with a life-long 
 feud between the two citizens. Over here you 
 can't do anything without bumping into feng- 
 shui. No man thinks of locating anything over 
 here, not even his own grave, without consult- 
 ing it. This sounds funny enough, but when 
 the Occidentals came in, with their telegraph 
 poles and smoke-stacks, it caused a heap of 
 trouble and some blood-shed. A smoke-stack on 
 on electric light plant simply knocked the feng- 
 shui in the whole town out of kilter. So did the 
 telegraph poles. 
 
 But the Chinese are knocking under. They 
 don't like to do it, but the point is they are 
 standing for the most flagrant violations of 
 their most ancient and revered custom 
 geomancy. 
 
 That is a long step for China. It is equiva- 
 lent to asking America to change the name of 
 the days of the week, put forty-five days in the 
 month, and lengthen the year out to seven hun- 
 dred and thirteen days. That would confuse us. 
 And ignoring f eng-shui confuses the Chinese. 
 
 But the republic idea and the spirit of 
 progress are bringing them to it. 
 
 138
 
 XXI 
 A CHINESE PARTY 
 
 1HAVE attended a Chinese party. The 
 French consul in Chung-King knew I 
 wanted to attend one, so he contrived to 
 get me an invitation. I shall give you an account 
 of "the pleasant time that was had" and "by one 
 who was there." The party ran from two 
 o'clock in the afternoon until midnight. During 
 this time the guests continuously arrived and 
 departed. This gentle device of stretched-out 
 entertainment, prevalent in China, puts the 
 kibosh on conventional liars. You can't say you 
 didn't come because of a previous engagement. 
 You have ten hours to choose from. 
 
 We chose six o'clock, because we wanted to 
 light on dinner. I figure that I saw a real 
 Chinese party except that I know that my 
 presence put some restraint on the crowd, but 
 perhaps not so much after all. 
 
 When I arrived the host met me at the front 
 door and personally escorted me into a big ante- 
 
 139
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 room paved in cement, on either side of which 
 were chairs permanently set against the walls 
 with small tables between them, the whole hav- 
 ing the appearance of a small lodge room just 
 before they let in the candidate. I took a seat 
 and studied the guests. Across from me were 
 three Chinese, a very tall one, a middling sized 
 man with a scraggly moustache and a fat one. 
 
 We did a lot of fancy and plain sitting. Then 
 a singing girl arrived. She was very richly 
 attired in silk and her feet were very small. 
 Her cheeks were not rouged, but her hair was 
 greased a lot. The host met her and accompa- 
 nied her to a seat. Next there arrived a big- 
 boned, business-like Chinese with a musical 
 instrument which looked like a croquet mallet 
 with the handle cut off. He tuned up. Then 
 he struck up a tune. 
 
 The girl, evidently much embarrassed, put 
 her handkerchief to her mouth and sang. She 
 had a pretty fair voice, but it was lost in that 
 music. It isn't fair to criticize anybody's music, 
 but when it comes to giving an imitation of a 
 guinea hen dying of asthma, a Chinese fiddle is 
 entitled to the blue ribbon. The song she sang 
 was dreadfully waily and whiney. 
 
 The singing girls continued to arrive and sing. 
 They filtered in and out all evening, going from 
 
 140
 
 A CHINESE PARTY 
 
 entertainment to entertainment. Eventually 
 dinner was announced. 
 
 One of the surprises for me in China is the 
 absence of luxury. Somewhere I had gathered 
 the impression that a Chinese feast was usually 
 in a room smothered in rich, damasked hang- 
 ings, the ceiling a pendant gold mine of intricate 
 carvings and so on. On the contrary, every- 
 thing of that kind I have seen is exceedingly 
 primitive and bare. It was so in this case. I 
 was the guest of honor, and I had to start 
 everything. As I never was much on chop 
 sticks, I rather slowed things up. Now, I know 
 that most people have attended Chinese dinners 
 in America. You may find them in New York, 
 Chicago, Kansas City, Denver or Frisco with- 
 out much trouble. But this dinner was in the 
 wild and woolly west of China, and for that rea- 
 son I am going to tell about the food, for I must 
 have had the real thing. 
 
 Before we sat down we were given a teacup 
 full of chop suey. Then each man was given a 
 very hot towel to wipe his face. We were then 
 given a cup of tea the only time it appeared. 
 Next came a little pie about three inches in 
 diameter. It was made of persimmon. Then 
 the towels came around again. Hereafter I will 
 just say towels. 
 
 141
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 We sat down. In front of us were small 
 saucers containing small bits of breaded fish, 
 shrimp, sliced duck, sliced cucumbers stacked up 
 like hay, pickled pig lungs and very old eggs. 
 These eggs had been varnished and buried for 
 several years. They were jellied, a bit acid and 
 v^ery good. Towels. Next came a small cherry- 
 like fruit it is the berry of the lotus plant. It 
 was very good. Towels. Two soup bowls con- 
 taining a soup-like mixture were brought in, 
 which, after I had speared some of it with my 
 chop sticks, the company assailed with enthusi- 
 asm. It was boiled shark fins. It didn't strike 
 me as very palatable. Towels. Next came young 
 bamboo, boiled. Something like asparagus. 
 Towels. This was followed by a boiled vegetable 
 tasting very much like raw oysters. Towels. 
 Suddenly there appeared in the midst of us a 
 suckling pig with the skin very brown and cut 
 into squares. I poked off a piece of this skin 
 and watched. A hollow, hot, thin-skinned bis- 
 cuit was brought in. Each Chinese opened up 
 this biscuit, put his piece of pig skin in it, closed 
 it up and ate it as a sandwich. As soon as all 
 the skin had been removed and I was figuring 
 on a piece of pig a coolie came in and took the 
 pig away. That was the last we saw of it. 
 Towels. This was followed by small saucers 
 
 142
 
 A CHINESE PARTY 
 
 full of brown duck skin. Towels. The next 
 thing in a soup bowl puzzled me, but I finally 
 made it out to be chicken neck cut up very fine. 
 Towels. The next thing I recognized. I had 
 seen it before. It was bird nest soup. This 
 soup is made of a sweet bird nest which is gath- 
 ered off trees in the tropics. I didn't fancy it, 
 although I knew that it cost like sixty some- 
 body told me that fifty dollars wouldn't pay for 
 the two dishes before us. Towels. All this 
 time wine was being served out of pewter tea- 
 pots. It was poured into small cups holding 
 about two thimblesful and was heated. It is 
 rice wine and quite weak. When the bird nest 
 soup had disappeared we were served jujubes a 
 sort of date and then the chief dish of the eve- 
 ning appeared. It is called Huo-Kuo-Tzu. Huo 
 means hat, Kuo means dish, Tzu means a lot of 
 things. They were bamboo, egg, chicken, ham, 
 duck, all shredded and all on separate saucers. 
 Then powdered flour, pepper, salt and garlic. 
 These were all placed around a big copper chaf- 
 ing dish. Alcohol was lighted under this and 
 water in it boiled. Then each of the guests 
 reached over the table and threw something in. 
 This was done with much exclamation. It was 
 a wild scene, and, as I was ready to go the limit, 
 I grabbed up the garlic and dumped it in. After 
 
 143
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 the whole mixture had boiled a while, each guest 
 took a portion in a small bowl full of hot rice. 
 This was the most palatable dish of the evening. 
 Towels. 
 
 The company then repaired to another room 
 and played Chinese dominoes. There are one 
 hundred and thirty-six dominoes in a set, and 
 the play was fierce and noisy. Every player 
 smoked. 
 
 I left before midnight, and what I carried 
 away was the sight of one Chinese smoking a 
 metal pipe which gives only one puff. A small 
 girl stood at his side, blew the pipe out, filled it, 
 stuck it in the man's mouth, he puffed, and she 
 blew it out, filled it, stuck it in his mouth, he 
 puffed it again. I watched this operation for 
 an hour and a half. It seemed endless. But 
 it wasn't, for just as I was leaving the man put 
 the pipe away and a coolie brought him a bam- 
 boo pole six feet long with a cigar stuck in the 
 other end. The coolie lighted it and stood there 
 holding the pole and the man puffed away and 
 went on with his dominoes. 
 
 144
 
 XXII 
 A STRANGE CEREMONY 
 
 I AM going to give you an impression I got at 
 Hua Ngai Hsu temple, near Chung-King. I 
 don't expect you will see what I am driving 
 at. Indeed, I am not sure what I am driving at 
 myself. And it really doesn't matter. If the 
 thing I wrote was too coherent, it wouldn't con- 
 vey the impression I got. Hua Ngai Hsu temple 
 is, so far as I know, the only thing of its kind 
 in China. You are to remember that this is up 
 next to Thibet, which is, in turn, up next to 
 India and Persia and Arabia, out of which all 
 religions have come. Here at this place the 
 Zoroaster idea caught and hung on like a frog on 
 a rock in a swift current. The temple is Budd- 
 histic with fire trimmings. Its priests have holes 
 burned in their heads in life, and their bodies are 
 reduced to ashes and stood along in rows of 
 ginger jars after they are dead. Both these 
 rites are extraordinary in China. 
 I had prowled around the temple, which is 
 145
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 very large, and had visited the little stucco 
 building where they put the body of the dead 
 priest and build a fire beneath it and had seen 
 the rows of ginger jars. I had visited the 
 chamber where, before a tremendous gold 
 Buddha, flanked on either side with great graven 
 bronze bells, the novitiates kneel every Febru- 
 ary and have the holes burned into their skulls 
 and had been hauled up on a high terrace where 
 I could study the roof of the main temple. 
 
 This roof was covered with symbols, to which 
 a man might give a life-time study. The ones 
 which interested me most were porcelain dolls, 
 in pairs, which straddled the long, curved 
 gables. Each pair consisted of a man and 
 woman carrying in their hands utensils I could 
 not identify. They all represented people of a 
 very ancient China, for the women's feet were 
 not bound. Each pair was a pleasant couple, 
 their rigid smiles seemingly in contradiction to 
 the dragons and elephants and tigers springing 
 up from the roof all about them. The ornate 
 roof, of yellow and green porcelain, was 
 beautiful. 
 
 I was alone. The day was Indian summer. 
 As far as I could see over the hills the green 
 slopes swam in a golden ocean of autumn sun- 
 light. The temple was silent as dumb as the 
 
 146
 
 A STRANGE CEREMONY 
 
 placid7the calm and squint-eyed Buddha in the 
 wall before me. Somewhere a bird sounded 
 incessantly, with little rests between the notes, a 
 sharp, treble tattoo over and over again. It was 
 one of those days when the hush in a sacred 
 place, as in a prairie graveyard, seems a prod- 
 uct of the golden flush of the landscape. A 
 little vagrant wind came rustling around the 
 corner of the colored shrine, scraped a knife- 
 shaped bell-tongue against the rim of a tiny 
 temple bell in competition with the industrious 
 bird, and then left off as though discouraged 
 with the effort. 
 
 One thought and one thought only is possible 
 in such surroundings. It is the thought of hu- 
 manity's age-old hungry reach out of the finite 
 into the infinite. The one thing in a material 
 world worth-while is the invisible, the inaudible, 
 the intangible. The thing of strongest proof is 
 that which cannot be proved, and to the end of 
 time Faith stands in first place, not Fact. Let a 
 man think and he will cease to see. Let him 
 think and he will cease to hear. Let him think 
 and he will let off contact with the world. For if 
 he think long and deeply enough, the thing he 
 sees and the thing he hears and that which he 
 touches become gross fictions, and that which he 
 cannot know becomes alone true knowledge. 
 
 147
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 In a workaday world people kick this proposi- 
 tion out of their way a good deal. The man 
 who is slacking about in the eddies of ambition, 
 or beating his way through to a fortune with a 
 club, or riding the cyclone of a great passion of 
 any kind naturally doesn't see much in it at the 
 time, but when he flips the pages of the book of 
 life under his thumb and looks at the last page 
 to see how the plot comes out, as most of us do 
 sometimes, he always runs against the brutal 
 fiction of Death. No one who is rational has 
 ever accepted death for the truth. As a fact, it 
 meets every requirement of the true and sen- 
 sible avouch of the senses (Horatio's test) but 
 as a truth it is a rank masquerading, four- 
 flushing imposter. 
 
 The long, warm flushes of the waning after- 
 noon shifted slowly on the green and yellow 
 roof and lighted up the emerald eyes of a red 
 dragon with a white, unbroken egg in his fangs. 
 
 Here every year come a string of devotees 
 who have rejected living and are on a dogged 
 search for life. They are Chinese. They have 
 come, by accident, as the rest of us come into 
 the world, and, unlike most of us, into a world 
 that is almost wholly a struggle to survive to 
 the next meal. Hunger is an inconvenience 
 with the west. It is a grand, insatiable passion 
 with the east. There are forty thousand char- 
 
 148
 
 A STRANGE CEREMONY 
 
 acters in the Chinese dictionary. I doubt if 
 there is one which stands for "enough." The 
 Chinese, most of them, are born hungry, live 
 hungry and die with the vision in their eyes of 
 a victualless hell. Food is the one considera- 
 tion, the alpha and omega of existence, the 
 mainspring of effort, the end of ambition. We 
 have many refinements which obscure bread and 
 butter. No Chinese ever loved or hated, or lost 
 himself in the joys of invention or reveled in 
 the passions of intrigue, that there was not 
 always the competitor, Hunger, knocking about 
 in the walls of his stomach and insisting jeal- 
 ously on a division of his interest. We give 
 flowers to the dead in America. They give food 
 to the oorpse in China. 
 
 It would seem that in China the first word in 
 the first line of the first chapter in life and the 
 last would be to eat. And yet every February a 
 string of novitiates come here for the purpose 
 of showing their independence of Reality and 
 contempt for Death and his chief lieutenant 
 the Gigantic Lie Pain. 
 
 For three days and nights they sit in their 
 dark cells and wait for the hour when they shall 
 demonstrate that the senses which give men joy 
 and sorrow are to be put away as trivialities 
 and beneath the notice of those who know that 
 the physical is not only inferior to the spiritual, 
 
 149
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 but in the bright light of the spirit the physical 
 is in fact non-existent, that Fact is, in truth, 
 fiction, and Faith the one worth-while proof of 
 living. On the appointed hour these Chinamen 
 file down into the temple and kneel in the dark 
 on little benches. The big bells begin to hum a 
 rich thunder. The candles flicker before the 
 placid Buddha. Acolytes pass among the kneel- 
 ing figures and fix on the head of each six little 
 soft cones of charcoal and incense. These are 
 all lighted simultaneously. They burn slowly 
 down to the shaven heads. The burning occu- 
 pies a half hour. All the time the big bells are 
 humming and the candles glitter. There is no 
 sound, save this and the mumbled prayers of the 
 devotees, who from this hour forth are to carry 
 on their heads nice little bare spots like the tops 
 of billiard cues. Now these are superior to the 
 senses. They have planted, for once at least, 
 their feet on the neck of Fact. 
 
 The Frenchman who had brought me to the 
 temple came up to me. I knew he had witnessed 
 the ceremony last February. 
 
 "How many were there?" 1 asked. 
 
 "Eighty-four," he said, 
 
 "And the smell?'" 
 
 *'It was really not bad,' ; he said, 
 
 150
 
 THE TEEMING LIFE OF SZECHUAN
 
 XXIII 
 CHINA'S ENEMIES DIRT AND GRAFT 
 
 IF you should put it to a vote in China, the 
 Chinese would declare their greatest enemy 
 to be Japan. To the average informed 
 Chinese* imagination, Japan is a dragon circling 
 around China, licking its chops and trying to 
 decide where to bite first. While I have come 
 to feel that Japan is laying for China, and I 
 fancy the world is to have a great row about it 
 and that the United States is liable to get into 
 it, I don't think Japan is China's greatest enemy. 
 I put Dirt and Dishonesty in first place. 
 
 Far be it from me to butt into a situation 
 that is four thousand years old with a bathtub 
 and a failing for reform. There are evidences 
 a-plenty that China has managed to blunder 
 along in the midst of filth for a long time. But 
 it has survived a good deal as the buffalo on the 
 prairies survived for centuries. There was no 
 one around gunning for buffalo. China long 
 was safe between a big ocean on one side and a 
 
 151
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 savage continent on the other. Now the ocean 
 has become a mere ditch pretty much at present 
 the private property of an ambitious pioneer 
 Japan and the savage continent is penetrated 
 by a Russian railroad. Between them Japan 
 and Russia contemplate doing various things to 
 China, and China can come out of it something 
 more than a vassal state if she will do certain 
 things. 
 
 I can imagine nothing more auspicious for the 
 future of China than the appearance of a 
 leader, divinely inspired, who would discover 
 means of putting down Dirt and Dishonesty. I 
 don't mean that he should entirely eliminate 
 them, but that he should in a measure reduce 
 them and bring them under a reasonable degree 
 of control. 
 
 There are other countries which are dirty. 
 Some of the nations of Europe specialize in dirt, 
 but no one knows what dirt is and what dirt can 
 be until he comes to China. Some cities are 
 cleaner than others, but they are all dirty, and 
 the dirtiest defy description. Only in China 
 does one comprehend what the hymn writer 
 meant when he wrote that "every prospect 
 pleases and only man is vile." I have always 
 liked to look at people. When I wanted to enjoy 
 myself I have always had recourse to the plan 
 
 152
 
 CHINA'S ENEMIES DIRT AND GRAFT 
 
 of taking a seat somewhere and just watching 
 people. But in China I find myself hunting just 
 plain, unadorned scenery for relief. 
 
 It's the dirt that gets on your nerves. It 
 bubbles up from the pavements and oozes out of 
 the walls. It drips from the eaves and streams 
 out of the earth. It stains the water they 
 drink and streaks the food they eat. The 
 clothes some of them wear reek with it, and 
 the beds many of them sleep in squirm with it. 
 It greets the baby at birth and kicks the aged 
 into the grave at the end. 
 
 Now, dirt means one thing disease. Disease 
 in China is rampant. There are no vital statis- 
 tics in China, but some men are fairly good 
 guessers. An American physician who has 
 been in Chung-King for twenty-five years told 
 me that at least seventy-five per cent, of the 
 population die in infancy. Dirt claims them as 
 its own. Dysentery is a monster in this part of 
 China. It mows people down as a new-whetted 
 scythe cuts sunflowers. Every white man in 
 this part of the world wears a flannel band over 
 his stomach at night in terror of it. About 
 half the fellows say there is nothing in the 
 flannel idea, and the rest contend that there is, 
 but they all wear them. Smallpox is as common 
 as colds in America. It is just as malignant 
 
 153
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 among the Chinese as anywhere else and just 
 as fatal, but the Chinese name it "the heavenly 
 flower" and do not guard against it. White 
 people vaccinate and keep on vaccinating and 
 escape. Occasionally some white man comes 
 along who doesn't believe in vaccination. He 
 doesn't last long. The late American consul 
 here, a young man from Connecticut, didn't 
 vaccinate, and last spring he died a terrible 
 death. Typhoid takes its toll also. The 
 Chinese, who are in a measure immune, have a 
 lighter form than occidentals, but the occiden- 
 tals largely escape it by inoculation. Forms of 
 eczema, cancer and leprosy are frequent. Eye 
 trouble is frightfully prevalent. Virtually every- 
 body has intestinal bacteria, and hookworm 
 among the barefoot is universal. 
 
 I believe that if China lacks physical stamina 
 this tornado of disease is back of a lot of it. 
 You see many splendidly built young people in 
 China, but you find mighty few really old men, 
 and the person over seventy is rare. They peter 
 out before three score and ten. 
 
 China is building up an army. It may drill 
 them until the cows come home, teach them 
 marksmanship and give them the best of officers, 
 but unless the population, from which the sol- 
 diers are drawn, is protected from disease the 
 
 154
 
 CHINA'S ENEMIES DIRT AND GRAFT 
 
 Chinese army in any serious contest isn't going 
 to do very much. 
 
 Now, I am aware that physical stamina is also 
 dependent on mental reactions, and you could 
 clean up China and yet not give her a capable 
 army. There is another thing needed in China, 
 and that is for someone to rise up and baste 
 squarely between the eyes official dishonesty, 
 which, unless it is curbed, will finish off the new 
 republic without the necessity of outside help. 
 
 Traditionally Chinese have been commercially 
 honest. There hasn't been much that is ethical 
 about it. The Chinese merchant has been honest 
 because it was the best policy. Officially the 
 Chinese overlords in the past did pretty much 
 as they pleased. They taxed the people, and 
 then gave up to the central government just as 
 little as they dared. When the republic came 
 in this system was continued, and a lot of 
 people claim that it has grown more flagrant. 
 In any event, there has grown up in China a 
 vicious system of "squeeze." 
 
 "Squeeze" as it has developed in China is not 
 the mere creature of avarice alone ; it is in part 
 the product of a cunning desire to do the other 
 fellow up and to luxuriate in the thought that 
 you have stung him good and hard. As between 
 equals, as in a horse trade, the game may not 
 
 155
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 be particularly demoralizing. If the other fel- 
 low gets the spavined nag off on you, it is your 
 look-out. Between a superior and a subordinate 
 the practice becomes vicious, and will as readily 
 wreck a nation as it will a firm or a family. 
 
 An appalling number of people in China rec- 
 ognize "squeezing" as legitimate, and defend it. 
 They expect their servants to squeeze, and con- 
 sequently they participate in the squeeze them- 
 selves by underpaying the servants. For in- 
 stance, a man has a head servant who has four 
 assistants, which assistants have each six sub- 
 ordinates. The head servant will withhold ten 
 per cent, of the assistants' wages ; the assistants 
 will withhold ten per cent, of the subordinates' 
 wages. If the man increases the wages, the 
 "hold-out" increases proportionately. The 
 squeeze increases in percentage with the amount 
 of money in sight. This practice starts with 
 the official class. It can tear down national con- 
 fidence, and unless it is stopped it may wreck 
 China. 
 
 Early America stopped counterfeiting by 
 making the penalty death. A few heads of 
 officials lopped off would probably put a stop to 
 the "squeeze" in China. In all events, it would 
 moderate it. 
 
 156
 
 xxiy 
 
 THE WAY OF CHINESE BANDITS 
 
 I WATCHED a party of missionaries set- 
 ting out for Cheng-tu. First there were 
 fifty soldiers, then a couple of chairs con- 
 taining the missionaries, each carried by four 
 men, then a cavalcade of ten men loaded with 
 goods. Everybody here says, "What will the 
 bandits say to that?" For the bandits between 
 Chung-King and Cheng-tu have broken out, and 
 they are raising blue blazes. 
 
 It started with the British consul at Cheng-tu. 
 On his way down to Chung-King the bandits 
 attacked him to his great affront. Then the 
 bandits carried away a couple of Canadian 
 women and robbed them of seven hundred dol- 
 lars. This was about a week ago, and since 
 then the bandits have been taking pot shots at 
 nearly every one who has gone that way. The 
 foreign consuls refuse to grant passports any 
 longer, but in some way these missionaries per- 
 suaded the Chinese general to give them a 
 
 157
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 military escort for their special protection. 
 
 The missionaries sailed away with a look in 
 their faces that seemed to indicate that they 
 weren't dead sure whether the soldiers conduct- 
 ing them were bandits or not. 
 
 For the bandit proposition in this part of 
 China is certainly a complicated business. When 
 it comes to regular, three-ply irregularity these 
 Chinese bandits could give the Mexican variety 
 cards and spades. Sometimes a Chinese bandit 
 is a soldier, sometimes he is a citizen and some- 
 times he is both at the same time. 
 
 Yuan Shih Kai, who tried to turn China into a 
 monarchy, is responsible for most of it. The 
 generals in Szechuan didn't know whether to 
 follow Yuan or to fight him. But the generals 
 in the next State, Yunnan, decided to scrap him 
 and his monarchy idea, and they sent an army 
 up to help this bunch make up its mind. Then 
 Yuan sent his army out from Peking to help 
 persuade them his way. So, while Yuan died 
 and his monarchy scheme deflated, Szechuan, 
 before the summer was over, found itself en- 
 tertaining three armies. After it was all over 
 the Yunnan army, which was for the republic, 
 started home, the Peking army also headed back 
 to Peking, and the home army prepared to settle 
 down to a life of peace again. Now, armies, if 
 
 158
 
 THE WAY OF CHINESE BANDITS 
 
 well organized, can move around without much 
 trouble. But an army that has to take care of 
 itself must pick its way. Pay isn't always 
 forthcoming, and food gets scarce. This was 
 the experience of a lot of the Yunnanese troops. 
 They rushed up to Szechuan and saved the 
 Chinese republic, but they weren't paid regu- 
 larly and some of them not at all. They had 
 to eat, so it became necessary for whole regi- 
 ments duly under generals to seize towns and 
 help themselves. This worked so well that 
 whole companies detached themselves from the 
 regular army and went into the hold-up business 
 in earnest. It seemed to pay. It wasn't a very 
 soldierly thing to do, and there was some talk 
 about a soldier's right, after he had quit the 
 army and become a bandit, to take his gun 
 along. But the soldier-bandit answered that, all 
 right. He simply kept the gun for pay and let 
 it go at that. Now, a bandit never has and never 
 will work in an unfriendly neighborhood. Some- 
 body is liable to get rude and plug him in the 
 back. So when one cf these bands of soldier- 
 bandits occupied a neighborhood they forced 
 citizens to join their ranks. That will explain 
 why some bandits are in uniform and armed 
 with modern rifles and why some are in cotton 
 gowns armed with hoes. 
 
 159
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 I talked to a man who had been captured by 
 bandits. They marched him up a hill and put 
 him in a pen guarded by a lot of men with hoes. 
 During the night the bandits grew confidential 
 and told the captive their story and begged him 
 to use his influence to get them pardoned. They 
 didn't want to get on the government payroll, as 
 they could if they had guns, but merely to es- 
 cape with their necks. 
 
 It follows, in such a state of affairs, that the 
 man with a uniform and a gun has the edge on 
 the plain, garden variety of brigand. 
 
 There are two fields for bandit activity. The 
 main roads of travel are two. One is the over- 
 land route between Chung-King and Cheng-tu. 
 This road is a stone pavement about five feet 
 wide, and it runs through graveyards, rice fields, 
 villages and mountain passes. It is the road 
 everybody here takes on the way to Thibet and 
 the Himalaya mountains. Therefore it is 
 pretty well traveled. The other route is the Min 
 river, which flows past Cheng-tu to the 
 Yangtse. Everybody returning from Cheng-tu 
 to Chung-King uses the river. No one uses it 
 going out. The Min river is not navigable to 
 steam vessels. Junks alone are used. So the 
 bandits operate upon the people who are going 
 up the Cheng-tu road in chairs or coming down 
 
 16Q
 
 THE WAY OF CHINESE BANDITS 
 
 the busy Min river in long lines of junks. 
 
 No one likes to be held up. And no white 
 man or woman can stand being held up by a 
 Chinaman. It adds insult to injury. You can 
 appreciate the feeling of the British consul at 
 Cheng-tu when he arrived boiling over the 
 indignity. 
 
 He was coming down the Min river at the 
 head of a long line of junks. He was snoozing 
 under the cover of the junk when the bandits 
 let loose from the banks. Operating a junk on 
 the Min river is equivalent to walking a tight 
 rope in wooden shoes. It is dangerous in the 
 extreme. The stream is rapid and rocky and 
 the boat is brought through by a man who 
 stands on the prow with a bamboo pole and 
 shoves the boat off the rocks as it plunges 
 down stream; and plunges is the word, for the 
 least mistake by the gentleman with the bamboo 
 pole would mean ordinarily a quick and wet 
 death to all on board. 
 
 When the bandits turned loose on the junk 
 the poleman on the Consul's junk quit. A China- 
 man hates lead, and this Chinaman didn't want 
 to accumulate any. So he ducked. And when 
 he ducked the junk went crosswise of the cur- 
 rent and shot on to certain destruction. The 
 Consul got up and told what he thought of all 
 
 m
 
 SOCIETY, POLITICS AND BRIGANDAGE 
 
 Chinese, and this Chinese in particular, and 
 ordered him to get to work with the pole again. 
 But the Chinese wouldn't do it. He negotiated. 
 He explained that if he got out there with that 
 pole he wouldn't last as long as a pie at a picnic. 
 But he suggested to the British consul that, as 
 the Chinese respected foreigners, it might save 
 the day if the British consul would step out in 
 front under fire and let the bandits see him. 
 They might stop when they saw who it was 
 a white man. As the junk was caroming around 
 like a grain of popcorn over a hot fire, it was up 
 to the consul to go out there and turn the bul- 
 lets away with his prestige. It wasn't a pleas- 
 ant thing to do. On occasions like this the light 
 is likely to be uncertain or the eyesight of the 
 shooters poor. It may read all right in the 
 magazines stories for a man to step out in front 
 of a lot of wild men and say, "Don't shoot. It 
 is I a white man." It may be all right in ro- 
 mance, but it is a hard thing to do actually. 
 
 But the Consul did it. He figured the chance 
 of getting shot was less than that of being 
 wrecked on the rocks, and he stepped out in 
 front and pushed his way through the rain of 
 bullets. And it worked like magic. The bandits 
 dropped that junk like a hot potato. But they 
 riddled the junks which followed, stopped them 
 
 162
 
 THE WAY OF CHINESE BANDITS 
 
 and robbed everybody aboard of their belongings. 
 As I said, when the Consul reached Chung- 
 King he was hot. The consuls all got together 
 and framed up a sizzling protest to the Peking 
 government. They demanded that the bandit 
 business be suppressed. We Anglo-Saxons can 
 always pass resolutions. 
 
 163
 
 XXV 
 LAND AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 TO my mind the young Chinese Republic 
 has two basic advantages. The first of 
 these is a fairly equitable disposition of 
 land holdings and the second is the essential 
 democracy of this people. Both are important 
 foundation stones for a sound republic. 
 
 The final expression of freedom, materially 
 considered, is the secure possession of a home 
 with enough ground around it to yield subsist- 
 ence to its occupants. The undoubted infringe- 
 ment on freedom which all men should fear is an 
 invasion of this condition. The last twist in the 
 rope of control any aristocracy gives a people is 
 a monopoly in land. 
 
 China is comparatively free from the land 
 problem. The new Republic has its big land- 
 lords and its millions of tenants, but the gen- 
 eral aspect of the country is one of a multitude 
 of small householders. They do not produce to 
 sell, but to live, and yet the ground and the 
 
 164
 
 LAND AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 product of it is their own. The reason for the 
 survival of this widely distributed ownership is 
 manifold and in part curious. Patriarchy, which 
 survived in the East and went to smash in the 
 West, enters into the proposition. In the days 
 of Isaac and Jacob, land descended to the tribe. 
 Probably Israel inherited the plan from the 
 Orient, but Israel which handed its laws and 
 ethics down to the West, did not transmit its 
 scheme of inheritance. The idea did persist, 
 however, in China, and the clan and the family 
 held and hold the fee in realty. The proposition 
 was further insured by ancestor worship, for a 
 Chinaman is tied to the graves of his forebears. 
 Everything of a spiritual kind makes him physi- 
 cally stationary. The family idea has reached 
 degrees of development that are surprising. 
 The most intere^ng figures in China are the 
 old patriarchs one seas every day, seated some- 
 times on the city wall, sometimes in the door- 
 way, wizen, spectacled, with sparse chin whisk- 
 ers and showing always an inscrutable placidity, 
 looking wiser than it is humanly possible for 
 anybody ever to be. It would do no good to ac- 
 cuse them of anything, for they wouldn't take 
 the trouble to deny it. In the West old age 
 prints in the faces of men a confession of de- 
 feat and surrender; in the East it writes in the 
 
 165
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 wrinkles around the eyes of the the ancients 
 an ode to victory and sets thereon the seal of 
 authority. More frequently than not the whole 
 village, not to say good-sized town, is inhabited 
 by all of the same name. The old man of the 
 family is not only the father of the whole ag- 
 gregation, but he is its civil governor and its 
 magistrate. He settles disputes and does away 
 with the necessity of both judge and lawyer. 
 This condition likewise has made for a perpetua- 
 tion of a given calling in families. A Chinese 
 farmer has no trouble on his hands on the score 
 of the city's lure for his sons. They are born 
 farmers and they will die farmers, as their an- 
 cestors have before them for centuries. This 
 permanency of vocation has been further 
 cinched by the absence of a money system in 
 China worthy the name. The mortgage until 
 lately has had little part in the agriculture of 
 the country because interest rates have been 
 prohibitive. The Chinese farmers have main- 
 tained among themselves for hundreds of years 
 a form of farm credit. 
 
 The head man of a village could call the head 
 men of other villages together and get a small 
 loan. The expenditure of this borrowed money 
 was under the closest surveillance of the lenders 
 the secret, by the way, of all successful farm 
 
 166
 
 LAND AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 credit schemes. But money was not frequently 
 borrowed. A singular absence of a comprehen- 
 sive currency has put money in a subordinate 
 place in China. The system is complicated. The 
 bulk of the business is conducted in copper or 
 brass "cash," the money with the square holes. 
 There are at times as many as 3,200 cash in a 
 gold dollar. Cash goes down in value as silver 
 goes up. Now Chinese silver is open to sus- 
 picion. Formerly each province issued its own 
 silver dollars. Frequently the man who minted 
 the dollars put in a grosser metal and pocketed 
 most of the real silver. No Chinaman accepts a 
 silver dollar without testing it. He balances the 
 coin on his forefinger and tinkles it. If it sounds 
 right he accepts it. Some money he will not 
 take at all. A Mexican dollar, current at Shang- 
 hai, cannot be passed at all in Szechuan. A 
 Szechuan dollar, good in Chung-King, is no good 
 in Shanghai. This is the result of dishonest 
 mintage. Now the necessities of honesty cause 
 a curious complication. The Chinese have what 
 they call a "tael." It is not a coin. It is a unit 
 of measurement. A man buys a water buffalo 
 for twenty taels (say $10 gold.) He doesen't 
 pay out twenty pieces of money, but he hands 
 over so many hunks of silver (called shoes), the 
 weight of which makes twenty taels. You say 
 
 167
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 this is not very complicated. All right. This 
 is complicated. Silver is not all of the same fine- 
 ness. A hunk of silver may be worth five taels, 
 but if a man who had sold five taels of rice took 
 his hunks of silver to buy five taels worth of 
 silk his hunk would be turned down, because a 
 rice tael is not as fine in silver as a silk tael. 
 This intricacy runs all through Chinese com- 
 merce. That it results in an embargo on easy 
 trading is obvious, and that it has helped to 
 keep the simple Chinese farmer out of the 
 notion of borrowing there is no doubt. Farm 
 credit banks have now been started in China, 
 and in time China must come to a simple and 
 honest money system. And eventually the 
 Chinese farmer may "buck the tiger" of interest 
 charge on easy loans, but he hasn't done so yet, 
 and his failure to run his plow-share through 
 the vaults of the local bankers has had a world 
 to do with the circumstance that in the distri- 
 bution of land among the tillers of it the new 
 Chinese Republic is in pretty good shape. 
 
 There is something similar in the factors which 
 have kept China in its most imperial days essen- 
 tially democratic. Had China had a more scien- 
 tific and compact government she would have 
 had less democracy. Indeed, if China had en- 
 joyed over any considerable period great pros- 
 
 168
 
 LAND AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 perity she would have been less democratic. But 
 she has always been loosely governed and appa- 
 rently she has always been wretchedly poor. In 
 China more than in any country in the world, 
 past or present, it is a positive disadvantage to 
 be rich or rather, to indulge in the fantastic 
 antics which so often follow as the prerogative 
 of wealth. The wise man in China who gets 
 wealth doesn't indulge in a manner of living 
 which advertises his riches. If he does a good 
 many people, officially and unofficially, will be 
 after his pelf. It is an essential point in the 
 game of accumulation in China to be secretive 
 about it. However, the number of rich men 
 known and unknown in China is comparatively 
 few. The country has resisted those modern de- 
 vices which produce wealth so quickly and con- 
 centrate it into the hands of the few so neatly. 
 The big corporations, the big factory, the com- 
 bination in restraint of trade have had little to 
 do with the evolutions of society here. The 
 Chinese are organized into guilds without num- 
 ber, but these guilds are largely protective. 
 They are not by nature aggressive and preda- 
 tory. Therefore, as China has neither produced 
 nor concentrated wealth, a known plutocracy is 
 not part of the new Republic's problems. Nor 
 does the old Manchu aristocracy constitute an 
 
 169
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 impediment. It did not touch the life of the av- 
 erage Chinese in the days of its power. In its 
 decline its prestige has petered out, and even 
 if the republic should sink and a monarchy rise 
 in its place it will not be the old dynasty. 
 
 For these reasons there is in China the ground- 
 work of a real democracy ready made. It is the 
 creature of the absence of excessive govern- 
 ment and at the same time security in land 
 holdings. Under the direction of government 
 and the security of property and person under 
 government a great and powerful republic can 
 be built. And the task will be immeasurably 
 more easy, because this same absence of govern- 
 ment has left undisturbed in the country the 
 ancient but advantageous system of widely dis- 
 tributed land holdings. 
 
 170
 
 XXVI 
 CARAVANS FROM THIBET 
 
 THERE is no more curious thing in life 
 than the vague origin of lasting impres- 
 sions. When I was a boy there hung on 
 the wall of my bed-room a chromo showing a 
 caravan of camels moving across a desert. Ever 
 since I first saw it, I have had a weakness for 
 curios. Let me figure it out for you. That camel 
 caravan was coming from somewhere and it was 
 laden with something. The picture did not re- 
 veal where or what. But as a boy I spent many 
 a serious five minutes over the question. In the 
 course of time I decided that the caravan came 
 from Central Asia and that it was laden with 
 much spoil. That spoil had to be ancient, orien- 
 tal, mysterious and rare. What it was, its 
 shape, nature, value, I was unable to guess. But 
 wondering about it eventually gave me a weak- 
 ness about ancient and rare things. It has al- 
 ways been difficult for me to get by a pawn- 
 broker's window. I had the curio hunter's bug 
 
 171
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 (that a discovery is about to be made) hard and 
 I had it early. 
 
 I had nearly outgrown it, when I struck 
 Chung-King. Then the old camel caravan voo- 
 doo began working again. For here is one of 
 the places to which the caravans from Central 
 Asia come down, and here they dump their car- 
 goes of curios. I have gone through one of 
 these shipments, and the transaction satisfied a 
 longing I had had since I first met that chromo. 
 
 It is a hard, steep road from Chung-King to 
 Thibet, the roof of the world. It is up, up, up, 
 from one range of mountains to another. But 
 men travel it, as they travel everywhere. And 
 while it is not possible to reach Lhassa from this 
 side (it is forbidden to enter the sacred city 
 from China, apparently not from India) men do 
 journey from Chung-King over into the heart of 
 Asia. 
 
 The white men who make the trip from this 
 point are Frenchmen and I had a long talk with 
 two of them about it. They told me that the 
 Thibetans are not Chinese; that they are big, 
 strong men with corded muscles and shaggy 
 heads. They are dirty beyond the power of tell- 
 ing, dirtier than the dirtiest of Chinese and im- 
 moral to depths beyond the most infamous thing 
 the white man knows. In the high altitudes 
 
 172
 
 CARAVANS FROM THIBET 
 
 they are heavily clad, and at night they sleep 
 around the fire in sitting postures. Their meat 
 is wild. Their potatoes (Irish) are larger than 
 those grown anywhere in the world. They are 
 heavy eaters. Their dogs are big and woolly 
 like Newfoundlands and have China blue eyes. 
 They brought a dog along. The eyes are odd, 
 and no mistake. 
 
 With the two Frenchmen I went through 
 the curios they had brought down out of this 
 mysterious land. First were the bronze and 
 gold plated gods. These were all Buddhas. One 
 was over two thousand years old, a symbol 
 of an early form of religion which only scholars 
 now talk about among themselves. The god in 
 this case has the head of a bull and the body of 
 a man. He had twenty-four legs and thirty 
 arms. The figure was of bronze. Another god, 
 in a collection of fifty or more, was a gold-plated 
 Buddha with a succession of six jeweled heads, 
 one on top of the other, the whole figure stand- 
 ing over four feet high. Another Buddha had 
 the head of an elephant. Across the bronze 
 trunk, some vandal of a forgotten day had 
 slashed his sword, probably to examine the 
 metal, in the hope of finding silver or gold. Of 
 course, these Buddhas had been stolen from 
 temples. What the travelers had given for them 
 
 173
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 I couldn't find out but probably a good deal, for 
 ancient things like these are not picked up 
 cheaply anywhere. Most of the Buddhas are of 
 a kind that would prevent their public exhibi- 
 tion outside of museums. 
 
 Next came the silk scrolls or tapestries 
 embroidered and painted curtains. The paint- 
 ings are of Buddhas in brilliant reds and blues 
 and yellows, the rich, vivid pigments showing 
 bright against the ancient fabrics, which are of 
 a finer weave than is manufactured anywhere 
 today, and to the touch as soft as down. How 
 old these tapestries are the Frenchmen did not 
 know, but they must have been made many cen- 
 turies ago. The manner of weave, the imperish- 
 able dyes, to say nothing of the symbolic mean- 
 ing of the paintings and embroideries, are lost 
 to mankind. Along with these tapestries were 
 large posters made of paper in a most peculiar 
 way. One was the figure of a priest of heroic 
 size. It was made of strips of colored paper, 
 each strip being about an eight of an inch wide. 
 These strips were crossed and criss-crossed in 
 a flat braid with the colors so arranged that the 
 figure of the priest in colors resulted. I realize 
 that I haven't described it accurately. As nearly 
 as I can tell it was a paper mosaic. I had never 
 seen anything like this before and I never heard 
 
 174
 
 CARAVANS FROM THIBET 
 
 any one describe such a thing in any way. 
 
 The Frenchmen also brought down from the 
 ancient land much fine porcelain some very 
 white, some ox-blood red and some brilliantly 
 blue. They made much of these vessels, but as 
 I am clearly at sea on the subject of ceramics I 
 could not work up much interest except in two 
 objects. One of these was a very large green 
 pitcher of jade a precious stone which is used 
 as settings in rings in the Orient. The green 
 pitcher, evidently part of the equipment of an 
 altar, was the biggest piece of jade I have 
 ever seen, and, of course, was priceless, probably 
 the richest find of the explorers. The other ob- 
 ject was a coffin made of porcelain. This was 
 about four feet long and eighteen inches wide 
 evidently for a child and highly ornamented. 
 
 Besides these curios, the travelers had picked 
 up several ancient swords, the hilts and scab- 
 bards of which were studded with turquoise, the 
 most commonly used jewel in Thibet. 
 
 There were, too, incense-burners of bronze 
 without number and an ancient Thibetan kettle 
 which caught my eye. This kettle was a large, 
 graceful vessel, on Persian lines. It was of highly 
 polished copper, heavily incrusted with silver. Its 
 spout was a long, curved affair and its handle 
 as delicately wrought as a high-priced ear-ring. 
 
 175.
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 The Frenchmen who had corraled all these 
 things purpose to dispose of them to museums 
 in Europe. They didn't know about my early 
 chromo experience, but they were infinitely pa- 
 tient with me while I examined each object. 
 
 But not until the last did I get my real thrill. 
 What I had seen and what I have described were 
 ancient, oriental and rare just the things my 
 chromo camels were laden with, no doubt but 
 there was nothing mysterious about any of it. 
 And I wanted something mysterious. And I 
 got it. 
 
 These travelers brought down from Thibet a 
 lot of bronze and silver bells. They are the 
 sweetest toned bells I have ever heard, and I 
 was jingling them around like a real Chautauqua 
 bell-ringer when one of the Frenchmen held 
 out to me two metal concave disks about three 
 inches in diameter, each disk fastened to the end 
 of a single small chain. He told me to strike 
 the disks together. I did so and I had one of the 
 surprises of my life. Imagine the purest note 
 Kreisler ever drew from his violin, or Paderew- 
 ski ever struck, or Melba ever reached and mul- 
 tiply it by a hundred and you will know what I 
 heard the most crystalline pure tone that ever 
 sang out into the air. It was high and yet vel- 
 vet, and it held like the rising note of a flute un- 
 
 176
 
 CARAVANS FROM THIBET 
 
 til it filled the whole room with its music. Even 
 the blue-eyed dog looked up from his bone and 
 listened, and some twittering sparrows at the 
 door grew silent. It seemed to challenge all na- 
 ture by its perfection. I rang it again. I ex- 
 amined it. I carried it into open air and tried 
 it there. The Frenchmen were just as excited 
 about it as I was, and it was an old story with 
 them. Was it the metal, or the shape, or the 
 manner of casting which did this thing? They 
 didn't know. It had come from a Thibetan tem- 
 ple. That was all they knew. But I knew that 
 after years of listening to singers and players, 
 and bands, orchestras and graphophones, I had 
 heard, for the first time in my life, the perfect 
 note. 
 
 177
 
 xxvn 
 
 WAGES AND LIVING COSTS 
 
 FREQUENTLY you will hear someone in 
 the United States say of the proprietor 
 of a Chinese laundry: "When he makes 
 a thousand dollars he will return to China and 
 be rich the rest of his life." Is this true? Are 
 the conditions of living in America and China 
 so different that a comfortable balance in bank 
 is a huge fortune in China? 
 
 The answer is yes. In elaborating on the cost 
 of living, which I shall do, I wish you would 
 keep in mind that I am overstating prices in- 
 stead of understating them, not because I want 
 to do so, but because I can't help it. No white 
 man in China can secure the same price quota- 
 tions that a Chinese can, and no rich Chinese can 
 get the same quotations as a poor man. The 
 traffic is charged what it win bear. 
 
 I should say that the average Chinese work- 
 man supports a family of six on a dollar a 
 month. I will use gold prices entirely. Now 
 
 178
 
 WAGES AND LIVING COSTS 
 
 that twelve dollars a year looks impossible. It 
 isn't in China, in this, the second year of the 
 European war, with prices rising everywhere in 
 the Occident. 
 
 In the first place, the Chinese workman eats 
 little or no meat. He may get it on festival 
 occasions, but day in and day out he has no ac- 
 quaintance with flesh. He lives on vegetables 
 cooked in vegetable oils, the oil being the source 
 of his fat. The fowl which he has occasionally 
 he raises himself, but he uses it sparingly. He 
 goes slow on eggs, too. The Chinese eat twice 
 a day. 
 
 In the second place, Chinese clothing is econ- 
 omical beyond belief. A workman's suit of blue 
 cotton costs about fifty cents. His sandals will 
 tax him four cents and his hat, if he goes in for 
 hats, three cents, the whole outfit coming to 
 something like sixty cents. Additional clothing 
 for winter will raise this to a dollar. I would 
 double this figure for his wife's outfit. 
 
 In the matter of furniture, an investment of 
 a dollar will run the family for many years. I 
 doubt if that much is expended by the average 
 family. Fuel is high and used grudgingly. Rent 
 I have not been able to size up. It is necessarily 
 next to nothing. 
 
 It must be remembered that I am describing 
 179
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 a part of China where the climate is about that 
 of central Texas, populated by a people the ma- 
 jority of whom have no drafts upon their re- 
 sources by education, fashion or lure of creature 
 comfort. The single big consideration in life to 
 most of them is food. It is, in a Chinese way, 
 wholesome provender. They enjoy it immensely, 
 and, taken generally, the men are sinewy, strong 
 and physically capable and the women fat and 
 roly-poly. 
 
 In conveying to you prices of eatables it will 
 be necessary for me to explain that bushels and 
 pounds do not exist in China, and I have had to 
 reduce the Chinese measurements to ours with 
 some difficulty. Also you should understand 
 that transactions here are in factions of a six- 
 teenth of one of our cents, which will make a 
 difference. And finally you must keep in mind 
 that the prices I quote are those of the deep 
 interior and were given to a foreigner and are 
 in all instances overstated. 
 
 Rice (the very best for table use), 2 cents a 
 pound. 
 
 Potatoes (Irish), 2 1-2 cents a pound. 
 
 Sweet potatoes, 12 cents a peck. 
 
 Tomatoes, 2 1-2 cents a pound. 
 
 Egg plant, 1 cent each. 
 
 Cabbage, 1 cent each. 
 
 180
 
 WAGES AND LIVING COSTS 
 
 String beans, 2 cents a pound. 
 
 Cucumbers, 1-2 cent each. 
 
 Spinach, 1 1-2 cents a basket. 
 
 Carrots, 2 1-2 cents a pound. 
 
 Green peppers, 1 cent for half peck. 
 
 Pumpkins, 2 cents each. 
 
 Peanuts, 4 cents a pound. 
 
 Onions, 1 1-2 cents a pound. 
 
 Oranges, 6 cents a dozen. 
 
 Lemons (imported), $1 a dozen. 
 
 Lemons (native), 25 cents a dozen. 
 
 Wheat flour, $1.25 for 50 pounds. 
 
 Eggs, 6 cents a dozen. 
 
 Of course, this list calls for some explanations. 
 There are many grades of rice, and the bulk of 
 the Chinese do not use the best, which I have 
 quoted. The native lemon is large, larger than 
 an orange. It is not so good as the California 
 lemon, which the Chinese in Szechuan could 
 easily grow if somebody started it for them. 
 Wheat flour is as I have given it. It is ground 
 by hand. No wheat is exposed for sale. Most 
 of the bread eaten is in the shape of hot-cakes. 
 
 Tea, which is used in enormous quantities, 
 can be obtained very cheaply. The very best 
 perfumed with jasmine blossoms sells at 45 
 cents per pound. Coffee is not used. 
 
 This closes up the list of eatables entering 
 181
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 into the expenses of the average Chinaman and 
 brings one to the meat situation. The richer 
 Chinese do eat meat, and they have a picnic 
 so far as prices are concerned. All cuts of 
 beef are five -cents a pound. This is for soup 
 bones as well as roasts. The beef is really ex- 
 cellent sweet and compact and well butchered. 
 Pork is from three to four cents a pound. The 
 Chinese pig invariably the Poland China breed 
 is as good as you can find anywhere. Mutton 
 sells for five cents a pound. It is really goat and 
 is very palatable. Suet is seven cents a pound 
 and lard, which is expensive, brings eighteen 
 cents for the pound. A pair of calf brains cost 
 thirteen cents. 
 
 It is really in the domestic and wild poultry 
 field that China shines. I don't think there can 
 be any place on earth where game is as palatable 
 as it is in this part of China. I have been long 
 a specialist on wild duck, but I have never had 
 such duck. I don't know much about the real 
 cause, but I suspect that the ducks feed wholly 
 on celery and rice. The same quality holds on 
 domestic fowl. And the prices are stunning. 
 Here are some of them. 
 
 Chickens (fries), 10 cents each. 
 
 Chickens (full sized), 15 cents each. 
 
 Ducks (tame), 15 cents each. 
 182
 
 WAGES AND LIVING COSTS 
 
 Ducks (wild), 10 cents each. 
 
 Squabs, 5 cents each. 
 
 Wild Pigeons, 4 cents each. 
 
 Goose (tame), 40 cents each. 
 
 Partridge, 10 cents each. 
 
 Quail, 5 cents each. 
 
 Woodcock, 10 cents each. 
 
 There are no turkeys and I saw no wild geese 
 for sale. While there are lots of deer, I found 
 no venison. Frog legs sell for a cent a pair. 
 The ducks are teal and mallard. Pheasants 
 bring forty cents each. 
 
 Salt in China is sold by a monopoly. It is 
 very high eight cents a pound. Native sugar, 
 unrefined (the old brown kind), brings three 
 cents a pound, and the same refined is sold for 
 six cents. Coal and China is full of it it just 
 sticks out of the ground everywhere along the 
 Yangtse sells in Chung-King for $4 a ton. Why, 
 I can't make out. It ought to be less than a 
 dollar. Wood is very high. China has neg- 
 lected her forests and the market is bulled out 
 of sight by the use of enormous coffins. Kero- 
 sene is forty-three cents a gallon and gasoline 
 fifty cents. 
 
 What the Chinese pay the Chinese workman 
 I could not find out the wages vary too much. 
 Here, however, is the servant list of one white 
 
 183
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 man's home which I picked up. It can .be ac- 
 counted exceedingly high as a wage scale. 
 
 Eight chair coolies, $2.25 a month each. 
 
 Water coolie, $2.25 a month. 
 
 House coolie, $2.50 a month. 
 
 No. 1 boy, $8 a month. 
 
 Cook, $10 a month. 
 
 Gardener, $2.50 a month. 
 
 Watchman, $3 a month. 
 
 Laundryman, $6 a month. 
 
 Charwoman, $1 a month. 
 
 Four seamstresses, $2.50 a month each. 
 
 Some people at home bat civilization around 
 a good deal and talk about it being a failure. 
 I can imagine some of these critics over in China 
 and saying to me: "Now, what's the matter 
 with these people ? They're ignorant, of course, 
 but they are happy, aren't they ? And they are 
 healthful, too, and contented. Why disturb all 
 this with democratic notions? Why burden 
 them with education? Why organize them for 
 higher wages? Why introduce foolish clothes, 
 and style, and bathtubs, and an appetite for of- 
 fice and a whole lot of foolish things that a re- 
 publican form of government is sure to bring?" 
 And I know just what I should answer: "The 
 good Lord didn't intend that happiness should 
 be the only thing in this world." 
 
 184
 
 xxvm 
 
 THE ROAD TO CHENG-TU 
 
 WHEN I was a boy I had a weakness for 
 a time for reading certain books 
 "through." I girded up my loins and 
 attacked the Bible, for instance, and sailed along 
 famously until I struck that "begat" chapter, 
 which put me down and out for the time being. 
 I tackled Baxter's "All Saints' Rest." I waded 
 through "Don Quixote." I demolished E. P. 
 Roe's "Barriers Burned Away." The next book 
 to it on the shelf was Tennyson." I jumped 
 into that. Now, the first poem in any well- 
 regulated volume of Tennyson is "The Lady of 
 Shalott." The poem itself is a paralyzer. It 
 isn't long, but it is cryptic. I couldn't make out 
 what was the matter with the lady. So I read 
 it again. But I was as much up in the air as 
 before. It was plain to me that the lady was 
 in trouble, but I couldn't diagnose it. So I went 
 through it a third time again without result. 
 Thereupon I passed up Tennyson. But the poet 
 
 185
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 left me an image the image of a road along 
 which passed a procession of men and women, 
 knight and lady, yokel, beggar, squire, actor, all 
 wending their way into the mists and the mys- 
 teries of the world over the hill and far away. 
 This image naturally awakened my poetic in- 
 stincts, and I tried the formula on our neigh- 
 bourhood. It didn't work. The only thing 
 similar to this procession in my town was a 
 daily passenger train. It flashed by with such 
 speed and with so little opportunity for seeing 
 the passengers that I quit. Had these passen- 
 gers only walked, I might have been a poet. 
 
 Nevertheless I have always kept an eye out 
 for such a road as Tennyson described. I found 
 it in China. It is the road from Chung King 
 to Cheng-tu. It awakened no poetic instinct in 
 me, but it was a source of never-failing interest. 
 I perched myself on the battlements and 
 watched the cavalcade below me as it wound out 
 of Tung Yuen Men (a city gate), through the 
 endless graveyard, around the shabby, jumbled 
 groups of temples, by struggling villages and 
 into the mouth of the horizon which gobbled it. 
 
 Here comes the panting mail-carrier bare- 
 legged, rather ragged, too, with a straw hat as 
 broad as the head of a bass drum. Across his 
 shoulders is the vibrating bamboo pole, at either 
 
 186
 
 THE ROAD TO CHENG-TU 
 
 end of it a little discolored wad of mail. He has 
 come seventeen miles, the last relay on the ten- 
 day journey from Cheng-tu. He pushes wayfar- 
 ers side and screams at others, and altogether 
 is a tremendous fellow in a tremendous hurry. 
 He gets $3.50 a month a detail Tennyson would 
 have overlooked. 
 
 Just back of him is a group of frolicking 
 children headed by a roly-poly Chinese girl of 
 ten. She has a feathered wooden ball a shut- 
 tlecock and this she tosses into the air by 
 striking it over and over again with the back 
 of her heels, first one heel then the other. All 
 Chinese children play this way, with a leg agil- 
 ity wonderful to behold. 
 
 Next appears a group of Chinese soldiers in 
 dove-colored cotton uniforms not unlike khaki 
 good sturdy fellows frightfully young with 
 visored caps and above the visor a tinseled star 
 signifying nothing but merely decoration. 
 They have a good military stride, a good mili- 
 tary air. They would be first-rate soldiers, too, 
 if you could take away from them the belief that 
 the man who makes the most noise wins. 
 
 Now follows a line of chairs, the bearers shin- 
 ing in their sweat and screaming their signals. 
 All the chairs are carefully closed. There are 
 ladies of quality in the chairs and they are not 
 
 187
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 to be seen, being as isolated as Tennyson's lady 
 herself. The lady of quality in China is the only 
 creature in China who dresses in splendor, and 
 then she cannot show off. I have been to several 
 big entertainments in rich Chinese homes, and 
 they show me all the children but the No. 1 wife, 
 never. 
 
 There are other women to see along the 
 Cheng-tu road, however women of less import- 
 ance, very dumpy women, very neat in their 
 linen trousers, very black of hair, bobbing along 
 on their stumpy feet and scarcely bending their 
 knees at all, like boys on stilts. Here is a group 
 of them in single file, their chubby yellow cheeks 
 shaking as they jolt along. 
 
 They pass a file of blind beggars five of them 
 and all of them young and pretty well clad and 
 fairly clean. Each has a Chinese fiddle. Here 
 comes a noisy caravan of coolies loaded with a 
 little of everything imaginable blankets, beds, 
 bureaus, chairs, musical instruments, crockery, 
 tinware, boxes, bundles and what not. A Chin- 
 ese family is moving. This group is repeated 
 scores of times, day in and day out, year after 
 year. The Chinese are always moving. I won- 
 der they have time for anything else. 
 
 But the row of coolies with shoulder poles 
 who follow do not belong to this crowd. Instead 
 
 188
 
 THE ROAD TO CHENG-TU 
 
 they are bringing chickens to market, the chick- 
 ens cooped in baskets at the ends of the pole. 
 And what is this row in their rear? It is a hog 
 a three hundred pounder squealing his lungs 
 loose. Four men have him. He is swung feet 
 forward to the pole, and so he has come for 
 miles and so he will go to the shambles. , 
 
 This is followed by a most curious spectacle, 
 for here seems to be moving in my direction the 
 whole inside of a theatre. There is first an or- 
 nate Chinese house, curved roof and all, and 
 then a lot of horses, house and horses all made 
 out of pasteboard and paper. They are too big 
 for toys and too small to live in or ride on. They 
 are going to a funeral, or better, being carried; 
 and the house will be set over the grave so that 
 the spirit of the deceased will not want for 
 habitation, and for exercise he can use the paper 
 horses. It will be good for his spiritual liver. 
 
 My surmise is right, for eight men come 
 grunting along with one of the huge Chinese 
 coffins. On top of it, tied by the leg, is a rooster. 
 He will be killed on the grave for the departed 
 one's sustenance as he crosses the dark river. 
 
 On the heels of this funeral come four well- 
 dressed Chinese slightly soused. Evidently they 
 have been to a party and have had a gay time. 
 They are getting away early for it is only three 
 
 189
 
 NEIGHBOUR TO THIBET 
 
 in the afternoon. They are the first men show- 
 ing signs of drink I have seen in China. They 
 are just exhilarated, just noisy. One fat reveler 
 stepped out in front of his fellows and made an 
 assertion about his own courage that is, he 
 brandished his legs. When a white man boasts, 
 he swells his chest out; when a Chinese gets gay 
 he throws his legs around like a pitcher in a 
 baseball game. It is most ridiculous to brandish 
 the legs around in this way. It is as much as 
 to say to your opponent: "You knock the chip 
 off my shoulder and I'll run away so fast that 
 you will be humiliated all your life for not hav- 
 ing caught me." 
 
 While I was watching the exhilarated Chinese 
 something was happening just below Tung Yuen 
 Men, the gate. For half a mile the wall was cov- 
 ered with Chinese. Down in front of the wall 
 was a soldier and standing near him a shaggy- 
 headed man with his arms bound behind him. 
 That whole neighborhood evidently had had 
 word of the pending execution of this bandit. 
 Everybody who could, lined up along the para- 
 pet old and young of both sexes. How quiet 
 they were! Was each one saying, "If it should 
 have been I?" Was his mother there? Prob- 
 ably, waiting to claim his body. How there 
 must have flashed hot through her soul her love 
 
 190
 
 THE ROAD TO CHENG-TU 
 
 of him and her divine hate of society which was 
 to sacrifice him! Why don't the executioners 
 hurry? The condemned man himself was quite 
 composed, but the crowd was in a perfect torture 
 of silence. Down through the gate they come 
 ten soldiers, double file and very, very quickly. 
 Ten gun shots, sounding like only three or four. 
 Why should they have hurried so.? Another 
 minute of sunlight would have meant so much 
 to him! Very, very quickly the soldiers have 
 marched away again. How very very flat a 
 dead man is on the ground ! How flat and shape- 
 less! And how even the tiniest of the bawling 
 beady-eyed Chinese babies there hushed as the 
 shots rung out. 
 
 191
 
 XXIX 
 CHINA'S GREAT ERROR 
 
 NEARBY our stopping place in Chung- 
 King there is a bastion in the city wall. 
 Viewed from the outside, it looks like a 
 heavy square tower, overhanging a steep cliff. 
 Inside it is a big, deep, ugly, inaccessible well. 
 Just back of this well is a heavy platform of 
 masonry, and on this masonry, flat, without 
 wheels or carriage of any kind, is a big six-inch 
 cannon. 
 
 This cannon is the sole defense of this city, 
 which is about as big as St. Louis. Of course, 
 the wall itself is a defense. It is strongly built 
 and it is so placed that it overhangs everywhere 
 declivities. There are eight gates to the city 
 and they are banged shut every night at six. 
 Anybody caught outside stays outside until 
 morning. An infantry force, without artillery, 
 could not take Chung-King in a year if the gates 
 were protected. Against any sort of well- 
 directed artillery the city would not stand ten 
 
 192
 
 CHINA'S GREAT ERROR 
 
 minutes' real bombardment without capitulating. 
 
 The cannon to which I have alluded, could not 
 be fired. It is not mounted, its bore is closed 
 with dirt, and its firing-vent rusted shut. There 
 are no cannon-balls for it. It must be two hun- 
 dred years old and it has not been fired probably 
 for a hundred. 
 
 I never looked at this old cannon without 
 reflecting again on the mystery of the colossal 
 inability of the Chinese to fight. What is the 
 matter with them? I have been trying to find 
 the answer. 
 
 To begin with you have to eliminate a lot of 
 ordinary explanations. First, the Chinese are 
 not cowards. Second, they are not serfs, for 
 they believe they are superior to the white peo- 
 ple. Third, they are capable of organized action. 
 That is, the Chinese people have courage, pride 
 and capacity for concentrated and concerted ac- 
 tivity just those qualities which hold together 
 the great armies in Europe. What is it they 
 lack? 
 
 For they certainly lack something. If a good 
 sized army of bandits should suddenly appear 
 before Chung-King, a contingency not at all im- 
 possible any time, and demand the surrender of 
 the city, the chances are that a few rich Chinese 
 would put up a lot of money and buy the town 
 
 193
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 off. They would not fight. In the same way, if 
 the United States should do something which 
 greatly offended the Chinese, there would be no 
 talk of war on us, but almost universally the 
 Chinese would begin to boycott American goods, 
 and they can make a boycott bull-strong and 
 hog-tight. The Chinese army is quite an organ- 
 ization. I have seen a good deal of it. It is 
 well-drilled, well-clad, and well-armed. It can 
 shoot straight. But it won't fight. Time after 
 time in the revolutions which have set up and 
 maintained the young republic, opposing armies 
 marched valiantly up to each other, spread out 
 in battle array, and then politely arranges terms 
 of peace. 
 
 Nine out of ten people who read this will say 
 that the Chinese were afraid. But they were 
 not afraid. They simply did not want to fight. 
 
 I have heard people try to explain the mys- 
 tery by declaring that the official Chinese re- 
 ligion, Confucianism, which is not a religion at 
 all, but a philosophy, makes for an extreme utili- 
 tarianism that the Chinaman about to fight 
 argues that there can be in a blood-spilling con- 
 test only great loss. But it is not a sense of 
 utilitarianism which makes the Chinese non- 
 combatant. No nation on earth is as quick to 
 take a risk as China. No people is as idolatrous 
 
 194
 
 CHINA'S GREAT ERROR 
 
 of material wealth, but no people ever has or 
 ever will gamble with it as do the Chinese. Ev- 
 erybody gambles. 
 
 No, the explanation is not there. The China- 
 man, as a human machine, is equipped just as 
 the American, the European, the Japanese, the 
 Indian, the Afghan, the Abyssinian, or anybody 
 else. He is not lacking in any fighting qualities. 
 But he is lacking one vital fighting method. That 
 is the solution of the mystery. 
 
 Through centuries of isolation and self-suffi- 
 ciency the Chinese have come to believe in the 
 entire virtue of the elements of defense. Every- 
 where else in the world a man who believes he is 
 about to be annihilated will himself take the of- 
 fensive, for in that situation the only effective 
 defense is in offensive action. The Chinese, 
 however, argue it out this way. The stronger 
 position is in holding your forces in reserve, 
 keeping a cool head, conserving your energy and 
 letting your opponent waste his energy and take 
 the risks of attack. That is, when the other fel- 
 low attacks, the Chinese recedes. Now China 
 has always been able to recede. Her territories 
 have been vast, her neighbors, until recently, in- 
 different. If she had been crowded into a cor- 
 ner in the past she would have just as much 
 initiative today as Japan has developed. And 
 
 195
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 the world might have seen historical repetition 
 of the Hun visitation in Rome, long since. But 
 China has so long believed in the defensive at- 
 titude of mind that it is doubtful if anyoody 
 short of a Hannibal or a Napoleon could bring 
 her to the other view. 
 
 For centuries China was left alone. Between 
 an aggressive Europe and herself were vast ter- 
 ritories held by semi-savages. Between the new 
 aggressive American and herself was a great 
 waste of water. Japan was not awake. 
 
 Japan did awake. She adopted modern de- 
 vices. She introduced machinery. She set up 
 the factory. She established joint stock com- 
 panies. She discovered she was cramped for 
 room. The first thing she kicked overboard was 
 her sense of isolation. Japan didn't want to do 
 this. She liked isolation. She didn't want to 
 mix with the rest of the world. But once she 
 was convinced that her isolation had slipped 
 away from her, she threw the memory over- 
 board. It is one of the hardest and most heroic 
 things on earth to do. 
 
 When Japan had made away with her tradi- 
 tion about isolation she took the bull by the 
 horns and did another astonishing thing she 
 adopted the offensive attitude of mind. Japan 
 had been just as defensive in her attitude as 
 
 196
 
 CHINA'S GREAT ERROR 
 
 China. She had counted on her insular security 
 as much as England ever did. She believed that 
 the way to avoid trouble was to convince the 
 world that she didn't want trouble, and to that 
 end she intended to avoid it. But now Japan 
 argued that if isolation was a thing of the past, 
 the old defensive attitude of mind was a danger- 
 ous thing to have around the house. So she 
 flopped right over and took the other side of the 
 argument. 
 
 There is only one rule in a fight and it has 
 always been the same. Alexander used it, so did 
 Caesar, so did Napoleon, so did Grant. Their 
 idea was this : "If it's got to be a fight, pick the 
 other fellow's weak spot, pick it quick, get all 
 your strength ready, and hit him first." This 
 is the first and last lesson in defense. I don't 
 know how far Japan will get with this device, 
 but it is what she is using in the Orient, and up 
 to date it is working well. First, she laid China 
 out cold. She then walloped Russia so suddenly 
 that the war was over before Russia scarcely 
 understood that it had begun. Somebody may 
 say: "Isn't Japan likely to overdo the offensive 
 thing ?" That is possible. For while the defen- 
 sive attitude can overcome a nation with dry-rot, 
 the offensive attitude also can quickly break its 
 neck. Whenever a nation or a man goes in on 
 
 197
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 an offensive campaign for the sheer love of 
 offense, it is good night for him. History is full 
 of examples of that. Besides, common sense 
 proves it must be so. 
 
 But while offense is a dangerous state of 
 mind, the defensive attitude of the Chinese is 
 worse for the end is in deep humiliation. This, 
 indeed, is the biggest lesson the Chinese must 
 learn. If they are to keep their republic; in- 
 deed, if they are to retain the integrity of their 
 country under any form of government this side 
 of vassalage, they must subscribe to a doctrine 
 which the world will some day outlive, but which 
 it is dangerous to forget now, that is, if another 
 nation has a gun which will carry ten thousand 
 yards, you cannot protect your nation with a 
 gun that carries only nine thousand, and fur- 
 ther, if you and your opponent have each ten- 
 thousand-yard guns, that your opponent be 
 given to understand that yours is ready and that 
 you have spent money training your gunners to 
 be swift and accurate. 
 
 One day I was looking the old cannon over 
 again on the bastion and a little Japanese 
 passed, paused, looked the gun over and smiled. 
 You couldn't blame him. And you couldn't 
 help blaming the Chinese. For it would be bet- 
 ter for the Chinese to have no cannon at all than 
 
 198
 
 CHINA'S GREAT ERROR 
 
 to have this, for the old gun, as indeed old China 
 herself, with all her disabilities, loomed in my 
 mind suddenly as an unholy invitation to ag- 
 gression, insult, humiliation and destruction. 
 
 Will the Republican form of government sen- 
 sitize China to this new national need? The 
 answer is in the laps of the gods. The best 
 guess is the affirmative one. Imperialism can 
 swallow an insult and live. A democracy can 
 not, and China is set on remaining a democracy. 
 
 199
 
 XXX 
 
 CITIES THAT NEVER DIE 
 
 YOU meet a Chinese and ask : "How old is 
 your town?" He takes on the same look 
 he would have if you had asked him the 
 shape of the nose of his great-great-grandfather. 
 Apparently he never thought of it before. He 
 usually answers that the town has been here for 
 a long time. And he is right it has. 
 
 Now, an interesting feature of the republic of 
 China is that you can find towns in every pos- 
 sible stage of growth and decay. You can find 
 old cities which are taking on new life, towns 
 that have become cities in a century, once popu- 
 lous centers that are still populous, yet are all 
 but forgotten, and villages that haven't changed 
 size in four thousand years. 
 
 Chung-King is an instance in point. The 
 chances are that there has been a city here for 
 a couple of thousand years, although I am guess- 
 ing at that. It could not have been much of a 
 place commercially until the white man got a 
 
 200
 
 CITIES THAT NEVER DIE 
 
 steamer up the Yangtse beyond the Gorges. It 
 began to boom then, and it is booming still. If 
 the Americans ever build their railroad up the 
 river, it will become the Chicago of China. 
 Now, across the river from Chung-King is a big 
 walled city called Kiang-peh. It is as dead as a 
 door nail. It doesn't like foreigners. The peo- 
 ple over there murdered the first American mis- 
 sionary who appeared and threw his body over 
 the wall. It isn't growing. It is dying now. 
 Two thousand years from now it may be 
 booming. 
 
 Shanghai is a big, spanking city on the coast 
 as full of business as a dog is of fleas. It was a 
 fishing village a century ago. Not so far away 
 from Shanghai is the city of Hangchow. It was 
 founded along about 600 A. D. In the next six 
 hundred years Hangchow became the "Queen 
 City of the Orient," a sort of "Peerless Princess 
 of the Plains." It was the center of things in 
 art, literature and commerce. Marco Polo went 
 wild over the beauties and business of this city. 
 In the course of centuries the town waned in 
 importance and was finally burned in a rebellion. 
 It is slowly rebuilding, but you hear precious 
 little of its importance in China now. 
 
 On the road from Hankow to Peking is the 
 city of Kaif eng. It has been the capital of the 
 
 201
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 country several times. When the Manchus in- 
 vaded China they took Kaifeng after a long, 
 hard siege. They then cut the levees of the 
 Yellow river and flooded the town, drowning a 
 hundred thousand people. Little is heard of 
 Kaifeng at the present time by the outside 
 world, and that little is in connection with the 
 attempt of a colony of Hebrews to get foothold 
 in China. After the persecution of the Jews in 
 Babylon, it is believed that a colony set out for 
 the far east and settled at Kaifeng. This colony 
 grew in numbers and importance for centuries. 
 It built a splendid synagogue and numbered 
 seventy clans. Its prosperity came to an end 
 about two hundred years ago, and in 1870 only 
 seven of the seventy clans remained, the total 
 number of persons in these seven clans being 
 two hundred. Their religion and their race have 
 fallen into decay. They intermarried with the 
 Chinese and lost their racial distinction, and it 
 is said that only one feature of the Jewish reli- 
 gion survives abstention from pork. 
 
 Another ancient capital of China is the city of 
 Sianfu. This town was flourishing before Rome 
 got on its feet. It was the seat of an old 
 emperor named Shih-hwang-ti, who, two hun- 
 dred years before Christ, earned the everlasting 
 condemnation of all historians by a fool act. 
 
 202
 
 CITIES THAT NEVER DIE 
 
 China had kept pretty good historical records up 
 to that time the oldest in the world. This old 
 codger ordered them all burned on the theory 
 that, with the records out of the way, he would 
 be remembered as the first ruler of China. 
 However, Sianfu, though its population is a 
 million, is of little importance to-day to the out- 
 side world, the chief interest in it centering in 
 the fact that the Nestorian Christians located 
 here about five hundred years after Christ. 
 Nestorius was a Christian priest at Antioch who 
 fell out with the church authorities over some 
 doctrinal matter. He picked up a colony and 
 set out for China, having among his following 
 one negro. For centuries these Christians sur- 
 vived and battled away against the inborn 
 paganism of the Chinese. Several hundred 
 years ago they prepared a tablet telling of the 
 glories of Christianity and set it up at Sianfu. 
 It is still in existence. The Nestorians disap- 
 peared from China long since, although when 
 Marco Polo crossed the country he found many 
 of them. 
 
 Of all the cities of China which evidence the 
 ebb and flow of the tides of fortune, Nanking is 
 easily first. It has now a population of four 
 hundred thousand, but its walls show that in 
 the past it has accommodated many times this 
 
 203
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 number of people. For the walls now take in 
 farms and fields, in the midst of which are found 
 big bridges which formerly were parts of streets 
 over which there was immense traffic. Nanking 
 has been besieged in nearly every period of the 
 country's history. War has swiped it with 
 great regularity down through the centuries. 
 It again came into prominence through the cir- 
 cumstance that the new republic was proclaimed 
 there. 
 
 Between Hankow and Peking, far off main- 
 traveled roads, is the city of Chenchow. It is 
 the oldest city in China. It started in 3000 
 B. C. Here silk was invented in 2500 B. C. by a 
 woman, her name being Yuen-fi. She was one 
 of the wives of the third emperor. Invention 
 ran in the family, for the old man himself, 
 Hwang-ti, introduced carts and boats. Man, 
 who scoots around in automobiles and steam- 
 ships, has improved the cart and the boat some 
 in four thousand years, but silk is the same. 
 China produces about two hundred million dol- 
 lars worth a year, and the world's demand ex- 
 ceeds the supply. Chenchow is little known, 
 and I have found no one who has ever been there. 
 Another town in southern China is entitled to a 
 place in history. It is called Zayton. Satin 
 was invented there, it is claimed. 
 
 204
 
 CITIES THAT NEVER DIE 
 
 Between Chung-King and Shanghai is tKe 
 city of Ching-teh-chen, the center of the porce- 
 lain craft. It is now and it always has been 
 apparently. The Chinese invented porcelain. 
 They had the potter's wheel two thousand years 
 before Christ. But porcelain under the name of 
 china was not known to the outside world for 
 many centuries afterward. The zenith of this 
 town's career was in Marco Polo's day, when two 
 hundred thousand artisans were employed in 
 making china there. Trade has fallen off, but 
 Ching-teh-chen remains the center of it. 
 
 But whether trade flourishes or fades away, 
 whether wars come or peace lingers, the Chinese 
 cities remain cities. Western Asia and Africa 
 are full of mounds of dust that once were the 
 temples and palaces of men and women who 
 lived, labored and loved. Nineveh, Babylon, 
 Palmyra, Carthage and Thebes are as dead as 
 an automobile out of gas on a muddy road on 
 a dark night. 
 
 For some mysterious reason Chinese cities 
 survive all destruction. The historian Macauley 
 talked about the day when the antiquarian from 
 Australia would stand upon a grass-grown heap 
 in England and say: "This was London." That 
 is all right. It will probably come to pass in 
 the fullness of time. But when the Australian 
 
 205
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 is thinking over the glories of the British me- 
 tropolis in the misty, mighty past it will be a 
 dead sure shot that the town of Chung-King, 
 China, will be just as crowded, just as dirty, 
 just as smelly as it is to-day and as it was two 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 206
 
 XXXI 
 THE CHINESE PRINTER 
 
 IT naturally occurred to me to call on the 
 editor in Chung-King. I didn't expect to 
 create a panic. But I did. There are three 
 daily newspapers in Chung-King that is, they 
 are daily occasionally. Every once in a while 
 your paper will quit coming for a week and you 
 will ask the carrier why and he will say : "Paper 
 stopped for a while. Run out of money." 
 
 I selected the paper called Min Tsu Pao that 
 is, "The Newspaper of the People Awake." Now, 
 I didn't know at the time that there had been a 
 lot of excitement in newspaper circles the pre- 
 vious week. There had been, just the same. 
 There is a general here named Hsua, a little 
 roly-poly Chinese who is a pretty good fellow. 
 The previous week the editor of "The Newspaper 
 of the Strong Heart" wrote a piece calling Hsua 
 a lot of names. Hsua went up in the air like a 
 candidate for county commissioner in his first 
 campaign. The oftener Hsua read the editorial 
 
 207
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 the more he wanted to lick the editor. But he 
 didn't. He compromised. He closed the "Strong 
 Heart" paper up. Now, the "People Awake" re- 
 published that editorial before it knew Hsua was 
 hot. Down Hsua came on the "People Awake," 
 and he made Rome howl, finally agreeing to fine 
 the "People Awake" twenty dollars. Now, I 
 didn't know this. So when I appeared with my 
 interpreter at the office of the "People Awake" 
 there was a stampede. I must have looked like 
 an irate subscriber. 
 
 The office of the "People Awake" is in an old 
 temple. This is strictly Chinese. Temples in 
 China are used for pretty nearly everything 
 except for worship. They hold markets in them, 
 use them for hotels, quarter soldiers in them; 
 and it was natural for the "People Awake" to do 
 business alongside three big gold Buddhas sit- 
 ting in solemn silence in a sea of cobwebs. 
 When I appeared there were about ten news- 
 paper men standing out in front of the office just 
 "mooning" in an abstract way Chinese have. 
 When they saw me these men made a dash for 
 the door and disappeared like the rear of a red- 
 ball freight train around a curve. I followed up, 
 however, and, as there are no doors in China, I 
 cornered the whole force. It was all right when 
 they saw I wasn't mad that I couldn't even 
 
 208
 
 THE CHINESE PRINTER 
 
 read Chinese, and was seeking light, not gore. 
 The chief editor, Mr. Yen, conducted me into 
 a small room, and I took a seat along the wall; 
 This wouldn't do at all. I had to have the 
 throne seat a high seat in the center. Then 
 a servant brought tea and rice cakes. This tea 
 business always happens. After it was over I 
 interviewed the whole crowd. They have three 
 writers on the "People Awake." They do not go 
 out after the news, but wait until the police 
 send it in. Then they write it and send it with 
 the telegraph over to the printer. They get a 
 small telegraph service from Peking. How do 
 they send the Chinese characters by wire? It 
 is simple. They give every word in the diction- 
 ary a number and then wire the numbers. 
 These telegrams are translated and sent to the 
 printer. When the last bit of copy is sent to 
 the printer in America the writer puts on the 
 last sheet "thirty." Here they put the Chinese 
 characters for "finished." The paper is off the 
 press at six o'clock in the morning and is deliv- 
 ered by five carriers, who finish their job by two 
 o'clock in the afternoon. These carriers get 
 $1.50 a month. I asked the writers a lot of 
 direct questions. Their answers were almost 
 always indirect, for Chinese do not answer until 
 they have guessed what you are trying to get 
 
 209
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 them to answer. Then their disposition is to 
 avoid giving information. You can't blame 
 them, for my questions were leading. "What 
 did they think of Japan ?" They thought Japan 
 might be of great help to China. "Would Japan 
 and the United States ever fight, in their 
 opinion?" They answered, "Probably not." Would 
 the Chinese Republic last? They hoped so. Did 
 they favor the re-election of the present presi- 
 dent of China for another term of five years? 
 They did. Were the people of China in favor 
 of the Allies or the Germans ? The Chinese peo- 
 ple didn't care who won, but everybody hoped 
 the war would soon end. Were the people inter- 
 ested in news about the war? At first the peo- 
 ple were, but they were not any longer. They 
 were tired of it. 
 
 I got one of the reporters to steer me over to 
 the printers. This is an establishment where 
 all the papers are set up and printed. I could 
 catch the smell of printer's ink, over all the 
 other smells of China, a block off. The foreman 
 of this shop was a tall, lean printer with a bright 
 eye. He led me to a little room, made me take 
 the throne seat and served me tea. He was 
 bubbling over with a piece of news, and he let 
 me have it. Two Chinese girls, Wan Yaw Chen 
 and Chua Fe, had been to him that morning to 
 
 210
 
 THE CHINESE PRINTER 
 
 know if he could print a daily paper for them. 
 They were about thirty years of age, apparently 
 unmarried, had been educated in Japan and were 
 of the middle class, and they wanted to start the 
 paper to push the cause of equal suffrage in 
 Chung-King. The printer thought this was 
 about the funniest thing in the world and if 
 you knew Chung-King you would think so, too. 
 The foreman took me at once out into the 
 composing room. The first thing that struck me 
 were the printers rather their manner. They 
 were absolutely indifferent to my presence in 
 true printer style. Everywhere else in this part 
 of China a man in our dress causes a cessation 
 of business. People follow you on the street in 
 droves, trying to figure out how you make your 
 clothes stay on. But the printers ignored me. 
 Each wore a hat with a black button on top and 
 worked in a little room made of three upright 
 cases reaching from the floor to a point above 
 his head. The type compartments are about an 
 inch square, and contain about six types. These 
 types are nicked the same as our old hand type. 
 A single case contains about ten thousand char- 
 acters. The printers use a "stick," just as we 
 do, but no "rule," and their work was quite 
 rapid. The Chinese memory, and this big type 
 case makes it hump, all right, is really uncanny. 
 
 211
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 Memory with us is a lost art. I watched some 
 distributors at work, and found that they dis- 
 tribute "dry." This is all right, for the types 
 are shoved into the compartments, not dropped. 
 The printers work different periods of time 
 some ten hours, some twelve, some fifteen. 
 They are paid on a basis of length of service. A 
 new man gets $5 a month ; the oldest man in the 
 establishment draws $10 a month big wages in 
 this part of China. A small, slant-eyed imp 
 washed the type. But they have no designation 
 for him, and they didn't understand why we 
 called him "the devil" in America. The type is 
 set in columns of about fifteen "ems." They 
 call it "two thumbs," but it is no more the 
 length of two thumbs than a foot in our meas- 
 urement is the length of a man's foot. The 
 most striking thing about a Chinese print shop 
 is that it is necessary to make the type in the 
 shop. This is because of the Chinese language. 
 It has so many characters that it would be prac- 
 tically impossible to keep a full font on hand all 
 the time. Some high-brow editor is liable to 
 swing into the office with a letter that hasn't 
 been used more than twice in the last hundred 
 years. It is necessary to get that letter, so the 
 Chinese make it. In a room off the composing 
 room they have several type-casting machines. 
 
 212
 
 THE CHINESE PRINTER 
 
 These machines are easily the best pieces of 
 mechanism in the shop. They cost about one 
 hundred dollars. Like the presses, they are 
 are manufactured in Shanghai. 
 
 The presses themselves are marvels. There 
 were two, and they were little dumpy, flat-bed 
 concerns just one degree above a Washington 
 hand press. One man feeds, another man takes 
 the printed sheet away and a third man attends 
 to the ink rollers. The presses were literally 
 swimming in oil and looked like they hadn't been 
 rubbed off for a year. 
 
 While watching the presses I considered the 
 fact that there are in this province of China 
 nearly as many people as there are in the United 
 States; that it wouldn't be such a tremendous 
 miracle if a tenth of them in the next half cen- 
 tury got the reading habit, and that the news- 
 paper field which offered ten million readers 
 would be some field. 
 
 And I was dead sure of this: If that miracle 
 could happen, not in fifty years, but in five 
 years, as a miracle should, and "The Newspaper 
 of the People Awake" could be read by fifty 
 thousand people, instead of by its present eight 
 hundred, there would be no question about the 
 future of the Chinese republic. 
 
 213
 
 XXXII 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN IN WANHSIEN 
 
 IT has been my desire to describe to you a 
 rich man in China. I have various reasons 
 back of the desire. First, I wanted to make 
 some comparisons with the things we read in 
 romance and the Chinese films we see at the 
 movies. Next I wanted to offer something in 
 China not touched with dire poverty or the 
 thing which is worse hungry avarice. And, 
 lastly, I wanted to preach a little sermon about 
 Mammon. 
 
 On the first score, I can vindicate the movies 
 and cannot the written romances. The rich 
 Chinese I have seen in the movies are very true 
 to life. The rich Chinese of romance are mostly 
 inventions. The rich Chinese I am to describe 
 is not avaricious he has all that money can buy 
 except more money, and that he doesn't want. 
 I will leave the sermon to the last. 
 
 When I arrived at the city of Wanhsien, I 
 followed in the footsteps of a friend, who knew 
 
 214
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN IN WAHSIEN 
 
 what I wanted, through the ancient town and 
 over a very high arched bridge, in crossing 
 which you go upstairs and downstairs, the 
 bridge being as two stairways propped up 
 against each other. We met long processions of 
 Chinamen carrying on shoulder poles big conical 
 cakes of indigo each about the size of a pump- 
 kin. We also passed several wedding proces- 
 sions, this being a "lucky day" and much chosen. 
 I did not see the bride in any instance, for she 
 was always tucked away in the big red chair as 
 she bobbed along to meet the sweetheart she 
 does not see until the nuptial day. 
 
 My friend and I were bound for the palace of 
 Mr. Yang. We found it on a beautiful hill, hid- 
 den in a grove of cedars. Above and beyond it 
 loomed a rocky, almost inaccessible and wholly 
 impregnable crag, around the top of which is a 
 high wall a city of refuge. In the distance the 
 city of Wanhsien, with its curved roofs and col- 
 ored temples, swam, fairy-like, in the afternoon 
 sunlight. The scene was ideal a mixture of 
 pastoral and medieval the frowning fortress 
 and the peaceful valley. It was all Chinese. 
 There are only six white folks there. 
 
 Our Chinese chair coolies knocked at the great 
 gate again and again, but there was no response. 
 It was explained to me that possibly Mr. Yang 
 
 215
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 had gone up to the city of refuge, where he spent 
 much of his time since the bandits had become 
 troublesome. All the rich lived up there. The 
 gate was finally opened by a genial, well-clad 
 Chinese, who led us into a great enclosure, up a 
 flight of steps to a second gate which opened at 
 his knock, heavily, creakily, and spread before 
 us a big garden and back of it a long palace 
 made up of a main building with two wings. 
 The wall of the house first interested me. It 
 carried near its top a wide border in porcelain 
 blue, red and yellow. The border was divided 
 into scenes, traditional and historical. I had a 
 chance to study one of these scenes while we 
 waited for our host it showed a Chinese in 
 very ancient attire playing a blue flute. Out of 
 the end of the flute flew a purple flame-like 
 ladle, and on this ladle three Chinese girls were 
 dancing that is, they were dancing, not to his 
 music, but on it. 
 
 After we had waited a bit we were taken into 
 another reception room. Walls, stairways, 
 chairs everything was ornate, not gaudily, but 
 with rich and curious carvings of figures or 
 flowers much of it in sandstone. A servant 
 brought to us the son of the family a boy of 
 ten very modest, in plain black silk with the 
 black silk skull cap common in China well down 
 
 216
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN IN WAHSIEN 
 
 over his chubby face. The boy was very well- 
 mannered and without nervousness, making his 
 bows without self -consciousness. With this 
 youngster and a retinue of servants we passed 
 on through the palace to an interior garden in 
 which stood a high, fancifully carved, sandstone 
 teahouse with two roofs there had been three, 
 it was explained to me, but when a workman 
 mending a roof had fallen and hurt himself, Mr. 
 Yang took one of the roofs off. Here we were 
 joined by the host, Mr. Yang. He is a little, 
 thin, bright-eyed Chinese with a quick smile. 
 He was clad in a plain brown silk gown with a 
 skull cap of the same color. When I pressed 
 him through the interpreter he told me his fam- 
 ily had been in the cotton fabric business in 
 Wanhsien for two hundred years. His home 
 had cost him one hundred thousand dollars. He 
 had lost all his children save this one son. It 
 was plain that his whole life was wrapped up in 
 this boy. If he should die and that is the con- 
 stant thought in this household the line would 
 pass, and that would mean that not only Mr. 
 Yang himself, but all his ancestors would be 
 uncared for. 
 
 I began to see the tragedy of this palace then. 
 The sum of all its happiness pivoted on this 
 child riches, luxury, gain, and all that desire 
 
 217
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 planned or ambition craved were as nothing 
 compared with the besetting fear that the boy 
 would not live. There was no emphasis upon 
 the point by the father except in his constant 
 watch over the child. Together we wandered 
 about over the garden and into the little rooms 
 which surrounded it a library with a litter of 
 Chinese books, lounging rooms, tea-rooms and a 
 drinking room with a legend over the entrance. 
 "One hundred rooms" that is, the drinkers 
 could go their length there were plenty of 
 beds here they needn't think of going home. 
 There was nothing of revealed or concealed 
 pride, no hint of boastfulness in Mr. Yang's 
 manner as he showed us about. As a matter 
 of fact, he let one of the servants he has thirty 
 do most of the leading, while he loitered be- 
 hind with us and the little boy. We did not go 
 into the wing where the family lived, and I have 
 to register, as all travelers to China must, that 
 you do not see the wives of rich men. 
 
 Eventually we rounded up in a little tearoom. 
 Mr. Yang took no pains to seat his guests 
 according to precedent, a thing the white people 
 in China guard jealously, as do most of the 
 Chinese, the white people putting the guest of 
 honor at the right, the Chinese theirs to the left. 
 Evidently this social gew-gaw had never reached 
 
 218
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN IN WAHSIEN 
 
 Mr. Yang, or if it had, he didn't care for it. 
 
 Mr. Yang had never been to the coast. He 
 had never been to Peking. His personal knowl- 
 edge of the world is confined to Szechuan. He 
 read no newspapers or magazines. His servants 
 poured the tea, scented with jasmine blossoms, 
 and set out little, round, sweet cakes, and every- 
 body, Chinese fashion, waited for the host to 
 take the first sip. Evidently this custom did 
 not cling strongly in Mr. Yang's memory, for he 
 was interested in conversation and let the tea 
 grow cold. After the tea the servants brought 
 the hot towels. These were scented delicately, 
 and the host mopped his face with one vigor- 
 ously, and with disregard of the act as a polite 
 custom. 
 
 The man was hungry for company. He 
 pressed us, not in politeness, but genuinely, to 
 pass the night with him. The boy was as 
 eager. He, too, young as he was, craved the 
 chance of interruption to their deadly monotony. 
 So when they bowed us out through the big 
 carved gates it was with real regret that we 
 were to leave them so soon. 
 
 Now, for the sermon. I carried away with me 
 as we left the shadows of the crowded cedars 
 and followed the narrow, shining road out into 
 the shadows of the night the old lesson again 
 
 219
 
 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF SZECHUAN LIFE 
 
 that of all things wealth is the weakest. Here 
 was a new view of an old truth, however. The 
 possession of wealth here was ideal. It had 
 expended itself in the creation of a fairyland 
 home. It was not hampered by ambition or 
 avarice. In this case wealth had not subjected 
 itself to the tortures of envy or emulation. It 
 had removed from the life of its possessor 
 all thought of strife, either to retain it or 
 increase it. People say very frequently in the 
 midst of the moil and toil of living: "If I had a 
 million, I would build a beautiful home away 
 from everybody and everything. I would take 
 my own out into a beautiful walled garden and 
 there, alone with my flowers and birds and my 
 loved ones, I would throw away all that cramps 
 the soul and pinches the heart and narrows the 
 mind. I would be rich in myself, my books, my 
 thoughts, my family and in my own." That is, 
 they would turn themselves into happy, luxu- 
 rious hermits. It sounds well. But there is 
 nothing in it. For when a man has built his 
 home and got all his own within it he has left 
 his dearest possession outside the walls the 
 world itself. For I could not help reflecting as 
 I passed through the palace and found all the 
 clocks recording different time and all of them 
 hours slow that the only thing which keeps any 
 
 220
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN IN WAHSIEN 
 
 of us in spiritual order is the old rantankerous, 
 jostling, hustling, double-fisted, hob-nailed 
 world, which, after all, is cruel only to be kind. 
 
 One of our greatest debts is to Xantippe. Had 
 she been amiable, Socrates would have hung 
 around the house and turned insipid. She chased 
 him out among the cobblers, the butchers and 
 the bakers and produced a wisdom against which 
 the world has been whetting it wits ever since. 
 
 221
 
 XXXIII 
 THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE YANGTSE 
 
 WHEN the devil was thrown head-long 
 and head-first out of heaven he 
 landed in the Yangtse river. This 
 is neither an historical fact nor a Chinese leg- 
 end. It is my private opinion, and this is the 
 way I feel about it. The stream has so many 
 demoniacal sides that it never could have ac- 
 quired them except by personal contact with the 
 Old Man himself. 
 
 Moreover, I think that the devil not only 
 landed in the Yangtse, but I am virtually con- 
 vinced that he liked the valley so well that he 
 has stayed. Of course, he may take a trip oc- 
 casionally, such as one to start a drouth m 
 Australia or a war in Europe, but his old home 
 place is the dear old rantankerous, rebellious, 
 man-strangling, boat-wrecking, boiling, boister- 
 ous Yangtse. 
 
 You don't really see the Yangtse as the 
 devil's own at first. You are apt to stand un- 
 
 222
 
 THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE YANGTSE 
 
 der an awning on the upper deck and exclaim 
 over the wonders of the curling waters and the 
 beauties of the careening junks. With the gorg- 
 eous mountains all about and the green fields 
 and the blue sky, it all seems a bit of heaven. 
 But you get over that as you come to know the 
 Yangtse. Knowledge begins with the "floaters," 
 the dead people who are whirled around in the 
 current the women corpses always face up, 
 the men corpses face down. You increase your 
 real insight into affairs when you have seen 
 several drown before your eyes, all of them hor- 
 ribly sucked down out of sight as though the 
 devil himself had hold of their legs. A man 
 usually has a floundering, fighting chance to 
 stay afloat, even at sea, but no chance at all in 
 the Yangtse plump! and he is gone forever. 
 And you come to know what a monster the river 
 is when you find the modern steamers piled up 
 at the foot of the gorges with broken shafts, 
 shattered propellers and busted boilers at the 
 end of the season, cripples every one. They say 
 that the Yangtse drowns a thousand a year. It 
 is a rank guess. Nobody has any statistics on 
 it ten thousand may be nearer the mark. Up 
 and down its banks on either side from Hankow 
 to Chung-King are shrines to the river gods. On 
 the rocks in the center of the stream, visible at 
 
 223
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 low water, are more gods carved in the stone 
 gods that take care of the drowned people be- 
 neath the surface in high water and of the live 
 ones on top in low water. Along the shore from 
 one end of the country to the other are long 
 banners to indicate that someone was drowned 
 off this point yesterday or the day before. And 
 once in a while a light will be found at the 
 water's edge, burning perpetually, in aid of some 
 poor soul who has been sucked down. At Ichang 
 one day every year they set loose thousands of 
 little colored paper boats, each containing burn- 
 ing oil, and let them float in a flock down the 
 swirling waters for the dead. 
 
 So everybody gets to loos upon the Yangtse 
 with the respect which is really not respect at 
 all, but calloused dread. You come to under- 
 stand that if you accidentally step off the deck 
 and hit the water you might as well write "ap- 
 proved by the national board of censors" after 
 your life and call it quits. For it is quits. The 
 newcomer will cross the river at night in a sam- 
 pan and pay the extra price with glee over the 
 adventure. The old stager prefers to stay on 
 this side of the river until daybreak, even if he 
 has to sleep on a rock. Indeed, if you stay long 
 enough in this part of China you will come fin- 
 ally into the belief that the Yangtse is laying for 
 
 224
 
 THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE YANGTSE 
 
 you and that it will get you sooner or later. 
 
 For surely, if slowly, the Yangtse ceases to be 
 a river and becomes a personality a murder- 
 ous, clutching fiend with a tiger's taste for blood. 
 Captain Brandt of the Shu-Hun, who plies be- 
 tween Ichang and Chung-King, told me that dur- 
 ing the seven months of navigation on the up- 
 per river there were really seven rivers. Every 
 month presented a new set of problems and put 
 some new and unexpected drag on the machin- 
 ery. Consequently after you had a little experi- 
 ence with the stream you quit standing on deck 
 and glorying in the scenery. You drop aft and 
 look down in the engine room, where the en- 
 gineer stands, wrench in hand, sweating like an 
 ice pitcher in July and cursing the piston and 
 eccentrics to the full power of his profanity. 
 
 With most white men the last stage of ac- 
 quaintance with the Yangtse is to regard it as 
 a personal enemy. Not so with the Chinese 
 They have known the Yangtse for a matter of 
 four thousand years grandfather, father, son, 
 this trinity multiplied a thousand times. And 
 to the Chinese the Yangtse is not merely a per- 
 son; it is a super-person. It is, in truth, the 
 devil himself, a powerful, cunning, treacherous 
 entity which is both Man and Thing, a sleepless, 
 aggressive, soul-devouring monster. 
 
 225
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 It is no easy matter for a white man to get 
 the mental curve which turns a Thing into a 
 Person, and that person the devil. The Chinese 
 do it easily. In fact, about the only place the 
 devil really survives is in China. He is on the 
 job here. Everywhere else he has become a fig- 
 ure of speech expressing an element- 
 Now the devil in China is not an element, he 
 is a person. He is not a superstition here; he 
 is a reality. He has vigor, cunning and inde- 
 fatigability. He also has his weaknesses, and 
 because of this fact the devil keeps the Chinese 
 almost as busy as he is himself. For, because of 
 these weaknesses, the Chinese is always trying 
 to beat the devil. For one thing, the devil can- 
 not stand light. He cannot travel in a crooked 
 line. The light idea is rational. Evil shuns the 
 sun and revels in the dark. Occident or Orient. 
 But the crooked line scheme is complex. For 
 evil with us is as full of curves as a bull snake. 
 Nine out of ten people who sin wouldn't have 
 done anything of the kind if evil had attacked 
 them directly. Those who fall are tricked by 
 the devious and seductive approaches of evil. 
 If Sin were frank in its attacks it would be ugly 
 and easily repulsed. But Sin is often indirect 
 and alluring and is not easily identified and so 
 speedily put down. The devil with us is a sly 
 
 226
 
 THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE YANGTSE 
 
 side-stepper. With the Chinese he is as straight 
 as a steel bullet. Consequently when a China- 
 man who has relations with the devil is not 
 lighting joss sticks to keep him away he is 
 traveling a crooked path to beat him out. No 
 road, street or path in China is straight. Be- 
 fore virtually every door is a protective stone 
 screen, some of those before temples being mas- 
 sive tablets. 
 
 Now this wouldn't be so very interesting if 
 the devil in China was as he is with us, an un- 
 pleasant and rather grotesque tradition. But in 
 China, in the minds of the Chinese he actually 
 exists, and, moreover, he is a demon for work. 
 There are millions of Chinese who fere not relig- 
 ious except in their respect for his Satanic ma- 
 jesty. There are plenty of Chinese who scoff 
 at all religious, their own included. They will 
 laugh at their own superstitions, as we do at 
 "Friday" and "thirteen," but, put to the test, 
 the Chinaman knuckles in short order before the 
 devil. 
 
 For instance, the first officer of our boat 
 brought aboard a couple of vultures which he 
 had shot. The Chinese quartermaster, a rather 
 pleasant and intelligent young man, greedily 
 gouged out the eyes of the birds and ate them 
 "because they would make his eyes very keen." 
 
 227
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 While I was trying to keep my dinner down, the 
 captain explained to me that the Chinese sailors 
 believed it, just as they believed that eating the 
 heart of a tiger raw would make them brave. 
 Then the captain said : "The mysterious part of 
 it is that intelligence or ignorance does not en- 
 ter into the proposition. A Chinese cringes be- 
 fore his supersition. Take my steward. You 
 cannot deny his intelligence. He speaks Eng- 
 lish like a statesman and writes beautiful Chin- 
 ese. He reads a lot and in his way is quite a 
 philosopher. I don't believe he has any religion. 
 I suspect him of Atheism. On one of my trips 
 things went wrong. The coal didn't steam and 
 we lost time. We had trouble with the gear in 
 a rapid. Everything got at sixes and sevens. I 
 guess we all lost our tempers. Now I wasn't 
 surprised at the coolie sailors deciding that a 
 bad joss pidgin was at work on the ship and I 
 didn't give their firecrackers astern a second 
 thought, but when I dropped aft and found my 
 philosopher steward in his room burning joss 
 sticks to beat the band it rather shocked me. 
 Of course, the steward was sheepish about it, 
 and hadn't expected me to know of his antics. 
 But afterward, when the troubles cleared up, I 
 joshed him about his incense burning and he 
 wouldn't say anything. What do I make of it? 
 
 228
 
 THE EVIL SPIRIT OF THE YANGTSE 
 
 Well, I can't call it religion. I would say that 
 it was an attempt to circumvent bad luck. Luck 
 is an odd thing anyway, and we are not onto its 
 curves. 
 
 For example this incident which I witnessed: 
 The Yangtse was boiling viciously below Ye Tan 
 rapid. The wash kicked up by the steamer's 
 screws had kept the junks and market boats 
 in its wake bobbing all along the route. The 
 wash is dreaded by all the boatmen. Their 
 invariable tactics consist of throwing the boat 
 head-on or stern-on into the wash and so riding 
 the waves. Just below Ye Tan an old man at the 
 rudder of a long market boat full of pigs swung 
 his prow towards the steamer, but a whirlpool 
 in the rapids whirled him viciously out of posi- 
 tion and brought him broadside on just as the 
 rolling waves caught him. Ordinarily the 
 waves come separately with an interval between. 
 The old man rode the first wave successfully. 
 Then the second and third waves struck his boat 
 virtually together and he and his two sons and 
 his cargo went quickly down beneath the surg- 
 ing current. Did the drowning Chinese blame 
 the steamer? No. Or the water? No. But 
 the two waves together which did the business 
 that was their destruction, and that was the 
 devil. 
 
 229
 
 XXXIV 
 THE COURAGE OF CASTE CONVICTION 
 
 THIS is the story of King Chow. I do not 
 think there is another story just like it in 
 the world. I don't believe that it will re- 
 mind you of anything you have ever read be- 
 fore. As a rule when you mention something 
 you guess to be novel somebody can draw a par- 
 allel instance out of history. I am content to 
 let any historian do his worst. I am satisfied 
 that the experience of King Chow, as the French 
 Commissioner at Shasi told it to me, cannot be 
 matched. 
 
 King Chow is a city that is dying of dry rot. 
 It is situated five miles from Shasi. Shasi is a 
 river port built on a long dike which sweeps 
 back from the Yangtse and encircles a big tract 
 of land and protects it from overflow. In the 
 midst of this enclosed area stands the once beau- 
 tiful city of King Chow. It dominated this part 
 of the world for a good many generations. Its 
 palaces were models for the emulation of the 
 
 230
 
 THE COURAGE OF CASTE CONVICTION 
 
 rich and powerful for many leagues; its treas- 
 ures of lacquer and filigreed silver, its stores of 
 embroidered fabrics at once the envy and the 
 despair of the great valley of the interior. To 
 all the population, generation after generation, 
 its frowning walls spelled power, pride, domin- 
 ion and divine right. For King Chow was the 
 seat of the Manchus. When the strong men 
 from the north took possession of China they 
 established their own garrisons throughout the 
 country. King Chow was one of these. The 
 Manchu clans, called "bannermen," prospered 
 and multiplied. They did not mix with the 
 Chinese. They did not intermarry with the 
 Chinese. The Chinese were the subject race. 
 By Manchu edict, the Chinese wore pigtails, and 
 however proud a Chinese became of his decora- 
 tion no Manchu ever let him forget it was a 
 badge of servitude. And if a Chinaman cut off 
 his pigtail, the Manchus supplemented the job 
 by cutting off his head. The Manchu man kept 
 the strapping size of his ancestors. He was 
 bigger, brawnier than the natives and he 
 never was and never could be Chinese. He is 
 still a bigger man than the native and he has 
 refused to become Chinese. 
 
 The Manchu woman aristocrat was undoubt- 
 edly the highest caste in the world. Europe has 
 
 231
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 had its dukes and duchesses, Turkey its khe- 
 dives, India its Brahmins and we have our plu- 
 tocrats. They all convince themselves in a very 
 considerable degree that they are superior to 
 the run of humanity. In my time I have seen a 
 good deal of them first and last. Either on thS 
 score of money or manners or birth, or all of 
 them together, these people believe they are of 
 superior clay. Mostly they get away with the 
 proposition. The general run of folk acknowl- 
 edge it. But the Manchu woman had all the es- 
 tablished aristocrats of the world beaten. She 
 was, first of all, the only aristocrat who was 
 superior to fashion. Other aristocrats set the 
 fashion. The Manchu woman did not. She 
 monopolized it. The average Chinese girl un- 
 derwent the tortures of feet binding, because 
 without the small feet, her chances of marriage 
 were reduced. The Manchu woman never bound 
 her feet. The Chinese woman has worn ill- 
 shapen trousers from time immemorial. The 
 Manchu woman kept to the concealing charm 
 of the graceful skirt. The Chinese woman has 
 always been subjected to a severely trying coif- 
 fure, her hair being plastered down over her 
 head in a way that exaggerates her cheek bones 
 and forehead. The Manchu woman affected an 
 elaborate hair dressing that made her face both 
 
 232
 
 THE COURAGE OF CASTE CONVICTION 
 
 notable and strikingly attractive in appearance. 
 
 Both Manchu men and women over a period 
 of three hundred years compelled popular recog- 
 nition of their supremacy. They forced society 
 to support them. Every Chinese had to pay 
 tribute to them in form of rice and tea and 
 other valuables. The Manchus had a supreme 
 contempt for those who supported them. They 
 would not mingle with their subjects. They 
 lived in separate cities or inside separate walls 
 within a Chinese city. They achieved the last 
 word in caste. 
 
 King Chow was a typical Manchu city. When 
 the Manchus came first to King Chow they were 
 a strong, virile race of men and women. They 
 had the brain and the brawn to prove their 
 right to dominate. They built their palaces and 
 their walls and ruled the country round about 
 with all the vigor and capacity of feudal lords. 
 
 Now there is no more interesting or profitable 
 spectacle on earth than the dissipation of power 
 through maintenance of caste. An aristocrat 
 to establish power must have not only the pre- 
 sumption of superiority, but also the ability to 
 prove it. But it is one of the curiosities of gov- 
 ernment than in the course of time the mere 
 presumption of superiority is sufficient to keep 
 an aristocracy going long after its ability to 
 
 233
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 prove its power has passed away. Indeed, at 
 last, caste the world over is a presumption. 
 
 Thus as generation after generation of Man- 
 chus at King-Chow came and went the Manchus 
 held themselves to be superior and the Chinese 
 so regarded them. For humanity has strange 
 measures of superiority. For one thing, the 
 Manchus lived in great luxury. They did not 
 have to work; in fact, they regarded labor as 
 dishonorable. It was notable with them, as it 
 is with all aristocracies, that when ability to 
 maintain power passed, then sense of superior- 
 ity grew. All Manchu boys and girls were born 
 with the belief that they were superior. Every 
 young Manchu knew that he was not of common 
 clay. If he ever had the energy to question it, 
 to put it squarely up to himself, whether physi- 
 cally or mentally he could dominate the Chinese 
 in a test as his ancestors had done, he would 
 have put aside the question as useless. For the 
 fact was his caste did the business it did not 
 have to meet the test because it was never 
 challenged. 
 
 In the course of two hundred years the Man- 
 chus of King Chow became a community of rari- 
 fied humans. They were exclusive, proud and 
 many of them rich. Their manners were those 
 of the extremely elegant, their lives rounds of 
 
 234
 
 THE COURAGE OF CASTE CONVICTION 
 
 unruffled ease. They feared no one. Indeed, 
 fear ceased to be an emotion in their lives. No 
 one would attack them. No one would dare. 
 This was the measure of their preparedness 
 the calm, certain assumption that thinking you 
 will not be attacked is dead sure assurance that 
 you will not be. This self-sufficiency of the 
 Manchus at King Chow was not a hundred years 
 old; it was three hundred years old; not the 
 habit of five generations, but of fifteen. 
 
 Then the revolution struck. In the winter 
 of 1911-12 the Chinese empire became a repub- 
 lic. The tribute rice, the tribute tea the sup- 
 port of the public ceased in a day. The French 
 aristocracy went out in an earthquake. The 
 aristocracy of King Chow was to die by inches, 
 as fire eats its way through punk. The Man- 
 chus at the end of a week had nothing to eat. 
 In the midst of ancient silk and costly furs and 
 priceless porcelain of antique make, here was 
 gaunt-eyed Starvation stalking like a ghost. So 
 the Manchus, through their servants, began to 
 sell their treasures. The Japanese came and 
 picked up the finest of the mandarin robes and 
 the best of the sables, and picked them up for 
 next to nothing. One by one the rare old por- 
 celain pieces which had come down in these fam- 
 ilies for centuries were taken out of the homes 
 
 235
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 and disposed of to fill the larders. Each week 
 saw the rooms a little more bare, a little more 
 forbidding. There was talk of the Republic hav- 
 ing made provision for the Manchus. No such 
 help ever reached King Chow. As the months 
 lengthened into years even the tables passed 
 out of the houses and finally the very beds. Then 
 the day came when there was nothing more to" 
 sell. One after another the palaces had emp- 
 tied themselves of their ornaments, furniture, 
 everything. The Manchus stood around as 
 people in a dream. They were dazed simply 
 dazed without the power of thought. One thing 
 they did not go to work. Their kind had not 
 worked for centuries. Work was the primal sin 
 and the ultimate degradation. They would not 
 work, and they did not. So finally they began to 
 sell their palaces brick by brick. It is a fine 
 brick, two hundred years old and more, and it 
 sold readily. Brick by brick the big houses have 
 come down and the brick has been carted off 
 until now King Chow is a pile of whitish rub- 
 bish, a skeleton behind its high, strong walls. 
 Nearby Shasi grows apace. And in the midst of 
 these dust heaps at King Chow are little wind 
 shaken mat huts. In the dirt and powdered 
 mortar live the Manchus. Around about them 
 are the ruins of King Chow and in their hearts 
 
 236
 
 THE COURAGE OF CASTE CONVICTION 
 
 only dumb despair and mocking memories. 
 
 So passes King Chow, the Manchu city. I 
 saw its men, big, strapping fellows still, with 
 great dignity in their sad, sunken eyes. I saw 
 its women, tall, stately women, still with their 
 elaborate coiffures, their normal feet, their long 
 skirts, sadder, all of them, in their bearing than 
 the men. The bricks of their homes are about 
 all gone. And after they are gone what? As 
 I watched their tragic figures in the midst of 
 this desolation, destruction and decay, I asked 
 myself the question again and again. After the 
 last brick what? Work? Never. For it is 
 something to be said of any real aristocracy 
 it will die with the courage of its caste convic- 
 tions rather than violate them. 
 
 237
 
 XXXV 
 A CHINESE GENERAL'S JOB 
 
 THE poorest job on earth is that of a Chin- 
 ese general. The chief reason for this 
 is that if you are a Chinese general you 
 must also be a politician. Nearly all the main 
 office holders in China are generals. This is, in 
 part, the result of the revolution. It naturally 
 followed, as it did with us after the establish- 
 ment of the United States. There are still peo- 
 ple down in Virginia who do not call him George 
 Washington, but General Washington. In fact, 
 after the war with Great Britain the military 
 men had the United States pretty well under 
 their thumbs politically. Indeed, the officers of 
 the Revolution in America formed the Order of 
 Cincinnati, and one of its schemes was to take 
 over the offices. A lot of people scented in^it 
 a plan to set up a blood aristocracy, and Wash- 
 ington himself had to put his foot down on it 
 before the order was made to take its proper 
 place as a mere fraternal organization. Then, 
 
 238
 
 most of us can remember that for thirty years 
 after the Civil war in the North most of the 
 men who held office had been military Grant, 
 Garfield, Harrison and others. And even later 
 than that there was Roosevelt, who jumped 
 off San Juan Hill into the White House. So it 
 is a perfectly normal evolution for the Chinese 
 general to become a president or a governor. 
 
 But there is a difference in China. In the 
 United States the general who became a gover- 
 nor grew so busy with politics that he forgot 
 his military side. He sat up so often at night 
 worrying over who should be coal oil inspector 
 that he forgot he was in command of the state 
 militia. Now in China a governor cannot for- 
 get his military side. In the first place, his 
 troops are always about him and they have to 
 be paid, and, as revenues are decidedly slack 
 most of the time, he is kept busy keeping his 
 own army in humor. In the second place, a 
 rival politician may have an army of his own, 
 and so needs watching. And, in the third place, 
 there may be a turnover in Peking which will 
 necessitate the general making up his mind 
 whether he is loyal or recalcitrant, and making 
 it up in a second. 
 
 I am going to give two instances to illustrate 
 just how rocky the road is for generals in China. 
 
 239
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 The first is the story of General Twang Fang. 
 Fang was beloved by the missionaries in all the 
 Yangtse valley. When the dowager empress 
 made up her mind to wipe the foreigners out of 
 China she sent a telegram to every governor 
 along the Yangtse which read: "Exterminate 
 the foreigners." For "exterminate" Fang read 
 "protect" and the missionaries were saved. 
 Fang was governor at Nanking at the time. 
 When the revolution broke out, in 1911, it 
 started in Szechuan, and the Peking govern- 
 ment sent Fang with his 2,500 soldiers up to 
 Cheng-tu to stop it. He never got to Cheng-tu, 
 for when he reached Chung-King he heard that 
 the revolutionists had captured Hankow, down 
 the river. So he was cut off. He couldn't go 
 forward and he couldn't go back. He made up 
 his mind to cut loose from his troops, who were 
 disaffected, and escape to Peking in disguise. 
 Then he reconsidered and decided to offer his 
 troops $25,000 to help him make his way out of 
 the country. They demanded to see the actual 
 money. Of course, he didn't have it, and they 
 refused. He went back to the idea of disguise. 
 As he was slipping out the gate of the city of 
 Tzu Chow he was recognized by his soldiers. 
 They dragged him into a temple and commanded 
 him to kneel. Fang was a Manchu and proudly 
 
 240
 
 A CHINESE GENERAL'S JOB 
 
 refused to kneel. They slashed his head off as 
 he stood. 
 
 This is the second instance. When Yuan 
 Shih Kai concluded that he was cut out for a 
 king he stationed his own friends around through 
 the provinces in charge of the troops and in the 
 governors' palaces. Then the revolution broke 
 out again, and although Yuan Shih Kai saved his 
 neck by dying with an opportuneness that sug- 
 gested suicide, but wasn't, the revolutionists in 
 different provinces went after; Yuan's friends 
 with a vengeance. One of his friends was Gen- 
 eral Kiang Pei Kun, in charge of the troops in 
 Chang-Sha. The soldiers of Hunan dashed into 
 Chang-Sha and cleaned out the other side. They 
 killed, burned and looted. All authority went 
 to smash and people with means either fled with 
 their wealth or concealed it. General Kiang 
 Pei Kun took to a small boat, and in the disguise 
 of a labourer of the lowest caste made down the 
 river. I am going to let Captain Reid of the 
 Tung-Wo, one of the best-known captains of the 
 Yangtse and one of the best fellows in the world 
 tell the rest. 
 
 "You see," said Captain Reid to me, "the lid 
 had slipped off hell and the pot tipped over in 
 Chang-Sha. They were murdering 'em like 
 sticking pigs in autumn. And frying their liv- 
 
 241
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 ers d'ye see? Frying 'em like beef steak and 
 eating of 'em. I was alongside the hulk the 
 wharf, d'ye see ? I was there for the company 
 for passengers. Ye see that. And we were get- 
 ting passengers swarms of 'em, like ants on 
 their busy day. They came bundlin' over the 
 sides with their money in boxes, baskets, satch- 
 els everything until we were stocked up like 
 a blooming money vault in a Shanghai bank. 
 And what do you think? The commissioner of 
 the port sent me word that I better pull off from 
 alongside the hulk that he couldn't be respon- 
 sible. The rioting soldiers wanted my passen- 
 gers. He sent me that word, d'ye see? Me 
 pull out? Well, I put on my pistols not where 
 you could see 'em, but I put 'em on kind of 
 under my coat-tails like d'ye see, and I ran up 
 the union jack. And I stayed there all night 
 with the shooting and burning and frying of 
 livers raging all around and passengers with 
 money bags tumbling onto the ship all the time. 
 I was there for passengers, d'ye see? I got out 
 at five the next morning, and forty-five miles up 
 the river we took on another refugee with a bag 
 of gold. And the coolie on the sampan, he sort 
 of whispered to the comprador and the compra- 
 dor come to me and say that the general is up 
 the river, all in. So I haul about, and about 
 
 242
 
 A CHINESE GENERAL'S JOB 
 
 two miles up the river we come alongside the 
 general in a sampan all in as dirty as a beg- 
 gar and trembling all over like a cat in a cold 
 kitchen. And we hauled him aboard, the poor 
 starving wretch, and he flipped and flapped and 
 fell over on the deck. And the Chinese took 
 him down and doused him into the bathtub, and 
 he came to, dazed sort of like, and guessed he 
 was saved. He had wandered about four days 
 without food. We take the lot to Hankow. And 
 I think no more about the whole blooming busi- 
 ness, not me, until one day a Chinaman came 
 bowing and bobbing alongside and gave me this 
 watch and this chain it's Chinese gold ye can 
 see for yourself and the two English sover- 
 eigns a-dangling to it not bad don't you 
 think so? and this letter. Will you read that 
 now? Take the spelling and all it's better that 
 way: 
 
 " 'Hankow, August 12, 1916. 
 " 'Dear Sir In presenting you these few 
 lines, I express my hearty thanks for your kind- 
 ness in saving my life when I was under the 
 chase of the Hunan soldiers in Hunan. It is un- 
 doubt that my life would lose if you didn't turn 
 your kind hand and stop the boat. I suppose 
 you know that I am rather a man of poverty, so 
 it is hard for me to express my thanks substan- 
 
 243
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATECRAFT 
 
 tically, but I should remember your kind act in 
 heart and try to repay my thanks in time when 
 I can afford to do. 
 
 " 'I am faithfully yours, 
 
 " 'KIANG PEI KUN.' " 
 
 It isn't much of a note from a literary view- 
 point. But it is a fine picture of genuine grati- 
 tude. And, moreover, it is a bit of a document 
 in the history of troublous times in a young 
 republic. 
 
 244
 
 XXXVI 
 THE FICTION OF ROYAL BLOOD 
 
 STANDING in the midst of the splendors of 
 the Forbidden City, Peking, I had some 
 thoughts on history's most colossal con- 
 game royal blood. But before I get to that I 
 want to take up the Forbidden City itself. Just 
 now I used the word "splendors" with care. For 
 the most part buildings in China are shabby and 
 dilapidated. The used-up, pealed-off appearance 
 of the country persists up to the very walls of 
 the Forbidden City. But it ceases there. The 
 sacred city itself comes very near being a real 
 sure-enough dream like you used to fancy 
 heaven was like when you accepted the pearly 
 gates as an architectural fact. 
 
 Now this may be due to the manner in which 
 you approach it. You first strike the Chinese 
 City, with its dull fifty-foot wall. The Chinese 
 City is big and uninteresting compared to the 
 interior Chinese towns, like Chung-King. Then 
 you get into the Tartar City, which is scattered. 
 
 245
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATECRAFT 
 
 That is, it is full of big empty spaces, used for 
 nothing in particular. It would be no sight at 
 all if its streets did not show multitudes of cam- 
 els, donkeys, two-wheeled prairie schooners, 
 wheelbarrows and queer people, with everybody 
 muffled up to their eyes in furs and rags for 
 it is winter. And yet you object to the Chinese 
 spread out so. They look better huddled like 
 rabbits. Indeed, you find it easy to put Peking 
 down as a glaring over-advertised fake before 
 you get to the Imperial City, which is inside the 
 Tartar City and not much better than the 
 Chinese city. And when you reach the forbid- 
 den city and pay your thirty cents to get in 
 for it is still forbidden you are discounting 
 every tale you ever heard about it to beat the 
 band. This impression is helped out some by 
 the fact that people are skating on the big moat 
 which surrounds the sacred enclosure. But once 
 inside you change your mind. You find your- 
 self in a big enclosure, crowded with color. The 
 roofs are a glistening yellow, the walls blue, 
 green and circus-wagon red, and in front of most 
 of the palaces are meshes of white marble balus- 
 trades. I say meshes because they are just 
 tangles of carved white marble, serving no pur- 
 pose whatsoever except for ornamentation. But 
 they do that. The eye is lost in following their 
 
 246
 
 THE FICTION OF ROYAL BLOOD 
 
 curves and a fairy-like effect is achieved. 
 
 I paid one dollar to go into one of the palaces 
 and look over the things which were saved out 
 of the royal palaces when the dynasty collapsed. 
 The whole array of jeweled boxes, jade and por- 
 celain and bronze ornaments and robes mount- 
 ing into the thousands are gorgeous beyond 
 compare. The crown jewels, for instance, in 
 the Tower of London look tawdry compared to 
 them. There is no such beautiful handicraft 
 anywhere else on earth. The looters in 1900 
 did not get a fraction of it. Now you see no 
 hint of all this fascinating art anywhere else 
 in China. The beautiful things in rich men's 
 houses are poor at best. They are truly regal 
 here. And the palaces, all furbished up as part 
 of Yuan Shih Kai's design to be king, are a fit- 
 ting jewel box. 
 
 I now come to the royal blood thought. This 
 Forbidden City with its beautiful contents was 
 the habitation of a royal family. It had become 
 so exclusive that it shut itself absolutely in and 
 the world absolutely out. When the emperor 
 sallied forth the population outside poked its, 
 nose in the dirt and dared not look upon him. 
 Through the influence of the times this dynasty 
 all but petered out. The breath of revolt swept 
 it away as a cobweb is brushed aside with a 
 
 247
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 a careless or casual movement of the hand. 
 How did it ever maintain itself so long? By 
 the world's weak subscription to the aforesaid 
 greatest con-game in history royal blood. The 
 subscription is as old as the world itself, and 
 no race is free from it. Most of the world has 
 been time out of mind monarchical. But there 
 was really less use for a monarchy here in 
 China than aywhere else in the world. For 
 while the Chinese are homogeneous, their eigh- 
 teen provinces are virtually autonomous. The 
 general run of Chinese knew personally no gov- 
 ernment except the local authorities. That gov- 
 ernment did not give security to life and prop- 
 erty. It existed for the very fundamental pur- 
 pose of taxation, to give someone the job of col- 
 lecting a tax and paying him for doing it, which 
 is a very complete definition of the ordinary 
 application of the doctrine of state's rights. Pre- 
 sumably the autonomous provinces of China 
 banded together under a central government at 
 Peking and under a monarchy with the idea of 
 national strength through union. But the cen- 
 tral government at Peking, within the memory 
 of man, protected nothing. It has been succes- 
 sively slapped, insulted and preyed upon from 
 the outside for the last hundred years. It is 
 the veriest fiction that the central government 
 
 248
 
 in China was necessary to speak with authority 
 for all the constituent states. So far as the out- 
 side world was concerned, Peking had no author- 
 ity worthy the name. Witness the British, 
 French, Japanese, Russian and German occu- 
 pations of Chinese territory, a thing no respon- 
 sible government could tolerate and live. 
 
 No, the truth is that monarchy existed in 
 China, not from the necessities of centralized 
 government, but because of humanity's weak- 
 ness for kings the belief that a quart or two 
 of exclusive red fluid in the veins of a certain 
 family endows its members with privileges be- 
 yond those given ordinary clay. It is a great 
 fraud, this historical fake, when you come to 
 think of it. For centuries the Chinese people 
 have been industrious, temperate, frugal and 
 dirt poor. They have dragged from their fer- 
 tile soil mountains of wealth, but they have 
 neither retained it nor enjoyed it. A wise, 
 strong central government would have enforced 
 scientific increases in the production of that 
 wealth and a just distribution of it, and exer- 
 cised for all the people a protection of their nat- 
 ional accumulations against the invaders of the 
 outside world. A dynasty, exercising such bene- 
 ficent rule could justly call for loyalty. But the 
 people of China remained loyal to the dynasty 
 
 249
 
 SUPERSTITION AND STATESCRAFT 
 
 without any of these benefits. They starved 
 and struggled along in their dirty hovels, shiv- 
 ering in their rags in winter and blistering half 
 clad in summer, beasts of burden most of them, 
 weary and heavy-laden through the whole of 
 their allotted span. The one bright, shining 
 spot in their vast empire was the Forbidden 
 City. Here the great palaces shouldered their 
 generous roofs into the sky. Here were shim- 
 mering lakes and spreading trees; here art and 
 ease, beauty and luxury, jeweled case and lac- 
 quered chest, silk so sheer it would tear at the 
 touch, embroideries heavy in richness as lead is 
 in weight here was royalty. 
 
 There has not been a Chinese emperor in the 
 last two hundred years who stripped to the skin 
 was not as any other Oriental of his breed. In 
 muscular tissue the average emperor could not 
 compare with the average coolie perhaps, or in 
 heart action, and in brain capacity there were 
 tens of thousands in his empire who could sur- 
 pass him. But he had one thing they did not 
 have; the working plans of the greatest con- 
 game in history the claim to royal blood. His 
 father was a king before him a natural fact of 
 infinitesimal account, but a psychological asser- 
 tion of world-wide and age-old potency. He was 
 of royal blood: therefore the world of men who 
 
 250
 
 THE FICTION OF ROYAL BLOOD 
 
 toil and moil were to surrender all reason and 
 self-interest that they might the better exalt 
 him. 
 
 A set of democratic dreamers pricked the bub- 
 ble in China. A touch and the revolution of 
 Dr. Sun and his crowd was just that and the 
 fake exploded. 
 
 So the Forbidden City, as I wandered through 
 its solitudes, seemed a magnificent monument 
 to a dream of power to which four hundred 
 million drudging men and women subscribed as 
 something real, when in truth it was a phantom. 
 
 251
 
 xxxvn 
 
 A CHINESE PRESIDENT 
 
 IT was Carey, the young American railroad- 
 builder in China, who arranged my call pn 
 the president of China. I went over to 
 Carey's home, and President Li Yuan Hung sent 
 his chief secretary, Mr. Kuo Tai-chi, for us. Kuo 
 was educated in America and shows it. 
 
 At the palace gate, plump! dropped the guns 
 of the soldiers. But Kuo waved them aside. 
 The soldiers brought their heels together with a 
 click and stood at rigid attention. 
 
 "See that gate?" said Kuo. "It's got a story. 
 Everything around here has a story. Every 
 foot of this ground simply bubbles up history. 
 Emperor Chen once captured a Mohammedan 
 princess and brought her here as a wife. She 
 wept and wept for her native land all that sort 
 of thing, you know. Now, right outside here 
 was a big Mohammedan camp, and the emperor 
 built this gate so the princess could sit in the 
 upper story and be relieved of her homesickness 
 
 252
 
 A CHINESE PRESIDENT 
 
 by looking at her countrymen in the camp." 
 We wandered on through a maze of buildings 
 ablaze with imperial yellow. There was one ex- 
 ception, a solid white structure, built square and 
 looking like a family vault. This was part of 
 Yuca Shih Kai's imperial dream. He had it built 
 and placed within it a gold box containing three 
 names from which were to be selected his suc- 
 cessor easy kind of election for a young re- 
 public. Only two men know who were so pre- 
 ferred, and they won't tell. The three were 
 probably Yuan's sons. 
 
 Once we stopped and went into the ancient 
 throne room. It was heaped with old furniture 
 and beautiful screens. Some of the furniture 
 was broken and the whole attic-like look of the 
 place spelled ruin. 
 
 President Li proved to be a very heavy man 
 with a large square head, covered with short 
 wiry hair which comes well down in front and 
 close up to big, rather flat ears. His jaw was 
 big, his cheeks heavy, but firm. He has a mili- 
 tary moustache, rather scant, as you often see 
 in Chinese, not thick as you would find it in a 
 westerner. He has a firm mouth and a good 
 nose. His predominating features were his 
 eyes. They were the lustrous, gentle, kind 
 which are capable of showing great sorrow or 
 
 253
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 great anger, but which normally carry kincQI- 
 ness. He was clad in a buff uniform with red 
 facings. The epaulets were of red and carried 
 three stars. He appeared as a soldier pure and 
 simple, and looked a man ready to take to the 
 field without having to pick up anything but his 
 sword. His office was furnished with a big desk 
 and a lot of red morocco chairs and a big sofa, 
 also in red morocco. The carpet was a plain 
 Chinese rug. The hangings were a blue bro- 
 cade and rather subdued in effect. Two boys in 
 blue uniforms, after the fashion of bell-boy 
 uniforms in American hotels, served tea, which 
 no one drank, the president, in his interest in 
 the conversation, evidently forgetting it. 
 
 President Li speaks some English. However, 
 we did our talking through Mr. Kuo. I would 
 make a statement and then Kuo would come 
 back with the president's answer, as "His ex- 
 cellency says that in what you say of China you 
 have hit the nail on the head." 
 
 We talked a little of everything about the 
 needs of a stable currency, the advantage of a 
 uniform educational system and above all the" 
 great benefits which follow railroad construc- 
 tion. 
 
 President Li said that China's need was ready 
 money and the consequent necessity of convey- 
 
 254
 
 A CHINESE PRESIDENT 
 
 ing to foreign financiers that China was a splen- 
 did security. "We have the smallest national 
 debt of all the larger nations only $200,000,- 
 000. Our people are universally industrious and 
 temperate. As you have seen for yourself in 
 your journeys over China, the potential possi- 
 bilities of China in agriculture, in minerals and 
 in manufacturing power are unlimited. But to 
 develop these resources, modern appliances must 
 be requisitioned, and it takes money to initiate 
 these appliances. China will pay for the money 
 she obtains. She has always paid. She has 
 never repudiated." 
 
 I told him that so far as the United States 
 was concerned, if money was forthcoming to 
 China in the shape of loans, public sentiment 
 would have a lot to do with it. For while the 
 bankers made the loans, the people themselves, 
 by investing, sustained the bankers in their 
 loans and that a favorable public sentiment 
 made, therefore, for easier transactions. I con- 
 tended that basically the regard for China by 
 America now rested upon a sentimental hope of 
 the permanency of the republican government 
 in China. I told him we did not want any part 
 of their land, but we did want a chance to trade 
 with China in a fair field and no favor. 
 
 This brought from the president a warm ex- 
 255
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 pression of the feeling of friendship in China 
 for America. It was genuine and not perfunc- 
 tory in the least. 
 
 We went on discussing the relations of the 
 two countries in this way for a long time. As 
 the president talked he kept fingering the table- 
 cloth in front of him, turning it over and over 
 in his big rufous hands with just that show of 
 the embarrassment you would expect in a sol- 
 dier. 
 
 When he had concluded the president arose 
 and went over to his desk and pulled out two 
 photographs of himself one showed him in 
 evening clothes, the other in the full regalia of 
 a general. He carefully wrote his name in Eng- 
 lish across the one I said I wanted the one in 
 military attire and armed with it I shook 
 hands with the president of the Oriental Repub- 
 lic and departed. Night had come down in the 
 palace and the soldiers stepped closer as we 
 passed and studied us and then stood at salute. 
 It was very, very quiet except for the rustle of 
 birds over-head. I had but one thought as I 
 wormed my way back to the gate of the Moham- 
 medan princess a hope that the Republic of 
 China would last, and that the blessings and 
 benefactions of democracy would turn to gold 
 the industry, the temperance, the infinite good 
 
 256
 
 A CHINESE PRESIDENT 
 
 nature of this ancient and historic people. 
 But for the moment the hope remained only 
 a hope and fell far short of a conviction. For 
 the way of liberty in these oriental windings is 
 certain to be difficult. And the palaces in the 
 night about me exhaled uncertainty. For in 
 this spot the oriental romantic thing had hap- 
 pened yesterday; it could happen tomorrow. 
 The whole atmosphere vibrated with what had 
 been, what was now afoot, and what was com- 
 ing, not in the order of designing men, but ac- 
 cording to the Arabian Night fancies of a 
 strange civilization, 
 
 2?7
 
 XXXVIII 
 THE DEAD DYNASTY 
 
 I WISH to transfer to you, for a few min- 
 utes, the atmosphere of China. A friend 
 took me to the summer palace, which is 
 about ten miles out of Peking. It is a park 
 about three miles square. It is literally smoth- 
 ered in buildings of palatial proportions, a riot 
 of colored porcelain highly glazed, the buildings 
 set around a huge artificial lake dotted with 
 decorative islands with a background of decora- 
 tive mountains. The walks are covered with 
 decorative arbors. In the lake rests a marble 
 barge. That is one picture to keep in mind. 
 
 Here is another. About a mile away is an- 
 other huge enclosure which is full of heaps of 
 ugly stone and broken brick, hummocks of mor- 
 tar, clusters of drunken pillars, leaning every 
 which way, fragments of broken marble stair- 
 ways that start out of rubbish and end in rub- 
 bish. This is the old summer palace. 
 This old summer palace was a marvel. Many 
 
 258
 
 THE DEAD DYNASTY 
 
 years ago, the French nation sent a troop of 
 soldiers to Peking to proffer France's friendship 
 to China. The Chinese seized the soldiers, 
 stripped them and then sliced them with sharp 
 knives all over. Having done this, they tied 
 the mutilated men out in the sun and let the 
 flies eat at the wounds until the men died. 
 France sent another expedition and among 
 other things destroyed this summer palace with 
 a savage vengeance that scarcely left one stone 
 upon another, a vengeance so complete that 
 when the late Dowager Empress decided to take 
 the money which China had set aside to build 
 a navy and build a new summer palace she had 
 to select a new site. 
 
 The new summer palace eventually cost the 
 Empress Dowager and her dynasty the crown, 
 and established the Republic. For when Japan 
 pounced upon China in 1894, the Chinese navy 
 crumpled up like tissue paper, and the prestige 
 of China, and of the Dowager, went glimmering 
 and the Republic followed. 
 
 Here, then, is a palace which played a major 
 part in the history of the Orient. The only in- 
 timation of the personality which was responsi- 
 ble for it is found in one of the yellow palaces. 
 My friend led me through a network of covered 
 walks, in and out of a wilderness of yellow 
 
 259
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 houses to a big glass door, and, parting a pair 
 of curtains, showed me a big oil painting of the 
 empress. This image reigns in this deserted 
 fairyland, as silent and as inscrutable as a sleep- 
 ing princess. 
 
 I had seen most of the sights of the Chinese 
 capital. I had been to the Bell Tower and to 
 the Drum Tower, where they tap curfew at nine 
 o'clock on a monster bass drum. I had visited 
 the sleeping Buddha in the Lama temple, a fig- 
 ure 70 feet high, carved out of a single tree 
 trunk; also the Temple of Confucius, where the 
 sayings of that sage are preserved in carvings 
 on stone tablets, and the Hall of Classics, where 
 the emperor used to bestow diplomas on the 
 prize-winners in the national examinations. I 
 had gone to the Temple of Heaven and stood in 
 the Center of the Universe, where the Emperors 
 all stood at the beginning of the year and re- 
 ceived their order from celestial guides, but no 
 sight in Peking had impressed me so much as 
 this silent simulacrum of the first woman of the 
 East, sitting in the midst of this deserted grand- 
 eur. 
 
 The Empress was a concubine. But there is 
 no sensuality in her straight thin lips, her thin, 
 long face, her calm eyes or her high, well-shaped 
 brow. There is no line there which spells any- 
 
 260
 
 THE DEAD DYNASTY 
 
 thing but possession of unchallenged sover- 
 ereignty and craft, not for defense, but for at- 
 tack. First and last she came into contact with 
 a great many people. She could be bamboozled, 
 but it took an artist to do it. When the Boxers 
 prepared to wipe out all the foreigners in Peking 
 they had to have her consent. To get it they 
 contended to her that by taking a certain oath 
 the Boxers were immune to gunfire. Bullets 
 would not pierce them. The old Empress said 
 if this were true, she was for the proposition. 
 She ordered a trial in her preserves. A row of 
 Boxers were brought before her. The soldiers 
 fired. The Boxers were uninjured. The Dow- 
 ager was ostensibly convinced. But she called 
 in an American who was counsel to her, a 
 man still living in Peking, and told him her expe- 
 rience. "Let me do the shooting," said the 
 American. The Empress ordered the Boxers 
 back for a second trial. But they fled. 
 
 However, she could be worked. There was a 
 rich Chinese statesman named Hsu Chang, a 
 good deal of a tightwad. He was an enemy of 
 Yuan Shih Kai, who schemed Hsu out of the 
 favor of the Empress. Hsu tried to see the 
 Empress, but could not. He bribed the door- 
 keeper of the palace and the eunuchs, but he 
 could not reach the Dowager. She needed the 
 
 261
 
 man's friendship and influence, and would have 
 been glad to have attached him to her. But 
 Yuan, the Empress' advisor, planned to keep him 
 out of favor. Finally Hsu got word to the Em- 
 press that he wanted to present her a sum of 
 money in person. It was a master-stroke, for 
 the old woman was mercenary. Yuan could not 
 escape the duty of presenting the proposition. 
 But he bethought him of a trick, a low-down, 
 political trick. He knew Hsu was a tightwad. 
 So he went to the Dowager and said : "Hsu, the 
 rich man, desires to present $200,000 to your 
 majesty. Shall I admit him?" The Dowager 
 ordered him admitted at once. Hsu came in, all 
 smiles, cocky and triumphant, and presented her 
 with $20,000. And when she found it was 
 $20,000 instead of $200,000, her wrath was inde- 
 scribable, and Hsu found himself still further 
 in disgrace. 
 
 People in China generally regard the Empress 
 as the most able of recent personages in Ori- 
 ental history. But with all her ability she re- 
 mained Chinese. She sacrificed the armament 
 needs of her country to satisfy a fancy. With 
 all the world snarling a menace around her, the 
 Empress dreamed of marble stairways, and lac- 
 quered lattices and vistas vanishing in sheer 
 loveliness. A rattling good navy would have 
 
 262
 
 THE DEAD DYNASTY 
 
 put China and herself at the forefront in 1894, 
 and changed the history of the world. A sum- 
 mer palace merely fed the idle fancy of an old 
 woman. But she decided on the summer palace, 
 not because she was a woman, but because she 
 was Chinese. 
 
 That brings me to the Chinese atmosphere, or 
 rather a close view of the summer palace, 
 which my friend and I made, brought me to the 
 Chinese atmosphere. The stonework and porce- 
 lain portions of the palace are as stable and 
 beautiful in their suggestion of permanence as 
 anything could be. The carpenter work is about 
 the rottenest I ever saw. The woodwork is 
 everywhere falling apart. It was a botched job 
 in the beginning covered up with much bright 
 paint. A few years comparatively have re- 
 vealed its frauds, and a few years more will 
 effect its ruin. If one can understand the mean- 
 ing of a majestic porcelain tower built to stand 
 forever, and at its side a veranda with gaping 
 joints and sagging rafters, then one can get the 
 Chinese atmosphere. 
 
 Because the Chinese atmosphere is made up 
 of just these contrasts magnificent conceptions, 
 partly carried out, partly contradicted a mix- 
 ture of dream and nightmare a medley of 
 beautiful harmonies and a busy afternoon in a 
 
 263
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 boiler factory a touch of the essence of attar 
 of roses and the backyard of a glue factory on 
 a warm day. 
 
 I stood in the sunlight with my friend and 
 took consideration of my surroundings. Far off 
 I could hear the hoarse honk of a Ford, and also 
 the long, clear, sweet note of the bronze trumpet 
 blown by a ragged tinker. In the distance I saw 
 a cavalcade of camels, on their way to Mongolia, 
 just as you see them in Biblical pictures, and 
 beyond them a group of American locomotives 
 smoking up a roundhouse. Before me was the 
 portrait of a shrewd, beautiful, capable woman, 
 stronger than Esther, or Zenobia, or Cleopatra, 
 in robes of incomparable fineness; beyond me a 
 road carrying traffic that might have passed 
 through the gates of Jerusalem in the day of 
 Jesus Christ and not have attracted notice. I 
 took out my kodak and snapped my friend. And 
 It seemed to me that I was standing on the sheer 
 edge of the world and watching the waters of 
 the West meet the waters of the East the 
 breath of antiquity fanning the cheeks of the 
 present the image of Oriental aristocracy and 
 the image of Occidental democracy blending 
 into an indescribable something which was at 
 once new and old, strange and familiar. 
 
 The waters of the West which washed upon 
 264
 
 THE DEAD DYNASTY 
 
 this alien shore the Ford and the American loco- 
 motive and my kodak had also left lying here, 
 among these fairy palaces, the tiny plant lib- 
 erty feeble enough as yet, but winding its 
 tender, tenacious tendrils around the decaying 
 skeleton of a dead dynasty and over the proud 
 face of the silent queen. 
 
 Occasionally a man thinks that sort of thing, 
 and once in a while is daring enough to write it. 
 
 But my friend broke the spell. He was point- 
 ing to a stone chalice. 
 
 "This was the vase," he said, "where every 
 night they caught the dew to wash the Empress* 
 face." 
 
 265
 
 XXXIX 
 A CHINESE CONGRESS 
 
 LIKE all legislative bodies, the Chinese con- 
 gress is a general target for popular 
 criticism. People pounce upon their law- 
 makers. I am not going into the reasons for 
 this. I simply state that it is so. 
 
 It is true in China. The young men who have 
 set up the Chinese Republic have the idea that a 
 democracy is conserved by its law-making 
 branch. A republic is a government by law; 
 therefore the legislative arm is most important. 
 Every legislator appreciates this fact. But as a 
 rule it doesn't appeal to the people. Legisla- 
 tures and congresses have such a sloppy way of 
 doing things that people love to sit around and 
 condemn them. 
 
 The first congress China had, Yuan Shih Kai, 
 who wanted to change from president to em- 
 peror, dismissed. When the revolutionists got 
 their republic set up a second time the congress 
 resumecf. There are two houses. The big house 
 
 266
 
 A CHINESE CONGRESS 
 
 has about six hundred members, the small one 
 about two hundred. I visited both. 
 
 I was very much impressed with both houses. 
 The small one is as quiet as our United States 
 Senate, and the big one is a lot more orderly 
 than our House of Representatives. 
 
 The two houses occupy buildings which were 
 built for schools, and are tucked away off in one 
 corner of Peking, away from the palatial 
 beauties of the presidential residence. Down in 
 Washington anyone may visit Congress. It is 
 not easy to do this in Peking. First, permission 
 must be obtained. Armed with a permit, I set 
 off for the House of Representatives. 
 
 About three hundred feet away from the en- 
 trance a couple of soldiers dropped their guns 
 across the path, and it was necessary to produce 
 the permit. But this was not sufficient. They 
 wanted our names. So we passed in our cards 
 and walked along through files of soldiers. Once 
 inside the building, a soldier took my cane away 
 and directed me up a small stairway which led 
 into a very narrow gallery, along which at inter- 
 vals of about ten feet soldiers were stationed. 
 The legislators were seated as they are in our 
 Congress in a semi-circle of small desks. They 
 have a calendar which they mimeograph, and a 
 calendar was on each desk. The speaker sits on 
 
 267
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 a raised dais, with the clerks and reporters in 
 front of him. At his side are chairs for mem- 
 bers of the cabinet, who attend the session, and, 
 unlike our cabinet members, can be questioned. 
 The chairman doesn't use a gavel, but a small 
 hand bell. 
 
 The members were mostly young. Nearly all 
 of them were in Chinese dress and kept on their 
 skull caps. Those dressed in European attire 
 removed their hats. Most of these young men 
 were from the "gentry," the professional land- 
 holding classes, not merchants. Nearly all of 
 them have been educated abroad the majority 
 of them in Japan. They use in speaking a com- 
 mon dialect, but if a speaker should lapse into 
 his native provincial tongue, as they do occa- 
 sionally, few present could understand him. 
 This necessity of selected language must have a 
 lot to do with shortening speeches, for none of 
 the addresses I heard had the appearance of the 
 long, dreary harangues which make our Con- 
 gress so dreadfully wearing on a spectator. 
 
 In the house the question up was one over the 
 representation to be allowed the province of 
 Mongolia. It was a minor question, and it was 
 handled very much as our Congress would 
 handle a similar proposition. There is a differ- 
 ence in putting votes, however, which interested 
 
 268
 
 A CHINESE CONGRESS 
 
 me. The speaker puts only the affirmative side : 
 "Those in favor of the question will rise to their 
 feet." If apparently a majority rise, the nega- 
 tive is not put. In our Congress the speaker 
 says: "Those in favor say aye"; then, "Those 
 opposed say no." If it is close, someone calls 
 for a division. Then the speaker says: "Those 
 in favor rise"; then, "Those opposed rise," the 
 speaker counting each side. If someone doubts 
 his count, he can demand tellers, and the mem- 
 bers are passed in a file between two members, 
 who count them. The Chinese method is the 
 better method, in my opinion. It expedites 
 business. It has one danger: It lodges rather 
 arbitrary power in the speaker, who might 
 fudge. I said as much to Mr. C. T. Wang, presi- 
 dent of the Chinese Senate, but he said they 
 had taken care of that by providing for a direct 
 challenge of the vote if someone doubted it. 
 The Chinese were anxious to put in an auto- 
 matic electrical voting device, but the manufac- 
 turer would not guarantee it. But the device is 
 perfectly practical, and it ought to be adopted 
 both by China and the United States. The 
 amount of time consumed by roll calls down in 
 Washington is absurd, and if the people knew 
 the facts there would be a national scandal. 
 For the consumption of time is one of the most
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 dangerous propositions in American politics. 
 Congress fools along until a lot of very impor- 
 tant appropriation bills jam up the close of a 
 session, and then the measures are rammed 
 through so that no one knows what is happen- 
 ing. Ninety-nine per cent, of all the foolish 
 work that ever happened in Congress at Wash- 
 ington has taken place at the end of sessions. 
 The fool practice has cost American taxpayers 
 millions. 
 
 I asked President Wang what the Chinese 
 were going to do about the calendar at the end 
 of a session. He said they had never had an 
 end of a session and he didn't know. In state 
 legislatures in America we select a paring com- 
 mittee which puts a few bills at the head of the 
 the calendar and lets the other bills die. In 
 congress certain bills, such as appropriation bills, 
 are called privileged and have the preference by 
 right. But, so far as actual consideration is 
 concerned, this privilege in the case of a bill 
 jam at the close of congress is a farce. It is 
 made so by the way congress consumes time 
 needlessly during the session. Quick roll calls 
 would help in the situation. But you will never 
 find a stand-pat leader in favor of automatic 
 voting devices. 
 
 The Chinese have another scheme which is 
 270
 
 A CHINESE CONGRESS 
 
 quite revolutionary. It is the hardest thing on 
 earth to get men to attend committee meetings. 
 You can hustle them out to a vote in congress, 
 but it is pulling tacks to get them into the 
 committee rooms. The Chinese congress has 
 sought to overcome this by fining a member ten 
 dollars for every absence, and after the third 
 offense he is put out of congress. 
 
 The speaker does not use his bell often. In our 
 legislative bodies the chairman has to whack 
 with his gavel a good deal to keep order. So 
 far this is not necessary in the Chinese con- 
 gress, and there is no limitation on the length 
 of speeches, the filibuster being as yet unknown. 
 But that will come in time. Since the begin- 
 ning of congress there has been but one serious 
 fracas it was over the question of state's rights 
 and a lot of ink wells were thrown. 
 
 This fracas has cost a lot of legislative pres- 
 tige in China. People say, "Those fool legisla- 
 tors," and all that. But before I join in that 
 chorus I will have to do a little more thinking 
 about the assault on Charles Sumner, as well as 
 about several lively scratching bouts I have seen 
 in congress myself. 
 
 The things I saw in the Chinese congress 
 were almost exact duplications of scenes in our 
 own congress. A young man arose to speak. 
 
 271
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 It was evidently his maiden effort. He was 
 greeted with a round of applause from his 
 admirers the half-humourous, mock-enthusias- 
 tic applause which I have heard hundreds of 
 times at home. The member blushed furiously 
 and made his way to the tribune, the raised 
 place from which an orator speaks here. He 
 cleared his throat and dragged out from among 
 his clothes a manuscript and started in on the 
 speech of his life. And then, as the applause 
 didn't come, his voice grew weaker, and when 
 he finished the meager hand-clapping which fol- 
 lowed was like a verdict of guilty. A square- 
 headed Chinese down in front arose to reply. 
 He was a leader. You could tell it without look- 
 ing. His words came snappy and sharp. His 
 sentences followed quick and decisively. He got 
 the applause going and he got under it and 
 pushed it along in the good old style of a prac- 
 ticed orator. And he carried his point. 
 
 The life of a republic is in its legislation. The 
 fountain of that vitality is in the popular assem- 
 bly. The young Republicans of China have that 
 idea, and they are trying to carry it out. They 
 may not do it. The legislature is not popular 
 either with the people or with the officials. 
 Both say: "Congress has been in session for 
 months, and what has it done? Nothing." It 
 
 272
 
 A CHINESE CONGRESS 
 
 sounds serious. And in a new republic it is. 
 But I have heard that a good many times in the 
 United States and nothing ever came of it. 
 And nothing may come of it in China. 
 
 Indeed, in the matter of legislative assemblies, 
 we are still in our democratic babyhood. We are 
 all developing our popular government lungs and 
 it isn't fatal, if we do occasionally get on people's 
 nerves. 
 
 273
 
 XL 
 THE HABIT OF BREAKING LOOSE 
 
 THERE is one aspect of China over which I 
 am in difficulty. I want to tell you about 
 it and I fear I cannot. But I am going to 
 try. It has to do with the occasional inexpli- 
 cable attitude of the Chinese mind. 
 
 In Peking I dined with several leading Chinese 
 leaders in the new Republic. Intellectually 
 they were the equals of the big men I met dur- 
 ing the war in London and Paris, and the eve- 
 ning was virtually the same as you would pass 
 at dinner in the White House at Washington. 
 We talked politics, war, literature, and eventu- 
 ally we got into the subject of antiques. One 
 member of the party, an American guest, roared 
 because a Chinese general in charge of the anti- 
 quities in the Forbidden City had his soldiers 
 wash the green fuzz off the bronzes fuzz that 
 it had taken centuries of care to acquire He 
 was so severe in his criticism that I finally said : 
 "Oh, well, fighting men are fighting men. 
 274
 
 THE HABIT OF BREAKING LOOSE 
 
 You can't expect a general 10 be an antiquarian." 
 
 "No," said Admiral Tsai, who had hitherto 
 taken no part in the conversation. "That gen- 
 eral was probably too antiquated to be an 
 antiquarian." 
 
 Now, there is no race on earth that has a 
 finer appreciation of the old and artistic than 
 the Chinese, but here was one general who 
 didn't, and he broke loose. 
 
 I had lunch with President Tsur of Tsing Hua 
 College and Mr. and Mrs. Chiao. I never had 
 more delightful converse. Mr. Tsur is a scholar 
 full of the most interesting and practical views 
 of education. Mr. Chiao is as companionable a 
 man as you could meet anywhere. His wife, 
 Mrs. Chiao, a beautiful Chinese woman, was as 
 charming and intellectually as interesting a 
 hostess as I have ever met. After lunch I 
 addressed the students in the college on the 
 benefits of patriotism to the present Chinese 
 Republic. 
 
 Now, my speech was the usual Fourth of July 
 effort. But the lecturer who preceded me on 
 that same platform was a Chinese who had 
 broken loose. This was Mr. Su Chung-Hsuan. 
 He was sent by the Confucian association, and 
 for two hours and a half he talked on the theory 
 that the aarth is absolutely flat. His idea is 
 
 275
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 that the earth is a circular plane. In the center 
 of this plane is the North Pole surrounded by 
 an icy sea. Peary and Amundsen simply went 
 to the same place and deceived themselves into 
 thinking one was the North Pole and the other 
 the South Pole. He contended that the world 
 did not revolve, for if it did the idea of "above" 
 and "below" would be ridiculous. For instance, 
 I am in China and you are in America. Are you 
 "above" or "below" me? Chung-Hsuan's propo- 
 sition was that the earth moves slightly up and 
 down. The sun travels above or below the rim 
 of the earth, causing the seasons. That is, the 
 sun does move. But what about day and night ? 
 Chung-Hsuan had an answer for that, all right. 
 He says that the sun at noon begins to draw 
 away from the earth and at night has got so 
 far away you simply cannot see it, and that it 
 comes into view again by approaching the earth 
 the next morning. He denied the existence of 
 gravitation flatly. Chung-Hsuan had simply 
 broken loose. 
 
 China owes as much to Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen as 
 she does to anybody on earth. Sun is a glorious 
 dreamer. Years ago he conceived the idea of a 
 Chinese Republic. No more daring idea ever 
 fomented in the mind of man. Here were four 
 hundred million age-old serfs, most of them inar- 
 
 276
 
 THE HABIT OF BREAKING LOOSE 
 
 ticulate, and here was a government so conserv- 
 ative that it scarcely recognized the existence 
 of the rest of the world, which it dismissed as 
 negligible and barbarian. Armed with nothing 
 but a dream of democracy, Sun went up and 
 down the world telling men of his dream and 
 exhorting them to see the vision. He finally be- 
 came prominent enough to challenge the atten- 
 tion of his government. He was hunted and 
 hounded from country to country. He hid 
 among the rocks of the desert and in the hovels 
 of the poor. He lived on the locusts and wild 
 honey. But never for one moment did he sur- 
 render one jot or tittle of his dream of self- 
 governed China. His dream grew, but it re- 
 mained a dream, and gossamery and diaphanous 
 a dream as it was, when it collided with the 
 Manchu autocracy, the autocracy was so frail 
 that it burst like a bubble, and Sun's dream 
 suddenly came true. 
 
 Sun, as was fitting, was the first president of 
 China. The first thing he did was to break 
 loose. The Republic was proclaimed at Nan- 
 king. Dominating this city is a hill, the Purple 
 mountain. When the Manchus conquered China, 
 the last of the Mings, a very good man, died, 
 and his spirit, according to legend, could have 
 gone to heaven. But Ming's spirit refused to 
 
 277
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 do so. It remained right on the tip top of this 
 mountain. Every morning the spirit came down 
 and asked the shepherds, "Have the Chinese 
 regained control of China?" For three hundred 
 years the peasants had to answer, "Not yet." 
 Well, as soon as Sun became president he lined 
 his army up in two rows leading from Nanking 
 to the foot of the mountain, and then bright and 
 early one morning he announced to the air, 
 "The Chinese have reconquered China." There- 
 upon Ming's spirit quit the mountain top and 
 went to heaven, satisfied. 
 
 Sun didn't remain president long. The exi- 
 gencies of politics made it necessary to put Yuan 
 Shih Kai in the executive chair. But part of 
 the deal was the appointment of Sun as minister 
 of communications at thirty thousand dollars a 
 year. He had a special car and he rode around 
 over China dreaming dreams about railroad con- 
 struction. In his car he had a big glass map of 
 China, a pot of black paint and a sponge. He 
 would sit in front of this map and study it. 
 Then he would jump to his feet, draw a black 
 line from one town to another, consider it a 
 while and then jump and sponge out the line and 
 draw another somewhere else. He was always 
 drawing imaginary railroad lines and rubbing 
 them out again. He had no money to build rail- 
 
 278
 
 THE HABIT OF BREAKING LOOSE 
 
 road lines, and a little matter like grades was 
 not in his calculations. He was too busy dream- 
 ing to be oppressed by such incidentals. When, 
 in 1913, it was believed that Yuan Shih Kai was 
 getting ready to throw the Republic overboard, 
 Sun and the radicals revolted. They were put 
 down by Yuan. Sun fled to Japan, and from 
 there worked up the revolution which finally, 
 with the aid of Yuan's sudden death, put the 
 Republic on it's feet. In doing this Sun spent a 
 million dollars. 
 
 Now, this is all likely to give the wrong im- 
 pression. The Chinese republic is getting along 
 in pretty good shape. Every day the govern- 
 ment lasts, those concerned like it better. If it 
 can keep on its feet a few years longer, the whole 
 Chinese people will come into a national con- 
 sciousness which will insure permanency of a 
 republican form. But, at the same time, the 
 world must expect severe strains on its hopeful- 
 ness. There was Chang Hsun, for instance. 
 Chang Hsun was the dowager empress' hostler. 
 He helped her escape out of Peking during the 
 Boxer troubles. She made him a general for 
 this. He collected and drilled his own army. 
 And when the revolution came he took his army 
 and retired along a railroad line of which he 
 took possession. He snid he was favorable to 
 
 279
 
 NEW GOVERNORS AND THE OLD REGIME 
 
 the Republic, but no one was so dead sure of 
 that. He still had his army, and he insisted on 
 his soldiers wearing pig-tails, which are pro- 
 hibited by law, and he supported his force by 
 levying, in a perfectly arbitrary fashion, local 
 taxation. There were members of parliament 
 who talked about impeaching him and all that, 
 but they didn't. Chang Hsun had simply broken 
 loose, and they let it go at that. 
 
 280
 
 XLI 
 POLITICS AND NANKING 
 
 THE first thing you hear about when you 
 reach China are the Mings and the last 
 thing that follows you like an echo when 
 you are leaving China are the Mings. Now, I 
 have investigated the Mings at Nanking. 
 
 If you see anything that looks old and curious, 
 the Chinaman who has it to sell tells you it be- 
 longed to the Ming dynasty. The other day in 
 a curio shop I inquired about an old dagger 
 which was for sale at an extravagant figure, and 
 the Chinese told me it belonged to the Ming 
 dynasty. 
 
 Right back of me was one of the small heating 
 stoves which are common in China. They are 
 only a little larger than a quart bottle, and they 
 usually have cast on their fronts names like 
 "The Pride of the World." I made believe I had 
 lost interest in the dagger, and I fixed a fasci- 
 nated eye on that stove. "Does that belong to 
 the Ming dynasty?" I asked. 
 
 281
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 Then the Chinese began to laugh with his 
 mouth, his chest, his stomach and lastly with 
 his eyes the last thing a Chinaman laughs 
 with. He knew I was a sucker, but he didn't 
 dream that I could be sucker enough to believe 
 that stove was antique. After a while he 
 quieted down, and then he suddenly broke out 
 again in convulsions. The second time he was 
 laughing at himself for having laughed at me. 
 
 But he quit talking Ming dynasty to me. The 
 Mings were the last pure Chinese rulers before 
 the Tartars and Manchus butted into Chinese 
 history. They set up in the king business about 
 seventy-five years before Columbus discovered 
 America. Nanking was their capital. That 
 was why I came to Nanking. I arrived Christ- 
 mas Day with the mercury around zero the 
 Chinese call it "five-coat weather," and most of 
 them haven't as many as two. 
 
 I don't suppose there is another town like 
 Nanking in the world. After you crawl through 
 the city gate you can't find it. You wander 
 around for miles, watching people working on 
 farms and feeding stock and chopping down 
 trees, but you don't see any town. You will 
 lollow a paved street right through a farm and 
 over a great bridge that doesn't cross anything 
 and leads from a cow lot to a barnyard. It 
 
 282
 
 LIMESTONE CLIFFS OF THE BELLOWS GORGE
 
 POLITICS AND NANKING 
 
 looks a lot like an American township would if 
 somebody built a thirty-foot wall all around it. 
 But if you keep going as I did in Nanking, you 
 will find the town, eight miles away from the 
 gate you entered, tucked away in one corner 
 like a handful of wheat in a bushel basket. 
 
 You begin to realize long before you reach 
 the town that something has happened to Nan- 
 king. What has happened to it is politics. It 
 has figured in Chinese politics since 300 B. C. 
 As soon as it was founded rival kings began to 
 fight over it, and every warrior who happened 
 along took a swipe at the place. It is little 
 wonder that there is so little of it left. And 
 the worst of it is that the politicians are still 
 at it. In the old days when the kings of the 
 north wanted a little diversion at the expense 
 of the kings of the south they got up an army 
 and besieged Nanking. Then when the Taiping 
 rebels a half century or so ago concluded to belt 
 the Ching dynasty they took Nanking and de- 
 stroyed most of it. And when the revolutionists 
 who set up the present government decided to 
 strike they pounced on Nanking. Here the new 
 republic was declared. If the republic capsizes 
 and someone lands on the throne, the first thing 
 he will do, after he gets his crown on straight, 
 will be to come down and shoot up Nanking. 
 
 283
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 You can't say the people here don't like it. As 
 a matter of fact, being destroyed seems to come 
 perfectly natural to them. Their wall is twenty- 
 two miles long, and it encloses more ruins than 
 any wall, big or little* on this terrestrial ball. 
 You can see ruins in all possible stages. Most 
 of the former town has gone back to fanning, 
 but if the farmer undertook to stir up the sub- 
 soil a bit he would plow into a temple or a palace 
 of an ancient day, like as not. Every fresh set 
 of fighters joy in adding to the collection of 
 ruins. Six years ago the Manchu City, a sep- 
 arate town within the main walls, was the pride 
 of the place. In the midst of this Manchu City, 
 however, was a ruin all that was left of the 
 first Ming emperor's palaces. When the recent 
 revolutionists took Nanking they destroyed the 
 Manchu City, but spared the Ming ruins. And 
 the Ming ruins look modern and up-to-date now 
 compared with that Manchu City. Talk about a 
 tornado. No tornado ever threshed a building 
 into brick dust as those Chinese revolutionists 
 pulverized that Manchu City. They literally 
 wiped it out, actually not leaving one stone upon 
 another. I have seen the destruction at the 
 battle front in Europe. I never saw such de- 
 struction as I witnessed in Nanking. It is 
 awful. For miles the ground is a dead waste of 
 
 284
 
 POLITICS AND NANKING 
 
 broken brick and shattered stone, in the midst 
 of which are the Ming ruins looking, for ruins, 
 quite neat and nifty. 
 
 It doesn't seem to affect the citizens at all. 
 As I said, they sort of specialize in ruins. This 
 was the place where they used to have the civil 
 service examinations in China. The examina- 
 tion hall is now a ruin, its 20,000 cells, where 
 they used to keep the students cooped up for a 
 week to prevent them from cribbing, all gaping 
 at the sky. The finest pagoda in China used to 
 be here, built entirely of fine blue porcelain. All 
 that is left of it is the big China button which 
 was once its top-knot. 
 
 But the greatest ruin that Nanking can boast 
 is the tomb of the first Ming emperor and his 
 wife, Ma. He had seventy-one other wives, but 
 Ma was the only one he cared to be buried with. 
 There are two authentic portraits of the first 
 Ming extant. He was a queer-looking chap, 
 with the slantingest of slant eyes and a chin 
 that stuck out like a door-knob. I have never 
 seen such a chin, and personally I think the 
 artist was a liar. Ming cleaned out everything 
 in China and set up his empire and then went 
 to work to fix up a private graveyard which 
 would last. He located it up against a moun- 
 tain with a grand avenue leading up to the main 
 
 285
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 gate of the grave. Ming originally was a cow- 
 boy. He just naturally took to animals, and 
 when he got this grand avenue idea into his 
 head he resolved to establish a permanent 
 menagerie. He had artists carve critters in 
 pairs camels standing and kneeling, elephants 
 the same, also horses and lions. These he set 
 up along his grand avenue. In front of them 
 he also stuck up some enormous stone men. 
 There they stand to this day. There they will 
 be standing for the next ten thousand years. No 
 revolutionist, though he have revenge and ruin 
 bubbling out of him at every pore, will be able 
 to demolish them. They were put there to stay. 
 And they will. But they are in ruins, just the 
 same. The grand avenue has disappeared. 
 The animals, when I saw them, were standing 
 in the midst of a winter wheat field, the green 
 crop growing right up under their bellies, and I 
 saw a humble husbandman wiping the mud off 
 his hoe on the hind leg of one of the great 
 Ming's pet lions. 
 
 In this frail and fragile world it is hard to 
 beat the tooth of Time. She feeds insatiably 
 upon the pride and pomp of the centuries, crush- 
 ing between her merciless molars the glories of 
 the past. But old Ming certainly gave her some- 
 thing to gnaw that will hold her a while. 
 
 286
 
 XLII 
 THE LESSON OF THE GREAT WALL 
 
 WHAT does the great wall of China look 
 like? I had always wanted to know 
 myself, and I found out. A good many 
 westerners have visited the wall of China, but 
 it is dollars to doughnuts that no white man 
 ever saw it on a colder day than I did. There 
 was no one about, and the only sign of life dur- 
 ing my whole visit at Chunglingchiao was a line 
 of bobbing camels as they jingled their way 
 through a great gate on out to Mongolia. No 
 doubt you have forgotten the main facts about 
 the Great Wall as you learned them at school. 
 The wall is fifteen hundred miles long. It was 
 built by the Chinese, starting about 300 B. C., to 
 keep the northern hordes out of the country. It 
 didn't do it. 
 
 Now, I have been trying all my life to find out 
 more than this about the Great Wall, and I never 
 could. Nor can I now history is as silent as a 
 clam about it. Indeed, there are only two facts 
 
 287
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 in connection with it: It was built and there it 
 stands. I had a feeling as I looked upon it that 
 I could take that much or let it alone. 
 
 Having concluded to take it, you can simply 
 throw the bridle off your imagination, open the 
 pasture gate and let your fancy kick up its heels 
 to its heart's content. That is, you can indulge 
 in any sort of dream and yet not measure up to 
 the fact that the wall is the most stupendous 
 piece of handicraft on earth. 
 
 It is not only stupendous because of its length, 
 but because its builders backed away from no 
 natural barriers. If Pike's Peak had been in the 
 road of that wall, the builders would have strung 
 it over that rocky, snow-bound pinnacle like a 
 necklace of pearls. For the wall, where I 
 studied it, crawls like a snake up sheer preci- 
 pices, drops down break-neck ledges and squirms 
 over needle-pointed peaks with every appearance 
 of having been reared to win some sort of a bet 
 that it could be done. 
 
 This effect of grotesque magnitude is empha- 
 sized by the seeming herd of walls which you 
 find all about you. You face the wall at one 
 point and watch it worm its way over the top of 
 a mountain and lose itself at the crest. Then 
 you can turn squarely around and you will find 
 it twisting along the hills back of you. WhicK- 
 
 288
 
 THE LESSON OF THE GREAT WALL 
 
 ever way you turn you confront the wall, and 
 every step you take changes your view of it and 
 brings new sections of it into sight, to the front 
 and rear and to either side. This effect is due 
 to the fact that the builders followed the back- 
 bone of the mountain range. They located the 
 structure only on the highest points, and as the 
 mountains at this point are jumbled together 
 badly and cross and criss-cross one another in a 
 tangle of ridges, the wall doubles and redoubles 
 on itself in a completely bewildering way. 
 
 When you begin to study the general plan you 
 come to understand why it was not an effective 
 means of defense. I have studied a good many 
 walls in China with considerable curiosity. 
 Most of the walls around Chinese cities are con- 
 structed on the theory of increasing the job of 
 the invading sealers by locating the wall on a 
 steep rock. This gave the defenders on the 
 wall more of a chance to knock the invaders off 
 as they attempted to climb over. In most cases 
 the walls built on these rocky cliffs were further 
 protected by a big moat, usually a string of 
 lakes, so that the invading host had to swim for 
 it before the climb began, thus affording the 
 defenders opportunity to muss the attacking 
 party all up before they reached even the bottom 
 of the cliff. But in all these cases the wall 
 
 289
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 builders were careful to keep the grade of the 
 top of the wall pretty level, or when a summit 
 was to be mounted to make the upward grade 
 of the wall gradual. Evidently the reason for 
 this was that the defenders realized that if the 
 wall was given a sharp upward turn it exposed 
 everybody on that part of it to an angle fire. I 
 don't know how the northern hordes broke into 
 China, nor does anybody else, but I imagine it 
 was done because the deep mountain valleys in 
 this part of China made it impossible for a wall 
 to be defended. Against the bows and arrows 
 and battering rams of those days a small num- 
 ber of men behind or rather on top a level wall 
 could hold an army. But where the wall dropped 
 down into a ravine at a sharp angle everybody 
 occupying that part of the wall must have been 
 shot up in great shape, and the invaders un- 
 doubtedly came through with a rush. Some of 
 these sections of the wall are so steep that they 
 are nothing more than gigantic stone stairways, 
 with every foot behind the parapets open to view 
 from the valley as clear an invitation to an en- 
 filading fire as one army ever gave to another. 
 I climbed to the top of the wall at several 
 points and examined it with particularity. It is 
 about forty feet high, about eighteen feed wide 
 and well paved on top. Every five hundred feet 
 
 290
 
 THE LESSON OF THE GREAT WALL 
 
 there is a big square tower. The wall itself is 
 constructed of smooth stand stone, three by 
 three by five feet. There is no such stone in 
 this vicinity. The parapets are built of big 
 black brick, about six times the size of modern 
 building brick, and so are the towers. The wall 
 is filled with a flint-like rock of which the sur- 
 rounding mountains are composed. The wall 
 does not look old, but it does look stable, the 
 most lasting thing I have ever seen. 
 
 I don't suppose any American ever comes to 
 the great wall and stands upon it without want- 
 ing to run an automobile on it. It would make 
 a cracker- jack highway. Of course you would 
 have to cut out the mountain grades, but for 
 most of the fifteen hundred miles it is level, 
 and with a little patching here and there a man 
 could "throw her into high" and scoot across 
 China with a view of the country beneath him 
 all the way. And if Mr. Ford should take a few 
 millions and buy the old thing for the benefit of 
 his future patrons in China, the old wall would 
 serve for the first time in history its only prac- 
 tical use to mankind. 
 
 There is another thing about the wall. It 
 doesn't let you moralize long. Of course, you 
 no sooner plant your feet on its ancient stones 
 than you begin to philosophize. "Here," you 
 
 291
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 say, "is evidence of a gigantic folly and a gigan- 
 tic injustice. Here the labor of millions of men 
 was consumed in the construction of a military 
 toy. Here humanity was ground into a dynasty's 
 monument to fear." The very stones are elo- 
 quent with the enormous futility of the work. 
 But that mood doesn't last long. For suppose 
 China hadn't built the wall. Suppose that those 
 millions of men had labored to increase the 
 national wealth and China's coffers had filled to 
 bursting with gold and she had waxed great and 
 proud and self-sufficient, as she surely would 
 have. The northern hordes would have come 
 and taken the country anyway. The wall didn't 
 stop them. Neither would a national prosperity 
 have stopped them. For, if you get any lesson 
 out of the wall at all, it is just this, that neither 
 a wall nor wealth is an adequate means of 
 defense. A nation's best defense is in the spir- 
 itual grace and the individual courage, mental, 
 moral and physical, of its citizens. And the 
 greater that grace and courage the less empha- 
 sis it puts on the necessities of defense. The 
 old Romans had a saying that a warrior should 
 develop his right, his sword arm, and let his 
 left, the shield arm, take care of itself. The old 
 Chinese dynasty which built the wall and lost it 
 paid too much attention to its left arm. 
 
 292
 
 XLIII 
 CHINA'S CHIEF REFORMER 
 
 DR. SUN-YAT-SEN, the first president of 
 the Chinese republic, said to me at his 
 home in Shanghai: "As our government 
 problems arise and we proceed to solve them we 
 must have patience. If you don't start right, 
 right at the beginning, then you must work 
 always thereafter with your problems, because 
 you did not start right." 
 
 Now, I am pretty certain that that statement 
 seems quite commonplace. It did to me at first. 
 But as I mulled it over, it grew to be quite 
 remarkable. If you will read it over again, you 
 Jrill see a whole encyclopedia in it. 
 
 Most of the great religious leaders, the histo- 
 rical crusaders and the political reformers of 
 first magnitude argue from a premise of perfec- 
 tion. That is, a perfect condition is possible, if 
 man would accept it. It becomes impossible be- 
 cause man muddles his own situations. This is 
 the story of the Garden of Eden and the intro-
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 duction of Sin. A poor start necessitated the 
 Mosaic code. It is also the story of the sledge 
 hammer insistence of Jesus Christ in the Sermon 
 and the stubborn popular rejection of- it 
 which necessitated the involved dialectics of 
 Paul. It also is the story of the ideal of the 
 American colonies, and the compromise in the 
 constitution, which necessitated the desperately 
 jealous care of the democracy by contending 
 political parties ever since. Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen 
 holds that liberty is a condition which man may 
 know by accepting, but which if he rejects, in 
 ever so slight a degree, he must thereafter 
 struggle perpetually to attain. It is for this 
 reason that all really great reformers hate, to 
 the bottom of their souls, compromise, the com- 
 promise which, in both the spiritual and political 
 domain, is the world's great tragedy, making 
 both sanctification and liberty objects to be 
 attained, rather than states of being to be 
 enjoyed. 
 
 There is no question in my mind that Dr. 
 Sun-Yat-Sen purposed to set up an ideal republic 
 in China. He had that slant. But as soon as the 
 Republic was set up, he had to step aside for a 
 man with a minimum of ideals, but a maximum 
 of military powers Yuan Shih Kai. Within 
 three years Yuan Shih Kai was well on his way 
 
 294
 
 CHINA'S CHIEF REFORMER 
 
 to an upset of the Republic and the institution 
 of a monarchy. Sun and others thwarted him 
 and re-established the republic, but the day of 
 the perfect democracy and its opportunity had 
 passed away and the day of compromise had 
 come in. So that China hereafter must strug- 
 gle to encompass liberty. This is the way of 
 the world. It always has been. I was inter- 
 ested in discovering just how Dr. Sun viewed 
 the situation. His view is given in the quota- 
 tion I have made. As a practical politician he 
 knows the problems of China must be worked 
 out with infinite patience and in the best way 
 the material in hand allows. I am not contend- 
 ing, of course, that if Dr. Sun and the other 
 reformers, past and present, had had their way, 
 things would have been different. For no re- 
 former has ever had his way. 
 
 Moreover, I am completely satisfied that Dr. 
 Sun has given up Utopia as a model and is 
 intensely interested in the concrete, red-blooded 
 contests of immediate politics, where a man 
 thanks his stars at the end of every day that he 
 has got so far without catastrophe. 
 
 For instance, I was met at the vestibule of 
 Dr. Sun's home by a soldier, not a perfunctory, 
 butler-like, card-receiving soldier, but a man 
 with a gun and a purpose to stop you, until he 
 
 295
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 knew your business and had entirely cleared 
 away his suspicion that you had come to do 
 murder. His uniform evidenced that he had 
 slept in the vestibule all night. He held me up 
 until a civilian servant got my card, and walking 
 in I met Dr. Sun face to face, for with the uncon- 
 cern of conventionality characteristic of reform- 
 ers he was coming himself to the door to 
 receive me. 
 
 He led me into a comfortable parlor, without 
 anything Chinese in it except himself. The 
 walls had pictures in taste, the chairs were up- 
 holstered in leather and there was a bright 
 anthracite fire in an open fireplace. But I knew 
 instantly that I had never met before another 
 Dr. Sun. There has been ground into his eyes 
 the inevitable placid resignation of the man 
 with an altruistic idea who sees it trampled on 
 daily, but who goes on fighting for its frag- 
 ments. There are some people in China who 
 will tell you that Sun is a fake. He isn't. He 
 is a tragedy. He has suffered everything for 
 his idea of a free China. A good share of his 
 life has been spent with a price on his head. 
 But he has played his cards fearlessly, and he 
 will play them fearlessly to the end. And as I 
 looked at him I knew instinctively that this man 
 would die a tragic death. It is as certain a* 
 
 296
 
 CHINA'S CHIEF REFORMER 
 
 sunrise that some day he will be led out arid 
 beheaded or shot by a file of soldiers who will 
 feel afterward that somehow the wrong thing 
 was done. For you can put it down as an axiom 
 that no single forward step in human liberty 
 has ever been taken but that somewhere, some- 
 how, sometime, some man has paid the price. 
 
 There is to be found occasionally a rare silver 
 dollar in China, known as the Sun Dollar. It was 
 minted while Sun was president, and when Yuan 
 Shih Kai drove Sun out of the country these 
 coins were destroyed. The Sun dollar shows 
 Sun in profile and makes him utterly insignifi- 
 cant. His profile is not so in fact. I studied it. 
 The artist was simply off his feed when the dol- 
 lar was designed. Sun's face is strong, his 
 mouth sensitively kind, his eyes placidly, almost 
 pleasantly tragic. He is a little man wrapped 
 up in a sack suit, fairly well tailored and neatly 
 pressed. He speaks English easily, and his 
 voice is as soft as the purr of a south breeze 
 across the prairie late in the afternoon at the 
 end of June that is, it doesn't vary, and is so 
 gentle as to be almost sleepy. 
 
 For instance, I said: "There are some people 
 in China who believe that the Republic will not 
 last; that the young emperor will be put upon 
 the throne in Peking again." Without the sign 
 
 297
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 of an accent, without a gleam in his dark, 
 sleepy eyes, but in a monotone as detached from 
 human affairs as a rumble of thunder in a dis- 
 tant cloud, Sun answered: "He would not stay 
 long upon his throne." I could have laughed 
 outright, though I did not risk even a smile. 
 My mind flashed back to the awful wreck of 
 the Manchu city at Nanking, to the starving, 
 gaunt-eyed Manchus at King-Chow, to the 
 ragged, dirty, pitiable Manchu beggars in the 
 streets of Peking. No, he would not stay long 
 upon his throne. 
 
 I asked Sun about a reform in the currency 
 system for China's system is atrocious. He 
 said it would come. I asked him about the rail- 
 roads. He said they would be built. I asked 
 him about a system of public schools. It would 
 come in time. I asked him about the presence 
 of soldiers everywhere the burden they must 
 be upon the people and the anomaly they pre- 
 sented in a republic in time of peace. He 
 answered that it was a survival of an old idea 
 of might. I asked him about the element of 
 public opinion, and questioned its existence in 
 China. He said it was forming that it was a 
 growth and it is. 
 
 I asked him about "squeeze." Nine out of ten 
 white men in China will tell you that the trouble 
 
 298
 
 CHINA'S CHIEF REFORMER 
 
 with China is "squeeze" the mutual hold-up 
 which pervades all public service, depleting pub- 
 lic revenues and corrupting public life. Most of 
 the foreigners in China hold that any reform in 
 this respect is absolutely hopeless. Dr. Sun 
 said, "No, it is not hopeless. It came down from 
 the old days. It will be reasonably corrected 
 in time." 
 
 I covered the basic problems of a republic. In 
 all of them he took the optimistic view. Yet I 
 know that in doing it Dr. Sun was fighting the 
 rear-guard action which is the lot of every 
 reformer. For once he had planned for the 
 scientific location of railroads in China rail- 
 roads placed to serve the whole country with a 
 maximum of efficiency something which no 
 nation has yet done, and none probably ever will 
 do. No crazy man, for instance, could have 
 located the railroads of the United States as 
 they have been located and have gotten them 
 crazier and while we will work back to a coher- 
 ent unified system in the end, the crazy pattern 
 will always be with us because we didn't start 
 right. We didn't think of the correct thing in 
 time. Sun did, but he had to give up. 
 
 Once, too, Sun had the idea of a financial sys- 
 tem, based on the exchange of the products of 
 labor putting that age-old instrument of tor- 
 
 299
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 ture interest on the shelf with the rack and 
 thumb screws. But the world prefers to look 
 upon its medium of exchange as a commodity, 
 and Sun had to give that up, too. For now he 
 is earnestly, purposefully devoted to keeping the 
 Republic on its feet and teaching it laboriously 
 the way to liberty. For "if you don't start 
 right, right at the beginning, then you must 
 work always thereafter with your problems, be- 
 cause you did not start right." 
 
 300
 
 XLIV 
 AMERICAN TRADERS IN THE ORIENT 
 
 ARE we Americans making headway in 
 trade in China? We are. We have 
 plunged into the Oriental market lickety- 
 split. Most of our ginger came after the Euro- 
 pean war began. The other nations except 
 Japan, of course lost ground as we gained. 
 
 All other nationals knock America and Amer- 
 ican goods so much that you just naturally put 
 on your fighting clothes and prepare to wipe out 
 all comers. 
 
 That is, you can't be an American in China 
 without gathering the entire American brood 
 under your wings and getting ready to battle the 
 whole world. The oil, the tobacco, the steel 
 organizations all look different in China, because 
 they are American, and the whole world is 
 bucking them because they are. 
 
 The fact is that we have the rest of the world 
 scared in business. The Britisher sniffs and 
 sneers at Americans and their wares, because he 
 
 301
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 is afraid of us. So do the other nationals. I 
 don't blame them for being scared, for when it 
 comes to business, we are certainly some little 
 steppers. For a long, long time we were not 
 interested in China it was so far away and we 
 were so busy at home that we didn't care. When 
 the world war got Americans interested in busi- 
 ness abroad they began to look towards China. 
 Then they started to edge in. And the way 
 Americans are doing it is a caution and no mis- 
 take. The Americans attacked with kerosene, 
 tobacco, sewing machines, typewriters, machin- 
 ery, electric appliances, hardware, drugs, dry 
 goods, canned goods, concrete, structural steel, 
 printing presses, iron bedsteads and anything 
 else which came handy. 
 
 We roll up the opposition and throw them 
 overboard when it comes to business. I don't 
 think Americans generally realize just what we 
 can do. We have traded around among our- 
 selves so long and got so used to mutual hard- 
 hitting that we don't realize how much rush and 
 punch we have. We are probably the greatest 
 merchants in the world. We can get the goods 
 out, show 'em, sell 'em, bank the money and 
 spend it while the ordinary trader is deciding 
 on what price tag to put on his wares. The 
 Japanese has as much speed as we have, but he 
 
 302
 
 AMERICAN TRADERS IN THE ORIENT 
 
 has also handicaps, and if we set our heart on it, 
 we will put him out of it, too. One Japanese 
 handicap is that he doesn't deliver invariably to 
 sample. That is, his competitors charge, he 
 sometimes cheats. And you don't cheat a China- 
 man twice. We are pretty slick traders, but we 
 don't cheat on samples. An American traveling 
 man told me that he got ten per cent, more on 
 the same contracts, in competition with the Jap- 
 anese, right along. We deliver the goods, as 
 ordered. The Japanese doesn't always do that. 
 
 The whole bunch dread us. We do things in 
 such a slap-dash, overwhelming sort of way. 
 One of our oil companies has tanks planted all 
 over China, with an American flag fluttering 
 from every tank. You can't find a Chinese 
 city, no matter how obscure, that you won't 
 stumble across an American sewing machine 
 store. We just rush in kind of careless like and 
 take possession. There is speed to us speed 
 that you can't see at home because you are 
 used to it. 
 
 There is another thing about us Americans 
 that you can't see at home, but you do see in 
 China. We are not high priced in comparison 
 with competition, and we give every ounce of 
 quality possible under the price. I can illus- 
 trate that by telling about a traveling cap I 
 
 303
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 bought what you would call a golf cap. I 
 tried a British store in Shanghai and they 
 wanted two dollars gold for one. It wasn't 
 worth it. So I went around to a store which 
 had an American cap which I bought for one 
 dollar gold. Now, the American cap wasn't as 
 good as the British cap. The British cap would 
 wear for five years the American cap, say, for 
 two years. But the point is here who wants 
 to wear a cap for five years ? Americans don't. 
 We turn the trick by producing an article of 
 middling quality and we get a low price on it by 
 volume of production. It is really democracy 
 creeping into merchandise. There are some 
 Britishers better dressed than Americans, but 
 there are more well-dressed Americans than 
 there are well-dressed men in any other country 
 under the sun. That is to say, we work to a 
 pretty comfortable average in America, and 
 hold it. 
 
 In business we get along famously with the 
 Chinese. In fact, Americans and Chinese were 
 made to trade with each other. Both have a 
 good deal of humour in trade. Both enjoy a 
 good contest. Both have a lot of the gambling 
 element in them, call it speculation if you want 
 a milder word, and both are rattling good losers. 
 Both are "good pay." I met a rich Chinese one 
 
 304
 
 AMERICAN TRADERS IN THE ORIENT 
 
 day, and in the course of conversation accusefl 
 him of being a rich man. "I am not," he said. 
 "I would be if I had all that was owing to me." 
 "How much is that?" I asked. "Well," he said, 
 "foreigners alone owe me one hundred thousand 
 dollars that I will never see." "Is there an 
 American among them?" I asked. "Not one," 
 he said, "not a single American. I have loaned 
 them thousands upon thousands. But Amer- 
 icans pay." 
 
 A remark like that makes you feel pretty 
 good in China, particularly if you have just 
 bumped into a few Europeans who were roast- 
 ing America. 
 
 Now, we have been weak on several points. 
 One and it is minor is that we do not know 
 how to pack goods. We do it shabbily, and we 
 lose by it. We ought to establish a school of 
 correct packing. Another point, and it is a very 
 serious one, is that we have had no American 
 merchant ships to speak of. We have had to 
 ship in foreign bottoms, and they all give us the 
 worst of it. We will straighten out both these 
 delinquencies, and then nothing will stop us 
 from being the prize package among the vendors 
 of the world. 
 
 305
 
 XLV 
 THE LEAVEN OF EAST AND WEST 
 
 SUMMING up my whole experience in China, 
 I have concluded that the Chinese Repub- 
 lic will make a go of it. And I base my 
 conclusion on as airy and fairy a proposition as 
 luck. Luck is with the country. 
 
 Now, luck is a base intruder in a world of 
 fixed rules, of logical causes and effects, of sane 
 and expected results arising from sane endeav- 
 ors. No well-ordered intellect ought to acknowl- 
 edge the existence of luck for a minute, and 
 every well-ordered intellect does. 
 
 The truth is that everything in China argued 
 against the institution of a Republic. The old- 
 est autocracy in the world, the absence of public 
 opinion, the inherent pacifism of the people, the 
 survival of ancient customs having nothing in 
 common with democracy, the presence of the 
 powers of the earth as partners in every Chinese 
 proposition, these elements not only made the 
 creation of a Republic a fanciful flight of the 
 
 306
 
 THE LEAVEN OF EAST AND WEST 
 
 imagination, but its perpetuation a seeming 
 impossibility. 
 
 But the Republic was created and it has hung 
 on. The feng-shui is right. Feng-shui, as I 
 told you, is the Chinese science of luck. I left 
 China without mastering even the rudiments of 
 the science, but it is here, the Chinese believe 
 in it and it is working for the Republic. 
 
 The war which Japan made upon China and 
 the Boxer outbreak exposed the Manchu dynasty 
 as an empty egg-shell. Without these events 
 the democrats of China could not have dared 
 even to dream. There was not enough left of 
 the dynasty for the European powers to attempt 
 to save it. Any sort of an old assumption of 
 authority shoved into Peking would have 
 answered for a government in the absence of 
 anything. So the Republic was set up on its 
 wobbly legs. Its president, Yuan Shin Kai, 
 nursed it along for a while in great doubt and 
 then concluded that it ought to be put out of its 
 misery. A few provinces, or rather, a very few 
 men in a few provinces, believed that it ought 
 not to be choked to death in any such fashion. 
 They revolted, and they were in the midst of 
 their trial of strength with Yuan Shih Kai when 
 the feng-shui operated. Yuan Shih Kai died. 
 His death, an undramatic, peaceful, stretched- 
 
 307
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 out-in-bed affair, was one of the most moving 
 events in the history of the world. It did two 
 things. First, it restored the Republic to its 
 friends. Second, it built up the prestige of the 
 Republic among the people of China themselves, 
 convincing them that the Republic had the ele- 
 ments of success in it. 
 
 There was another thing every day the Euro- 
 pean war continued tamped the foundations of 
 the Chinese Republic a little firmer, a little more 
 solid. There are two reasons for this. First, 
 the European nations have been so busy they 
 could not interfere with the internal affairs of 
 China, and, second, the war brought a measure 
 of prosperity to China itself which predisposes 
 the people to the Republican form. Few Euro- 
 peans in China have a kind word for the Chinese 
 Republic. They don't like Republics anyway, and 
 they are inclined to dismiss the Oriental attempt 
 with a sneer. If their hands hadn't been tied, 
 they would have been busy tearing the Chinese 
 Republic into little bits, exaggerating every rob- 
 bery into a revolution and making a crime of 
 every little weakness the new government 
 showed. But, whether by feng-shui's work or 
 not, the Chinese Republic has been measurably 
 let alone by the superior, and often over-critical, 
 monarchists from Europe. They had their 
 
 308
 
 THE LEAVEN OF EAST AND WEST 
 
 hands in one another's hair so long and so tight 
 that they forgot that China existed. There was 
 one exception Japan. Japan saw her chance 
 to butt in and grab off China while the other 
 nations were fighting. She went at the job with 
 a will, but it didn't come through just as she 
 planned. China showed a little pluck and de- 
 layed the game, and while Japan may be still 
 anxious to gobble up her big neighbor, every 
 day makes it more and more improbable that 
 she can do it. 
 
 China is still intact, and every day it is becom- 
 ing a little more difficult for her enemies to 
 break down China's confidence in herself. This 
 is helped out, in turn, by the circumstance that 
 times are fairly good in China, so far as Chinese 
 experience goes. The country isn't prosperous 
 as we know prosperity, of course. China is a 
 country where for centuries people have died 
 by the hundreds of thousands periodically of 
 famine. Tens of thousands are born hungry 
 and die hungry. Prosperity doesn't mean in 
 China a Ford in the barn and a Victrola in the 
 parlor. It means escape from death through 
 cold or starvation. The war in Europe helped 
 make times good in China. The Republic gets 
 some of the credit for this. It would get all 
 the blame if times were hard. 
 
 309
 
 PROMISE OF CHRISTIANITY TO CHINA 
 
 This is China as I have seen it an ancient 
 civilization struggling to keep afloat as a new 
 democracy and doing it by main strength, 
 awkwardness and luck. But she is doing it 
 and if she succeeds, there is coming into the 
 world for four hundred million human beings a 
 greater measure of happiness than they and 
 their ancestors for four thousand years have 
 ever known. 
 
 No man can be sure that he has given in print 
 the impression he intended, but I have tried to 
 get China to you just as China came to me, 
 through my eyes, ears and nose. 
 
 The big outstanding fact in my mind in con- 
 clusion is this: The two foremost elements of 
 the world are the doctrines of Jesus Christ and 
 democracy. To me they are one and the same; 
 making the leaven which must eventually leaven 
 the whole lump, East as well as West. 
 
 The End. 
 310
 
 ABOUT OTHER LANDS 
 
 HENRY CHUNG 
 
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