Numerous walled towns—The dirt of them—T\'ung Chou—Romance of the evening light—My own little walled city—The gateways—Hospitable landlady—Bald heads—My landlady\'s room—A return present—“The ringleaders have been executed”—Summary justice—To the rescue of the missionaries at Hsi An Fu—The Elder Brother Society-Primitive method of attack and defence—The sack of I Chun.

Oh that first walled city! It was the first of many walled cities, many of them so small that it did not take us more than a quarter of an hour to cross from gate to gate; but to enter one and all was like opening a door into the past, into the life our forbears lived before the country I was born and brought up in was ever thought of. When I was a little girl, I cherished a desire to marry a German baron, a German baron of the Middle Ages, who lived in a castle, and I could not help thinking, as the influenza left me and I regained my powers of thought, that here were the towns of my German baron\'s time—dirt and all. In my childhood I had never thought of the dirt, or perhaps I had not minded. One thing is certain, in the clean land of my childhood I never realised what the dirt that comes from a packed population, from seething humanity, can be like. The Chinese live in these crowded towns for the sake of security—of security in this twentieth century—for even still, China seems to be much in the condition of Europe of the Middle Ages, safety cannot be absolutely counted upon inside the gates of a town, but at least it is a little safer than the open country.

185We passed through T\'ung Chou when the soft tender evening shadows were falling upon battlements and walls built by a nation that, though it is most practical, is also one of the most poetical on earth; we passed through Chi Chou when the shadows were long in the early morning, and in the sunlight was the hope of the new-born day. Through the gate was coming a train of Peking carts, of laden donkeys, of great grain carts with seven mules, all bound for the capital in the south.

I remember these two perhaps because they were the first of many walled towns, but Tsung Hua Chou will always remain in my memory as my own little walled city, the one that I explored carefully all by myself, and, when I think of a walled town, my thoughts always fly back to that little town, three-quarters of a mile square, at the foot of the hills that mark the limit of the great plain of China proper.

It was Tuan\'s suggestion we should stay there. I would have lingered at the tombs, but he was emphatic.

“Missie want make picture. More better we stop Tsung Hua Chou. Fine picture Tsung Hua Chou.”

There weren\'t fine pictures at Tsung Hua Chou. He had struck up a great friendship with the “cartee man,” and, perhaps, either he or the “cartee man” had a favourite gaming-house, or a favourite 186singing girl in the town. At any rate we went, and I, for some hardly explainable reason, am glad we did.

The road from the tombs was simply appalling. The hills frowned down on us, close on either side, high and steep and rugged, but the rough valley bottom, up which we went, was the wildest I was to see for a long time. To say I was tossed and jolted, is to but mildly express the condition of affairs. I sat on a cushion, I packed my bedding round me, and with both my hands I held on to the side of the cart, and if for one moment I relaxed the rigidity of my aching arms, my head or some other portion of my aching anatomy, was brought into contact with the woodwork of the cart, just in the place I had reckoned the woodwork could not possibly have reached me. There were little streams and bridges across them, which I particularly dreaded, for the bridges were always roughly paved, but it was nobody\'s business to see that the road and the pavement met neatly, and the jolt the cart gave, both getting on and getting off, nearly shook the soul out of my body. I thought of walking, for our progress was very slow, but in addition to the going being bad, the mules went just a little faster than I did, three and a half miles an hour to my three, and I felt there was nothing for it but to resign myself and make the best of a bad job. Not for worlds would I have lingered an hour longer on that road than I was absolutely obliged. And yet, bad as it was, it was the best road I had till I got back to Peking again. There may be worse roads than those of China, and there may be worse ways of getting over them than in a 187Peking cart, but I do trust I never come across them.

We entered the gates of the city as the evening shadows were growing long, and as usual, I was carried back to the days of the Crusaders—or farther still to Babylon—as we rumbled under the arched gateway, but inside it was like every other town I have seen, dirty, sordid, crowded, with uneven pavements that there was no getting away from. Within the curtain wall, that guarded the gate, there were the usual little stalls for the sale of cakes, big, round, flat cakes and little scone-like cakes, studded with sesame seed, or a bright pink sweetmeat; there were the sellers of pottery ware, basins and pots of all sorts, and the people stared at the foreign woman, the wealthy foreign woman who ran to two carts. It is an unheard-of thing in China for a Chinese woman to travel alone, though sometimes the foreign missionary women do, but they would invariably be accompanied by a Chinese woman, and one woman would not be likely to have two carts. One thing was certain however, my outfit was all that it should have been, bar the lack of a male protector. It bespoke me a woman of wealth and position in the eyes of the country folk, and the people of the little towns through which I passed. It is possible that a mule litter might have enhanced my dignity; but after all, two Peking carts was very much like having a first-class compartment all to myself.

There were no foreigners, that I could hear of, in Tsung Hua Chou. The missionaries had fled during the Boxer trouble, and never come back, so that I was more of a show than usual, though 188indeed, in all the towns I passed through I was a show, and the people stared, and chattered, and crowded round the carts, and evidently closely questioned the carters.

They tell me Chinese carters are often rascals, but I grew to like mine very much before we parted company.

They were stolid men in blue, with dirty rags wrapped round their heads to keep off the dust, and I have no reason to suppose that they affected water any more than the rest of the population, whereby I perceive, my affections are not so much guided by a desire for cleanliness as I had once supposed. They both had the hands of artists, artists with very dirty nails, so it may be a feeling of brotherhood had something to do with my feelings, for I am hoping you who read will count me an artist in a small way. What romance they wove about me, for the benefit of the questioning people, I don\'t know, but the result of their communications was that the crowd pressed closer, and stared harder, and they were evil-smelling, and had never, never in all their lives been washed. I ceased to wonder that I ached all over with the jolting and rumbling of the cart, I only wondered if something worse had not befallen me, and how it happened that these people, who crowded round, staring as if never in their lives had they seen a foreign woman before, did not fall victims to some horrible pestilence.

For once inside Tsung Hua Chou I saw no beauty in it, for all the romantic walls outside. The evil-smelling streets we rumbled through to the inn were wickedly narrow, and down the centre hung notices in Chinese characters on long strips of 189paper white and red, and pigs, and children, and creaking wheelbarrows, and men with loads, blocked the way. But we jolted over the step into the courtyard of the inn at last, quite a big courtyard, and quite a busy inn. This was an inn where they apparently ran a restaurant, for as I climbed stiffly out of my cart a servant, carrying a tray of little basins containing the soups and stews the Chinese eat, was so absorbed in gazing at me he ran into the “cartee man,” and a catastrophe occurred which was the occasion of much bad language.



0276

The courtyard was crowded. There were blue-tilted Peking carts, there were mules, there were donkeys, there were men of all sorts; but there was only one wretched little room for me. It was very dirty too, and I was very tired. What was to be done?

“Plenty Chinese gentlemen sleep here,” declared Tuan, and I could quite believe it. At the door of every lattice-windowed room that looked out on to that busy courtyard, stood one, or perhaps two Chinese of the better class—long petticoats, shaven head, queue and all—each held in his hand a long, silver-mounted pipe from which he took languid whiffs, and he looked under his eyelids, which is the polite way, at the foreign woman. The foreign woman was very dirty, very tired, and very uncomfortable, and the room looked very hopeless. The “cartee men” declared that this was the best inn in the town, and anyhow I was disinclined to go out and look for other quarters. Then there came tottering forward an old woman with tiny feet, one eye and a yellow flower stuck in the knot at the back of her bald head. China is the country of bald 190women. The men, I presume, would not mind it very much, as for so long they have shaven off at least half their hair, but the women certainly must, for if they can they dress their dark hair very elaborately. And yet have I seen many women, like this innkeeper\'s wife, with a head so bald that but a few strands of hair cover its nakedness, yet those few poor hairs are gathered together into an arrangement of black silk shaped something like a horn, and beside it is placed a flower, a rose, a pink oleander blossom, or a bright yellow flower for which I have no name. That flower gives a finish to a sleek and well-dressed head, when the owner has plenty of hair, but when she has only the heavy horn of silk, half a dozen hairs, and the rest of her bald pate covered with a black varnish, it is a poor travesty. When a girl marries, immediately after her husband has lifted her veil and she is left to the women of his family they pluck out the front hairs on her forehead, so as to give a square effect, and the hair is drawn very tightly back and gathered generally into this horn. I suspect this heavy horn is responsible for the baldness, though an American of my acquaintance declares it is the plucking out of the hairs on the forehead. “The rest of the hair,” says he, “kinder gets discouraged.”

This innkeeper\'s wife was very kindly. She said I should not sleep in that room, I should have her room, and she would go to her mother\'s. The mother was a surprise to me. I hope when I am as old as she looked I shall have a mother to go to.

Now I do not as a rule embrace my landlady. In England I couldn\'t even imagine myself feeling particularly kindly towards a dirty little woman clad 191in a shirt and trousers of exceedingly dirty blue cotton, but the intention was so evidently kind and hospitable, I knew not a word of her tongue, and was by no means sure the valued Tuan would translate my words of thanks properly, so I could but take both her very dirty little hands in mine, clasp them warmly, and try and look my thanks.

Then I inspected her room. It was approached through an entrance where lime was stored, it was rather dark, and it was of good size, though on one side was stacked a supply of stores for the restaurant. Chinese macaroni, that looks as if it were first cousin to sheet gelatine, stale eggs and other nondescript eatables. There was a k\'ang, of course, quite a family k\'ang, and there was a large mirror on one wall. I had forgotten my camp mirror, so I looked in it eagerly, and the reflection left me chastened. I hadn\'t expected the journey to improve my looks, but I did hope it had not swelled up one cheek, and bunged up the other eye. I felt I did not want to stay in the room with that mirror, but there were other things worse than the mirror in it. The beautiful lattice-work window had apparently never been opened since the first cover of white tissue paper had been put on it, and the smell of human occupancy there defies my poor powers of description. The dirty little place I had at first disdained, had at least a door opening on to the comparatively fresh air of the courtyard. I told Tuan to explain that while I was delighted to see her room, and admired everything very much in it, nothing would induce me to deprive her of its comforts. She certainly was friendly. As I looked in the chastening mirror, I, like a true woman, I suppose, put up 192a few stray locks that the jolting cart had shaken out of place, and she promptly wanted to do my hair herself with a selection from an array of elderly combs with which she probably dressed her own scanty locks. That was too much. I had to decline, I trust she thought it was my modesty, and then she offered me some of the macaroni. I tried to say I had nothing to give in return and then Tuan remarked, “As friend, as friend.” So as a friend, from that little maimed one-eyed old woman up in the hills of China, I took a handful of macaroni and had nothing to give in return. I hope she feels as friendly towards me as I shall always do towards her.

It is not always that the difficulty of giving a return present is on the foreign side, sometimes it is the Chinese who feel it. I remember a traveller for a business house telling me how on one occasion he had gone to a village and entertained the elders at dinner, giving them brandy which they loved, and liqueurs which seemed to the unsophisticated village fathers ambrosia fit for the gods. The next day, when he was about to take his departure, a small procession approached him and one of them bore on a tray a little Chinese handleless cup covered with another. They said he could speak Chinese, so there was no need for an interpreter, that he had given them a very good time, they were very grateful, and they wished to make him a present by which he might remember them sometimes. But their village was poor and small. It contained nothing worth his acceptance, and after much consultation, they had come to the conclusion that the best way would be to present him with the money, 193so that he might buy something for himself when he came to Peking or some other large town. Thereupon the cup was presented, the cover lifted off, and in the bottom lay a ten cent piece, worth about twopence halfpenny. Probably it seemed quite an adequate present to men who count their incomes by cash of which a thousand go to the dollar.

I don\'t think my landlady minded much my declining the hospitality of her room. Possibly she only wished me to see its glories, and presently she brought to the little room I had at first so despised, and now looked upon, if not as a haven of rest, at least as one of fresh air, a couple of nice hard wood stools, and a beautifully carved k\'ang table thick with grease.

“Say must make Missie comfortable,” said Tuan with the usual suggestion he had done it himself.

And those stools were covered, much to my surprise, with red woollen tapestry, and the pattern was one that I had seen used many a time in a little town on the Staffordshire moors, where their business is to dye and print. And here was one of the results of their labours, a “Wardle rag,” as we used to call them, up among the hills of Northern China.

I was too tired to do anything but go to bed that night as soon as I had had my dinner. I had it, as usual, on the k\'ang table, the dirt shrouded by my humble tablecloth, and curious eyes watched me, even as I watched the trays of full basins and the trays of empty ones that were for ever coming and going across the courtyard.

Next morning my friendly landlady brought to see me two other small-footed women, both smoking 194long pipes, women who said, through Tuan, their ages were forty and sixty respectively, and who examined, with interest, me and my belongings. They felt my boots so much, good, substantial, leather-built by Peter Yapp, that at last I judged they would like to see what was underneath, and took off a boot and stocking for their inspection, and the way they felt my foot up and down as if it were something they had never before met in their lives, amused me very much, At least at first it amused me, and then it saddened me. Though they held out their own poor maimed feet, they did not return the compliment much as I desired it. They took me across the courtyard into another room where, behind lattice-work windows, that had not been opened for ages, were two more women sitting on the k\'ang, and two little shaven-headed children. These were younger women, tall and stout, with feet so tiny, they called my attention to them, that it did not seem to me possible any woman could support herself upon them. My boy was not allowed in, so of course I could not talk to them, could only smile and drink tea.

These two younger women, who were evidently of superior rank, had their hair most elaborately dressed and wore most gorgeous raiment. One was clad in purple satin with a little black about it, and the other, a mere girl of eighteen, but married, for her hair was no longer in a queue, and her forehead was squared, wore a coat of pale blue silk brocade and grass-green trousers of the same material. Their faces were impassive, as are the faces of Chinese women of the better class, but they smiled, evidently liked their tortured feet to be noticed, gave 195me tea from the teapot on the k\'ang table, and then presently all four, with the gaily dressed babies, tottered out into the courtyard, the older women leading the toddling children, and helping the younger, and, with the aid of settles, they climbed into two Peking carts, my elderly friends taking their places on the outside, whereby I judged they were servants or household slaves.

“Chinese wives,” said Tuan, but whether they were the wives of one man, or of two, I had no means of knowing. The costumes of the two younger were certainly not those in which I would choose to travel on a Chinese road in a Peking cart, but the Chinese have a proverb: “Abroad wear the new, at home it does not matter,” so they probably thought my humble mole-coloured cotton cr?ape, equally out of place.

And when they were gone I set out to explore the town.

It was only a small place, built square, with two main roads running north, and south, and east, and west, and cutting each other at right angles in the heart of it. They were abominably paved. No vehicle but a springless Peking cart would have dreamt of making its way across that pavement, but then probably no vehicle save a cart or a wheelbarrow in all the years of the city\'s life had ever been thought of there. The remaining streets were but evil-smelling alley-ways, narrow in comparison with the main ways which, anywhere else, I should have deemed hopelessly inadequate, thronged as they were with people and encroached upon by the shops that stood close on either side. They had no glass fronts, of course, these shops, but otherwise, 196they were not so very unlike the shops one sees in the poorer quarters of the great towns in England. But there was evidently no Town Council to regulate the use to which the streets should be put. The dyer hung his long strips of blue cloth half across the roadway, careless of the convenience of the passer-by, the man who sold cloth had out little tables or benches piled with white and blue calico—I have seen tradesmen do the same in King\'s Road, Chelsea—the butcher had his very disagreeable wares fully displayed half across the roadway, the gentleman who was making mud bricks for the repair of his house, made them where it was handiest in the street close to the house, and the man who sold cooked provisions, with his little portable kitchen and table, set himself down right in the fairway and tempted all-comers with little basins of soup, fat, pale-looking steamed scones, hard-boiled eggs or meat turnovers.

This place, hidden behind romantic grey walls, at which I had wondered in the evening light, was in the morning just like any other city, Peking with the glory and beauty gone out of it, and the people who thronged those streets were just the poorer classes of Peking, only it seemed there were more naked children and more small-footed women with elaborately dressed hair tottering along, balancing themselves with their arms. I met a crowd accompanying the gay scarlet poles, flags, musical instruments and the red sedan chair of a wedding. The poor little bride, shut up in the scarlet chair, was going to her husband\'s house and leaving her father\'s for ever. It is to be hoped she would find favour in the sight of her husband and 197her husband\'s women-folk. It was more important probably, that she should please the latter.

The bridal party made a great noise, but then all in that town was noise, dirt, crowding, and evil smells. The only peaceful place in it was the courtyard of the little temple close against the city wall. Outside it stand two hideous figures with hands flung out in threatening attitude, and inside were more figures, all painted in the gayest colours. What they meant I have not lore enough to know, but they were very hideous, the very lowest form of art.



0286

There was the recording angel with a black face and the open book—after all, the recording angel must often wear a black face—and there was the eternal symbol that has appealed through all ages to all people, and must appeal one would think above all, to this nation that longs so ardently for offspring, the mother with the child upon her knee. But they were all ugly to my Western eyes, and the only thing that charmed me was the silence, the cleanliness, and the quiet of the courtyard, the only place in all the busy little city that was at peace.

When I engaged Tuan I had thought he was to do all the waiting upon me I needed, but it seems I made a mistake. The farther I got from Peking the greater his importance became, and here he could not so much as ca............