»-' ur ipu;
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
IN MEMORY OF
CARROLL ALCOTT
PRESENTED BY
CARROLL ALCOTT MEMORIAL LIBRARY FUND COMMITTEE
t^ .
ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
VOL. I
YUAN SHIH-K AI.
President of the Repuhlie of China.
ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
A NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL
IN THE CHIEF OPIUM-PRODUCING PROVINCES
OF CHINA
BY
SIR ALEXANDER HOSIE, M.A., LL.D., F.R.G.S.
LATE H.B.M. CONSUL-GENERAL, TIENTSIN, CHINA
AUTHOR OF " THREE YEARS IN WESTERN CHINA," " MANCHURIA : ITS PEOPLE,
RESOURCES AND RECENT HISTORV," ETC., ETC.
VOL. I
LONDON
GEORGE PHILIP & SON, Ltd., 32, Fleet Street
Liverpool : PHILIP, SON, & NEPHEW, Ltd., 20, Church Street I914
{All rights reserved)
1
vs
7/0
V, I
PREFACE
This book is not a history of the Opium Question, nor does it deal with the evils which attend the abuse of the drug. It is a plain narrative of journeys made in China during the years 1910 and 191 1 for the purpose of investigating the extent of poppy-cultivation in those provinces which had hitherto been the chief centres of opium production. The main results of this investigation have already been made public through the medium of Parliamentary papers ; but he would be a poor observer who confined his attention to one particular subject and shut his eyes to the physical characteristics and economic conditions that constantly present themselves, not to speak of those incidents which befall every traveller in a little known and, in part, unexplored country. It is in the hope that a description of these characteristics, conditions and incidents may prove of some interest that the following pages, compiled from my diary, are now published. The inception, organization and methods of the anti-opium crusade in China are described in the first of two Appen- dices, the second of which contains a summary of my investigation into poppy cultivation in each of the six provinces traversed by me.
ALEX. HOSIE.
Sandown, Isle of Wight. November, 1914.
1 r ^."J '^'^O
CONTENTS OF VOL. I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Peking to the Yellow River ..... i
II. The Yellow River to Hsi-an Fu, Capital of the Pro- vince OF Shensi . . . . . . .21
III. Hsi-AN Fu TO the Frontier of the Province of Kansu 6o
IV. From the Frontier of Kansu to the Capital of the
Province ......... 87
V. Along the Northern Road from Lan-chou Fu back to
Shensi . . . . . . . . .118
VI. Across Shensi from Kansu to Shansi . . . .160
VII. Return to Peking through Shansi and Chihli . .184
VIII. Peking to the Province of Szechuan .... 213^^
IX. From Wan Hsien to Chungking by River and Land . 242
X. Chungking to Chengtu, the Capital of Szechuan . 264
ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOL. I
FACING PAGE
Map of the Provinces of Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu
At end of volume
Yuan Shih-k'ai, President of the Republic of China
Frontispiece
1. Bridge on the Cheng-T'ai Railway .
2. Railway Gate of T'ai-yuan Fu
3. South Gate of T'ai-yuan Fu . 4.. Camel Caravan, Shansi ....
5. Stone Mill, Shansi .....
6. The Loess Formation, Shansi ; with Mule Litte
Passenger Cart .....
7. Well Irrigation, Shansi ....
8. Loess Cave Dwelling, Shansi
9. Nestorian Tablet, Hsi-an Fu, Shensi
10. Inner South Gate, Hsi-an Fu, Shensi
11. Pagoda outside South Gate, Hsi-an Fu .
12. Public Water Tobacco Pipe, with Customer
13. Lanchou Fu, Capital of Kansu, with Bridge
Yellow River .....
14. Poppy Head (Papaver somnifeTum)
15. Memorial Archway, near Shuang-liu Hsien, Szechuan
16. Long Stone Bridge across the Pa Ho, Shensi .
16 16 16
32 32
48 48 48 64 64 64 96
128 176 176 176
vlii ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOL. I
FACING PAGE
17. Gorge on the Upper Yangtsze ...... 224
18. Trackers at a Rapid on the Upper Yangtsze . . . 224
19. Rapid and Gorge on the Upper Yangtsze . . . 240
20. Bridge over a Tributary of the Upper Yangtsze, Wan
HsiEN, Szechuan ........ 240
21. City and Port of Chungking, Szechuan . . . .272
22. Salt Junk on the Upper Yangtsze, Chungking . . 272
23. Poppy Fields in Szechuan prior to the Anti-Opium Crusade 288
24. Chinese Ash (Fraxinus chinensis), coated with Insect White
Wax, near Chia-ting Fu, Szechuan .... 288
25. The Author's Chair on the Chengtu Plain, Szechuan . 288
The Author s grateful t hanks for the loan of photographs, here reproduced, are due : for Nos. 2 and 3, to Mr. W. E. Bryant ; Nos. 5 and 6, to the English Baptist Missionary Society ; Nos. 10, 11, and 16, to the Rev. J. C. Keyte ; No. 13, to Dr. G. E. Morrison; nvhilefor No. 23, the Author ^wishes to acknonvledge his indebtedness to ^^ Commerce," ^th January, 1901.
ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
CHAPTER I
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER
The petals of the Chinese opium poppy ^ are of various hues. White predominates ; but pink and white, different shades of red, and purple are by no means uncommon. The season of cultivation differs with the provinces : in the west and south-west sowing takes place towards the end of October or beginning of November, flowering occurs in Szechuan in March, and the opium is harvested in April. In Yunnan and Kueichou it is one to two months later, and in the north-western provinces of Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu the poppy is in full bloom in June, with harvest in
July.
It seems almost unnecessary to explain that opium is the juice or sap which exudes from incisions made on the outside of the capsules when they have attained their full development after the fall of the petals. In India the petals are carefully collected and used in the preparation of the outer shells or husks of the balls containing the opium, but in China they are discarded. The incisions in the capsules, sometimes horizontal, but more frequently perpendicular, are made with the points of three or four small parallel
* Papa-uer somniferuin. VOL. I. B
2 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
blades inserted in a short wooden handle, and so arranged as to leave the tips exposed, and only sufficiently long to lance without penetrating the wall of the capsule. Occasion- ally, as in parts of the province of Chekiang, a small instrument resembling a carpenter's plane takes the place of the multi-bladed lance, and the capsules are shaved downwards leaving the ragged tags attached to the lower sides of the poppy-heads. These incisions or shavings, which are repeated at intervals several times on each capsule, are, as a rule, made in the evening, and the exuding sap, at first cream, with a dash of pink, in colour, but later turning dark brown to black, is collected in the morning, the collector — man, woman, or child, as the case may be — generally using a flat strip of bamboo to remove the inspissated sap — the raw opium — which is dropped into a bowl or cross-section of a bamboo, and thereafter exposed in the open for the evaporation of surplus moisture or, if required for more immediate use, dried by the application of heat.
I have specially mentioned the above six provinces Decause they have hitherto been the chief centres of opium production in China, and because they are the provinces with which this narrative deals. Distances in China are so great, and transport in the interior so slow, that on my return to China towards the end of April, 1910,' it was too late in the season to reach the south-western provinces while the poppy was in the ground, and I accordingly directed my steps to the north-western provinces of Shansi, Shensi and Kansu, where I should be able to see it in flower, and the opium in process of being harvested, reserving till the following season my examination of the provinces of Szechuan, Yunnan and Kueichou.
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 3
On arrival in China I proceeded to Peking where I made the necessary preparations for my first journey, and on the 4th May, 19 10, I left the metropolis by rail bound for T'ai-yuan Fu, the capital of the province of Shansi. Early on the afternoon of the same day the train, after running south for 150 miles through the province of Chihli, steamed into the station of Shih-chia-chuang, where, next morning, I joined the train which goes westward to T'ai- ylian Fu, a distance of 1 5 1 miles, over the metre gauge line known as the Ch^ng-T'ai railway. The approach from Chihli to Shansi by rail did not create a favourable im- pression on my mind. The line passes up through the well-known loess formation, then arid to a degree owing to lack of rain. The low hills, many of them inhabited by cave-dwellers, are terraced, and the terraces faced with stone to prevent denudation by rain or that detrition which is steadily going on throughout the whole loess formation, owing to its friable vertical cleavage, a detrition which must in time change the whole aspect of the provinces it overlies ; but I shall refer to this subject later. It is only when T'ai-yiian Fu is neared that the country opens out and reveals a plain, 3000 feet above the level of the sea, resembling in many respects the seemingly boundless plains of Honan and stretching away to the south and south-west. Some miles to the north-west and north, the plain is hemmed in by hill ranges giving birth to streams which, uniting to the north of the provincial capital, join the Fen Ho, flowing from the north-west, whose waters and tributaries irrigate the south of Shansi and ultimately enter the Huang Ho or Yellow River before the latter, sweeping south and dividing the province from Shensi, resumes its eastern and north-eastern course
4 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
through Honan, Chlhli and Shantung to the Gulf of Pechihli.
Comparatively few trees dot the loess hills bounding the track of the railway ; but willow, poplar, fir, date [Zizyphus vulgaris)^ Cedrela sinensis and Ailanthus glandulosa (" Tree of Heaven ") find an occasional foothold. Coal, however, both anthracite and bituminous, underlies the loess, and the whole province of Shansi is known to be one of the largest and richest coal-fields in the world.
The railway station at T'ai-ylian Fu lies outside the south wall of the city, and on arrival there on the afternoon of the 5th May, I found the Principal of the Imperial University and his wife — old friends — awaiting me, as well as the carriage 'of His Excellency Ting Pao-ch'uan, Governor of the province, who was good enough to place it at my disposal during my stay in the provincial capital. His Excellency was well aware of the object of my visit and at two interviews which I had with him on the 6th and 7th May, he assured me that the cultivation of the poppy had entirely ceased within his province in 1909, and that an attempt to revive cultivation in 19 10 within the district of Wen-shui Hsien, a two days' journey to the south of the provincial capital, had been suppressed by a military force which, on resistance being offered, opened fire on the threatening crowd, resulting in over forty casualties in dead and wounded, and uprooted the young poppy plants.
In 1909 His Excellency had invited a friendly examina- tion of his province, and ja Consular Officer was detached from the British Legation for the purpose. He spent a month in the south of Shansi, covering a distance of 400 miles, but failed to find a single poppy plant. His
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 5
Excellency expressed a wish that I should meet such members of the Provincial Assembly (not then in session) as were in T'ai-yiian Fu and on the 7th May I had the opportunity of discussing with them the whole question of opium. The President and members of the Assembly present gave me the same assurance regarding the eradica- tion of the poppy in Shansi as the Governor, and seemed to be justly proud of the achievement of their province ; but when they hinted that, Shansi having done so much, there should be a further reduction in the export from India, I pointed out that their province was only a small part of China and that, as regards diminution of poppy cultivation, the Empire must be taken as a whole and not individual provinces. They said that, instead of a diminished, there was an increasing import of Indian opium into China, and I explained that the higher prices ruling in China, as in trade generally, naturally attracted opium from other consuming countries and that the menace to China was not Indian but native-grown opium, and they seemed surprised when I told them that at the Shanghai Opium Commission the Chinese delegates in their Memorandum admitted that the annual production of opium in China amounted to about eight times the quantity annually imported from India and in former years had even exceeded that amount. They were (no doubt inspired by the Governor) anxious that I should express an opinion regarding the measures of suppression taken within the district of Wen-shui Hsien, but this I declined to do, saying that any decision thereon rested with the Chinese Government and the Chinese Government alone.
Meantime, I was organizing a caravan to convey myself, servants and baggage to the provinces of Shensi and Kansu,
6 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
and it was ultimately composed of five baggage mules, a litter resembling a sedan chair, but seatless, swung between two mules, two riding ponies, two servants, four muleteers, and a groom. To these have to be added a petty official from the Bureau of Foreign Affairs at T'ai-yiian Fu and a soldier, both mounted, deputed by the Governor to escort me to Hsi-an Fu, the capital of the province of Shensi. Local escorts, varying in number and changed in each district traversed, completed the caravan. With this caval- cade my aim was to enter Shensi in the north and then pass south through that province. To the west the Yellow River is the boundary of Shansi and Shensi ; but there was little knowledge of the river in T'ai-yiian Fu, and opinions differed as to the place where the crossing could most easily be effected. The only thing was to trust to luck, and on the morning of the loth May we emerged from the main south gate of the city and soon entered the sandy valley of the Fen Ho where wheat and barley were well above ground.
Between the city and the river, which we crossed by a bridge of millet stalks, troops — infantry and cavalry — were being drilled, and they proved very inquisitive as to who and what I was and whither I was bound. Across the river the road runs south by west, parallel to ranges drop- ping their foot-hills into the plain and starting streamlets, whose waters were diverted to the fields under crop. Eleven miles from T'ai-yiian Fu we passed through the district city of T'ai-yiian Hsien, and four miles beyond lunched at the village of Chin-tzu which lies close to the foot-hills, whence irrigation channels, frequently banked with stone, ramify into the plain. Another ten miles brought us to the village of Ch'ing-yiian-hsiang, where we
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 7
lodged for the night after passing through a country full of wheat and barley some eighteen inches high, and thickly dotted with the Chinese date tree ^ with occasional willow, Sophora japonica, whose petals yield the Chinese Imperial yellow dye, poplar, and vines trained over wooden frames and carefully tended. The barley cultivated in this part of Shansi is a huskless bere which, as in the case of the husk- less oat also grown in this province, but still more widely in Shensi and Kansu, threshes out like wheat. Small flocks of sheep in poor condition were nibbling with the greatest eagerness withered grass wherever there was any waste land, and the stubble of last year's crops where the fields awaited ploughing and flooding for the reception of the rice or padi shoots — in some cases already planted out. The sheep were of the fat-tailed variety, but their tails were much attenuated.
During the second day's journey from T'ai-yiian Fu the road, still following the trend of the hills, takes a more westerly course as far as the district city of Wen-shui Hsien, about 25 miles from Ch'ing-yuan-hsiang, passing midway the district city of Chiao-ch'eng Hsien, the approach to which is lined on both sides by elms for a distance of seven miles. We did not enter the latter city, but had lunch outside the walls in a temple which had been thought- fully swept and garnished. From this point the road is bordered by willows as far as Wen-shui Hsien, within and without whose walls are magnificent specimens of Sophora japonica of enormous girth. The city itself is so poor, however, that it does not possess a single decent inn and the magistrate had been good enough to borrow a few rooms for our accommodation from a friend. In addition
1 Zizyp/ms 'vulgaris.
8 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
to wheat the soya bean {^Glycine hispidd) was a prominent crop, and the fields were dotted here and there with peach trees and vines, while farm houses were frequently sur- rounded by high crenelated walls containing lofty square towers also crenelated. In some places there were depres- sions between the foot-hills and the plain, necessitating well- irrigation by hand-windlass. Trade was not conspicuous : there were a few carts ; but the bulk of the traffic, such as it was, consisted of wheelbarrows, each with a man pushing the handles and a donkey tracing in front, and some camels carrying sacks of lime from the hills to the north. A few miles before entering Wen-shui Hsien we passed the scene of the affray between the opium cultivators and the soldiery on the 23rd March already referred to.
The nth May, the date of our arrival at Wen-shui Hsien, was a black-letter day in the history of this journey. At nine o'clock in the evening my personal servant, after making my room as comfortable as possible, was retiring to his room next door for the night when, on passing my two riding ponies, which were tied up under the projecting eaves, he was kicked by one of them on the right leg, just above the ankle, and sustained a compound fracture of both bones. He was carried into his room, and, in his agony, begged me to give him a dose of poison to end his suffer- ing. He would not allow me to touch his leg, so I called in a native doctor, who professed to have some acquaint- ance with Western medicine, and who produced a tiny bottle of chloroform, which we administered without suc- cess. Fortunately I had in my medicine chest a sleeping- draught mixture, which I administered so liberally that the patient at last dozed off. Then we put the leg in splints, had a bamboo litter made, and sent him off next morning
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 9
at daylight to Fen-chou Fu, the next stage of the journey, where I was informed there was a foreign mission hospital. As my personal servant was in charge of clothing and stores for the journey, I had to remain in Wen-shui- Hsien for a day, to overhaul the caravan, and hand over everything to my cook, who knew nothing whatever of the duties of a personal servant. This journey, begun under such unhappy auspices, was unhappy to the end, for, although the same servant had sustained a fracture of the skull on a previous journey to the Eastern Frontier of Tibet, and had then, as now, to be left behind, while the same cook did double duty, yet the previous accident deprived me of his services for only eighteen days, and occurred in a country where there were fewer difficulties to contend with. As every traveller knows, the success or failure of a journey depends in great measure on the capability of his servants, and, although it was unwise on my part to proceed short-handed, yet I was unwilling to await the arrival of a new, and it might be incompetent, servant from Peking, which I had left a week before.
From Wen-shui Hsien to Fen-chou Fu the road goes west, and then south as the latter city is neared. The distance is only about twenty miles, but the road, especially as Fen-chou Fu is neared, winds exasperatingly round fields, devoted at this season of the year to wheat and ground-nuts [Arachis hypogoea). The latter flourishes best on a sandy soil, and the plain stretching southwards appeared to be less well irrigated. The Sophora, willow, and peach were the prominent trees. On arrival at Fen-chou Fu I called at once on the American mission, and found that my servant was in their temporary hospital, under the care of a doctor who, however, was unable to deal with the broken leg until
lo ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
the swelling had subsided. Here I remained two days, and ultimately arranged with the doctor to send my invaluable servant, in case of no complications and final recovery, to Hsi-an Fu, to await my return from the province of Kansu. The doctor told me, however, that he was soon proceeding with his family to the seaside for the summer, and, as will be seen later, I had to pick up my servant on my return four months afterwards, still unable to put his foot to the ground. His experiences will be described in their proper place.
Six o'clock on the morning of the i6th May saw us off from Fen-chou Fu, which we left by the north gate, and our course lay west by south, along a road much under the surface of the surrounding country, and varying in places from 20 to 40 feet broad. This road, more like a deep cutting, is characteristic of these north-western pro- vinces, over which the loess has spread its deep mantle of brown earth, interesting from a scientific point of view, but exceedingly monotonous to wander over and through for months, for, during the journey under description, it was never out of sight, stretching as it does many miles to the west of Lan-chou Fu, the capital of the province of Kansu, which was my furthest point. Travelling in the bowels of the earth was not in keeping with the nature of my investi- gation, and I rode for ten miles through fields of wheat and other crops not yet above ground to the village of Hsiang- yang-chen, at the eastern entrance of a rocky gorge bounded by cliffs, rising in places some 50 feet or more, and fre- quently overhanging the roadway, which was 15 to 50 feet in breadth. This gorge is a miniature Upper Yangtsze gorge, without, however, a rushing river ; but what the road may be in the rainy season it is not difficult to
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER ii
imagine, for it must be a raging torrent bounded by stiff cliffs — dangerous cliffs, too, for the higher rocks projecting over the roadway might be, and no doubt are, easily dis- lodged by the rains, and the numerous small stone props piled at dangerous places, not for support, but merely as thank-offerings for escape from destruction, testify to the great risks that have to be run. These stone props mark the road as a great trade route, and so it is. Hundreds of mules, donkeys, and some ponies were staggering down the gorge under loads of sheep's wool, sheep- and goat-skins, vermicelli, wheat, felt, linseed oil in water-proofed willow baskets, and hemp, twine, and ropes. Down also came flocks of sheep and herds of fine fat oxen and black pigs. One peculiarity of the pigs was that the young had hairless ears sweeping the ground as they followed the call of their herdsmen, who kept feeding them with beans from small sacks. The gorge was a passage over a ridge, from the summit of which the road descends into a valley running north-west, bounded by loess banks and fairly cultivated. This valley was soon hemmed in by a range going east and west, and we turned in the latter direction to the dry bed of a stream, which we followed to the village of Wu-ch'eng, about 32 miles from Fen-chou Fu. The bounding hills, which were scantily wooded — mostly with willow — were lower, terraced, and better cultivated as the end of the day's stage was neared.
It seems almost incredible that this road is a great trade highway between the west and north of China, but so it is, and an execrable road to boot. When my caravan left Wu-ch'eng at six o'clock on the morning of the 1 7th May, we found ourselves in the company of many mules and ponies laden with native cloth, bound, like ourselves, for the
12 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
Yellow River and the province of Shensi, and we met during the day hundreds of loads of wool, Kashmir hair — the combings of the under hair of the goat — wrapped in felt rugs, wheat, abutilon hemp (the fibre yielded by Abutilon Avicennce)^ ropes and cordage, willow baskets and straw hats going east, the pack animals including a number of camels. Some of the loads were flying flags bearing in Chinese characters the names of well-known British firms at Tientsin, an indication that the produce was being carried under outward transit pass to a port for shipment abroad.
On leaving Wu-ch'eng the road goes north-west for a short distance along the bed of a streamlet which winds down a stony valley and had to be repeatedly forded and re-forded. With the exception of some wheat and beans an inch or two above ground, the hills bounding the valley were bare and sparsely wooded with willow ; but the plough was at work, especially as the department city of Yung-ning Chou was neared when the valley opens out and the road leaves the bed of the stream. It was bad going, and twice I took refuge in my mule litter to save my horse ; but on each occasion the front mule fell and had ultimately to be replaced by one of the pack mules. The chief feature of the day's journey from Wu-ch'eng to Yung- ning Chou, a distance of about 25 miles, was the number of villages of cave-dwellings, some of them inhabited but the great majority in ruins. The entrances to the caves were mostly stone or brick arches, the arched roofs extended back into the solid loess, and smaller arches carved several feet from the ground served as windows. In the interior, bedsteads, recesses, shelves, and even the cooking-stoves were cut out of the earth, and there was little else in the way
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 13
of furniture, wooden-pegs driven into the walls carrying the loose odds and ends of a Chinese household.
The city of Yung-ning Chou stands on rising ground, and as we passed from its eastern suburb, where we had spent the night, round the eastern and southern walls on the morning of the i8th May, I noticed that in many places the loess foundations had given way, the wall itself cracked beyond the possibility of repair, and the whole place bore that look of neglect which has marked all the cities of Shansi which I have as yet visited. At the city the road to the Yellow River divides, one branch going north-west to Chi-k'ou, the other west to Chiin-tu. We followed the latter and proceeded with a stream winding down a fairly wide valley bounded by hills where the cave-dwellings were fewer and villages more numerous. Those villages were fairly wooded, and all available land where irrigation was possible was under cultivation. It narrowed from time to time and afforded little room for tillage ; but, wherever possible, wheat, beans, and peas were in evidence. In addition to the willow, the poplar, planta- tions of date trees, mulberry and peach were frequently to be seen. On approaching the large market-town of Liu- lln-chen, twenty miles from Yung-ning Chou, we forded a stream flowing south-west to join the main stream which we crossed by a wooden bridge to the west of the market-town, and thereafter kept, as far as possible, to its right bank to the considerable market-town of She-ts'un, where my caravan caused great excitement, and where I was received not with that quietude which has hitherto characterized the people of Shansi ; but She-ts'un, lying as it does only seven miles from the left bank of the Yellow River, is a border town, and border towns in China are proverbially lawless. Traffic
14 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
on the road was brisk : wheat packed in long brown sacks slung loosely over the backs of donkeys, mules, ponies and camels, sheep's wool and goat hair were all being carried east from the provinces of Kansu and Shensi. Flour in its various forms is the staple food of the people of these north-western provinces, and at Liu-lin-chen, where there were many flour mills driven by water-power, it cost only twelve [cash a pound, or about half a crown a hundred- weight.
The previous day the eye was cloyed with the sameness
of the scenery — the eternal loess hills ; but after all they
have a great beauty which dawned upon me on the morning
of the 19th May when we left the somewhat inhospitably
inclined She ts'un where, in spite of an attempt at rowdyism,
we spent an excellent night. In the very early morning
the town was practically asleep, and there was no crowd to
greet me, rudely or otherwise, when we rode through the
western suburb into a beautiful valley where the sun rising
over the eastern hills was tinting with a golden hue the
hill-tops on its western side. The valley, unfortunately
small, was green with wheat, peas, and vegetables ; melons
were a few inches above ground ; and date and mulberry,
both now well into leaf with their respective light and
darker green tints, lent a charm which, however, was not of
long duration, for the road soon left the stream to find its
way to the Yellow River, and wound up north-west between
the loess hills. There was perfect stillness as we rode up
the path, and the ripple of a stream in the dry watercourse
below would have been welcome ; but the ride was short,
for the road rose abruptly and twined about! a mountain
side when we had to dismount and lead our horses up and
down for six miles to Chiin-tu, a ferry-station perched high
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 15
up on the east bank of the Huang Ho or Yellow River whose yellow-brown water we had earlier sighted deep down in a valley to the north-west. After breakfast at Chiin-tu, or " Military Ferry," we descended to the river where two boats, each divided into three compartments, and some 30 feet long, with a centre width of some fifteen feet, awaited us. The mules were unloaded and there was little difficulty in inducing them to jump into one of the boats ; but to persuade our riding ponies to share our boat was quite a different matter. One was with much urging finally forced into the centre compartment, but the other absolutely declined to face the boat until a wooden gangway in the shape of the bow-piece of an old boat was fetched, and he was driven in after a long struggle. An escort pony promptly refused to ascend the gangway which was thereupon lowered and levelled with stones. All in vain ; he declined to budge. His front feet were at last captured, and he was hoisted by tail and hind legs into the stern compartment. Another fine pony belonging to my escort had evidently been accustomed to this necessity, for he stepped quietly into the middle compartment with the other two. This accomplished, we started down river after the other boat ; but the motion and the noise of the two long oars,'each manned by three or four men and boys, startled the ponies soon after we had cast off, and their struggles resulted in one of them falling into the bottom of the boat causing her to leak. His desperate struggle to regain his feet did not mend matters, for the boat was built of boards loosely held together by iron clamps. By this time our boat was well down river with a strong current, and she was ultimately brought to and beached on a sandbank a quarter of a mile above the usual landing-place. At the
1 6 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
crossing the river, which is about 800 yards broad, after making a sharp bend from the north-west sweeps south-west and a few miles beyond turns south. We were carried on the backs of the ferrymen through shallow water to dry land, a service for which extortionate but unsatisfied demands were made.
Having now reached the Yellow River, the boundary of the provinces of Shansi and Shensi, after a journey of little over six days from T'ai-yiian Fu, I propose to give the reader an insight into the working of my caravan. I have already given the numbers of men and mules, the latter fine large animals, each capable of carrying a load weighing 250 lb. Two mules, however, counting as three in the matter of cost, bore the mule litter. Of the four muleteers two were supposed to attend to the litter, and the other two to look after the five pack mules ; but this disposition was not rigidly adhered to and more often as not only one man attached himself to the litter, and on occasions to the back of the rear mule, especially, I might say invariably, when fording streams, for, like most Chinese landsmen, he had an antipathy to wet feet. Attendance on the litter was not a favourite occupation, and each man took it in turn for a day. In the case of the five pack mules the drivers could, and frequently did, ride and sleep on the top of the packs, swaying about in the most alarming fashion, but never once within my observation losing their balance. On the other hand, the front mule of the litter had, as a rule, to be led by a driver on foot, and, although Chinese can sleep at any time and in any position, I have not yet met the man who can walk and sleep at the same time. To me the litter proved a most uncomfortable conveyance. As I have said, it is a large sedan chair carried by mules instead of men.
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I. BRIDGE ON THE CHENG-T AI RAILWAY BETWEEN SHIH-CHIA-CHUANG AND t'aI-YUAN FU.
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2. RAILWAY GATE OF t'aI-YUAN FU. 3. SOUTH GATE OF t'aI-YUAN FU.
[To/acip. 16.
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 17
In the bottom there is space for packing away odds and ends, and on the top of this there is a wooden grating on which the traveller piles his bedding and pillows. On each side there is a sliding window, the foot of which is raised a little above the grating, and there is a fixed window in front. The two side windows are the only means of entrance and egress. The latter process is simple enough ; but mounting is not so easily effected, and the muleteer usually presents his thigh as a ladder to the traveller who, in scrambling in, has to be careful not to capsize the whole thing, for the frameworks fixed to the poles or shafts in front and rear rest loosely on the wooden pack saddles, and are liable to slip over. A Chinese can coil himself up and sleep soundly in such a litter, but, not being a short man, I could neither stretch nor coil, and had to content myself with sitting when I wanted a rest, for the nature of my investigation precluded my attempting to sleep during the day. Of the seven mules, one, by far the best and strongest, was entire and vicious in the extreme, frequently attacking with his teeth any pony that happened to come in his way ; and there was many a scene and row on this account. The four muleteers, two of them boys of about twenty years of age, were decent enough fellows, and treated their animals well ; but I had many a passage of arms with the head muleteer, who, although the exact sums and dates for payment en route had been duly arranged by written agreement, was continually endeavouring to extract more than was due, usually on the ground that fodder was much more expensive than he had expected. His state- ments were as frequently proved to be untrue, and on these occasions he ended by assuring me that he was a Catholic, and* that his family had belonged to that faith for many
VOL. I. c
1 8 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
generations. He was exceedingly plausible in his pleadings, and occasionally succeeded in obtaining advances consider- ably ahead of due date ; but he was always warned that there would be a day of final reckoning, a warning which did not appear to trouble him in the very least. I soon discovered, too, that, whenever possible, he was in the habit of making short payment to innkeepers. Strictly speaking, this did not concern me, for I had nothing to do with the feeding of his animals ; yet I knew that he relied on my presence to escape payment of his due debts. In this, how- ever, he was disillusioned, as I frequently called up the inn- keeper as we were about to start in the early morning and asked if everything had been paid for. Sometimes there was no complaint, while at others I would be told that water for the mules had not been accounted for, or that more than the actual quantity of straw purchased had been used. They were, as a rule, trifling sums, and were paid grudg- ingly after some altercation ; but I always took care to remind him that the faith which he professed, and which he never failed to impress on me, was proof of his truthful- ness, and honesty forbade him to cheat. By the time we parted company, I think he was sorry that he had ever con- fided to me the nature of his religious beliefs. The young muleteers were jolly boys ; but I am safe in saying that one of them did not wash his face or have his head shaved more than four times during as many months, and that my remarks regarding his colour, meant to be sarcastic, had not the slightest effect on him. It transpired later that he had once worked in a coal mine, where he had contracted a facial skin disease, which the application of water would intensify. Such was the explanation given me by the head muleteer, and I must leave it at that.
PEKING TO THE YELLOW RIVER 19
At T'ai-yiian Fu I had engaged a groom to attend to my two riding-ponies, and he turned out to be a very decent servant. The petty official and the soldier deputed by the Governor of Shansi to escort me to Hsi-an Fu, the capital of Shensi, were exceedingly attentive, and, with the groom, did much to make up for the loss of my personal servant, for my cook proved perfectly hopeless in his attempt to do double duty, and was a source of annoyance during the whole of the journey.
To avoid carrying large quantities of silver, I had pur- chased in Peking drafts on native banks in T'ai-yiian Fu, Hsi-an Fu, and Lan-chou Fu, the capital of the province of Kansu, all of which I proposed to visit, and at each of these three places I had the silver ingots which these drafts represented carefully weighed, and the weight written on each as a guide to its approximate weight, for previous experience of travelling in China had taught me that the scale differs not only in each province, but in every place in a province, and that the weight is almost invariably against the traveller. Haggling over weights and exchange is one of the chief annoyances that have to be encountered in those parts of the interior where there is no silver coinage. In T'ai-ytian Fu itself, subsidiary ten and twenty dollar-cent silver coins were the currency ; but outside the provincial capital their circulation was confined to a very narrow radius. Although I carried silver — or sycee, as it is gene- rally called in China — I arranged to pay my caravan on a dollar basis ; but payments for food, inns, and the like had to be made in copper cash, the exchange between which and sycee was as varied as between sycee and dollars. I had, therefore, two sets of exchanges to contend with, and my experience, which has been considerable, is that the foreign
20 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
traveller in China is a child in the hands of the native money-changer. As a Chinese fellow-traveller once put it : if you start with a hundred ounces of silver, and convert them into local weights at each city between two provincial capitals, you will find that by the time you reach the end of the journey, or even before, the whole amount has been swallowed up by loss in exchange. This may be a slight exaggeration, but there is a very big grain of truth in it. Every one who has any knowledge of commercial matters in the interior of China is well aware that the domestic trade of the country is similarly ruined by the incidence of taxation. As a colleague of mine, sent on a mission of inquiry into the state of trade at the treaty ports of China, wrote in his report : "It would be an interesting experiment for some one to start in any direction with a quantity of merchandise, selling, as it became necessary, a portion to pay the taxes imposed en route. Like water poured on sandy soil, it would all be absorbed before going far."
CHAPTER II
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU, CAPITAL OF THE PROVINCE OF SHENSI
In the preceding chapter frequent reference is made to the loess, and it will be well, before proceeding further, to explain the nature of this formation which overlies these north-western provinces and in places extends as far south as the river Yangtsze. Various theories have been advanced to account for this earthy covering which is known to the Chinese as Huang T'u, that is "Brown or Yellow Soil." It has been described by some as a fresh-water, and by others as a marine, deposit ; but the late Baron von Richthofen, the distinguished German geologist, who visited these provinces in 1870, propounded what has generally been accepted as the correct explanation, and I cannot do better than quote his remarks on the subject. He says : " The loess is among the various substances which would commonly be called *loam,' because it is earthy and has a brownish yellow colour. It can be rubbed between the fingers to an impalpable powder, which disappears in the pores of the skin, some grains of very fine sand only remaining. By mechanical destruction, such as is caused by cart-wheels on the road, it is converted into true loam. When in its original state it has a certain solidity and is very porous, and perforated throughout its mass by thin tubes,
22 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
which ramify like the roots of grass and have evidently their origin in the former existence of roots. They are incrustated with a film of carbonate of lime. Water, which forms pools on loams, enters therefore into loess, as into a sponge, and percolates it, without in the least converting it into a pulp or mud. The loess is everywhere full of organic remains, but I have never seen any other than land-shells, bones of land animals, and the numberless impressions of roots and plants. It is not stratified, but has a strong tendency to cleave along vertical planes. Therefore, wherever a river cuts into it, the loess abuts against it, or against its alluvial bottom-land, in vertical cliffs which are in places 500 feet high ; above them the slopes recede gradually in a series of terraces with perpendicular front faces. Where the river washes the foot of such a wall, the progress of destruction is rapid ; the cliff is undermined, and the loess breaks off in vertical sheets, which tumble into the stream, to be carried down by the water. Such is the case along the southern bank of the Yellow River near Kung-hien and Sz' shui-hien, and probably in many other portions of its course. The beds of the affluents which join the river in these places, are no less deeply cut into the loess, and ramify into its more elevated portions like the roots of a tree, every small branch a steep and narrow gulch. It would lead us too far astray from the objects of this letter, to describe more in detail the exceedingly curious feature which the scenery of a region composed of loess presents. Among the most noteworthy is this, that it gives habitation to many millions of human beings. You walk on the richly cultivated bottomland of a river, and yet do not see a single human dwelling. But as soon as you approach the precipitous wall of loess, on either side, you find it thronged
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 23
with people like a bee-hive. They live in excavations made in the loess.
"As regards the mode of origin of this formation, the loess of China, like that of Europe (where it exists on a comparatively small scale), has been supposed to be a fresh- water deposit. This supposition is erroneous as regards the loess of northern China, because it extends equally over hills and valleys, and does not contain freshwater shells. Others have therefore considered it as a marine deposit. This view is more erroneous even than the former, because it would presuppose the whole of northern China to have been submerged at least 6000 feet beneath the level of the sea in a recent epoch, while there is abundant evidence to prove that such has not been the case. Nor can the theory, current in Germany, that the loess of that country was produced by glacial action, be at all applied to the loess of northern China, from various obvious reasons, too lengthy to explain here. Unbiassed observation leads irresistibly to the conclusion, that the loess of China has been formed on dry land. The whole of that vast country which was covered by a continuous sheet of loess, before this had under- gone destruction, was one continuous prairie, probably of greater elevation above the sea than the same region is now. The loess is the residue of all organic matter of numberless generations of plants, that drew new supplies incessantly from those substances which ascending moisture and springs carried in solution to the surface. This slow accumulation of decayed matter was assisted by the sand and dust deposited through infinite ages by winds. The land shells are distributed through the whole thickness of the loess, and their state of preservation is so perfect that they must have lived on the spot where we now find them. They certainly
24 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
admit of no other explanation than that here hinted at, of the formation of the soil in which they are imbedded. The bones of land animals, and chiefly the roots of plants, which are all preserved in their natural and orignal position, give corroborative evidence." ^
There is a small military post at Sung-chia-ch'uan, on the right bank of the Yellow River, where the petty official had his command of five men drawn up to receive and welcome me to the province of Shensi ; but our ignominious landing above the ferry somewhat marred this kindly intention. We followed down the right or west bank of the river for some six miles to the hamlet of Kang-chia-ta, and then turned west and north-west into the hills, whence the road emerges and rises mile after mile winding north- west from mountain to mountain, and frequently skirting the edges of deep, loess precipices that I refused to face in the litter. I had walked nearly the whole of the morning and, considering the precipitous and difficult stone road, I felt absolutely inhuman when I found it necessary to be carried. The day's journey of about 27 miles from She-ts'un was exceedingly trying, and on arrival at the hamlet of Hu-yen animals and men were completely used up. Wheat and peas were the visible crops, but as yet I had seen no sign of the poppy, which should have been well above ground. This absence of cultivation strengthened my desire to ascertain whether opium could be purchased at Hu-yen, and I ordered one of my men to be taken suddenly ill in the lower part of his chest, and gave him twenty cents to buy a dose of opium with which to obtain relief. His contortions were wonderful and, when I was
1 Report by Baron von Richthofen on the Provinces of Honan and Shansi Shanghai, 1870-72.
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 25
unable to effect a cure, the innkeeper was begged to find some opium. He declared that it was utterly impossible for him or any one else in the hamlet to procure it : it was unobtainable, and my device was unsuccessful. I presented my man with the twenty cents in appreciation of his wonderful display of a sudden attack of colic : it might even have been cholera, for he was a most realistic actor — as what Chinese is not ^
It was refreshingly cool when we turned out of our inn at Hu-yen just before six o'clock on the morning of the 20th May. Still ascending, we gazed from the brow of the hill above the hamlet at a sea of similar hills or rather mountains, tossed about and broken up in glorious disorder, but all glowing in the light of the sun rising in a cloudless blue sky. The road runs level for a short distance, and then plunges down in a north-westerly direction into the usual narrow valley where a trickling stream kept us company. Here were several tiny hamlets, mostly stone-built, where the women tried to entice the muleteers to indulge in a decoction of millet (^Setaria italica) boiled in water, and in hard-boiled eggs. Here fowls cost only 160 cash (say four pence) apiece, and eggs three cash, or some sixteen for a penny. One grizzled old lady was holding out a couple of straw hats, for the gaudiest of which she asked 30 cash ; but my muleteer had no time to haggle over the bargain, and the purchase was not completed. Straw hats are a main feature of the traffic along this road. I said, above, stone houses, for we have come to sandstone underlying the loess, and blocks of the horizontal strata have replaced the conglomerate stones hitherto seen in the arched entrances to the better class cave dwellings, for in the earlier caves met with there was
26 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
merely the loess arch without any stone work whatever. The large village of I-ho-chen, ten miles from Hu-yen, is an excellent example of this stone-work. The best houses facing the street were built on terraces supported by several slab archways, these archways being generally used for stables, byres, manure-pits, and other less reputable purposes, while the houses were built on the terraces behind the arches and reached by double slab-paved ramps with balustrades capped with long slabs fitting into each other — the project- ing centre end of one slab locked into an opening cut in its neighbour. The walls surrounding the houses were built of rows of slabs, the alternate rows slanting in opposite directions. Many of these houses were unoccupied, as is the case in nearly all the villages along the road, for these provinces have never recovered from the desolation caused by the Mohammedan Rebellion of 1865-73, the daily sight of deserted and ruined villages presenting a somewhat melancholy spectacle. On this road there is not only poverty and misery : there is death. Yesterday, a pitiful cortege passed our caravan. It consisted of a rough deal coffin, a white cock perching on the top, slung between two mules. Inquiry elicited the statement that the inmate had been a muleteer who had succumbed to the hardships of the road. The surprise is that there are not more casualties. As an example of the difficulties that have to be encountered, I may mention that while my muleteers were hanging on to the tails of their animals to keep them from slipping with their loads down a most precipitous part of the road just beyond I-ho-chen, the servants of a military official, on his way from Ning-hsia Fu in the province of Kansu to the port of Tientsin, were holding on to the tails of their ponies to help them up in the other direction. The sight was ludicrous ;
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 27
we were all up to the ankles in loess dust, and the official himself and I exchanged greetings entrenched behind our coloured dust-spectacles. Down we trudged into a valley and regained the stone road, before entering at noon the hamlet of San-shih-li-p'u where, after a hasty meal, 1 had a quiet talk with the innkeeper, a rather reserved individual. I asked him when the poppy-seed was sown in this part of Shensi. He replied that much depended upon the weather and the condition of the ground, but that sowing was usually over by March with flowering in May and June. I remarked that I had seen none on the way. "Ah!" he said, "there is none here now," adding that such stringent proclamations had been issued against cultivation and strong measures taken by the high authorities of the province that farmers were afraid to sow and that little or no opium had ever been grown in the neighbourhood. I remarked that it was probably cultivated in small quantities here and there, but this he contested, saying that deputies had recently been scouring the country in search of it. He added that the poppy required abundant water, which was not available on the slopes of these loess hills, and that there was little level ground in the neighbourhood. This was quite true, and the innkeeper was visibly relieved when I thanked him and took my departure.
It was a weary struggle from San-shih-li-p'u to the department city of Sui-te Chou, a distance often miles. The rough, rocky road follows a valley, with a stream frequently overhung by rocks, at first south-west and then north, till at last our eyes were gladdened with the sight of a plain of inconsiderable size running north and south, at the north- west corner of which the city is beautifully situated on some
28 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
hill-tops. The plain is watered by a river some 50 yards broad called the Wu-ting Ho, which, coming from the north-west, flows south along the eastern side of the plain and is joined by a stream from the west just to the north of the city walls. The Wu-ting Ho, known in its lower reaches and before it joins the Yellow River as the Yi Ho, rises in Mongolia. We struck the plain a short distance below the city and ascended the left bank of the river to the ferry where we had nearly as much difficulty in shipping our ponies as at the Yellow River. A wide shingle bed, an indication of the breadth of the river during the rains, lies between the right bank and the hills on which Sui-te Chou is built. But the heat in the plain was oppressive, and we hurried up to the city, glad to find shelter in an inn abutting on, and on a level with the parapet of the city wall. No one was more eager than I was to rest for a day at Sui-te Chou : we had not yet got into the swing of a long journey, and the muleteers could point to a lame mule which had not failed to escape my observation, especially as part of its load had been transferred to a fellow beast of burden. Indeed, there is very little personal cruelty exercised towards the animals by their drivers. The cruelty, if so it may be called, consists of verbal abuse, which is not confined to the beast itself, but is freely bestowed on a long line of ancestors. Just as the Emperor of China exercised the power of ennobling an individual's ancestors to several generations, in like manner the muleteer damns his charge's ancestors to any number of generations. In either case the matter is of little importance and has little meaning. As far as the muleteer is concerned, he will curse whole generations of animals and then burst into song from lightness of heart until the next stumble, when the
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 29
flow of vituperation recommences. So they jog along, mule and man, the former probably as intelligent as the latter if their minds could be scientifically analysed and compared.
We spent the 21st May at Sui-te Chou where I en- deavoured to discover something regarding the roads leading south through the province of Shensi ; for, although I had hoped to follow the right bank of the Yellow River as far as possible, experience had taught me that for my purpose little was to be gained by being cooped up between never-ending loess hills, and I now wished to shape my course to Hsi-an Fu down through the centre of the province in the expectation of finding a country more suited to the cultivation of the poppy and, if it existed, the poppy itself. That it did exist in the neighbourhood of Sui-te Chou is certain, for it was exceedingly difficult not to overhear a conversation carried on in the loudest of voices several rooms off between the men sent by the Department magistrate to protect me during my stay in Sui-te Chou and others — probably some of my own men. These guardians of my safety lamented the price of opium which had suddenly risen from 250 to over 1000 cash a Chinese ounce, and in their enthusiasm waxed eloquent over the beautiful poppy-fields which used to fringe the Wu-ting River. They described the excellent flavour of the opium, and said that this fine rich soil which had hitherto yielded 30 taels a mou (6 7nou = i English acre) from the poppy, had now, on account of the stringency of suppressive measures, to be given up to the far less profitable millet (Sorghum vulgar e).
My experience of travelling in the interior of China is that after a day's rest there is always a strong disinclination
30 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
on the part of one's followers to take to the road next morning. The 22 nd May was no exception, and my men were all more or less asleep when they turned up to load the mules. At last, however, we got away from Sui-te Chou at about six o'clock, by no means sorry to part with those vampires of Chinese inns which defy even Keatlng's insect powder and make night hideous with their clammy irritating touch. On leaving the city we proceeded west as if with the intention of ascending a pretty valley down which flows a stream to join the Wu-ting Ho. Soon, however, we plunged into a narrow branch valley to the south-west, passing, on the way, numerous stone tablets erected by the roadside to commemorate the worth of former officials and others. Down this side valley came a rill much utilized for the irrigation of small patches of wheat, peas, hemp {^Cannabis satha) and vegetables ; but the valley soon narrowed and was cooped up by hills whose slopes and summits were under similar crops until nothing but the roadway banked by bare loess cliffs remained. Southward beyond these cliffs we came upon small hamlets so ruined and poverty-stricken, that I was unable to get a table or even a settle for breakfast. A little further along the road our wants were supplied at the hamlet of Ma- chia-p'ing-tzu, but even here there was the greatest difficulty in finding fodder for the beasts of burden. The scene was as amusing as it was sad. Our sudden arrival was too much for the old, wrinkled, small-footed lady who ruled the roost in the loudest of voices. All the neighbours, men, women and children were impressed to assist and they were a motley crowd. Old men, with remnants of queues and the dirt of ages on their hands and faces, were sent to cut up millet stalks, a water-carrier was called in, the old lady
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 31
herself began to cook sundry messes for the muleteers, hobbling between times to fetch small cups of wine from somewhere round the corner, while naked children collected and gazed at me, and one boy of maturer years had lost not only the seat but also the corresponding part in front of his pants, which now consisted of two lower parts of patched legs suspended by pieces of string from a waist- band concealed under a short jacket. Even the solitary black pig came to share the fun. It would have been a real comedy had it not been for the dreadful misery and squalor of the whole crowd.
South of Ma-chia-p'ing-tzu the road, which runs along a wider valley, greatly improved before we entered the hamlet of Wang-chia-pao, whence we pushed on to the wretched village of Shih-tsui-yi, about 25 miles from Sui-te Chou, where we spent the night. Trade during the day was represented by a few loads of wheat, goat wool, and raw cotton bound north, and there were numerous flocks of brown goats and some sheep herded by men and dogs on patches of brown withered grass. The willow was the most prominent tree, but the mulberry, peach, and Ailanthus glandulosa were not uncommon. There were stacks of good lump coal in the yard of the inn which we occupied at Shih-tsui-yi, and the innkeeper, who was very civil and communicative, told me that it came from the district of Mi-chih Hsien to the north of Sui-te Chou, and cost him, laid down, six cash a catty, or about sixteen shillings a ton, a very high price mostly due to the cost of carriage. From coal I turned to the subject of opium, and he informed me that last year it was abundantly cultivated in the glens where water was available, but that sowing had not taken place during the present year owing to the risk of discovery and
32 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
its consequences. He seemed to be telling the truth ; but, as truthfulness is not a Chinese virtue, Chinese statements require much sifting and, as often as not, are found to be very inaccurate and misleading.
A solitary loess cliff rises to a height of about one hundred feet opposite and close to the village of Shih-tsui-yi, and I took this to be an indication that we were approaching more level country to the south ; but after a few miles the road again plunged and rose among hills with narrow valleys between, and at the highest point I had an excel- lent opportunity of examining many valleys and gullies. All in vain, however, as only wheat, peas, and hemp could be found. Descending on the south side we entered a well- cultivated valley and followed it over a fairly good road with accompanying stream to the district city of Ch'ing-chien Hsien, the entrance to which is graced by a long line of honorific sandstone tablets. The city occupies the southern face of a hill with a large outcrop of sandstone which is utilized for building, paving, and slating, and the stream flows south under the western wall of the city, deep down between horizontal strata of the same stone through which it has cut its way. In the valley, in addition to wheat, peas and hemp, beans were an inch or so high, melon seeds were being planted, while millet and maize were sown but not yet above ground. In planting melons, holes are dibbled in ridges, and into each hole is dropped one or two seeds with a pinch of powdered manure. On the top of each hole is then placed a small stone which prevents pilfer- ing by birds, and serves the far more useful purpose of retarding the evaporation of the moisture required to assist germination. The stones are removed overnight but replaced during the day until the seedlings are sufficiently
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THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 33
advanced to withstand the heat of the sun and shift for themselves. Inquiries made all along the road during the day elicited the information that the poppy was in evidence last year, that to the immediate north of the city of Ch'ing- chien Hsien it was cultivated during the present year along the banks of the Ch'ing-chien River, as this stream, a tributary of the Yellow River, is called, but that the plants were plucked up when a few inches high by official orders. This, however, was only hearsay evidence. What I wanted was ocular proof. That was forthcoming the following day, 24th May, at the hamlet of Ying-t'ien, ten miles south-west of Ch'ing-chien Hsien, where I came upon a patch of poppy which had been rooted up the previous day by a deputy and his followers sent by the district magistrate to search out and destroy all poppy found under cultivation. The plants, several inches long, were still green. From Ch'ing-chien Hsien we accompanied the stream in its sand- stone bed as far as Kuai-mao, where it is joined by a tribu- tary from the east, and then struck west along a valley which widened out and gave more room for crops of peas, hemp, beans, maize, and a little wheat. In this valley the principal trees were the willow and date, with a sprinkling of elm and poplar, and at the village of Ma-chia-kou, the end of the day's stage of some 26 miles, silkworms were being fed on the mulberry.
The district city of Yen-ch'uan Hsien lies two-thirds of a mile off the main road, and we did not enter it, but pushed on to Ma-chia-kou, three miles beyond. I rode out of the latter early on the morning of the 25th May, considerably depressed, for my mission so far, whether for good or for ill, had yielded little or no result. It is true that I had seen a freshly destroyed patch of poppy at
VOL. I. D
34 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
Ying-t'ien ; but this was a meagre result for many days* wanderings, and I began to think that in this province of broken country my quest of the poppy was like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Little did I think at the moment that my interest was soon to be awakened. I had ridden six miles westward up the valley when at a place called Feng-chia-wan, within the district of Yen-ch'uan Hsien, I suddenly came upon a plot of poppies some eight to ten inches high by the roadside and close to a streamlet flowing east. It was a suitable spot, for a water supply was at hand. Further fsearch led to the discovery of a much larger plot on a terrace above, and another on the opposite bank of the streamlet, and four miles beyond there was still another plot. The plants, which were all of vigorous growth, were not likely to be in flower for another month and my investigation to the south would be much facilitated by the petals which admit of no concealment. In every village through which I passed I noticed over the door of a dwell- ing-house or shop a signboard with the conspicuous Chinese characters, " Opium Abolition Branch Office," and I had the curiosity to try and enter one of these offices to ascertain the duties of the official in charge ; but I found the door locked and not a soul about the place. It was not a solitary instance, and I was driven to the conclusion that, in the usual Chinese way, the signboards had been scattered broad- cast by command, and the abolition of opium thereby made eflfective ! Soon after sighting the fourth plot we passed through the hamlet of T'o-chia-ch'a beyond which the road ascends a steep mountain side covered with grass, brush- wood and thorn bushes to a pass, called Yen-men-kuan, with a small temple and stone archway joining two mountain- sides. The descent on the other side, which was equally
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 35
steep, led to a valley running south, well cultivated in places with wheat, peas, beans, maize, and hemp. The date, usually in the vicinity of hamlets, mulberry, willow, elm, and poplar were common trees. There was little traffic on the road, but we met not a few animals carrying coffin boards of cypress wood from the district of Kan-ch'Uan Hsien further south. We had seen the wild iris, known as Ma Lan Hua, in the province of Shansi ; but here it fringed the roadway and grew even in the middle of the track which, but for its steepness in places, was good as Chinese roads go. The petals of the iris vied with the blue of the heavens, and their colouring was the only pleasing thing that met the eye, for the hamlets, few in number, affi^rded only the most wretched accommodation, and the market- town of Kan-ku-yi, where we spent the night, 30 miles from Ma-chia-kou, was fit only for pigs ! There were considerable flocks of sheep and goats all along the road, and it was curious to watch the way in which they took the heat of the day. The sheep huddled close together in the shade of the loess hills, while the goats frisked about in the sun and butted each other in sheer wantonness.
On the morning of the 26th May we left Kan-ku-yi and its unpleasant bed-fellows and skirted the north side of a valley or plain varying in width from two hundred to two thousand yards, bounded by gentler hills much better cultivated than usual. Down the valley came a stream crossing and recrossing it from time to time. As the country was exactly suited to the cultivation of the poppy, I forded the stream with my escort soon after leaving Kan- ku-yi, but, finding none after a ride of seven miles, I casually remarked that no opium was produced in that neighbourhood. This gave an opening to one of my local
36 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
escort, who said that two years ago this valley was one vast poppy garden, but that the authorities had since that time completely stopped its cultivation. Later, at the hamlet of Yao-tien, ten miles from Kan-ku-yi, the keeper of the inn where we breakfasted declared that the poppy had been sown in the spring and the seedlings uprooted a fortnight ago by the magistrate's emissaries, and he complained bitterly of the loss of the money which the crop would have realized. I do not pretend to say which of these men spoke the truth ; but an hour after leaving Yao-tien I came upon a large patch of poppies, an English acre in area, some four inches high lying along the north side of the road. There was no concealment or attempt at conceal- ment ; this poppy-field, which was situated within the district of Fu-shih Hsien in the prefecture of Yen-an Fu, was open to the observation of every passer-by.
The accommodation available along this road is of the poorest : at Ai-li-p'ing, eighteen miles from Kan-ku-yi, I had to take lunch in the shade of a Sophora japonka^ the only decent room smelling so strongly that the use of it had to be abandoned. Some villagers crowded round me, and I took the opportunity of asking them why they allowed their houses to fall into such a state of disrepair. They replied that they were too poor, and, when I pointed to the crops that lay below, they said that the soil did not produce enough to yield a profit, and certainly appearances seemed to accord with their statement ; but I could see that if I had cared to sit with them for hours they would willingly have kept me company instead of finding work. These people appeared to be mostly sheep and goat herds, and they told me that a sheep was worth the equivalent of about half-a-crown and a sheep-skin about sevenpence.
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 37
After leaving Ai-li-p'ing we came upon a hamlet of cave- dwellings without any stone work whatever, and, eight miles beyond, we entered the small prefectural city of Yen-an Fu on the left bank of the Yen-shui flowing west to the Yellow River and at the base of hills to the west blocking the valley we had ascended the whole of the day. The willow, mulberry, peach, elm, date and Sophora japonica were all met with during this stage of some 26 miles, and the willow was particularly abundant near the city. Peas, hemp, beans, maize, wheat, and poppy were the crops on the ground.
I had scarcely settled down in an inn in Yen-an Fu when I received a visit from Mr. Ernest F. Smith of the English Baptist Missionary Society, which has a very strong footing in the province of Shensi. He was good enough to ask me to join himself and his wife at their evening meal, and, although I disliked leaving my caravan and delaying the posting of my journal even for a few hours, 1 was unable to resist his kind hospitaUty. Mr. Smith had spent the greater part of his four years in China at and in the neighbourhood of Hsi-an Fu, the provincial capital, and had only recently arrived at Yen-an Fu, where he was busy putting his new station in order. Yen-an Fu is such a poor place that he had experienced the greatest difficulty in hiring skilled labour for the work he had in hand, and ultimately had found it necessary to have recourse to the hangers-on of the local official who were willing to serve as paper-hangers and painters, because they were unable to earn a living wage in their official capacity. Occasionally there was a scrimmage and one or other of the men was called away to perform some official duty, whereupon he donned his official hat and coat and hurried off, to return later, remove the habiliments of office, and resume work as
38 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
an artisan. Mr. Smith Informed me that he had seen opium cultivators beaten a thousand blows on the buttocks in the presence of a magistrate. This was in the south of the province, where he estimated that the cultivation of the poppy had been reduced about 70 per cent. That was a very large reduction and would require some confirmation.
The city was barely astir when we left Yen-an Fu by the south gate on the morning of the 27th May. Presum- ably the authorities were still asleep, for they neglected to provide my escorting official with a fresh mount, and he had perforce to hire a pony with a bare, wooden saddle at the gate, in the hope that the official animal would soon catch up the caravan. Our course lay south, up a valley, and at the end of four miles we called a halt at the two-housed hamlet of Wo-hu-wan, where there was a poppy patch, twenty yards by ten, close to the roadside. There was still no sign of the missing pony, and the soldier was sent back on the hired animal to fetch it. This he did, swearing loudly at the laziness of the magistrate who had neglected his duty. There was not much in the way of cultivation in the main valley ; but branch valleys and glens were numerous on both sides, and were better cultivated. While I was seated at breakfast at a stone table, shaded with branches of trees, in front of a mud hut, in the hamlet of Erh-shih-li-p'u, seven miles from Yen-an Fu, six sedan chairs carrying a Chinese official and his family from Hsi-an Fu suddenly appeared, and took possession of the inn in which I had refused to have my meal, so foul was it. On leaving Erh-shih-li-p'u there was quite a transformation scene. For a time the road ran south, through broken hills, which, in contrast with the bare, brown loess to which we had been accustomed for many days, were really beautiful.
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 39
The hill-sides and gullies were rich with vegetation : trees, especially the willow and elm, crowded each other along the roadside, and in the ravines shrubs in full bloom, notably a rose covered with yellow blossoms, lit up the various shades of green. It was a real oasis in the brown loess. A very steep descent followed, and brought us again to cultivation, which had ceased since leaving Erh-shih-li-p'u. No sooner had we descended than I came upon a large field of poppies, about four inches high. I took the trouble to measure this field, which was 220 yards long by 30 yards broad. It lay alongside the road, near the entrance to the hamlet of Ta-lao-shan, where I had an amusing experience. When I arrived upon the scene the innkeeper's family were trying to sweep away the dust of ages from a room in which I was to eat ; but the air was so thick that I had to take refuge under the eaves of a house under construction behind the inn, whither a table and settle were brought for my use. While lunching I noticed across a gully a patch of plants that seemed familiar, and, crossing after my modest meal, I was not surprised to find about a third of an acre of poppies in excellent condition. I put one of the plants in my pocket, returned to the inn to start off my caravan, and was standing at the doorway when a well- dressed man approached, and said to me, '' We do not grow opium here." I replied that this was rather odd, as I had just measured a field of poppies before entering the hamlet, and, producing the plant from my pocket, I said that I had plucked it a few yards away, and asked if he recognized it. A smile passed over the faces of the usual crowd of by- standers, and the man quickly edged away and disappeared. During the descent to Ta-lao-shan we kept company with a rivulet, which quickly grew in volume, and was available
40 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
for irrigating purposes on reaching the valley which we descended to the miserable-looking district city of Kan- ch'lian Hsien, 30 miles from Yen-an Fu. Two-thirds of a mile before entering the city, however, I came to another poppy-field, close to the village of Yang-chia-pien. It covered, an area of 166 by 35 yards, and had the great advantage of lying close to the rivulet, part of which was diverted across the field. The plants thus irrigated were the healthiest I had yet seen, and gave excellent promise.
It was a tired and sleepy-looking caravan that emerged from the south gate of Kan-ch'uan Hsien somewhat later than usual on the morning of the 28th May, and it was evident that a day's rest would soon be indispensable. We at once struck the left bank of the Lo River, a yellow, muddy stream flowing from the north-west. It rises in the north-west of Shensi, and, after passing through a corner of the province of Kansu, re-enters the former province, and crosses it south-east to the Yellow River, which it enters to the north of the more important tributary, the Wei River. The road followed the left bank of the Lo River the whole day, sometimes high up on the hillsides, and at others close to the water's edge. The river zigzags down a valley, occasionally narrowing, but more frequently widening out, and affording room for plains or flats, which, owing to the excellent water supply, seemed ideal spots for the cultivation of the poppy. But wheat and maize occu- pied the most of the ground until we reached the hamlet ot Huang-pu-tien, some sixteen miles from Kan-ch'tian Hsien, and under the jurisdiction of the independent-department magistrate of Fu Chou, where my search was rewarded by the discovery of two plots, one on each side of the road, measuring respectively 56 by 35 and 60 by 46 yards. This
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 41
was but the beginning, for a mile and a half further south I unearthed three other plots 25 by 108, 58 by 17, and 30 by 50 yards. These were close to the hamlet of Ts'ui- chia-kou, another mile and a half to the south of which is the hamlet of Tz'u-yao, where, to the dismay of the inhabi- tants, I measured four plots — 75 by 11, 32 by 96, 70 by 2S, and 16 by 178 yards — and was only prevented from measuring four others by the intense heat. They were, however, as big as any of the others. At a wooden bridge which crosses a small tributary of the Lo River a mile south of Tz'u-yao there was another plot, measuring 42 by 16 yards; and at the entrance and exit of the hamlet of Yii-lin-ch'iao, two-thirds of a mile further south, were two plots of similar size. I do not pretend, nor do I think, that these sixteen poppy plots were all that we passed during the day ; but I kept a careful watch, and those I saw were easily observable from the road. As stated above, the day was uncomfortably hot, and we had to circumvent so many gullies that we did not reach the hamlet of Ch'a- fang, the end of the day's stage of about 28 miles, till nearly seven o'clock. Men and beasts were all jaded and worn, and a day's rest was at once proclaimed amid general rejoicing. To reach Ch'a-fang, which lies about a mile and a half to the east of the city of Fu Chou, we proceeded south by east, up a side valley, down which flows a clear mountain stream, to mingle with the yellow, turbid Lo, and I made up my mind to explore this valley in the cool of the following morning. This I did, and starting at six o'clock, I was back at seven with twelve more poppy-fields, one of them about four English acres in extent, added to my list. Now, many such side valleys are passed during a day's journey, but it would be impossible to follow them up and
42 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
unearth their secrets without spending months instead of days in the investigation. Should each contain as much poppy as I saw In an hour, the production of opium must be very considerable. I do not say that they do ; but here, at any rate, no repressive measures were in force, and the probability was that extensive poppy cultivation was the rule, not the exception. The petty official from T'ai-yiian Fu and my groom, who have both learned to take a great interest in my quest, accompanied me during my morning walk. The former never ceased to rail at the apathy of his own authorities, while the latter did all in his power to assist me with his keener eyesight.
Part of the road from Ch'a-fang to Lo-ch'iian Hsien, which marked the end of the next day's stage of 26 miles, was the most atrocious we had yet encountered. We began by winding up a steep hill-side to a plateau torn here and there with the usual deep crevasses, and by a steep descent dropped into the miserable hamlet of Chieh-tzu-ho where we were overtaken by a thunder and rain-storm. Crossing a streamlet going west to the Lo Ho we ascended to a similar plateau, the descent from which was so winding and the road so narrow between banks of bare loess that the mule litter frequently came to grief, the mules stumbling and falling every few yards. Thereafter the road zigzagged to a third riven plateau and, after a long weary day of over twelve hours, we entered the poor district city of Lo-ch'iian Hsien surrounded by a wall, partly brick and partly loess, within which the accommoda- tion at my disposal was a bare mud room, mud floor, half a chair and a tottering table. I was unwilling to take up my night quarters in such a place ; but the heat during the day had been so intense and the road so difficult that a
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 43
muleteer was ill, two mules were lame, and the whole caravan was limp. There was no help for it ; the mules were unfit for work and had to be given a two-days' rest. There was no poppy to be seen during this stage, for it is not cultivated on these hills where water is not available. Wheat, short in straw, was a poor crop but the most extensive, and was followed by peas, hemp, and beans.
After a two-days' rest, man and beast were again fit for the road ; but there was a deluge on the 3rd June, and we did not leave Lo-ch'iian Hsien till the following morning. The country to the south was much the same as between Ch'a-fang and Lo-ch'iian Hsien — up and down loess mountain-sides broken by deep, wide rifts and gullies. After ten miles we descended from a plateau to the hamlet of Chiao-k'ou-ho and the left bank of the Lo River which we crossed by ferry-boat, the animals wading. In the hamlet was an Opium Prohibition Branch Office where I proceeded to make inquiries. It was untenanted and, according to the father of the hamlet, had never been occupied. Yet the title over the door stated that it was opened during the first month of the first year of the Emperor Hsiian T'ung, February, 1909. Another case of paper orders 1 The Lo River flows west round the small plain and then turns south, while the road winds west up the side of a plateau, crosses it, and then descends to a rift at Jung-sheng-ch'uan, where we crossed a clear stream going west. The same stream, known as the Hsien Ho, had again to be crossed and recrossed as it winds east and west between lower hills over which runs the road. The valley with its excellent water supply seemed a suitable spot for poppy cultivation and, after crossing the stream for the third time, we came upon three plots well advanced, the
44 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
plants standing from i8 to 24 inches high and rapidly nearing the flowering stage, and a quarter of a mile from the north gate of the district city of Chung-pu Hsien there was a very considerable plot on the right bank of the stream where three of the plants were in full white bloom, harbingers of a white field within the next few days.
Scarcely a house or a soul is to be seen along this road, and, although cultivation is general where possible, the crops were poor : wheat was most in evidence, but it was exceedingly thin and short in straw. There were a few patches of barley, buckwheat, rape in seed, and some tobacco recently planted out from the seed beds. But there was an unmistakable air of poverty everywhere. When I was sitting by the bank of the Lo River watching the mules fording it with their packs, a man of my local escort who happened to be alone with me suddenly addressed me and said that he was exceedingly poor and hoped I would give him sufficient to pay his way back — which I had every intention of doing. He went on to say that he had received no money from the magistrate to pay his expenses, and it should be remembered that money has, as a rule in China, to filter through several hands before it reaches the intended recipient and that it gets very much attenuated on the way, if it does not actually reach vanishing point. The distance between Lo-ch'iian Hsien and Chung-pu Hsien on the left bank of the stream is 23 miles, and there is little to choose between the two cities in the matter of poverty and inn accommodation. In the latter, opium could be bought at 1300 cash, or over a Mexican dollar (about is. Sd.)y a Chinese ounce, and two of the escort from Lo-ch'lian, who had evidently laid in a supply of the drug on the strength of my present to them,
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 45
began to smoke in a room adjoining mine. The fumes of opium are unmistakable, and at my request the smokers were ordered elsewhere, the man who complied with my request, himself an opium smoker, talking loudly of the disgusting and filthy habit during the process of ejection 1 And I need hardly add that one of the smokers was the man who begged from me on the bank of the Lo River ! Truly, the Chinese are a wonderful race.
Leaving Chung-pu Hsien by the south gate on the morning of the 4th June we forded a stream flowing east under the city wall, and at once proceeded to climb south- west to reach the usual cleft-riven loess plateau. At one spot the narrow road dividing two of these deep crevasses was supported on rough timbers of which, though covered with earth, our animals thoroughly disapproved. Slipping on either side meant death to man and beast ; but we got them across with some coaxing. We had left the main road to save a few miles. Once on the top we found the usual type of plateau with immense fields of wheat, peas, and beans, but scarcely a sign of life or habitation. It was dotted here and there with growing timber, a few isolated clumps of trees, which in China generally betoken the neighbourhood of a village or hamlet. But here there was not a single house, not even a cave. After thirteen miles we descended to the cave-dwellers of P'ien-ch'iao-chen where, during breakfast, I inquired what it all meant — why all this cultivation, poor though it was, and apparently not a soul to till, sow, reap, or consume ? An old gentleman with spectacles constituted himself the spokesman, and said that much of the land was uncultivated ; but this I declined to accept as a sufficiently valid reason, for the land not under crop was the exception, and all these plateaux had presented
46 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
exactly the same features. He then said that much of the labour was imported, and that farm-hands came during the tilling and reaping seasons from as far off as the province of Szechuan to aid the proprietors of the soil who lived mostly in the cities, and he added that such a labourer's wages amounted to from 60 to 70 cash a day with food. This latter explanation I found at a later date to be the correct one, and it reminded me of Manchuria which during the open season is supplied with farm labour by the provinces of Shantung and Chihli.
The table round which this conversation took place In the loess cave at P'ien-ch'iao-chen had one of its legs propped up with three stones to make it level. This process of propping is peculiarly typical of China. Things, great and small, are kept going day by day by propping, and it is remarkably effective so long as no violent measures are taken to loosen the props. It has lasted for centuries and may continue for many more unless an upheaval, more violent than usual, upsets the whole table.
From P'ien-ch'iao-chen the road continued to descend west by south into what appeared to be a long, smiling valley with hill-sides terraced and cultivated ; but we were soon undeceived, for avoiding the main road we took a short cut by a small road and soon found ourselves in uncultivated land thickly clad with grass, flowers, and scrub, affording excellent cover for pheasants which rose and whirred every few yards at our approach. Pheasants have not been uncommon along the whole road ; but at this spot they were particularly numerous and tame. In the middle of the scrub we struck a caravan of pack animals grazing, twenty to thirty of them, and the six muleteers
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 47
having a meal. The packs, which were ranged side by side on the ground, consisted of miscellaneous goods — mostly paper and water-pipe tobacco from the province of Kansu. They were doing the journey from Hsi-an Fu to Yen-an Fu. Keeping south over uneven country we soon came in sight of the district city of Yi-chtin Hsien, some twenty- three miles from Chung-pu Hsien, built on a hill-top, and with its wall and two-storied tower over the north gate looking in the distance like a large fort. External appear- ances count for much in China ; inside, the city consisted of ruined buildings and plots of ground overgrown with weeds. It looked as poverty-stricken as Chung-pu Hsien, the crenelated brick top of whose wall was very imperfectly repaired with loess mud. In the case of Yi-chun Hsien the^^brick parapet surmounting sandstone was overthrown in many places and left to its fate. I saw no sign of poppy between these two cities, and the only reference to it was a proclamation posted on the wall of the hostel in which I had a meal at P'ien-ch'iao-chen. It was a long document issued by the Treasurer of the province imposing, in accord- ance with regulations submitted to and approved by the Board of Revenue, a tax on the transfer of land and house property to make good the deficit in the revenue hitherto derived from opium. It was dated the third moon of the second year of Hslian T'ung, April, 19 10.
The stage from Yi-chiin Hsien south to T'ung-kuan Hsien is by Chinese reckoning 30 miles. For ten miles the road follows a high ridge with deep valleys on both sides containing billows of hills rising like waves in a stormy sea. With the exception of a brown speck here and there tillage was entirely absent. The country was covered with scrub and trees of various kinds, and pheasants were
48 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
crowing everywhere. It is a botanical paradise : in addition to the yellow roses already mentioned, scrub, oak, and hazel kept company with willow and walnut, and there were many other shrubs and creepers decked out in their beauti- ful white blossoms. Where there was a clearing, the crops were wheat or barley, and young maize ; but they were poor in the extreme and seemed hardly worth the labour being bestowed upon them. For another ten miles the road, descending from Lieh-ch'uan-chen, a filthy hamlet which I was glad to leave after snatching a hasty meal, entered a valley at the north end of which there were a few cultivated patches ; but Nature soon reasserted herself, claiming the whole of the narrow valley for a stream and the roadway, the former rushing southwards, leaping from rock to rock, and the latter humbly following it in its windings, sometimes high above the torrent's bed and frequently descending to and crossing it as room for it on one side or the other became impracticable. If we crossed that torrent once during the day we must have forded it at least twenty times. I gave up counting in despair, for there were many more attractive things claiming attention. The steep hill-sides which cooped up the narrow valley were one mass of white blossoms on the shrubs, trees, and creepers with which they were clad. Although the poppy was my quest, I could not help revelling for an hour or two among beautiful specimens of, among others. Clematis^ Cotoneasier, Elaagnus umbellata, Ranunculus acris, Lonicera quinquelocularis and Sophora flavescens. I had caught them all in full bloom and they were lovely.
At the hamlet of Chin-so-kuan, where the southern end of the valley opens out, I found that the hovel in which I had a meal had over its door the important announcement
6. THE LOESS FORMATION, WITH MULE LITTER AND PASSENGER
CART, SHANSI.
7. WELL IRRIGATION, SHANSI.
8. LOESS CAVE DWELLING, SHANSI.
{^Toface p. 48.
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 49
that it was an Office of an Anti-Opium Society. It was a ruin and might have been classed as a tenth-rate Chinese lodging-house, and yet it was the Office of an Anti-Opium Society ! Was there ever such mockery or such an attempt to make the most of a name ? Who is to blame for all this trickery, the government or its servants ? Both, I think, for the former has the means to enforce its will if it chooses. Instead, it appears to be content to accept as proof the reports that emanate from the emissaries of its servants. Poor China 1 your administration needs drastic refor- mation. There was a prisoner chained leg to leg in this Anti-Opium Society's Office : he was a highwayman from the Chung-pu District on his way to the provincial capital to be dealt with by the High Authorities there. He was an unpleasant looking customer. He was allowed his pipe by his gaoler ; but the probability was that his smoking days in this world were nearing an end. I was not a prisoner in chains ; but the foreign traveller in the interior of China is always a prisoner. He can never escape observation, and his every movement is watched and criticized.
South of Chin-so-kuan the valley widens and cultivation
became general. The stream we had followed during the
day increased in bulk by additions from side valleys, and
was largely used for irrigation purposes, canals drawing
away from the main channel abundant supplies, with the
result that wheat and barley were yellowing unto harvest
and promised a good yield of grain and straw. Rape was
practically ripe and ready for the sickle, and maize and
beans were well above ground. In many places the rice
1 shoots had been planted out, and many plots of land were
! submerged in preparation for the receipt of similar shoots
i from the seed-beds with their beautiful light-green tints.
' VOL. I. E
so ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
In one plot, not far from the city of T'ung-kuan Hsien, I noticed three poppy plants about two feet high : they had not yet flowered, and appeared to have been part of a large patch which had been destroyed. As we neared T'ung-kuan Hsien, the end of the day's stage of 26 miles, we came upon a large caravan with pack loads of sheep's wool and goat combings stacked under canvas while the animals grazed. Rain, which had been falling since morning, had compelled a halt. As we approached the city of T'ung-kuan Hsien, which lies on the right bank of the stream, all available ground was given up to the cultivation of vegetables such as turnip, lettuce ^ (grown for its stalk, not for its leaves) and leek.
The rain of the previous day made the road very bad going when we left T'ung-kuan Hsien on the morning of the 6th June. It followed southward the west side of a valley down which flows the stream we had forded so often yesterday and which we had again to ford four times before arriving at Yao Chou, the end of the day's stage of 23 miles. For six or seven miles the valley is fairly wide and the crops of barley, wheat and rape were excellent. The barley was white to harvest, and in places the garnering of the crop had already begun. The walnut and Sterculia platanifolia were prominent trees south of T'ung-kuan Hsien, and further south peach trees were scattered among the wheat-fields. As we neared Erh-shih-li-p'u, after a seven- mile ride, a stream from the west joins the main stream, and it was being utilized for flooding plots of land in preparation for the rice shoots. Here there is a village of cave-dwellings, and Erh-shih-li-p'u itself, with the exception of a mud hut by the roadside in which I had breakfast, is carved from the
1 Lactuca Scariola.
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 51
loess. In China any excuse is good enough for invading another man's house especially when it harbours a foreign traveller, and the little room in which I sat soon became so congested with visitors demanding eggs or lights for their pipes, that I found it necessary to inform them that I was paying for the temporary accommodation, not they. The hint was sufficient ; but the evacuation was carried out leisurely to show one another that their retirement was quite a voluntary act. During the morning I had seen only four poppies on the edge of a wheat-field and they were doubtless from seeds that had fallen by the wayside, for I was informed that last year all the land watered by this stream had been under poppy, but this year the cultivation had been com- pletely suppressed. This was corroborated seven miles south of Erh-shih-li-p'u at the hamlet of Huang-pao-chen where I fell in with the Rev. Mr. Bell, of the English Baptist Society, who was paying pastoral visits and at the same time looking about for a cool retreat for himself and family during the hotter months. He said that last year all the land watered by the stream from T'ung-kuan Hsien southward and including Huang-pao-chen was given up to poppy, but that this year it had all disappeared and he had seen only occasional plants in fields of wheat or barley. He added that in the south 90 per cent, of the plain in the neighbourhood of Hsi-an Fu, hitherto a poppy garden, was now under cereals, and that the suppressive measures taken by the authorities had been effective. When we reached the city of Yao Chou, however, through a country of low terraced hills with the road frequently much under the level of the cultivated land, Mr. Comerford, also of the English Baptist Society, was good enough to accompany me on a walk outside the south gate where we found some
52 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
half-dozen poppy-plots not only in flower, but the opium in process of being harvested. They were of no great extent, the largest measuring some forty by five yards. They lay along patches of indigo and quite close to the city wall.
When we left Yao Chou on the morning of the 7th June, we began the day with a chapter of accidents, which, if at times amusing, were somewhat trying to the temper, not always at its best on the road in China. A stream from the west joins the main stream flowing south to the east of the city a short distance from the south gate. This we had to ford, and while doing so, one of the mules lost its footing and threw its load of two boxes of stores into the stream. There was much shouting and yelling in conse- quence, but above all rose the screeching of my Ningpo cook, whose dialect, at best all but unintelligible to the muleteers, had to be largely supplemented by the language of signs. It turned out that his bedding, wrapped in a coir mat, was afiixed to the top of the thrown pack and, naturally, it suff^ered more than the tins, which merely parted with their labels and obliterated the names of their contents. The bedding was soaked, and the fuss and the language of the little cook regarding the bundle, probably not worth five shillings, were extraordinary as he danced attendance on it during the day with a face that was ludicrous to all but himself. He is a peppery little man, and there was a feud between him and the muleteers during the rest of the stage. Another mule stampeded shortly afterwards ; but the contents of the thrown pack were in this case altogether mine, and the little accident did not seem to concern anybody much. The head muleteer drew a long face for a minute or two and, after a few repeated " Ai-ahs ! " quickly recovered the expression of utter
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 53
weariness of the world which he was fond of assuming when he and I had to discuss affairs of business.
But other matters demanded my attention. Patches of poppy in full bloom met the eye from time to time along- side plots of the two indigo dye plants — Polygonum tinctorium and Indigofera Bungeana — which were under careful cultiva- tion. The road goes south over a plain, past numbers of circular brick vats, built in the ground for the steeping of the indigo-leaves and the extraction of the blue dye. It was too early in the season for the indigo harvest and the vats were empty. At the entrance to the plain, which is well irrigated by channels branching from the main stream, were some fine persimmon trees, and during the whole stage they were quite common in the company of the poplar, cypress, Sophora japonica^ walnut, Sterculia platanifolia and willow. There were splendid crops of wheat and barley, much of the latter already harvested, and in places hemp — Cannabis sativa — had attained a height of four or five feet against the same number of inches a few days ago. Eight miles south of Yao Chou the plain was broken and we descended from the hamlet of Mi-tzu-chen between precipitous loess walls to the cave-dwellers of Chao-tzu-ho, where I found a patch of poppies, not yet in flower, carefully guarded by thorn branches. Of course, nobody would claim ownership when I asked the assembled squatters to whom it belonged, and I may remark here that opium was a subject which for obvious reasons no one seemed inclined to discuss.
Crossing the rift and a streamlet over a small bridge, we ascended to a plateau with equally splendid crops, and, after another steep descent, landed at the village of Ling-ti,
54 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
where my appearance was the signal for the usual crowd. My local escort of one or two men usually preceded the caravan and secured a room for a meal ; but on this occasion they had stopped on the way to smoke opium, and we arrived before them to find that no preparation had been made. The only place that could be commandeered at the moment was the front and, indeed, the only room of an old curiosity shop, whose proprietor, a very gentlemanly old man, reproved the crowd that packed the street to watch the " foreign devil " washing and feeding. I per- formed both operations to the satisfaction of all ; but several friends of the proprietor called on him during my short stay, entrenched themselves behind the counter and, pretending to talk high politics, succeeded in obtaining a nearer view than the men on the street. In the crowd was a Lama, evidently a lunatic, who bared his arms and postured as a pugilist, but, to universal amusement, refused to stand his ground when I approached with the intention of addressing him. There was one customer during my meal, and his purchase was a sheet of match-paper for which he paid one cash. On leaving the shop, 1 graciously thanked the proprietor for the temporary accommodation, and he as graciously received the thanks, as a Chinese gentleman can do so well. So long as I was present he would not touch the hundred cash which my cook placed on the counter for the use of the shop.
A poppy here and there raising its head from wheat, barley, or peas, means nothing, and such plants were common enough during the stage ; but before entering the village of Ling-ch'ien-chen, thirteen miles from Yao Chou, where carts were in various stages of construction, I came across a large field with from 50 to 60 plants in full
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 55
bloom. The field contained to all appearances a crop of thistles, for the variety and size of which 1 have not seen the province of Shensi excelled. The people of Shensi may not be so intelligent as the inhabitants of other provinces, but I did not credit them with cultivating thistles, and a careful examination of the field showed that the blooms were parts of rows of poppy-plants which had originally covered the ground. There could be no doubt that the poppies had been destroyed, but I could get no explanation from the villagers of Ling-ch'ien-chen, for nobody would talk of opium except the local escorts, who are almost invariably smokers, and whose lament was the high price of the drug. At Yao Chou the cost of raw opium had risen from 300 to 1200 cash per Chinese ounce. Several other poppy patches were observed during the day's stage, but they were of no size or importance. The road from Ling-ti runs south over a most fertile and well- cultivated plain to the district city of San-ylian Hsien, which, 26 miles from Yao Chou, is a great banking centre, and one of the greatest Shensi depots of trade with the province of Kansu.
South from San-yuan Hsien the road runs over a large plain dotted here and there with the dilapidated ruins of camps or garrison stations whose loess walls now present a sorry sight. They are the remnants of the Mohammedan rebellion, which had its origin in an attempt on the part of the Chinese to extirpate the followers of the Prophet who had endeavoured to throw off the Chinese yoke in the sixties and were all but decimated in 1873, when the rebellion was quelled by a Chinese army under the com- mand of Tso Tsung-t'ang. In the plain harvesting, threshing and ploughing were in full swing. Ploughing
S6 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
was done by ponies instead of the ox and the ass as in the northern part of the province. Threshing was accomplished by rolling grain and straw with a horizontally grooved stone roller on a threshing floor beaten hard with pieces of straw as binding. The roller has a greater diameter at one end than the other, and this facilitates its circular motion over the broken up sheaves arranged in a circle on the floor. Whether wheat, barley, or rape, the process was the same. Reaping was done not with the usual curved sickle but with a straight blade ten inches long and two inches wide, fitted by iron clamps into the groove of a nine-inch piece of wood inserted at right angles in the end of a short rounded wooden handle with a slightly curved hand grip. In cut- ting the grain the reaper keeps the straw on the scythe until he has collected a sheaf, which is then thrown aside. Soon after leaving San-ylian Hsien we came upon a plot of poppy by the roadside, with numerous blank spaces in the rows, a sure sign that an attempt had been made to destroy it, and at the hamlet of T'a-ti, twelve miles from the city, were a couple of patches which had not been tampered with, owing, most probably, to their insignificant size. A little later we struck the left bank of the Ching River, a brown muddy stream some 50 yards broad, flowing east, across which we and the pack loads were ferried by boat with the assistance of a rope stretched over cross poles erected on both banks. Below the ferry the stream widens and is shallower, enabling the animals to wade across ; but there were many holes, and several of the muleteers were wet to the waist when they reached the right bank. Just under the left bank there was a patch of poppy in full flower, and on the right bank was a large field in which about a hundred blooms were scattered about. Evidence
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 57
collected on the spot went to show that these hundred blooms were the remnant of a crop which had been officially destroyed at an earlier date.
The Ching River, which comes from the north-west, is made up of a number of streams rising in Shensi and Kansu, and leaving it the road goes south to the left bank of the much larger river — the Wei which, soon joined by the Ching, goes to swell the Yellow River at a point to the south of the latter's junction with the Lo River. A distance of some four miles separates the Ching from the Wei, and on the plateau between them I came upon a field of poppies some 10 by 300 yards in area well concealed behind a field of wheat. The harvesting of the opium on this field was proceeding, the most of the capsules having been bled. Soon the plain of Hsi-an Fu and the Wei River came into view and, descending from the plateau, we at once struck a number of poppy-fields by the road-side, some of which had been partly destroyed ; but one large field, measuring some 500 by 30 yards and containing certainly two-thirds of a full crop, was being harvested.
We reached the left bank of the river, also flowing east, over a sandy uncultivated flat and had to await in the intense heat the arrival from the other side of one of the two large ferry boats or barges which are used for crossing the northernmost of the three channels into which the Wei is divided up at this season of the year. At last it arrived carrying seven carts, each with two animals and their drivers, and when these had been discharged I succeeded in getting my caravan on board after the usual delay with the riding-ponies, which had to be helped with more than gentle
58 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
persuasion. The passage was tedious and the navigation peculiar : six men poled at the stern to prevent the current, which was fairly swift, from carrying the barge down stream, while two men at the bows armed with long sweeps headed the craft up stream, and had great difficulty In averting a broadside presentation to the current. The sandy bed of the river Is little under a mile broad ; but, once across the northernmost or deep-water channel, the mules and ponies easily waded the other two channels and we were soon on the right bank to find ourselves amid the ample remains of poppy-fields where opium harvesting was taking place. These fields were of great size, and I am safe In saying that they were yielding a half crop, so Ineffectively had the work of official destruction been carried out, while in other fields brilliant petals of various hues defied concealment as they overtopped the peas amid which the poppies had been sown. But one beautiful picture clamoured for attention to the south of the Wei River ; long lines of graceful trees, principally poplars, edged and crossed fields In wonderful profusion, adding an unwonted charm to the landscape. The memory of that picture did much to sweeten the night spent in a stinking mud cell.
I had lunch In the vestibule of a farmhouse at the hamlet of Wen-chia-pao after the passage of the Wei River, and the farmer. In return for my explaining to him the working of a Prana syphon and praising his cool well water, told me that last year from the right bank of the Wei River southwards, the land was one blaze of poppy, that this year the authorities had been most stringent, and that those who had sown the poppy during the present season had suffered considerable loss. This farmer, who appeared to be straightforward and truthful, stated that experiments
i
THE YELLOW RIVER TO HSI-AN FU 59
were now being made with cotton and sesamum to take the place of the poppy. It was a weary ride from Wen-chia-pao to the city of Hsi-an Fu and, although the road passes through a fine fertile country, we were all tired of the long day's stage of over 30 miles. As if to remind us that we were still in the loess country, the road passes down south- west between high precipitous cliffs of brown earth before entering the north gate of the provincial capital, and on this narrow road we had considerable difficulty with passing carts which are in use on the great Hsi-an plain.
CHAPTER III
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF THE PROVINCE OF KANSU
The name of the provincial capital of Shensi is variously known as Hsi-an Fu, Si-an Fu and Si-ngan Fu, according to the taste of the speller. I have adopted the form Hsi-an Fu, which accords with the romanization of Chinese characters used by the British Consular Service in China. The city, which I reached 29 days after leaving T'ai- yiian Fu, and which has a walled circumference of some ten miles, lies, like many other provincial capitals, within two districts — Ch'ang-an Hsien and Hsien-ning Hsien. It has a great historical past : Ch'ang-an Hsien, then known as Hao, was the capital of the Yin Dynasty (b.c. 1401- 1121), and of the Chou Dynasty (b.c. 1122-769), while under its modern name of Ch'ang-an Hsien it was the capital of the Western Han Dynasty (b.c. 206 to a.d. 24), of the Sui Dynasty (590-619) and of the T'ang Dynasty (620-906). In other words, the city of Hsi-an Fu has from time to time been the capital of five dynasties, and it was to this ancient capital that the Emperor Kwang Hsu and the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi fled from Peking on the 15th August, 1900, the year of the Boxer rising, and from which they returned on the 7th January, 1902.
The high brick walls of the city with their four towering gates form a parallelogram, whose north and south sides are longer than the other two, and there are extensive suburbs
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 6i
outside the east and west gates. In the centre of the parallelogram is the Drum Tower whence a good view is obtained of the whole city. In the north-east corner is the Manchu walled quarter, which was stormed during the late revolutionary movement, and its inhabitants, men, women and children, variously estimated at from 10,000 to 15,000 souls, hunted for four days and butchered in cold blood, the darkest stain on the whole revolutionary period. In the south-east section of the city, whichlis mostly residential, is the celebrated Pei Lin or Forest of Stone Tablets, on which are cut the Thirteen Classics or Canonical Works, including the Nine Classics of the T'ang Dynasty, and there are many other similar records of antiquity and specimens of caligraphy. The tablets are arranged in a series of low buildings, and in one room close to a stone- carved portrait of Confucius is the famous Nestorian Tablet standing on its tortoise stone pedestal, the earliest record of the propagation of Christianity in China. Nestorian missionaries from Persia and Nipal entered Northern China in 506, during the reign of T'ai Tsung of the T'ang Dynasty, and the tablet, erected by Imperial sanction in 781, records in Chinese the tenets of their creed known as the Ta Chin Ching Chiao or " Illustrious Religion of Syria."
The tablet, which is in an excellent state of preservation, was unearthed from some ruins in 1625, and re-erected about a mile outside the west suburb of the city near the highroad which leads to the district city of Hsien-yang Hsien on the left bank of the Wei River. The preserva- tion of the tablet is doubtless due to the Syriac writing cut on it — on each side and at the foot of the twenty-eight perpendicular columns of Chinese characters as well as on its left edge. The Syriac writing on the face of the tablet
62 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
gives the names and offices of the high dignitaries of the Nestorian Church in China, while that on the left edge consists of the names of 67 Nestorian priests, of which 61 are followed by their Chinese equivalents. The Chinese character columns are 66 inches in length, each column, with one or two exceptions, containing 62 characters. Surmounting these columns and in large characters, nine in number, arranged in three rows, is the heading Ta Chin Ching Chiao Liu Hsing Chung Kuo Pei^ that is, " Tablet [commemorating] the Propagation in China of the Illustrious Religion of Syria," above which there is a small cross some two and a half by two inches. The four points of the cross as well as its centre are ornamented with circles, and its foot rests on what appears to be foliage with a distinct branch at each side. The heading and the cross are supported on each side by a dragon, griffin or other fabulous animal with six legs, two legs of each animal raised and meeting above the cross. While cross and foliage are cut into the stone at a less depth than the Chinese characters, the two animals are in relief and the top of the tablet ends in a curved arch. On the edge of the tablet there is another inscription to which I have seen no reference made, probably because it is of recent date. It consists of 47 Chinese characters, some of which have unfortunately been cut over Syrian writing, and reads : " One thousand and seventy-nine years later, in the ninth year of Hsien Feng (1859), Han T'ai-hua of Hangchow came to examine the tablet, and luckily finding the inscriptions in good condition re-erected a pavilion over it. Unfortunately his old friend Wu Tzu-mi, the Provincial Treasurer, was unable to accompany him, to his everlasting regret." As mentioned above, the tablet was erected about a mile outside the
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 63
west suburb of Hsi-an Fu ; but a few years ago it came to the notice of the authorities that a Danish subject was having a replica made with, it was thought, the intention of carrying off the original to be exhibited in an American museum. They took fright and had the tablet removed to the Pei Lin, where I saw it housed. To me it seemed almost incredible that I was looking at a stone with inscriptions 1129 years old; but its marvellous state of preservation must in some measure be due to the fact that it lay burled for many centuries. At the time of my visit rubbings of the inscriptions were being made, and there were two shops inside the grounds of the Pei Lin where rubbings of this and other tablets were on sale.
In the southern part, but near the centre of the city, is the official residence of the Viceroy or Governor-General of the two provinces of ShensI and Kansu, but when the Hsin Chiang or New Dominion was incorporated as a Chinese province the seat of the latter was transferred to Lan-chou Fu, the capital of Kansu, and the Governor of Shensi, vacating his own, took possession of the residence of the Viceroy. The vacated residence, which is in the north-west section of the city, became the temporary palace of the Emperor and Empress-Dowager when they fled from Peking in 1900. The rooms which Their Majesties occupied were pointed out to me, but entrance to them was denied, and I was requested not to take any photo- graphs. Covered-up furniture was to be seen through the windows, and this temporary abode of royalty, consisting of many clean courtyards and several miniature gardens, was silent as the grave. To the west of the Manchu city is the Mohammedan quarter with its two mosques, and still further west is what may be called the Szechuan quarter,
64 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
for it is inhabited almost entirely by natives of that province who, crowded out from their own, have emigrated to Shensi as labourers, harvesters and artisans. Of this I shall have more to say later. This north-west section of the city is the most densely populated and the principal business quarter.
Hsi-an Fu, with a population of about a quarter of a million inhabitants, is a great commercial centre, and has trade relations with Kansu and Tibet, Szechuan, Hupei, Honan, and Shansi. Previous to the construction of the Peking-Hankow (Ching-Han) railway, the greater part of the trade of Southern Shansi and its connecting markets was carried on by the River Yangtsze and its very important tributary the Han, which joins the former river near and to the west of the port of Hankow, that is, " Mouth of the Han." Goods in ever-increasing quantity are now carried by rail from Hankow north to Cheng Chou in the province of Honan, where the Peking-Hankow line is crossed by the K'ai-feng Fu — Honan Fu (Pien-Lo) railway, and from Cheng Chou they go west as far as the present railhead at Honan Fu, whence they reach Hsi-an Fu by cart or pack animals in less than a fortnight, an immense saving in time and cost in comparison with the long and difficult ascent of the Han River and a long overland journey to boot.
It was late in the afternoon of the 8th June when we entered the city of Hsi-an Fu by the north gate, where my name and whence I came were required by a khaki- uniformed policeman. Unfortunately we missed my escort- ing officer, who had gone ahead to find a suitable inn, and we wandered about the streets for a couple of hours in the hope of encountering him. At last we came upon him at
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HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 65
the door of an inn with wretched accommodation. He said that he had seen only one good inn which, however, was fully occupied, but that he would arrange with its keeper next morning to secure part of it for my use. This he did, and it proved far and away the best inn I had seen since leaving Peking. As soon as I had settled down I sent my card to the Governor, His Excellency En Shou, with a proposal to pay him a visit next day at ten o'clock, or such other hour as would be most convenient for him. I was immediately waited upon by a member of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs requesting to know the nature of my business with the Governor. I replied that I had no special business and that I would communicate such as I had to His Excellency when I had the pleasure of meeting him. The interview took place at ten o'clock on the loth June. His Excellency said that he had received a letter from the Governor of Shansi that I was coming, but was not yet in receipt of any communication regarding me from the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office) at Peking. I at once produced my passport from the Wai Wu Pu, dated the 28th April, which he read. I explained that I had come to thank him for the protection which I had received from the local authorities of his province on my way south, and to express the hope that he would be good enough to ensure a continuance of that protection on the road to Lan-chou Fu, the capital of the province of Kansu, whither I was bound. I informed him that the Governor of Shansi had sent a special deputy and a mounted soldier all the way with me to Hsi-an Fu, that both had served me exceedingly well and that, if it could be arranged by telegraph with his colleague of Shansi, I should be glad if the deputy were allowed to accompany me as far as Lan-chou Fu. I said
VOL. I. F
66 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
that the deputy was willing to go, that, as I had temporarily lost the services of my personal servant owing to an acci- dent, he had done everything in his power to make good my loss, and that I should consider it a great favour if the present arrangement could be continued. His Excellency expressed his willingness to comply with my request, and said that he would telegraph to the Governor of Shansi for the loan of the deputy whom he desired to see. This he did the following morning, and, so far as I could gather, the result was satisfactory, the only information volunteered to me by the deputy being that he asked whether I was making a map of the country,
I remarked to His Excellency that I had been struck by the splendid harvest prospects of a great part of the province through which I had passed and incidentally mentioned the subject of opium. He stated that he had taken stringent measures to put a stop to the cultivation of the poppy, that it had been reduced by from 60 to 80 per cent., and that, although it might still be found growing in out-of-the-way places and corners of the province, cultiva- tion might be considered as practically stopped, and that by the end of the year it would be entirely eradicated. He added that the people somewhat resented this wholesale suppression of what had been to them a very profitable means of livelihood for many years ; but I gathered that this would not stand in the way of his doing his duty.
I informed His Excellency that it was my desire to proceed to Lan-chou Fu by way of the valley of the Wei River, and I asked if all the roads to Kansu were safe. He replied that they were, but suggested that I should keep to the high-road. To this I demurred, saying that I
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 67
should see little of the country in which I was interested if I went and returned by the same road. He said that he would have inquiries made regarding all the roads and let me know the result later. As a consequence the deputy from the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, who was present at my interview with the Governor in the capacity of interpreter, but whose services were, much to his relief, not required, called on me on the night of the I2th June, bringing with him a list of the stages as far as the frontier of Kansu. This list gave the names of the stages to the north and west of Hsi-an Fu ; but I told him, as I had informed the Governor, that my wish was to follow the valley of the Wei River. As he could adduce no valid reason why I should not take that route, it was decided that I should follow up the Wei River as far as possible, and I announced that I was leaving on the morning of the 14th June. He said that the Governor had been indisposed for a couple of days and was much concerned that he had been unable to return my call. To show the want of uniformity in Chinese Government Departments, I may mention that three members of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs who called upon me each sent me a route list, each list differing from the other, the aim of all seemingly being to keep me as far away as possible from the Wei River, where the cultivation of the poppy was no doubt known to be exten- sively carried on. There could be no other possible reason for trying to head me off the route I had mapped out for myself. Hsi-an Fu is the headquarters of the English Baptist Missionary Society in the province of Shensi, and there and elsewhere I received every kindness at the hands of its members. Mr. Shorrock, the senior member at Hsi-an Fu, has spent many years in the province and he
68 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
was able to give me much valuable Information regarding poppy cultivation in the neighbourhood of the provincial capital. He told me that remarkable, almost incredible, progress in suppression had been made in the great plain of Hsi-an, which only a very few years ago had been one large poppy garden, and he was also able to give me satis- factory results which had been achieved in other parts of the province ; but his information was incomplete as regards the western districts which I was about to traverse. It is quite common for merchants from other provinces to buy up the crop as it stands in the fields, engage men to harvest the opium and transport it eastwards for consump- tion. This, however, is a risky business, for, should rainy weather set in, much of the juice or crude opium as it exudes from the capsules is washed away. During my visit the price of raw opium in Hsi-an Fu, which was about 70 odd taels per 100 Chinese ounces in the latter half of 1909, had, owing to the prohibition of the export of the drug, fallen to 50 taels. These represented some fourfold the prices of former years. The price of prepared opium, that is ready for smoking, was about 1400 copper cash per Chinese ounce or five times the cost in 1909. I should say that a tael, which was approximately the equiva- lent of half a crown, could purchase from iioo to 1400 cash, and that a Chinese ounce is equal to i,^ English ounces. The currency of Hsi-an Fu was somewhat com- plicated : side by side with the old copper cash, which are being pushed west from those provinces using the new copper coins, there was a note currency guaranteed by the provincial government. These notes represent cash, but a 1000 cash paper note was equivalent to only some 700 actual copper cash. As in Shansi, the new copper coins
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 69
representing 5 and 10 copper cash pieces were not in circulation in Shensi.
1 left Hsi-an Fu on the morning of the 14th June, and proceeded west over a good broad road with a considerable cart traffic as far as the village of San-ch'iao-kai, where, during breakfast, we had an adventure with a grey-headed old woman who followed us into the court yard of an inn shouting at the pitch of her voice, and ultimately lying down just inside the gateway. Thinking that she was a beggar I told my servant to give her some cash ; but she refused the gratuity and continued her loud monologue until she was ejected by the innkeeper. She then lay down on the road outside the inn till passing carts compelled her to move on. She was insane. From San-ch'iao-kai the road turns north-west to the village of Feng-ch'iao, named after the bridge at its western end spanning the Feng Ho, a tributary of the Wei River, whose right bank we almost immediately struck. Between San-ch'iao-kai and Feng- ch'iao I noticed on the north side of the roadway what appeared to be a field of peas. As, however, it had a somewhat peculiar appearance I dismounted and examined it carefully to find that it was a field of poppies well con- cealed by pea stalks and leaves. The poppy capsules were most of them lanced. The field was within the district of Hsien-yang Hsien, the city of that name lying on the right bank of the Wei River. Opposite the city the river is divided into two channels by a long sandbank, the wider and deeper channel lying along the left bank. Crossing by two sets of ferry-boats we entered the city and lunched in the official rest-house, the Governor having been good enough to send instructions ahead that these government buildings were to be placed at my disposal if I preferred to occupy them.
70 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
The city of Hsien-yang was the capital of the Ch'in Dynasty (b.c. 255-206), during whose brief sway several important events occurred. Incidentally it may be mentioned that the name China is generally supposed to be derived from the name of that dynasty. China had hitherto been divided up into a number of feudal states or principalities, but the first and third princes of the Ch'in Dynasty (the second prince reigned only three days) set themselves the task of subduing the other states and welding them into one kingdom. The fourth prince, named Cheng, who succeeded to his heritage in the year b.c. 246 at the age of thirteen, continued the work of subjugation, and in b.c. 221 felt himself powerful enough to proclaim himself Shih Huang Ti, or " First Universal Emperor " of a country from and including the province of Chihli in the north to the river Yangtsze, with the addition of the present province of Chekiang, and from the Yellow Sea on the east, to the province of Szechuan in the west. This empire he divided up into 36 provinces, a forerunner of the divisions of to-day. The reforms of Shih Huang Ti were thwarted by the scholars of the time, and on the advice of his Prime Minister he issued a Decree in b.c. 213 commanding that all classical literature, with the exception of works on agriculture, astrology, divination, and medicine, should be burnt. This is known in Chinese history as the " Burning of the Books." There was a loud outcry against this Decree and, as a consequence, 460 scholars were put to death, some say buried alive. For this act his name has always been held in detestation by the literati of China. During his reign Shih Huang Ti made roads and built bridges, and to him is due the credit of constructing or, rather, completing the Great Wall of China, to protect his
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 71
kingdom from the Tartar tribes in the north. He was very superstitious and was in the habit of consulting sooth- sayers by what means he could attain to great age. He was informed that he was the prey of evil spirits, and to avoid them must never sleep in the same room two nights running. He accordingly built an enormous palace in the neighbourhood of Hsien-yang in b.c. 212 ; but he died in B.C. 209, in the province of Chihli, while making a tour of his kingdom. The palace is known in Chinese history as A-fang-kung, and its construction was so costly that it called down the remonstrances of the Emperor's eldest son, who was, in consequence, banished to the neighbourhood of the Great Wall, where he committed suicide in accordance with an Imperial order forged by his brother immediately on his father's death. In this way the younger brother Erh Shih Huang Ti, or the Second Universal Emperor, came to the throne, and one of his first acts was to build a vast mausoleum for his father's remains in the vicinity of the district city of Lin-t'ung Hsien, fifteen miles to the north-east of Hsi-an Fu. The mausoleum was built by criminals, but its cost and adornment proved so great a tax on the people that they rebelled. Erh Shih Huang Ti was assassinated in b.c. 206 and, although his son nominally reigned for a couple of months, the Ch'in Dynasty was overthrown, and was succeeded by the Han Dynasty.
Through the west gate of Hsien-yang the road runs seventeen miles due east to the district city of Hsing-p'ing Hsien, and, on the way, between the villages of Ma-pao- ch'uan, with its several cave dwellings, and Shang-shih-pao, I came across six fields of poppy at short intervals, three to the south and three to the north of the roadway. The first, on the south side, was close to the road, and measured about
72 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
loo by lo yards ; in the second, measuring 50 by 50 yards, some 100 paces from the road, three men were busy lancing the capsules ; and the third field was about the same size. On the north side were : first, a plot some 10 by 150 yards, the second 10 by 100 yards, and the third — a patch in full white bloom — some 50 by 50 yards. These were in the Hsing-p'ing district. In all I came across seven fields and plots of poppy during the day. There was no sign of interference with the cultivation, and the only conclusion to be drawn was that no effective repressive measures had been taken in the district of Hsing-p'ing Hsien. Other crops on the ground were wheat, barley, the lucerne fodder plant {^Medicago saliva), and peas ; and whole families were in the fields gleaning what was left by the rake. Cotton, common hemp, beans, and maize were showing well above ground, and there were not a few patches of Abutilon hemp [Abutilon Avicenn^, Gaertn.), the fibre of which has for many years been erroneously classed as jute by the Chinese Customs. During the earlier part of the day the roadway was bordered by willows a few yards apart ; but the poplar, Sophora and cypress, also common, were ultimately over- shadowed by the elm, which was much in evidence as the city of Hsing-p'ing Hsien was approached.
Soon after leaving Hsing-p'ing Hsien, on the morning of the 15th June, I noticed several fields, half peas, half poppy ; but all this anxiety to conceal quickly ceased, and before entering and after leaving the hamlet of Pan-ch'iao-pao, six miles west of Hsing-p'ing Hsien, three large poppy-fields, distant 200 to 300 yards from the south side of the road, came into full view, and at the entrance to the village of Ma-wei-chen, where we broke our fast at eight o'clock, there were two large patches and one small
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 73
plot within the village itself. But these were trifling com- pared with what was to follow. On leaving Ma-wei-chen, I quitted my caravan and struck down a likely glen to the south, and at once came upon three very large fields of poppy, in which the petals had fallen and the capsules had been bled. On higher ground, to the immediate west, were two still larger fields and a small patch by the road on the north side. But I need not enter into too great detail. During the day I added to my list 52 fields and plots of poppy between the district cities of Hsing-p'ing Hsien and Wu-kung Hsien, a distance of some 30 miles. These, with the exception of half a dozen, were within the Wu-kung district, and in the city of that name we passed the night. One of these fields measured 17 by 800 yards. It was a sample of many such fields, which were all within sight of the road, and the great bulk of them quite close to it. In only two cases did I notice signs of official destruction, which consisted in lopping off many of the capsules ; but other capsules had matured, and were being bled. It was quite evident that no effective measures had been taken to stop cultivation of the poppy in the Wu-kung district, for, if the roadside gave such results, what must have been the state of the interior of the district ? It could hardly be want of knowledge on the part of the magistrate, whom I met proceeding into the country to hold an inquest on the body of a man who had met his death in a gambling brawl. Had he been a few minutes earlier, he would have found me measuring the field above referred to, while the many poppy blooms by the roadside could not have failed to attract the attention of even the blindest official.
Of the two mounted soldiers sent to escort me from Hsi-an Fu to Lan-chou Fu one was a quiet, unassuming
74 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
man, who always rode behind me ; the other was more active, and undertook the duty of going ahead and procur- ing accommodation for meals and quarters for the night. The former remarked, soon after leaving Hsing-p'ing Hsien, that the poppy now grown in Shensi represented only about one-tenth of the cultivation of former years, when the price of opium ranged from 13 to 14 taels per 100 Chinese ounces, that the price had risen to over 50 taels for the same quantity, with a recent slight decline, owing to the greater stringency of the measures taken in regard to the disposal of the drug, and that the number of merchants from other provinces who used to visit Shensi to purchase opium was now greatly reduced. What, he said, induced farmers to produce opium, and to produce it in the face of official warnings and prohibitions, was this : one mou (one-sixth of an English acre) of land will produce opium which will realize seven times the price of wheat grown on the same area ; and not only will it realize this larger amount, but it will always find a ready market, and, what is of still greater importance to the farmer, ready money. There was little to chronicle except the poppy between Hsing-p'ing Hsien and Wu-kung Hsien. Wheat was being harvested and threshed, and the ground was being ploughed and prepared for the reception of millet (Sorghum vulgare\ much used in this part of Shensi for the distilla- tion of spirit, especially in the city of Feng-hsiang Fu, whose product is famed throughout these western provinces under the name of Feng Chiu (" Wine of Feng "). We met carts going east laden with this spirit, contained in baskets of willow twigs waterproofed with oil-paper. The road, if somewhat broken at Ma-wei-chen by a slight descent between loess banks to the left bank of a stream —
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 75
a tributary of the Wei River — and a small plain at the west side of which nestles the district city of Wu-kung Hsien, under a range of hills running north and south, was level and good. To cross the stream, flowing south, I took refuge in the mule litter, and in mid-stream the rear mule stumbled and fell, with the result that the bottom of the litter was flooded ; but no great damage was done, and wet bedding was soon dried in the official rest-house in the city which sheltered me for the night. The elm and Sophora japonica were the most prominent trees between the cities of Hsing-p'ing Hsien and Wu-kung Hsien, the latter tree preferring the villages.
Leaving the west gate of Wu-kung Hsien, the road ascends a loess bank, and goes west over a plain similar to that of the day before, covered with golden wheat and barley, soon to be cut down by the sickles of the hundreds of harvesters who accompanied us on the morning of the 1 6th June, a day remarkable for its heat and for the extent of poppy cultivation. It was the hottest we had hitherto experienced, and between the loess banks, when the road ran below the surface of the plain, the atmosphere was stifling, entirely demoralizing men and animals. After a ride in the morning, I had to take refuge in the suffbcating mule litter, and it was a great relief when, at the end of 20 miles, we descended to the small district city of Fu-feng Hsien and its official rest-house, where the magistrate had prepared some refreshment in the shape of Chinese fruits, laid on a table covered with a bed-spread as table-cloth. It was a kind attention, but the intense heat prevented full justice being done to the offerings. We had still ten miles to accomplish, and we put up at the official rest-house in the village of I-tien at five o'clock in the afternoon, weary
76 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
and exhausted by the great heat of the day. But the most remarkable incident in the 30 miles between the district city of Wu-kung Hsien and the village of I-tien was the largest find of poppy in one day. There were 104 fields, plots, and patches visible from the road, many of them close to and others a short distance from it, but all within sight of the passer-by. Of these, 6 were in the Wu-kung, 85 in the Fu-feng, and 13 in the Ch'i-shan district, through part ot which we had to travel to reach I-tien. As regards trade, we met three large carts laden with bales of sheep- and goat-skins, and other carts piled with bundles of hemp from Feng-hsiang Fu, to the north-west.
The great heat culminated in torrential rains which kept us prisoners in I-tien during the 17th, 1 8th, and 19th June. At nine o'clock on the night of the 19th, when the storm had abated, there was a great tumult in the village with loud shouting- and noise, and the cause of the disturbance was the arrival of a large body of harvesters from Wu-kung in search of a night's lodging before going west. Dogs barked, women shouted and children cried, and it was a couple of hours before peace again reigned. My escort were afraid that an invasion of the ofiicial rest-house would be attempted, and gunfire signals were arranged between them and the local garrison in the event of the attempt being made. In the usual Chinese way I was told not to be afraid if I heard shots, and assuring my escort that I was not at all afraid, 1 went to bed. I had given instructions that, to avoid the heat of the day, we were to be up at four and off at five o'clock next morning; but the officer of my escort, who, I think, was really afraid of the harvesters and, incidentally, of my safety and baggage, was up at 2.30 a.m., and roused us by the noise he made in trying to light a
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 77
fire with the aid of a pair of sheepskin bellows. I got up and dressed, only to discover the mistake that had been made. I packed them all off again and slept until four o'clock. We were off at five. There must have been at least a couple of thousand harvesters at the west end of the village, where they had spent the night in the open. Many of them, in addition to their sickles, had the cash they had earned slung in cloth wrappers at the ends of carrying-poles or in packs on their backs. Hundreds of them accompanied us westwards. They were from Kansu and Szechuan, trom the former province owing to its poverty, from the latter because it is in many parts over-populated. One could readily understand the amount of labour required to till and reap these immense fields stretching, field after field, to the far horizon, and frequently having, at a conservative estimate, an area of about 20 acres apiece.
From I-tien the road goes west with occasional dips for six to seven miles to the city of Ch'i-shan Hsien, where we had breakfast in an excellent rest-house. The yellow gold of wheat and barley was relieved by the glistening green of maize, green lucerne, the grey-green of the poppy- stems and capsules, and the darker green of the bean. From Ch'i-shan Hsien the road turns north-west to the pre- fectural city of Feng-hsiang Fu, a distance of twenty miles, and during the whole 30 miles I observed 51 poppy-fields, only three of which had been tampered with by the authori- ties. Some capsules had been lopped off, but no effective damage was done. Of these 5 1 fields, 43 were in the Ch'i-shan and eight in the Feng-hsiang district. Mr. Stevens, of the China Inland Mission, who had been resident at Feng-hsiang Fu for about fifteen years, informed me that the poppy, which in former years could be seen from the city walls in
78 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
all directions, had now entirely disappeared, and that its eradication was due to the energy of the late Prefect, who had recently gone into mourning owing to the death of his mother. He also stated that the district of Pao-chi Hsien to the west and on the right bank of the Wei River was, and still is, a great centre of opium production, and inci- dentally he remarked that the proportionate area of poppy to wheat used to be about three to four. I also noticed some patches of padi (rice), not a few fields of reeds, and many plots of indigo round the city of Feng-hsiang Fu, which, besides being a great spirit-distilling centre, contains numerous dyeing establishments, blue-dyed cottons hung out to dry forming archways under which we rode to the official rest-house. There was also some silk production and, of course, the mulberry. Other trees were the Sophora, elm, willow, and a species of Broussonetia — probably B. KaempferU , Trade during the day was represented by some h\^ carts from Kansu laden with drugs, especially Curclima longa^ L., and Angelica polymorpha^ Max. van sinensis^ Oliv., as well as loads of millet (Kao-liang) spirit from Feng- hsiang Fu.
It rained over night, and it was drizzling when we trooped out of Feng-hsiang Fu, at a quarter to six o'clock on the morning of the 21st June, to make the stage of 23 miles as far as the district city of Ch'ien-yang Hsien to the north-west. The plain in which Feng-hsiang Fu lies is bounded on the north by a range of hills running north- east and south-west, and, as far as the southern foothills, contained many villages and farm-houses well wooded with Sophora, elm, willow, Broussonetia, peach and other trees and crops of wheat, maize, peas and beans. Outside the city, the rain came down in torrents, and when we had travelled
HSl-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 79
six miles, the muleteers showed an inclination to remain at the village of Liu-lin-chin for the day; but the accommoda- tion was of the poorest description, and I determined to push on. Entering among the hills, we ascended a valley northwards between terraced and well-cultivated hill-slopes on which wheat and maize blended their gold and green colours. The weather cleared up, and the crow of the pheasant was heard on all sides. "We soon left the main road, which was slippery and bad going, and struck north- west up the hill-slope, over the summit and down into a similar valley in which lies the district city of Ch'ien-yang Hsien, a poor city with loess walls surmounted with a brick crenelated parapet. It does not boast of an official rest- house, and we spent the night in a miserable inn in the south suburb. The branch road across the hills was extremely dangerous in places : at one point, where it made a sharp turn, part of the roadway had fallen down a s^p precipice, leaving only a narrow path. I advised the head muleteer not to attempt the passage with the mule litter; but, after a few minutes' reflection, he decided to risk his two mules, the litter and its contents. He gave a shout to the animals, and they and the litter disappeared from sight. We were in doubt what had happened until, looking round the corner, we discovered they had passed safely and were hugging the inside bank. How they succeeded in rounding the sharp corner we did not see, but all was well. Neither I nor any of my men dared to ride round it. What mules will do is truly marvellous: they succeeded in descending the steep, slippery path that followed the dangerous spot without mishap, and we rejoined the main road -before reaching the bottom of the valley — a wide valley down which flows a stream, the Ch'ien-shui, going south-east.
8o ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
This stream is named after the city of Ch'ien-yang Hsien on its left bank, to reach which we had to ford a couple of rills which joined the main stream from the north-east. The wide, stony beds of these rills gave some indication of their size during the rainy season. This valley, with its excellent water-supply, seemed a favourable spot for the poppy, and this it turned out to be, for I observed 25 patches between the village of Wu-li-p'o, where we entered the Ch'ien-yang district, and the city, a distance of ten miles, and this number, together with 23 observed earlier in the day in the Feng-hsiang district, made up a total of 48 fields, plots and patches, all within easy view of the road.
The fates nearly compelled us to remain a day as well as a night at Ch'ien-yang. I had given orders that we were to be up at four and oiF at five o'clock on the morning of the 22nd June ; but at four it was raining heavily, and my men were as gloomy as the weather, and moving about in a listless way in anticipation that I would call a halt. Ch'ien-yang, however, was unkind in the matter of accommodation and unpleasant bed-fellows, and, for this and other reasons, I was determined to lose no more time, so that when the rain ceased at six o'clock we hurried through the city and pro- ceeded north-west along the east side of the previous day's valley, passing on the way peach, persimmon, walnut, and apple orchards, and fields of yellow wheat and green maize on the terraced hill slopes bounding the valley. The wheat in the valley itself was nearly all harvested and stacked at the farm-houses and cave dwellings which were particularly numerous. The stream flowing down the valley divides up into branches, forming islands, on which the peasants were busy diking and flooding fields for the reception of
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 8i
padi or rice shoots. If the hamlet of Kou-chiao-ho failed to produce a table or even a chair for the morning meal, it made up for its lack of civilization by the number and beauty of its willow trees. There was some rising ground to the north of the hamlet and, to avoid the hill-road, an attempt was made to ford a branch of the Ch'ing-shui and ascend the valley ; but, although our riding-ponies crossed it, wading up to their girths, the mule litter and the pack animals declined to face it, and had to return and take the hill-road. When they joined us later we again found our- selves in difficulties, for the valley was cut up by irrigation canals, and in many places the road was a torrent, rushing from canal to canal. What may please the farmer may be a slough of despond to the traveller or trader, and the con- dition of the ground provoked the vituperation of the muleteers whose vocabulary of abuse, at no time scanty, was liberally hurled at agriculture generally, and farmers in particular. We had breakfast at eight o'clock, and at noon we reached Hsiang-kung-shan, a range of hills jutting into and seeming to block the valley on its eastern side. On one of the summits of the range, a few hundred feet above the road, was a temple whose bell sent its sweet note rolling down the valley almost beguiling us to tarry ; but the sun was hidden by clouds, the day was cool, and we pushed west to round the range, and then north-west to the market-town of T'u-yang- whose inhabitants were consumed with a rest- less curiosity, which was about equally divided between the foreigner with his brown gaiters and boots, and his tall Hi horse. The number of people who passed and repassed the bare room in which I had a meal was astounding : there was no rudeness, only the keenest interest in my move- ments. Seven miles north-west of T'u-yang, after crossing
VOL. I. G
82 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
and recrossing the stream, we entered the department city of Lung Chou, which lies at the southern foot of a low range of hills. A messenger from the magistrate informed me that there was no suitable inn or rest-house within the city, but that he had made arrangements with the native caretaker of the China Inland Mission Station, the pastor, a Swede, being at home on furlough, to accommodate me in the front courtyard buildings which were officially provided with a few chairs and tables nicely draped. I appreciated this attention, for it ensured cleanliness and the chance of a good night's rest.
This valley of 30 miles, from Ch'ien-yang to Lung Chou, was an ideal spot for the poppy, which showed itself with unblushing frequency and effrontery. Well-watered and generally with a rich soil, it was largely taken advantage of for the production of opium. I observed in all 167 fields and patches of poppy — 33 within the Ch'ien-yang and 134 within the Lung Chou district. As the poppy was here the white-flowering variety, it could be readily distin- guished from other growing crops at a distance, and within two miles of Lung Chou I counted 44 fields — not mere plots or patches — whose white petals were nodding at the walls and gates of the city. The most prominent crop on the ground besides the poppy was common hemp [Cannabis sativa), which was in excellent condition and exceedingly promising. During the day we met several mule caravans laden with Kansu drugs packed in baskets of willow twigs, and this reminds me that, in addition to the fruit trees mentioned above, willows of various kinds, poplars, cypresses, and elms were abundant. There was much excitement at the city gate as we entered at six o'clock, and we were escorted to the China Inland Mission Station by the
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 83
magistrate's myrmidons and a fair share of the population. Swift canals flow under the city walls, and native flour- mills were scattered here and there along their banks.
Fine old willow trees lined for several miles the road that led west from the city of Lung Chou ; but they were not the only striking feature of the landscape on the morn- ing of our departure towards the province of Kansu. From the back of my horse I counted within the first three miles 135 fields, plots, and patches of poppy in full bloom, most of it white, with here and there an admixture of red, purple, mauve, and pink and white. After three miles the road passes through more broken country, rounded, well-culti- vated hills being dotted to the west with valleys between. Our way lay west up one of these valleys containing the higher waters of the previous day's stream, which we soon forded, and then entered on a fine plain, to the north of which, in a dip, flows the stream, not to reappear until we had accomplished some thirteen miles, and just beyond the village of Hsien-yi-kuan — regarded as the end of the first day's stage west of Lung Chou. It was a great sur- prise to me that from the city of Lung Chou to the hamlet of T'ou-ch'iao-p'u, which is less than a couple of miles to the west of Hsien-yi-kuan, I was able to count as many as 568 poppy-fields, including patches and plots without and within villages, in valleys, and on terraced hill- slopes ; but the number of large fields on the plain was exceedingly striking, and in the fifteen miles to which I refer I was never out of sight of poppy-fields. One wondered if the magistrate of Lung Chou had ever been called upon to report on the production of opium within his jurisdiction, and, if so, what had been the nature of his reply. Nor must it be forgotten that I am speaking of what
84 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
I personally observed from one road within the department and not of the department as a whole. What the state of the latter must have been could readily be left to the imagination. When His Excellency the Governor of Shensi informed me that the cultivation of the poppy had been reduced from 60 to 80 per cent, throughout the pro- vince during the year, it seems to me incredible that he could have been posted regarding the condition of things in this western part of his province. I counted during the day 569 fields, including plots and patches, the extra one being observed on the descent from the hamlet of T'ou- ch'iao-p'u into a narrow glen where cultivation of all kinds practically ceased. On the Lung Chou plain willow and walnut trees were particularly numerous.
We had accomplished the short stage of thirteen miles by ten o'clock, and, as it would have been waste of time to spend the rest of the day at Hsien-yi-kuan, I suggested to the muleteers that we should proceed after breakfast and do the next stage of 26 miles. No serious objection was raised, and off we started, soon descending into a gorge or glen and crossing by a bridge the stream issuing from it. We had not gone far when rain overtook us. This narrow glen, whose rugged, rocky, bounding hills were enveloped in mist, resembles in many respects the glen we descended from I-chiin to T'ung-kuan Hsien on the 5th June, especially in richness of vegetation. It lacked, however, that wealth of white blossoms which lighted up the other. Here the blossoms had fallen and the plants were seeding ; but the vegetation appeared to me to be richer and more varied than between I-chiin and T'ung-kuan Hsien. We ascended the glen westwards for some six miles when it turned south and brought us, after seven miles and after
HSI-AN FU TO THE FRONTIER OF KANSU 85
crossing and re-crossing it several times, to the poor hamlet of Cho-t'o-p'u, where, drenched and hungry, we took refuge in a hovel whose thatched roof leaked like a sieve. We were all hungry, and men and animals called loudly for food. I had a cup of hot tea from my Isola flask ; but my men pleaded to the lady of the house for something to eat. " Give us eggs," they cried, " and we will willingly pay you four, five, even ten cash apiece for them." But she replied : " I haven't a single egg : I have no hens and I don't lay eggs." This sally was received with the greatest good humour, and even the pitiless rain did not damp the men's hilarity. The road up the glen is a narrow mule track, and after leaving Cho-t'o-p'u it ascends by a series of sharp, steep zigzags the side of a mountain — the Ta- kuan-shan — through birch, oak, and other trees to the grass and flower-clad summit. The track, almost obliter- ated by dripping vegetation, was stony and slippery, and at sharp corners the mules had to be unharnessed from the litter which was with difficulty edged round by muleteers and escort. At other precipitous places the mules stumbled and fell, and employer and employed lost their tempers as they struggled upwards on foot through white drenching clouds. After three hours' work from Cho-t'o-p'u we passed through the clouds to the summit and began the descent on the west side at five o'clock. The descent, at first a wet, slippery stone path on which the mules kept stumbling and falling, was through denser vegetation and a greater variety of trees, with rich undergrowth of ferns and flowers, than on the east side. Gradually we entered a valley, silent but for the notes of a bird or two, and unin- habited but for the presence of a couple of woodcutters' huts far apart, and down we all tramped sombre and sullen,
86 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
for our tempers had been sorely tried by the mishaps of the day, and we were still nursing our resentment. The valley was deserted : a solitary woodcutter towing a small black pig up the mountain-side was the sole warning that we were not the only human beings in this remote western corner of the province of Shensi. At eight o'clock, after fifteen hours on the road, we issued from the valley at the village of Chang-ning-yi, where my men were soon sitting naked round a roaring wood fire piled high in an inn room. The flames from the logs lit up a merry party drying their clothes and satisfying the inner man, and soon all our troubles were forgotten in sleep. We had accomplished two stages, covered close on 40 miles, were within three miles of the Kansu border, and had proved that the culti- vation of the poppy in western Shensi was not the negli- gible quantity which the highest authority in the province had tried to impress upon me.
CHAPTER IV
FROM THE FRONTIER OF KANSU TO THE CAPITAL OF THE
PROVINCE
In the foregoing chapter I stated that at the village of Chang-ning-yi we were within less than three miles of the Kansu border, and, on the morning of the 24th June, our animosities of the previous day having evaporated over night, I proposed to the muleteers that we should endeavour to accomplish two stages, or a distance of 30 miles, and I at the same time promised them a day's rest as soon as decent accommodation could be found. To this they agreed, and we got away at five o'clock ; but we had only just left the village when the eccentricities of one of the mules delayed us for an hour. The offender was the vicious entire mule, who bucked and threw his load three times and ultimately declined to carry it, afraid, no doubt, that the experiences of the previous day were about to be repeated. All attempts to load him proved fruitless ; but with some persuasion he was induced to exchange packs with the donkey, which was grain-bearer for the mules and carried a much lighter load. The donkey, which had stood by during the performances of the mule, brayed loudly at the exchange, and one of the pack-mules which had gone ahead, missing the attentions of his driver, turned back to see the fun and, quietly lying down, threw off his pack. This, however, was easily adjusted, and we started down
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the opening valley westward with the stream which we had followed from its source on the western side of the Ta-kuan-shan. Here was scant tillage : buckwheat, the broad horse bean and maize were met with in occasional clearings, where pheasants were strutting and crowing in large numbers. We soon left this valley and turned north up a second, down which flowed a babbling brook to join the streamlet from the Ta-kuan-shan. Less than three miles from Chang-ning-yi we crossed into the province of Kansu just beyond the hamlet of Ch'a-ch'uan-p'u and breakfasted at the village of P'an-lung-p'u, whose inhabi- tants were unusually inquisitive and annoying in their attentions. During breakfast I discussed with the head muleteer the question of transport and the delay caused by the obstreperous mule. He explained to me that he bought five similar mules at a particular place and at the same time, and that he had disposed of four of them. I suggested that he would do well to dispose of the fifth ; but he remarked that the mule was a strong and excellent beast when on his best behaviour ; while I expressed my opinion that these fits of temper would scarcely repay the loss entailed by smashed boxes and their contents.
Soon after leaving the village we crossed some rising ground, meeting on the summit a caravan of forty mules laden with drugs from Lan-chou, the capital of the province of Kansu. These drugs are sent down by cart to the department city of Ch'in Chou, eight stages from the capital, and there transferred to and thence brought down by pack animals. A gentle descent landed us in a valley full of oats six to eight inches above ground, and a further ascent and descent brought us to a second valley also covered with oats and dotted about with fine willows. At the foot of this
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second valley there was a long village, whence the road again ascended a hill-side and dropped into a third valley with many walnut trees and crops of wheat and maize, as well as oats and flax some ten inches high on the hill-slopes. The general direction of the road is west, and, after another climb and thereafter skirting a mountain-side, we looked down into a deep basin in the bottom of which lies the market- town of Pai-sha-chen, which, although only twenty miles from Chang-ning-yi, is reckoned a day's stage. A steep descent leads from the rim to the bottom of the basin, which, so far as the eye could see, was surrounded on all sides by mountain barriers ; but later acquaintance with it proved that there is an easy outlet on the west side. From the heights Pai-sha-chen seemed an ideal spot ; but, like all Chinese villages, it could not bear close inspection, and its inn accommodation was so dispiriting that I was exceedingly glad that we had arranged to pass it by and spend the night at Ch'ing-shui Hsien, the first district city by this route within the Kansu border and ten miles west of Pai-sha- chen.
The oat referred to was the huskless Chinese oat (Avena sativa^ L.y var. ine7'mis) in which I had taken a deep interest since 1908. In that year, when I was Acting British Com- mercial Attache in China, I happened to read in an English newspaper that it was being experimentally cultivated in Norfolk by Mr. Charles W. Marsters, grower and seedsman of King's Lynn, from seed obtained from China, and I at once took steps to ascertain in what province or provinces this huskless oat was cultivated. Application for samples of Chinese oats was made to the Chinese Board of Agriculture through the Chinese Foreign Ofiice, and it was at the same time explained that what was particularly desired was the
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husk- or hull-less variety. For a time samples of hulled oats reached the British Legation, and it was only after further explanations that natural husk-less grain was received from the north of the province of Shansi. I sowed this naked oat in flower-pots in my room in Peking, and it germinated and grew freely. A box of this seed was forwarded for experi- mental purposes to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in London and distributed among ten Agricultural Colleges in Great Britain. Reports from the latter were not so favourable as Mr. Marsters' successful experiment would have led one to expect, for from the ^6 lbs. of seed which he obtained in 1906 he was able in the season of 1909-10 to dispose of seed for two guineas a bushel. In his catalogue for that season, in which a head of the oat, reduced to one-fourth of the natural size, is figured, Mr. Marsters states, that " one of the distinctive features of this oat is that there are sometimes as many as nine grains on a panicle or bell," and that " the grain thrashes out like wheat ; hence its name, huskless." He adds that " the natural weight of the oat in 1908 was 56 lbs. per Imperial bushel," and that in the sowing only one bushel is required per acre against three bushels for home-grown oats. In a note which accompanied the sample from the north of the province of Shansi it was stated that to prevent mould or mildew the seed is kept moist for 36 hours in samshu or millet {Sorghum vulgare) spirit before sowing. In Kansu no spirit is used : the seed is simply steeped for a short time in warm water. I shall have more to say regarding this huskless oat later. I have also referred to flax as a growing crop, and I may mention that this plant (Linum usitatissimum) is cultivated in China only for the linseed-oil yielded by its seed and not for its fibre. True linen is not made in China, and what passes as
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE CAPITAL 91
linen among Europeans in that country is the finer quality of grass cloth manufactured from the fibres derived from the CJiu Ma or Boehmeria nivea^ also known as Rhea or Ramie. I have likewise heard it applied to the fine cloth made in Southern China from the fibres of the pineapple leaf. But the whole subject of Chinese fibres and their products is very much confused and I hope to deal with it at another time and in another place.
Having refreshed ourselves at Pai-sha-chen we passed through the town and left the basin by a wide opening on the west side leading to a valley or plain bounded by low, well-terraced and cultivated hills which, here and there, throw their bare loess into the plain. Through the opening and down the valley a stream kept us company, nurturing on its way field after field of hemp (^Cannabis satha) whose stems were some four feet in height. During the day crops had been backward : wheat was still green, and maize and hemp were short ; but in this valley, what barley there was was fast ripening, while pits for retting the hemp stems were being repaired in anticipation of the coming harvest. The further west the better were the crops. Willows and poplars were common in the valley, and there were some Sophora trees to the immediate west of Pai-sha-chen. From the latter it took us less than three hours to cover the ten miles to Ch'ing-shui Hsien, a proof that the road was good going. Ch'ing-shui Hsien is a poor district city and, in the absence of an official rest- house, we took up our quarters in an inn in its western part. The muleteers at once came to see whether I would rest for a day ; but when 1 pointed to the miserable mud- floored hovel which I occupied they did not press their proposal.
92 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
As the next stage on our western journey was only 25 miles long, I gave instructions that I was not to be disturbed until five o'clock on the 25 th June ; but the muleteers were all astir at the usual hour of four, overhauling their pack-saddles and harness, and hammering away in the courtyard in front of my room. Such is the force of habit that I, too, was awake although I had retired only at midnight. We were off at six as arranged and, leaving the city by the west gate, turned south-west up the stony bed of a streamlet on its way to join the stream (the Niu-t'ou Ho, a tributary of the Wei) which was our companion from Pai-sha-chen to Ch'ing-shui Hsien the previous day. The bed of the streamlet, which was little more than a trickle, is wide and densely packed with willows and poplars, principally the former. Low hills, green and in some places well terraced, hem in the valley, and loess banks falling from the hills on either side were fairly cultivated with wheat, maize, oats, hemp and flax ; but they were poor crops and backward compared with those we had seen to the east of Ch'ing-shui Hsien. Seven miles brought us to the hamlet of Shao-ch'uan-p'u, which is approached through a narrow pass without room for cultivation, but studded with willow, poplar and walnut trees. Here I breakfasted in a small room abutting on a stone pathway, the only thoroughfare, surrounded by the inhabitants, the female members of whom were badly afflicted with goitre. Later the pass widens and again narrows till the road commences and continues up a precipitous ascent south-west over a rocky path which occasionally presented serious difficulties. In turning one corner, the mule litter had to be unharnessed and carried on men's shoulders up a very rough piece of rock which
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE CAPITAL 93
formed part of the roadway. While this was being mancEUvred rain came down in torrents, and as we rose to broken, hilly country with crops of green barley, oats, peas, broad beans in flower, hemp and maize, the rocky path gave way to loess mud in which our animals had difficulty in keeping their feet. The descent south and south-west on the other side was exceedingly slippery, and we were glad to reach the hamlet of Ts'ao-ch'uan-p'u without broken bones, although we had accomplished only thirteen miles. After our arrival there the rain continued to pour and prevented any attempt at further descent that day, for we had the unanimous assurance of the inhabitants of the hamlet, which lies in a hollow on the mountain slope amid willow and walnut trees, that the descent was much more precipitous and dangerous in the lower than in the higher slopes. For once in a way, this Chinese assurance proved correct, as we found to our cost next day. At Ts'ao- ch'uan-p'u I bought a Chinese pint, which weighed four pounds, of huskless oats, for the sum of 100 cash, or less than one halfpenny per pound ; but, later, I found that I had paid about three times the proper value. In China, however, fixed prices are the exception, and it is only by haggling and bargaining that an approximation to the true value is reached. On this occasion I did not haggle, as I was only too glad to obtain for twopence proof that the cultivation of huskless oats was not confined to the province of Shansi. As a matter of fact, this trifling expenditure led to the discovery that the huskless is the common variety of oat cultivated in Kansu, and in the north-western provinces of China generally, and that oatmeal enters largely into the diet of the population, whose principal food-stuff is wheat- flour cooked and baked in various ways. As in Manchuria
94 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
and North China, rice is a luxury to the peasantry of the north-west.
Kansu, and especially its capital, Lanchou Fu, is famed for the excellent flavour of its tobacco, more particularly for its shredded leaf, which resembles shag, and is known as "water tobacco," prepared for smoking in the Chinese hookah or water-pipe. In manufacturing this tobacco, the whole leaves are first spread out separately in open-work bamboo screens and exposed to the sun for several days. They are then transferred in bulk to larger screens and tightly bound for a like period, after which they are removed and the stalks and coarser veins extracted by hand. They are then spread in layers in square wooden boxes some six inches deep with the addition of rape oil between the layers. When a box is full, a wooden lid is placed on the top and weighted with stones, and, in a couple of days, when the superfluous oil has been expressed, the contents are cut up into slices about two inches wide. The slices are thereafter placed in presses for from four to six days, till sufficiently hard to be planed into shreds — the " water tobacco " ready for use, A pinch of this tobacco is filled into the head of a short, removable metal cylinder — the whole pipe is usually made of copper — and, when it is lit, the smoke from it passes down into the bowl which is full of water and thence up into the mouth through a long stem. The cylinder, in the interior of which cross metal wires are adjusted not far from the top to prevent residue tobacco and ashes from falling into the water, is inserted in an orifice in the fixed lid of the bowl, and, when the pipeful is finished, it is drawn out and the ashes removed by blowing through the lower end. In most hookahs there is a receptacle or pouch for tobacco alongside the bowl and forming part of the pipe, as one fill
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE CAPITAL 95
is sufficient for only two or three " draws," and the pipe has to be constantly refilled. This tobacco is distributed all over China and, for export from Kansu, it is packed for convenience of transport in wooden boxes which are care- fully waterproofed with oiled paper to prevent injury by rain. On nearing Ts'ao-ch'uan-p'u we met several caravans of this tobacco and of drugs on their way from Lan-chou Fu to Hsi-an Fu.
The night of the 25th June, which we spent at Ts'ao- ch'uan-p'u, was so cold that we found a charcoal fire in the brick bed, with its concealed, radiating flues, exceedingly comforting. Everybody was astir before four o'clock in the morning, and half an hour later we were off to tackle the precipitous descent to the valley of our old acquaint- ance, the Wei River. Once out of the hollow in which Ts'ao-ch'uan-p'u lies, the road runs south and south-west, sometimes along the face of loess hills, and at other times along ridges between deep valleys well cultivated and wooded. The country was much broken up, and similar to those rounded loess mountains through and over which we had travelled in Northern Shansi. There was, however, this difference : cultivation was carried to greater perfec- tion in the Kansu loess, and the crops were more varied. In Shansi wheat and barley predominated, whereas in Kansu oats, peas, flax, buckwheat, and maize were additional crops. At last, from a ridge, I sighted the Wei River in a deep valley, and then commenced the steep, precipitous descent which proved to be no mere Chinese fable, such as the traveller has so often to listen to, and so frequently dis- count. It was a reality ; and it was a much-bemudded caravan that dropped Into the valley at eight o'clock. Several accidents occurred on the way down : the pack-mules
96 ON THE TRAIL OF THE OPIUM POPPY
slid and tumbled about on the sticky mud, and, at one point, the front mule in the litter slid away, leaving litter and rear mule behind. But these were trifles, for, had the rain continued, the descent would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. Where we struck the valley of the Wei the river flows north-east. Here it con- tains numerous mud islands, given up to padi (rice), which was also being cultivated along the edge of the plain run- ning along the left bank of the river to the foot of the loess hills we had just descended. This plain is of no great size, for it is soon hemmed in by a ridge that drops down to the left bank of the river, and marks the position of the ferry. It was a striking contrast to the mountains we had just left. The grains were already harvested ; cotton plants were a foot above ground ; hemp, if small in quantity, was a thriving crop ; and maize, with its long, shiny leaves, was exceedingly healthy in appearance. The grain-bearing fields had already been ploughed, and laid under other crops. But what was more striking was the great profusion of willows, of every shade of green, according to their age, and the numerous persimmon and pear orchards. The river twines about in the valley, and we had to go north for some distance to reach the ferry, where two boats were plying. Here sand-banks jut into the river from the right bank, and contract it to about 150 yards in width. The current was sluggish, and could be forded by those unen- cumbered with packs, and four men crossed it while we were loading up the boats, the water rising in some places above their waists. The river was fairly deep under the right bank, and one of our ponies, instead of jumping from the boat on to the bank, managed, in his haste, to fall between boat and bank and disappear, saddle and all, for a brief
Copyright,] \Sce page 94.
12. PUBLIC WATER TOBACCO PIPE WITH CUSTOMER.
[7oface p. 96.
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE CAPITAL 97
minute. There was no damage done, except a wet seat for the cook during the rest of the day. If the small plain along the left bank of the Wei was fruitful, much more so was the wide valley to the west, which we ascended on leaving the ferry. Bounded by terraced hills, and watered by a stream flowing east, and by rills issuing from gaps in the hills to the south, it was well cultivated with peas in flower and in pod, broad beans (^Vicia Fahd) in bloom, cotton, hemp, tobacco, capsicum, indigo, and, in the upper reaches of the stream, padi. There were also some melon fields. The grain harvest had already been reaped. There were, in addition, immense persimmon orchards, varied with peach, pear, and plum gardens, while magnificent specimens of willow, and not a few poplars and cypresses, were dotted along the valley.
From the Wei River we followed an excellent, broad road, between lines of willows, to the department city of Ch'in Chou, and on the way I observed poppy blooms in 28 separate fields ; but I was convinced that they were the result of stray seeds that had found their way into the ground with the seeds of other crops. I have it, however, on the authority of a British lady missionary resident at Ch'in Chou, that the plain lying along the left bank of the Wei was in 1909 entirely given up to the cultivation of the poppy, that it was similarly planted out in 19 10, but that in the latter year farmers were compelled to plough up the plants with their own ploughs, fortunately in time for them to sow other crops.
Ch'in Chou is a city of some commercial importance : it is the meeting-ground of roads from Szechuan and Shensi, and it is connected with Lan-chou Fu, the capital of
VOL. I. H
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Kansu, by a road up the valley of the Wei, which I fol- lowed, and also by a direct mule-path or trail. Down the former medicines, tobacco, and other produce are trans- ported by cart from Lan-chou to Ch'in Chou, whence they are distributed by pack-mules. I walked freely about the town without being the object of special attention, and visited the China Inland Mission Station, where I had hoped to meet Mr. Harding, who has an intimate knowledge of the department and of the adjoining districts ; but he was unfortunately absent, visiting out-stations, and, although expected back daily, his exact whereabouts were unknown to his family. I waited till i p.m. on the 27th June in the hope that he would return ; but at that hour my caravan filed out of the west gate of Ch'in Chou, and soon struck the left bank of the stream we had crossed before entering the city the previous day. The main branch of the stream lies further south, and the waters of the smaller branch were being drawn off to flood plots of land, some already planted out, others in course of preparation for the padi shoots. Soon, however, we crossed to the right bank and gained higher ground sloping down from hills which bounded the valley on the south side. We followed this bank for fifteen miles over a good broad road, passed fields of maize, millet {Sorghum vu/gare), melons of various kinds, hemp, flax, beans, tobacco, cotton, peas, and one of th,e smaller millets {Setaria italica). The grain crops were nearly all harvested. In about a dozen fields of peas I noticed scattered poppy blooms — the produce of stray seeds or the relics of demolished poppy-fields. At any rate, no attempt was being made to extract opium from the capsules from which the petals had fallen, and 1 did not consider that these poppies were being cultivated for the production
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE CAPITAL 99
of opium. There were several persimmon and pear orchards in the valley, the willow abounded, there were a few scat- tered poplars, and here and there cypresses were dotted about extensive graveyards — relics, no doubt, of the Moham- medan rebellion. Further west whole families were in the fields reaping wheat and barley, the women on their knees assisting in the cutting, for In this part of China women have feet so small and so tightly bound that they are unable to stand at work. I had previously seen them on their knees hoeing In the maize-fields. At the end of fifteen miles we recrossed the valley, and soon entered a narrow gully, stony and almost uncultivated ; but higher up there were the usual crops. Having accomplished twenty miles during the day, we put up for the night at the miserable hamlet of LIu-shlh-li-p'u, with little or no accommo- dation of any kind, and with no one Inn large enough for my caravan. The Inn In which I stayed did not boast a name, showing its insignificance and that of the hamlet.
Off from Liu-shlh-li-p'u at five o'clock we found the valley which we had ascended the previous day almost entirely blocked by a range of hills jutting Into it from the south. Rounding the range by an opening to the north- west, whence Issues the stream, we entered a valley unculti- vated except for a few flooded padi plots and bounded by precipitous loess hills. Gradually it opened out and gave room for the usual crops with the addition of some fields of the oil-yielding plant, Perilla ocymoides^ and flax now showing its pretty five-petalled blue flower. In this valley, which is well timbered with willow, poplar, elm and walnut, but broken and stony in places where mountain torrents from gaps In the hills to the south-west carry down and
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deposit broadcast stone and rubble, we came upon ten carts laden with boxes of water-pipe tobacco from Lan-chou. Each cart had a team of three animals. Our first stopping- place was the considerable village of Kuan-tzu-chen, where the serious work of the day — -the ascent and descent of the Hsieh-chia-shan — began. The ascent was fairly steep, but the descent can only be described as not merely precipitous but dangerous. Once up, there is flat going here and tliere, and the valleys on both sides of the road are terraced and well cultivated ; but this ends all too soon and down goes the road, north-west and north, with innumerable twists, windings and zigzags. Some have seen and many may have heard of the " Devil's Elbow " which lies between Braemar in Aberdeenshire and Blairgowrie in Perthshire, while many motorists have experienced con- siderable difficulty in negotiating it ; but if a score of " Devil's Elbows " were thrown into an almost perpen- dicular descent, some idea might be obtained of the western face of the Hsieh-chia-shan. And yet travellers, Chinese and foreigner, talk glibly of the great cart roads of the province of Kansu. Carts certainly manipulate this road ; but they do it in company, and each cart is dragged up separately by its own team, assisted by the teams of all the others. Thus it is that traffic is carried on by this route. The road ultimately descends into a gorge cooped up by precipitous loess hills, leaving room for the stony bed of a mountain rill. Later the willow puts in an appearance and ultimately a few mud huts find a footing, followed by patches of land which the rill is diverted to irrigate. Gradually the hill-sides are terraced, and it was interesting to observe a patch of poppy in full white bloom nodding to us from the heights, while beyond was another plot on a
FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE CAPITAL loi
level with the roadway. The gorge ends at a temple called the Lung-wang-miao (" Temple of the Dragon Prince "), two-thirds of a mile from the district city of Fu-ch'iang Hsien, and the road then drops down to a plain, and, skirt- ing a couple of considerable graveyards, runs to the city which we entered by the west gate, for the south gate is small and low, and the traffic of the city passes through the former. Our record for the day was twenty miles, and we arrived at noon, leaving me ample time to visit the station of the China Inland Mission where I received every hospi- tality and kindness, and was able to replenish my exhausted stores. I noticed during the day three fields of poppy within the department of Ch'in Chou close to the border of the district of Fu-ch'iang Hsien and 84 within that district itself — a total of 87 ; but according to Mr. Mann of the China Inland Mission much more poppy was sown in 19 10 than in 1909, and he told me that, until a month or two previous to my visit, the Magistrate of Fu-ch'iang Hsien held merely an acting appointment, and as his term of office was about to expire he had done nothing to stop cultivation. When the new incumbent arrived, he found the poppy some two feet in height, and it was only when the Prefect of Kung-ch'ang Fu, within whose jurisdiction Fu-ch'iang lies, was sent on a tour of inspection, that any steps were taken to deal with it. As soon as it leaked out that the Prefect was coming, farmers ploughed up the poppy fields lying along the high road ; but, contrary to expectation, he came by a small road, and there and elsewhere in the district he visited, caused crops to be destroyed. I had seen evidence of this before descending the Hsieh-chia- shan ; but at a distance from the road white poppy-fields were clearly discernible. Mr. Mann expressed the opinion
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that, had the magistrate shown firmness, the farmers would have given way, and he instanced the case of the T'ung-wei district to the north of Fu-ch'iang, whose magistrate, with- out leaving his official residence, was able to clear his jurisdiction of the poppy. His method was simple. He summoned the headmen of the places where the poppy had been sown, cangued them, and sent word to the places concerned, that unless poppy plants were uprooted by a certain date, it would be his painful duty to beat their headmen. The threat was sufficient and the poppy was destroyed. The district of Ch'in-an to the north-east of Fu-ch'iang was, according to Mr. Mann, reported to be clear of the poppy, and the districts of Ning-ylian and Lung-hsi to the west and north were supposed to be clear ; but I take nothing for granted, and, as my way lay through these western districts, I was able to judge for myself as to the accuracy of these reports.
The Fu-ch'iang district had always been a great centre for the production and distribution of opium, and in the city itself there was at the time of my visit an office called the T'u-yao Chii or Opium Bureau where all opium (native, of course) was officially weighed, and where all purchases and sales of the drug were effected. It levied a tax of about 300 taels (about ^^y^ on every mule-load of opium, amounting to about 240 catties or 320 lbs. The officer in charge of the Bureau held his appointment from the provincial capital, and was responsible to the High Authorities for the sums collected. Little silver had come to the city to purchase opium in 19 10 as compared with other years : silver was scarce and had appreciated in value from 100 to 200 cash per tael. There were no public opium smoking divans in the city ; but every shop might be considered a divan, and
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opium prepared for smoking might be purchased by any one who had the money to buy.
Fu-ch'iang Hsien is famed for the manufacture of woollen mittens, gloves and leg binders, which are exported to neighbouring provinces in large quantities. The yarn is spun on the spot, and the weaving done with wooden knitting needles. It was lately proposed to put a tax on this industry ; but the women rose in their might, stormed the magistrate's official residence, and the proposal was dropped. So busy are the women, said Mr. Mann, that they give this as their reason for non-attendance at service on Sundays. There is another industry connected more with the district than with the city itself, and that is the manufacture of straw hats from wheat straw. Hats were hung outside every doorway by the roadside for sale, and they, as well as straw sandals, seemed to occupy the attention of almost every household.
The room I occupied in the inn at Fu-ch'iang was a regular nest of vermin : I was exactly four hours in bed and suffered torment during that brief period. It is a mystery to me how it is that Chinese bugs, in spite of every precaution, find no difficulty in attacking their victims, and that with the least possible delay. My groom had warned me what to expect, for constant experience has taught the Chinese to predict from the walls of a room whether these pests are numerous or otherwise. We got away at six o'clock, and had not left the west gate of the city many minutes when we came upon patches of poppy in full bloom, and the record for the day between the cities of Fu-ch'iang Hsien and Ning-yiian Hsien, a distance of some 33 miles, was 283 fields, patches, and plots of poppy, a
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record which, owing to the action of the Prefect of Kung- ch'ang, was not anticipated. I certainly observed mutilated crops, but much remained, and the plants were in full bloom. Of these 283 fields, 224 were within the Fu-ch'- iang district, and 59 within the district of Ning-ylian, which was supposed by Mr. Mann to be clear of poppy. In reading these figures it should always be borne in mind that they represent what any observant traveller could see from the road, and do not cover the total amount of culti- vation within these districts, which must have been enor- mous. They are merely an indication of what was no doubt taking place at a distance from the road, and, there- fore, far more likely to escape detection.
Our road lay west along the south side of the valley of the Wei till little but the river bed, hemmed in as it is by precipitous conglomerate cliffs, remained. Under these cliffs we forded a branch of the river, and beyond, where the valley opens out, we found men wading up to the hips preparing plots of land for the reception of padi shoots. Of the crops, wheat and barley were green and backward, but hemp and potatoes were in flower. Other crops were maize, millet, melons, and cucumbers, the last selling at two to three cash a piece according to size, that is from 140 to 200 a shilling. The valley was densely wooded with willow, elm, walnut, poplar, and beautiful cone-shaped cypresses. The Sophora japonica was common in the villages. On leaving Lo-men, or Lo-shan-chen as it is also called, a village 23 miles west of Fu-ch'iang Hsien, we followed the road up rising ground to the city of Ning-yiian Hsien, where we put up for the night in an inn situated in its western suburb. Here I met with an imposing reception. A mounted messenger from the magistrate met me with
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the latter's card some distance from the city and, in his master's name, bade me welcome, while, a little further on the road, about a dozen armed soldiers accompanied by two trumpeters awaited me and, heading the caravan, escorted me through and outside the city to my inn. The trumpets rang out from time to time, but the display was marred by heavy rain, for five miles from the city we were overtaken by a thunderstorm which continued well into the night. As we approached the city we were lucky enough to be able to ford two watercourses in which torrents from the hills to the south were momentarily growing, but my escorting officer, who had taken to a cart, was some distance behind, and he had to wait for hours till they had subsided. In spite of the rain an enormous crowd awaited our arrival at the east gate of the city. On the opposite bank of the river from the city were lines of beautiful pollard willows backed by rows of fine poplars. Reports had led me to believe that Kansu was a treeless province, but, so far as this part is concerned, the reverse is the case. Travellers are too apt to generalize from limited observation and this leads to unfortunate results. I told my cook to leave my bread-making oven at Hsi-an Fu as, there being no trees in Kansu, it would be impossible to procure charcoal ; but no sooner had we crossed the Shensi border into Kansu than charcoal was abundant. The fact is, we know so little about China that we are apt to make serious blunders. Another instance will suffice. We have been saying for several years that China's new copper coinage has brought ruin to the whole country, whereas it has not even pene- trated into the provinces of Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu, where the old copper cash still reigns.
An incident, trifling in itself but showing the difficulties
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one has occasionally to contend with in an immense country like China, occurred during the day. When we left Fu-ch'- iang Hsien, one of the local escort, evidently a man off the streets, began to make up to the muleteer in charge of the litter. He hovered round the front mule and the muleteer addressed him : " You are one of the escort, aren't you ? " The man replied in some unintelligible jargon, and the muleteer tried him again : " What is the name of the place at which we stop to-night ? " The man appeared not to understand the question and I replied for him, " Ning-yiian Hsien." The muleteer thereupon said to himself : "This is very funny. I understand all my foreign employer says ; but I do not understand what this man, a countryman of my own, says to me, nor does he understand me." He was passed on to the second muleteer after a long silence ; but the latter was equally unfortunate. Nothing daunted, however, the man took refuge in song and kept on singing nearly the whole of the day. When will China possess a language which will be intelligible to the whole Chinese race?
The escort with the trumpeters accompanied me next morning for a mile outside Ning-ylian Hsien. The weather had changed for the better : there was a perfect blue sky, and it was actually chilly. The road clings to the south side of the Wei River valley, which we ascended till blocked by a range of hills from the south, leaving only a narrow footpath impossible for pack animals. A precipitous ascent and descent of this range brought us to the village of Kuang- ling-p'o, and another two miles to the village of Yuan-yang- p'u, where we forded in a north-west direction three forks of a stream called the Nan Ho coming from the south and on its way to join the Wei River. A few hundred yards
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beyond, we forded the Wei itself, its two branches containing less water than its tributary. The road then followed the left bank of the river which, owing to stony ground, was only moderately cultivated. Soon cultivation entirely ceased and the road ran up a hill-side covered with scrub, whence the chirping of cicadae announced that the day was getting hot. On the other side of the hill we were again in the river valley fairly cultivated ; but we had again to ford the river to the right bank and to follow the valley till it opened out into a plain bounded by green, terraced and cultivated hills some miles apart. The road led over this plain north-west and north to the prefectural city of Kung-ch'ang Fu, lying between the end of a range of hills dropping into the plain from the south-east and hills to the north-east. The dis- tance from Ning-ytian Hsien to Kung-ch'ang Fu, with its district city of Lung-hsi Hsien, is reckoned as 30 miles ; but the mile on the flat was exceedingly long and tiresome, and we did not reach the end of the day's stage till seven o'clock. Ten miles from Kung-ch'ang Fu the muleteers made up their minds that they had had enough for the day and, although I rested an hour for lunch/they declared that they had not had their meal. I told them, however, that they had had ample time to eat and that, meal or no meal, we must go on. This we did amid much grumbling ; but authority had to be maintained. The grumbling continued all the way to Kung-ch'ang Fu, and in the evening I had the men up and told them that if any one was entitled to speak of hardships it was myself, a foreigner in their country, who had not seen a wooden floor since leaving T'ai-yiian Fu, who was living nightly in filthy and vermin-infested rooms, and who, owing to late arrival at the end of each day's stage, had to put up with at the most four or five
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hours' sleep, while they were^ifree to turn in till four o'clock every morning as soon as they had disposed of their even- ing meal and fed their animals. They replied that the mules were exhausted at the end of each day, and this I believed to be the case ; but it was utterly impossible to travel the whole day and every day from daylight to dark, and they promised to accelerate their speed in future.
Villages were more numerous during the day, and some of them were of considerable size, but they all looked poor and squalid. In Europe their inhabitants would be described as living in abject poverty ; but poverty is a comparative condition, and I am not sure that these people are not happy enough with their dirt, their vermin and their rags. As a matter of fact, the boys had the best of it, for they wore no clothes. The ludicrous part of it was this that, in spite of these sordid, mouldering villages, insanitary to the last degree from a European point of view, children swarmed on the streets. Their ragged parents sat at their doors, the men unshaved for many days, and the women with their hair done up in a knot at the top, or with a horse-hair cushion shaped like the sole of a shoe affixed at the back and projecting over the top of the head. Frequently the whole of the hair was enclosed in a conical cap, black as a rule, but occasionally red. I have often been teased by my friends and by newspaper critics regarding my pre- dilection for referring in my reports of travel to the attrac- tions of the fair sex in different parts of China ; but I am sure I will be exonerated so far as these north-western pro- vinces are concerned, for I have never seen less attractive or, figuratively speaking, heavier ladies than the women of Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu. To see them searching each other's heads for vermin in the open streets, unabashed by
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the presence of passing strangers was, to say the least of it, disgusting.
The crops on the ground were much the same as before : green wheat and barley in about equal proportions : maize millet [Sorghum vulgare and Setaria //^/zV(^), peas, beans {Vicia Faba)^ and flax and potatoes both in flower. The country was exceedingly well wooded with willow, elm, poplar, peach, cherry, and walnut. We met mule loads of paper and salt in bags from the west. Nine patches of poppy were observed during the day, four within the Ning-ylian and five within the Lung-hsi district ; but with one exception, the poppies were well mixed with barley, peas or potatoes. They were not, however, the result of stray seeds, and barley was the favourite crop for purposes of concealment.
We spent the night of the 30th June in an Inn in the west suburb of the city of Kung-ch'ang Fu, having passed through the town from east to west. Next morning we proceeded north for a short distance, the road cutting its way through a bare loess ridge which divides the plain to the west into two parts. Down the eastern part flows a brook to join the Wei ; but our road lay along the right bank of the main river which spread over a wide stony bed with grassy flats on which herds of sheep, cattle, ponies, donkeys, and goats were grazing. On the low loess cliff's along the left bank there was cultivation and timber ; but along the right bank there was neither till a valley opened out and the river was confined to its narrow bed. Then reappeared considerable fields with the usual crops which, however, were backward compared with those we had recently seen. Not a poppy stem nor a poppy flower was observed during the day. With the exception of the road,
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which was lined with willows and sometimes elms and poplars, the valley was not well-timbered until the city of Wel-yiian Hsien, from which the Wei River derives its name, was neared, when there seemed to be a superabun- dance of these three kinds of trees. Double, treble rows lined the roadway, and they were so dense in the valley itself as almost to hide the city walls from view. On the right bank of the river, which flows under the city wall,