Chapter XIV: Along the Great Yang-Tze Kiang

China is so large a country that what is true in the north is often not true at all in the south, nor perhaps even in what is called Central China, the basin of the Yang-tze Kiang. This “Son of the Sea,” as its name means in English, cuts China in two much as the Mississippi does the United States. But instead of flowing from north to south, it flows from west to east. Rising among the lofty mountain ranges of Tibet, it runs clear across China proper to the Pacific Ocean. It is more than three thousand miles long, considerably longer than the Mississippi, and with its many branches it drains fully as much territory as our own greatest river.

Yet though most foreigners think so, the Yang-tze does not exactly divide northern from southern China. The real dividing-line is farther north, about at the thirty-fourth parallel of latitude. In crossing that invisible line on our way south by railway, either from Peking to Shanghai or from Peking to Hankow, six hundred miles up the Yang-tze, we shall see an almost sudden change in the life and realize how much difference is made by climate. There will be no more camels; no more “Peking carts” bumping along on wheels having sharpened spikes for tires; no more wide roads. We shall see narrow trails winding through the rice fields, wide enough only for men on foot or for wheelbarrows.

Plowing a rice field is not exactly fun for the man, but the water
buffalo seems to enjoy the muddy, flooded field.
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Coolies and Rice Fields

Even the most important “roads” of southern China are seldom more than two and a half or three feet wide, though often they are paved for hundreds of miles with broad slabs of stone. The carrier-coolie, usually with his load at the two ends of a springy pole, carried over the shoulder, is the chief beast of burden throughout southern China. I have had coolies tell me that this is an easy way to carry heavy loads because, since the load bounces up and down as they trot, they really feel the weight only half the time! At any rate, they become so used to carrying things that way that if they have load enough for only one end of the pole they put a stone, or perhaps a little boy or girl in a basket, at the other end. Often it is easier for a Chinese to carry two of his small children than one, especially if he has twins!

Men in China are so used to carrying everything hung by long cords
from the ends of a pole that they often take the baby to balance
some other load. Or, if they have twins to take for a ride, it is
very easy to carry them in this way.
]

Instead of the _kaoliang_ and millet and wheat of northern China we now find rice growing everywhere. Along with the flooded rice fields comes the water-buffalo, the _carabao_ of the Philippines. He loves to wallow in places where rice grows, only his eyes and nostrils above the surface of the water. Though the line between northern and southern China is not marked on a map, it is so distinct that I know places where wheat grows in one field and rice in the next one.

The boys, and some of the girls, in southern China ride the water
buffaloes to keep them out of the rice fields while grazing along
the dikes. A Chinese boy learns to sleep soundly stretched out on
the animal’s back, but it is hard to see how he can do that and be
really “on the job” too.
]

Shanghai

Most people who visit China land at Shanghai and perhaps think of that as the most important Chinese city. This is not true, although it is the most important “foreign” city in China. In the International Settlement or the French Concession you can almost imagine yourself in some big American city; and it is the foreigners rather than the Chinese who rule it. Yet there is a big Chinese part of Shanghai also, an old city that was once walled, where things are much the same as they are a thousand miles from any foreign concession. At the end of the electric car lines built for the foreign sections, passengers often transfer to wheelbarrows which bounce them away over roads almost as bad as those in the far interior. As a port, Shanghai leads all other cities of the Far East.

In many ways, Shanghai is a very up-to-date, modern Western city, but,
as appears here, men still do much of the work that horses or trucks
would do in our country.
]

Shanghai is not on the Yang-tze, but on a branch of it called the Whangpoa. Yet all the big steamers going up the “Son of the Sea” start from there. Many of these steamers are British or American or Japanese; indeed, one of the complaints of the Chinese against foreigners is that they were forced to make a treaty allowing anyone to use their great river. The United States does not allow foreign boats to carry freight or passengers on the Mississippi, you know, or even between the ports on our coasts.

This is a scheme that beats the “daily dozen.” Boatmen around
Shaohsing, which is across Hanchow Bay from Shanghai, row with their
feet and paddle with their hands, at the same time. They can keep
this up for twenty-four hours at a stretch.
]

Important Cities

Two cities we must not fail to see before we go farther inland are Soochow and Hangchow. Both of them are on the Grand Canal, though not exactly on the Yang-tze itself. They are famous old cities with many canals and queer high-arched stone bridges, and the Chinese have a saying that they are the most beautiful places outside of heaven. I doubt, however, whether you would think them so very beautiful, and I am sure you would not find them clean enough to be called heavenly.

The Grand Canal, by which the people of southern China sent their taxes in rice to Peking for hundreds of years, crosses the Yang-tze at a pretty place called Chinkiang. The canal goes on northward and the river takes us to the west. Almost at the junction is the famous old city of Nanking. Its name means “southern capital,” as Peking means “northern capital.” But though it has been the capital of China at various times during the past two thousand years, like several other cities, it is now only the capital of a province. If it filled all the space inside its great wall, it would be one of the largest cities on earth. But it was almost destroyed several times during various wars, especially in the war against the Taiping rebels, about the time of our Civil War. We rode for miles through hilly country even after entering the city gate, and found Nanking itself down in the southern end of the inclosure—much as if it were a peck of potatoes left in a two-bushel sack.

We can travel to Nanking from Shanghai either by railroad, in about five hours, or by steamer. On the river we shall pass modern cotton-mills and other proofs that China may in time become a great industrial nation of factories, like Japan or the United States. But as we travel farther we shall discover that the great mass of the Chinese still work in little groups, often in their own houses, and that they are still in the family stage of industrial development, just as Western peoples were once—and not so long ago, either, as world history is measured.

A “street” of Shaohsing which, like many cities of southern China,
somewhat resembles Venice in having many canals. These
water-streets, if not so beautiful as those of the Italian city, are
certainly picturesque.
]

On Up the “Son of the Sea”

As we plow on up the Yang-tze, so wide that sometimes we can see only one of its low flat banks at a time, we do not wonder that the Chinese named it “Son of the Sea.” Besides the big foreign steamers, as comfortable as those crossing the Pacific, there are thousands of native craft. Sometimes a hundred sails are in sight at once; near at hand we see that they have ribs of bamboo which remind us of the lines on a sheet of writing-paper. Many of the boats or junks have an eye painted on each side of the bow, usually protruding like the eyes of a fish. The Chinese think that a boat needs to see its way just as a man or an animal does.

There are many smaller boats also on the Yang-tze. Some are what we call _sampans_, which in Chinese means “three boards,” and that is about all some of them are. The fishing boats crawl along the shores and sometimes go far out into the stream. Some are rowed by an old man or woman, or even by a boy or two, while at the bow stands a stronger man with what looks like a huge pair of scissors made of bamboo. He thrusts the crosspieces and attached net down to the bottom, closes the “scissors,” and draws them in again. If he catches a fish, or anything else good to eat, he dumps it into the boat. Generally he catches nothing, but he goes right on working as fast as he can without really hurrying. As I have said before, the Chinese think it undignified to hurry. Along some of the canals of China we shall find men lifting weeds and slime off the bottom with these scissor-like implements; nothing is wasted in China, and the stuff collected makes good fertilizer.

Thousands of Chinese cloth weavers work in little dens like this.
Often they eat at their loom, and sleep on a board or mat underneath
the crude wooden machine. Yet these workmen do not seem to think
their lot a hard one.
]

The more common form of fishing-boat along the Yang-tze and in many other parts of China is a raft, usually anchored at the shore. A little hut made of grass and reeds shelters the fisherman, and a long square dip-net, much like the one we sometimes use, held open with a bent bamboo fastened to each of its corners, is balanced at the end of a long pole. Now and then the fisherman pulls up the net by hauling the inboard end of the pole down to him in his hut. Even such nets do not seem to catch many fish, but no people have more fisherman patience than the Chinese. They even fish in little ponds about the towns, and fix rows of poles so as to spoil the net of anyone who tries to catch their fish at night.

Silk thread hung out in a yard to dry before being woven into cloth.
The making of silk is one of the most important industries of China,
but it is nearly always a home-and-family, rather than a factory,
industry.
]

Several times we saw big flocks of ducks being driven across the river. Two men in small boats each had a long pole with a lash on its end. They hit the water with the lashes to make the ducks go the way they wished. I have seen hundreds of these duck-herders driving their flocks over hills and through swamps and rice fields looking for feeding grounds, or bringing them home again at night.

Living on the Water

Even beggars have boats on the Yang-tze. Some, in miserable “three boards,” paddle up close when travelers stop, and beg for the rice that has been left over from the last meal. If they see a stick of wood in the river, or anything else they can possibly use as fuel or food or for any other purpose, they hurry after it and fish it out. Some of these beggar-boats make one think of big washtubs, and nearly all contain whole families, the children lying about on bundles of rags that serve as bedding. More than once I saw a man in a tub hardly as large as those we use on wash-day, paddling himself about with two pieces of board smaller than tennis-rackets. In ponds about Nanking and along the Yang-tze a man or woman, or a child, sometimes goes out in one of these tubs to pull up water-chestnuts from the bottom. The Chinese eat these, as they do almost anything, although from them, the missionary doctors say, comes one of the worst native diseases.

The Chinese never really row a boat. Sometimes a dozen or more men stand at the front, facing forward, and push at long oars. But the more common way is to scull, just as the gondolier of Venice does, with a single oar sticking out behind, its inboard end fastened to the deck with a piece of rope. All over southern China there are families that have no other home but their boat. They are born, grow up, marry, and die on boats. Most of them have an altar to their ancestors taking up the best part of their floating home. The women handle a boat just as well as the men do, and baby sleeps serenely on mother’s back while she sculls.

The duck herder, driving his flock to a place where they can pick up
food, is a very common sight in China.
]

There are a number of large cities along the Yang-tze, but the big foreign steamers dock at only a few of them. At other places, such as Anking, capital of the province of Anhwei, passengers landing have to jump into small boats sculled out from the shore. Those who wish to board the steamer scramble, somehow, with many shrieks, onto the lower deck. Often baggage is lost in the confusion, and sometimes passengers are drowned.

The Ever-present Pagoda

Outside its walls Anking has a pagoda that looks quite new, but like nearly all pagodas in China it is about a thousand years old. A pagoda is supposed to protect a town from evil spirits, and sometimes it has another use, as is the case with that at Anking. The Chinese imagine that this city is a boat, and think that its _two_ pagodas keep it anchored. The second pagoda is only the shadow thrown across the river by the real one at sunrise. Now, unless they wish to float away and live somewhere else, you would think that the people of a town that is a boat would be careful to keep repaired the pagoda that serves it as anchor. But the people of Anking either thought they would be better off somewhere else or they grew very careless. They allowed their pagoda to fall almost into ruin. Finally a rich Chinese rebuilt it, in gratitude for having been kept from sailing on a steamer that sank during the voyage he had planned to make on it.

Not far from Anking is a sacred mountain called the Chio Hwa Shan, or Nine Flowery Mountains, because of the strange form of its peaks. I climbed to the cluster of temples and monasteries at the top, along with hundreds of pilgrims. But as we shall climb even more famous sacred mountains before we leave China I shall not take time to tell you much about this one. Kiukiang, the next important city above Anking, is partly a concession belonging to foreigners, like Nanking and Wuhu. From the river the walled city of Kiukiang along the bank looks very picturesque, but when we land we find only the foreign part of it clean enough for an enjoyable walk.

Triplet Cities

Higher still, six hundred miles up the river, are the triplet cities of Hankow, Hanyang, and Wuchang. Together they have nearly as large a population as Chicago. Hankow is a foreign concession, with some six- or eight-story buildings, modern streets, and a wonderful foreign club with everything from golf to cricket, from horse-racing to swimming-pools, where the many foreign residents come in the afternoon and evening to hear band concerts and enjoy themselves even more than most of them could at home. Just across a creek with hundreds of native boats on it are the great steel mills of Hanyang. The Japanese have a strong influence in the control of these mills as they loaned money to build them. Across the Yang-tze is Wuchang, a big Chinese city and capital of an important province. Here began the revolution of 1911 that drove the Manchu emperor off the throne at Peking and gave China the name of a Republic.

Foreign and Chinese steamers go on up the “Son of the Sea” a thousand miles more, but they are smaller steamers than those between Hankow and Shanghai. That part of the great river is often beautiful and much more interesting than the wide lower Yang-tze with its flat shores. We shall see it when we come down from far western China at the end of our Chinese travels. Now we will return to Kiukiang and climb to Kuling, a foreign city. Here my family and I spent the summer with more than three thousand other foreigners. There were at least twenty different nationalities in that foreign community, and China has no more to say about governing it than it has about governing Kansas City.

When a rice field is plowed, the children follow and gather a certain
kind of snails which the Chinese consider good eating. It doesn’t
seem to be very hard work for these youngsters, who probably get the
same kind of pleasure from the task as American children would in
making mud pies or sand forts.
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