Chapter XIV: The Yangtze and Kuei Fu

On February 7th we entered the solemn Wushan gorge, twenty miles long, a grand chasm from 330 to 600 yards in width, and walled in by perpendicular cliffs ofttimes 1000 feet in height, with lofty mountain spires and pinnacles then touched with snow above them. The “Witch’s Mountain Great Gorge” is uncanny, and the black gloom of a winter day, clouds swirling round the higher summits, and the long yells with which the boatmen besought the river god for a wind, with many vows and promises to pay, did not enliven it. Nor does the name “Iron Coffin Gorge,” given to a reach above, where iron chains are bolted into the cliffs fifty feet above the winter level of the river for the use of the junks bound west, cheer the situation.

We were two days in this “dowie den,” and tied up for a third on Sunday, near the last inhabited village in HUPEH, Nan-mu yurh, “Cedar Garden,” situated on both sides of a deep glen apparently closed by a high mountain, a covered bridge connecting the two halves. It is a romantic place, quite worth the toilsome ascent of 517 steep stone steps which form the terraced street. The houses are surrounded by loquats, orange, and pomegranate, their dark, shining foliage with a background of snow. The people of this mountainous province are said to be poor, hardy, and industrious. A respectable merchant asked if we had heard when peace was going to be made? Such ignorance was phenomenal on this great highway of commerce! Some boatmen asked ours what we were doing tied up there when there was such a good wind, and the reply was that they had foreign devils as passengers, who, though they did no work and were always eating, must sleep one day in seven!

Above this glen the walls of the gorge approach again; they are still of limestone with sandstone above, caverned at great heights, worn in places into colossal terraces, and singularly fluted by means of deep, vertical potholes, the outer halves of which have given way. Two narrow glens on each side of the river are the boundary between HUPEH and SZE CHUAN, but it was not till some hours later that we passed the first village of the empire province, Pei-shih, “Back to the Rock,” a long, straggling street, on an imposing limestone ledge, and possessing a fine Taoist temple. There is a small but nasty rapid below it, which took two hours to ascend. While scrambling along the shore I picked up a piece of pink granite, which at once raised a clamour, the people saying that a foreigner with blue or grey eyes not only sees three feet into the ground, but can look inside the stones, and that I had seen a jewel in this one. I threw it down, and they broke it open; and then, not finding anything, said that I had spirited it out of the stone by foreign magic.

The current at the upper end of the Witch’s Gorge produced so much tedious delay that I was glad when we reached Wushan, the first city in SZE CHUAN, to which, for a considerable distance, we were _clawed_ along by hooks attached to the boatmen’s poles. Opposite Wushan is a small tributary, which brings down salt from brine wells near Ta-Ling, a district city, in boats which Mr. Little regards as exact copies of Venetian gondolas. Wushan is grey and picturesque, its walls following the contour of the hills on which it is built, enclosing fields, orchards, and beautiful trees. A fine temple to the God of Literature in a grove of evergreens on a steep mountain cone 1500 feet in height, and a lofty pagoda on the same peak are striking objects, but the town, though fairly clean, has no look of prosperity, and so far was disappointing.

Toiling up the “Kitten” and “Get-down-from-horse” rapids, we reached the Feng Hsiang, or “Bellows,” or “Wind-Box” gorge, the last and one of the grandest of the great gorges, where the Great River is narrowed in places to 150 yards, by vertical walls of rock from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. There are both rapids and dangerous whirlpools, the presence of red lifeboats, as usual, denoting risk. My boat was dragged up inch by inch against a tremendous current, _clawed_ up in places where there was no foothold for trackers, and so terrible was the straining of these poor fellows on the rough and jagged rocks that I welcomed the opening out of the stupendous chasm, and our entrance upon a beautiful mountainous country, through which the Yangtze rolls through a valley covered, even in February, with all manner of crops in their freshest green. Just at the mouth, creating two channels—one 100 feet and the other 200 feet in width—lies a black, polished, square mass of rock known as the “Goose-tail” rock; it was fully forty feet above the water when I went up, but when I came down in June it was only just visible. When it is quite covered, the authorities at the city, five miles above, do not allow any junks to descend till it reappears. A remarkable rock ladder connected with early Chinese military history, a grand white limestone peak which curves majestically over the gorge, a fine temple on a cliff with gardens and courtyards—and then the almost painful drafts on the capacity for admiring and wondering which the previous eleven days had made came to an end.

The scenery above the Wind-Box gorge, though less grand, is very varied, the valley and the lateral valleys for ever narrowing and broadening; the distant mountains forest-covered or snow-slashed; the spurs crowned with grand temples, below which picturesque villages cluster, and whitewashed, black-beamed, several-gabled, many-roofed, orange-embowered farmhouses; and every slope and level is cultivated to perfection, the bright yellow of the rape-seed blossom adding a charm to greenery which was never monotonous.

After ascending some troublesome but minor rapids, much bothered all the time by a big cargo boat with seventy trackers of its own, which kept close behind us, always trying to pass its rope over the top of our mast, a quarrel being the inevitable consequence, we arrived in sight of what looked like a smoky manufacturing town, the first time I saw such a sight in China. Really the appearance was produced more by great jets and ebullitions of steam than by smoke, for the “manufacturers” were burning a local coal, much resembling anthracite. At low water there are great sand-banks below the city of Kuei Fu, or Kuei-chow Fu, where a number of salt boilers establish themselves for the winter months, who dig great brine pits in the sand and evaporate the product with coal. The process is rude, and the salt is a bad colour, but the product of this and many other similar wells is one of the chief exports of SZE CHUAN and a great source of revenue.[26]

A great bank of boulders, a strong _chipa_, a highly cultivated region, the pleasant valley slopes of which rolled up into hills, pleasant farms, a general sunny smile, a grey-walled city of much picturesqueness, a great fleet of junks moored below it, a mat town to supply their needs, and we were at the city of Kueichow Fu.

Ever since leaving Ichang we had been goading the _lao-pan_ to hurry, so that we might reach Wan by the Chinese New Year, which was quite possible, but he and all his trackers were determined that we should spend it at Kuei Fu, a favourite place with junkmen, so we had the bad luck of being detained there four days till noisy and gluttonous celebrations of the great festival were past. Not that we were honestly detained, or that the _lao-pan_ claimed this holiday, but he resorted to mean Oriental dodges to keep us. We arrived on February 10th, the New Year fell on the 13th, so one day the boat required serious repair, another stores must be laid in, the third the _lao-pan_ moved a few hundred yards and then said he must go to some village for a new tow-rope, and another day must be devoted to paying debts! Fortunately it was brilliant weather, though so cold that I had to sit wrapped in blankets with my feet in the bed. But then at home people do not usually sit in what is practically the open air with the temperature at 39°!

Kuei Fu is a large city, with a very fine wall and noble gate towers, and imposing roofs of _yamens_ and temples are seen above the battlements. At that time it was very hostile to foreigners, and I made no attempt to enter its stately gates, but walked in the beautiful surroundings among large farmhouses, all _en fête_ for the season, with many wolfish dogs, aggressive and cowardly, and crops of wheat and barley already showing the ear stalks, and root crops with much juicy leafage, a farming paradise. Good paths bordered with the yellow fumitory, already in blossom, intersected the country, and owing to the recent dry weather, there was an agreeable aspect of cleanliness everywhere. I photographed a suburban temple with a porcelain front, where the priests, as is their wont, were quite polite, but on the way back we were “rushed” by a crowd of men and boys howling and shouting, and using the term _yang-kwei-tze_, “foreign devil,” very freely. No Protestant missionaries, and I was told no Roman either, have yet effected a lodgment in this city. Two Chinese telegraph clerks, both Christians, and speaking good English, paid us a visit, and told us that feeling had become so very much more hostile since the “disturbances” that there would certainly be a serious riot if we went into the town.

Outside the walls little is to be seen except the salt boileries on the sand-banks; the manufacture of briquettes; the loading of junks for the low country with big lumps of anthracite coal, which sells for 9_s._ 6_d._ a ton at Kuei Fu, and is much used by the blacksmiths; the ceaseless procession of water carriers, each making the long steep trudge from the river to the city with two buckets for half a farthing; and the aqueduct, a great work of former days, about three miles long, which brings a supply of pure water down a stone channel from a strong spring which spouts from a hole in the rock at a height of 1500 feet or thereabouts. This good gift is not _pro bono publico_; the magistrate who constructed the work was ambitious only to have a private water supply. The paved path leading to the source passes over a steep hill which for more than a mile is a vast city of the dead, occupied by graves some of which are handsome stone structures closed by inscribed slabs of stone, standing on carefully-kept grass platforms, as in Korea, while the majority are circular grassed mounds held together by rubble.

Kuei Fu or Kwei Hwan (_i.e._ “The Barrier of Kueichow”) is a decaying city, bolstered up into an appearance of grandeur by its position and its stately wall and gate towers. There all goods going up or down the Yangtze paid _likin_, a transit tax of about 5 per cent. on their value. As (according to Mr. Little) over 10,000 junks go up and down in the year, and each one is delayed for examination three or four days, a large extra-mural population made a living by supplying their needs. Some years ago the Kuei Fu Likin Office was the most valuable in China next to that of Canton, and the likin duties were the great source of SZE CHUAN revenue. The grand houses, with fine pleasure grounds, of which many can be seen from a height above the wall, testify to the fortunes made by officials in the days when they had the right to levy 5 per cent. on a trade worth possibly £2,000,000 sterling.

But we have “changed all that” by securing the opening of the treaty port of Chungking with the transit pass and chartered junk systems, to which all foreign imports can be carried on payment of duty to the Imperial Maritime Customs at Shanghai. Thus these rich dues go to Peking, and the “Four Streams Province” is the sufferer, and Kuei Fu really can only exact legal dues from junks carrying local merchandise and from salt junks. The reader will at once perceive the reason for the strong provincial hostility which is roused by the opening of new treaty ports, for each one, to a greater or less extent, enriches the Imperial Government at the expense of the provinces, and deprives a great number of officials of their “legitimate” perquisites or “squeezes,” in favour, as the people think, of highly salaried foreign customs employés.

On two days, owing to the crowds on the shore, I did not leave the boat. In the bright sunshine, “light without heat,” the view was always delightful, as it changed from hour to hour, and disappeared at sunset in a blaze of colour—distant snow peaks burning red after the lower ranges had passed into ashy grey. The picturesque grey city, the magnificent opening of the Feng Hsiang, or “Wind-Box” gorge, the hill slopes in the vividness of their spring greens and yellows, the rapid, with its exciting risks and the life on the water, made a picture of which one could never weary.

Yet five days of crouching and shivering in a six-foot square room, really a _stall_, with three sides only and no window, taxed both patience and resources, especially as the virago and the boat baby were more aggravating than usual, and the trackers ignored the existence of passengers. The _lao-pan_ gave himself up to the opium pipe, and was consequently obliterated. Be-dien, my servant, whose temper and pride were unslumbering, made himself unpleasant all round. It would require some very old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon words to describe the smell of the cooking of the New Year viands. Yet somehow I did not feel the least inclined to grumble, and my slender resources held out till the end.

I had Baber’s incomparable papers on Far Western China to study and enjoy, a journal to “write up,” much mending and even making to accomplish, and, above all, there were photographic negatives to develop and print, and prints to tone, and the difficulties enhanced the zest of these processes and made me think, with a feeling of complacent superiority, of the amateurs who need “dark rooms,” sinks, water “laid on,” tables, and other luxuries. Night supplied me with a dark room; the majestic Yangtze was “laid on”; a box served for a table: all else can be dispensed with.

I lined my “stall” with muslin curtains and newspapers, and finding that the light of the opium lamps still came in through the chinks, I tacked up my blankets and slept in my clothes and fur coat. With “water, water everywhere,” water was the great difficulty. The Yangtze holds any amount of fine mud in suspension, which for drinking purposes is usually precipitated with alum, and unless filtered, deposits a fine, even veil on the negative. I had only a pocket filter, which produced about three quarts of water a day, of which Be-dien invariably abstracted some for making tea, leaving me with only enough for a final wash, not always quite effectual, as the critic will see from some of the illustrations.

I found that the most successful method of washing out “hypo” was to lean over the gunwale and hold the negative in the wash of the Great River, rapid even at the mooring place, and give it some final washes in the filtered water. This chilly arrangement was only possible when the trackers were ashore or smoking opium at the stern. Printing was a great difficulty, and I only overcame it by hanging the printing-frames over the side. When all these rough arrangements were successful, each print was a joy and a triumph, nor was there disgrace in failure.

The day before the New Year was thoroughly unquiet. The population of the boat was excited by wine and pork money, and was fearfully noisy, shouting, yelling, quarrelling, stamping overhead, stamping along the passage outside my cambric curtain, stamping over the roof, sawing, hammering, and pounding rice. A mandarin’s boat tied up close to my window had engaged a “sing-song” boat, and I had all the noise from both, and many glimpses of the mandarin, a good-looking young man, in fur-lined brocaded silk. Like all others that I have seen of the higher official class, he looked immeasurably removed from the common people. The assumed passionlessness of his face expressed nothing but aloofness and scorn. One of the servants died in his boat after a few hours’ illness, during which the beating of drums and gongs, and the letting off of crackers to frighten away the demon which was causing the trouble, were incessant and tremendous. We sailed in company, and shortly after leaving Kuei Fu one of the mandarin’s trackers, in a very minor rapid, was pulled into the river and drowned.

I had an opportunity of taking an instantaneous photograph of my trackers at dinner. Their meals, which consist of inferior rice mixed with cabbage or other vegetables fried in oil, with a bit of fish or pork occasionally added, are worth watching. Each man takes a rough glazed earthenware bowl and fills it from the great pot on the fire. All squat round the well, and balancing their bowls on the tips of the fingers of the left hand close under the chin, the mouths are opened as wide as possible, and the food is shovelled in with the chopsticks as rapidly as though they were eating for a wager. When the mouth is apparently full they pack its contents into the cheeks with the chopsticks and begin again, packing any solid lumps into the cheeks neatly at once. When mastication and swallowing took place I never quite made out, but in an incredibly short time both bowls and cheeks were empty, and the eaters were smoking their pipes with an aspect of content. The boats, unless sailing, tie up for meals. The Chinese never, if they can help it, drink unboiled water, which saves them from many diseases, and these men drank the water in which the rice was cooked.

On three such meals the poor fellows haul with all their strength for twelve hours daily, never shirking their work. They are rough, truly, but as the voyage went on their honest work, pluck, endurance, hardihood, sobriety, and good-nature won my sympathy and in some sort my admiration. They might be better clothed and fed if they were not opium smokers, but then where would be their nightly Elysium?