Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

It was in 1888 we first arrived in Peking, and we felt at once convinced that, whatever wonders it might have to offer, nothingno! nothing could surpass the wonder of the journey. And when it is considered that every high official throughout the empire had to travel this same way in order to be confirmed in each appointment, the wonder of it is enhanced. From Tientsin you could always ride to Peking, if you were strong enough. Sir Harry Parkes did it in the day, the year before he died. But if not equal to riding eighty miles at a stretch, or eighty miles relieved (?) by nights at Chinese inns, you had in 1888 to travel the way we did, taking boat up the Peiho as far as Tungchow. We left Tientsin at two o'clock on Thursday, and reached Tungchow at 9 p.m. on Sunday, having been very lucky, as it appeared. We had a south-west 458 wind all Friday, spinning us along certain reaches of the ever wriggling, rather than winding Peiho. Along the reverse reaches the men had to tow or pole us. On Saturday the wind was so high that we had to lie to in the middle of the day, the men being unable to make any way against it by towing. And we only made a very few miles that day. In the afternoon it rained, and was altogether cheerless. But on Sunday we had a fine westerly wind blowing us on. Although a river, the Peiho in this part of its course is decidedly more canal-like and uninteresting than the English canal down which I had had some thought of travelling the year before, till I decided it would be too tedious. But after all there is a charm about this exceedingly slow method of progression. The world does not really stand still with you, but you feel as if it did. You get interested in the boats you pass and meet; some coming down stream, laden with plants in potstwo dwarf orange-trees, with oranges on them, I saw onceor bringing down straw braid, or taking up brick teasuch quantities of brick tea, which had, I suppose, come all the way down the Yangtse from poor water-beleaguered Hankow of the willow avenues and ravening mosquitoes, and round farther by sea from Shanghai to Tientsin, and whose progress on strings and strings of dignified camels Siberiawards we subsequently saw. What brick tea costs in the original instance I do not know. But when I think of the labour expended on its transport I feel it ought to be precious indeed to the Siberians. 461 Every now and then we got out and walked along the banks, looking backwards at the long zigzagging procession of boats behind us, each with one large sail, or at times each with a bare mast, looking like a long line of telegraph-poles. And beside us was the line of real telegraph-poles, forerunners of the coming railway that has since been opened; and we knew that the foreigners who would approach Peking in the old historic manner were already numbered. For there will be nothing to tempt people to provide themselves with all the necessaries of life for a three or four days' trip, now that the railroad is open and you can book direct. There is nothing to be seen upon the road that cannot be seen as well elsewhere,mudbanks, sandhills, millet- and sorghum-fields with poor crops, fairly nice trees, fences gay with convolvulus flowers, mud houses, mud roofs, and level mudbanks crowded with all the disreputable refuse of a poor Chinese village; then wood-cutters (one or two substantial coffins stood out prominently alongside of them; wood seems too precious for anything but coffins in those parts), a mule and a pony ploughing, or a donkey or an ox, never a pair of animals of the same kind. All these one looks at with a pleasant interest as one saunters or floats by. But you can see them elsewhere; or you can never see them, and yet be none the worse for the miss. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 43456
Author: Little, Archibald
Release Date: Aug 13, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English