A wandering student in the Far East/Tzu-liu-ching to Ch'êngtu

by Lawrence Dundas

CHAPTER VII.

TZU-LIU-CHING TO CH'ÊNGTU.

Tzu-liu-ching is a considerable town running in long straggling streets—narrow and desperately dirty—on both sides of an affluent of the Lu Ho, called locally the Ching Ho or Well river. The surrounding country is hilly, and in all directions clusters of skeleton derricks may be seen, resembling the derricks of an oil-field. But the smoke and smell of oil are both absent, the motive-power being in every case supplied by buffaloes. There are the usual piles of native-made cloth, and many shops stocking foreign-made fancy goods—perfumes and powders from Osaka; looking-glasses, clocks, watches, cigar-holders, buttons, and belts from Germany and Austria. There are also a great many shops stocking foreign piece-goods—a little American sheeting and a great deal of English shirting and black and coloured Italians, besides prints and a few other varieties,—proving the prosperous condition of the salt industry; for it is only those who are well-to-do who can afford to invest in foreign cloths. In one shop I was told by the owner that he could sell foreign piece goods to the value of 5000 or 6000 strings of cash in the year—i.e., £500 or £600. I have already warned the reader of the incurable antipathy of the Chinese for accuracy. Let me warn him again. An acquaintance told Dr Smith that two men had spent 200 strings of cash on a theatrical exhibition, adding a moment later, "It was 173 strings, but that is the same as 200—is it not?"^[1] A large crowd accompanied me during my inspection of the town, and made comments of varying interest and intelligence whenever I stopped to examine the contents on sale at any shop. At one stall where I was looking at some English shirting, on which was written in Roman letters details as to size and place of origin, I was amused to learn from Joe that he had just been addressed by an interested onlooker, who asked with considerable scepticism whether it was probable that the barbarian (i.e., myself) could read the characters upon the cloth. He was assured that there was a strong balance of probability in favour of his being able to do so. At another shop a Chinese with obviously superior knowledge on questions of ethnology informed the onlookers that I was a Japanese. After which assertion I was ready to accept the statement of an amiable well-owner who invited me to visit his property, to the effect that "not many foreigners came to Tzu-liu-ching."

Salt has been worked in Ssŭch'uan for the past 1700 years, and possibly for much longer. The wells range in depth from "a few tens" of feet, as the Chinese would say, to over 2000 feet. The particular well which I inspected was said to have a depth of 2300

Memorial arch in Ssŭch'uan.

Chinese feet.^[2] In a shed a short distance from the boring, four buffaloes harnessed to an immense drum were being driven round and round by running attendants. The rope was thus wound up, and at the expiration of about a quarter of an hour the "baler," a cylinder of bamboo, 80 feet in length, with a valve at the bottom, was brought to the surface. The brine was emptied from this into a small tank, from which it was conveyed by pipe to a reservoir. Close by the brine well was a gas well. The natural gas was collected and distributed from the mouth of the well by a series of bamboo pipes to the evaporating house near by, where it was made use of in a number of small furnaces, over each of which stood a large, shallow, circular pan containing the brine. Each pan, we were informed, could yield from 130 to 140 catties (173 lb. to 186 lb.) a-day, and this particular gas well supplied sufficient fuel for 200 pans. "How many wells are there in the district?" I asked. But just as I had put this important question, one of my Ch'ung-k'ing escort broke into the conversation with some extremely animated remarks. I stopped in my inquiries to gather this fresh flood of light which was being thrown upon the question. After waiting patiently while his remarks were being poured forth, I demanded a translation. "He says, sir," declared Joe with unruffled seriousness, "that it is an extraordinary thing that the gas should be invisible so long as it is in the pipe, and that it should then become fire immediately on leaving the mouth of the pipe!" After this illuminating assertion I paid no further attention to the puerilities of my followers. The interruption, however, had distracted the attention of my informant, and in reply to my question he answered vaguely and in round numbers that there were altogether in the district upwards of 10,000 wells, with an annual output of 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 catties. The cost of the salt on the spot was, he said, about 13 or 14 cash a catty, plus a Government tax of 10 cash a catty. I was further given to understand that a well takes anything from one to fourteen years to bore. When a man has a little capital he starts boring, and when the capital is exhausted he perforce stops until he has accumulated sufficient to go on again—a matter sometimes of years.

I had not the time to test the accuracy of the information given above, and prefer therefore to accept the figures of Sir Alexander Hosie, than whom no one is better qualified to speak on all matters connected with the province of Ssŭch'uan. The following figures are taken from his chapter on the salt industry in 'Three Years in Western China,' and his report on the province of Ssŭch'uan (China No. 5, 1904). Speaking of the brine-fields of Ssŭch'uan as a whole, he says: "At depths varying from 30 feet to over 2000 feet brine is found, raised, and evaporated.... So great is the supply, and so vast the industry, ... that Ssŭch'uan, in addition to satisfying home requirements, is able to send an immense surplus to Kuei-chow, parts of Yün-nan, as well as to the eastern provinces." The number of wells in the Tzu-liu-ching district is given as "over a thousand," and the fire wells as about a score; while the cost of raising the brine is placed at from 12 to 14 cash a catty, and of evaporation from 2 to 4 cash.^[3] "There are altogether forty districts of Ssŭch'uan producing salt, and withered grass, lignite, wood, coal, and gas are all taken advantage of, each as the others are unavailable for fuel." The total output for the province, including "illicit" salt—i.e., salt that escapes taxation—is estimated by Sir Alexander Hosie at not less than 300,000 tons a-year.

When watching the somewhat primitive methods employed in raising the brine, the foreigner naturally suggests steam. But, for some reason or other, steam-power does not appear to appeal to the people of Tzu-liu-ching. Two years before, a steam-boiler and windlass of foreign manufacture were imported, but whether the Tzu-liu-ching workmen did not understand the mechanism of the machine, or whether they saw in it a formidable rival and so wrecked it before its real capabilities became known, it was impossible to find out.^[4] The only thing that was quite certain was that it did not work. My informant objected that the cost of coal would render it too expensive; and yet the buffaloes employed cost at least £5 apiece to purchase, and 300 cash a-day to feed, and only last from one to five years.

During the evening I had a visitor in the shape of an itinerant dentist, who showed me with much pride a stock of false teeth (made in Japan). He had been at Tzu-liu-ching, he said, for a month, and had inserted no less than 100 teeth in the mouths of the townspeople during his stay. I become more and more suspicious of round numbers as used by the Chinese every day.

On December 5th we left Tzu-liu-ching and accomplished a march over hilly ground all day, variously estimated at figures from 90 to 112 li. My own estimate was twenty-five miles, which I covered on foot between 7.30 A.M. and 3.30 P.M. For an hour we travelled through the populous and built-over environments of the salt metropolis, and then emerged into a country marked by a series of curious circular flat-topped hills, rising above the general undulating surface of the country like the tops of tea-canisters. On the low ground great water-buffaloes plodded ponderously along, up to their bellies in water, preparing the rice-fields for sowing, while beans and sugar-cane monopolised the hillsides. At frequent intervals along the road small shrines and temples were to be seen beneath the green bows of the far-spreading banyan.

After travelling north to the small town of Chien Pai, we turned east viâ Lung Hui Chen to Yang-chia-chang, where we halted for the night. A march of fifteen miles on the following day brought us to Tzŭ Chou, on the main road once more, and on the two following days we accomplished long marches of 100 li each, though for some inscrutable Chinese reason we were informed that the 100 li march of the second day was not so far as the 100 li march of the first. The towns we now encountered were large and apparently prosperous. Considerable quantities of English piece-goods were always to be seen, and many shops appeared to flourish solely on the proceeds of fancy goods from continental Europe. My tour of inspection at Yang-chia-kai, a town at which we spent the night of December 8th, evoked a chorus of canine disapprobation,—a proceeding which Joe (who is acutely conscious of the unerring instinct by which the Ssŭch'uan dog singles out foreigners and beggars for his disapproval) attributed to the unwonted fact that the sun was shining. "The dogs of Yang-chia-kai are true Ssŭch'uan dogs," he remarked pleasantly to the crowd of gaping onlookers, whereat every one laughed. They laughed still more when a moment later a beggar in rags came hobbling along and shared with us the general howl from the pack of curs.

Among the shops dealing exclusively in native produce, the bulk, and the most popular, appear to be those displaying on their counter the curious medley of foodstuffs which appeal so irresistibly to the Chinese palate. But even more noticeable to the foreigner are certain shops which are to be seen in every town and in almost every village in Ssŭch'uan, in which are stocked paper models, of considerable size, of horses, houses (perhaps 5 or 6 feet in height), men, and animals, and millions of imitation paper coins. What can be the use of these paper toys, you wonder? But they are very far from being toys: they are, on the contrary, important adjuncts in the most important ceremonies connected with the strongest and most universal religious doctrine of 400,000,000 of Chinese—the worship of ancestors. All these things are burned on the dead man's grave in order that in the spiritual world he may be provided with the spiritual essence of such things as he has been accustomed to in his materialised state.

The thoughtful may learn much from contemplating these symbols. In these paper houses and goods, in these billions of paper cash, thousands of which may be purchased by the poorest for a few brass cash, is a certain index to many things in the national character. It is this exaggerated reverence for ancestors which hangs like a millstone round the neck of the Chinese. The people live in a state of voluntary bondage to the dead. They look to the past instead of to the future, and when the present generation considers the future at all, it is the vital necessity of raising posterity, not for the good of his country, but for the sole and all-important purpose of being assured that when he in his turn is numbered among the dead there shall be some one to pay him those attentions which he himself has lived to pay to some one else, that fills his mind. "If you have no children to foul the bed, you will have no one to burn paper at the grave," and this latter prospect being intolerable, the Chinese marries at the earliest possible moment, with the fixed determination of obviating it. "The hundreds of millions of living Chinese are under the most galling subjection to the countless thousands of millions of the dead." How then (asks Dr Smith), while the people are content to exist solely for the benefit of the dead, is it possible for them to lift themselves out of the slough of stagnation which has clogged their limbs for countless generations? Perhaps the white races, or some of them, have something to be thankful for on this very score. In Australia and America the pinch of Chinese competition has already made itself felt. How infinitely greater would have been the pinch had not the extraordinary "thirst for decomposing under the immediate feet of their posterity" chained the Chinese race to their own soil!

A long march of twenty-five or twenty-six miles through driving rain brought us to Cha-tien-tzu, a small town situated near the summit of a mountain-pass, on December 9th, and early the next morning we found ourselves gazing down over the wide and intensely fertile Ch'êngtu plain from the summit of the range. A long descent, and then a walk of about ten miles across the level of the plain, dotted with farmsteads and clumps of bamboo, brought us to the suburbs of the capital. After walking for

My chair descending a mountain road.

some time down greasy stone streets, between the usual rows of shops and stalls, we were brought suddenly face to face with a bridge spanning a wide stream, on the far side of which rose the walls and gates of the city. Here, for the next few days, we were hospitably entertained by Mr Gough of the Consular service, who resides in the capital in his capacity of Consul-General for the province of Scŭch'uan, though his residence in Ch'êngtu in his official capacity is not recognised by the Chinese authorities.

1. 'Chinese Characteristics,' p. 54.
2. A Chinese foot = 13¾ inches.
3. A recent report by Mr A. Rose, of the Consular service, places the number of wells at 5000, with an approximate output of 1,000,000 lb. a-day, and the cost of raising the brine at ⅓ to ¾ cash a catty.
4. Gill states that some time before he was at Tzu-liu-ching in 1877, some Chinese connected with a European firm had attempted to introduce pumps. "They had only their heads broken for their pains by the coolies, who declared that their labour was being taken away from them."