In the valley of the Yangtse

Introduction

' I "*W0 thousand years ago, when the ancient Britons hunted in -^ our great forests, and the Druids offered liuman sacrifices to appease the anger of their gods, China was already a civilized country. Gentlemen and ladies dressed in silks and satins, and lived in fine houses ; their sons learnt to read and write, and were well versed in the native classics. The Emperor lived in a splendid palace, and the officials behaved with ceremonial politeness. Centuries passed by, and still China was ahead of England. Gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and the art of printing were invented in China before they were thought of in Europe.

And yet to-day China needs our missionaries! For civilization cannot save from sin, nothing but the Cross of Christ can do that. China has had religions, priests, and sacrifices ; but they were thought out and planned by man, very little in them was of God, and so they could not bring forgiveness, peace, salvation.

There is much misery to-day in China and more sin. Confucius told people to be good, Buddha pitied the suffering world, but Christ alone had power to make men good, and to save them by the sacrifice of Himself.

A Chinese Christian preacher once gave the following illustration: "A poor man fell into a deep pit from which he could not

h vi INTRODUCTION

escape. Confucius came to the edge, looked down, and said : ' You should not have fallen in there ; it wais very foolish of you not to be more careful.' Then Buddha came, and, leaning over, he looked sympathetically down, and said, ' Poor man ! I am very sorry for you ; I wish I could help you.' Th6n the Christ came, and, climbing down the steep sides of the pit, He laid hold of the man, who was powerless to help himself, and brought him safely up out of the pit."

To-day Christ is looking down on the sinning, suffering millions of China. He wants to speak" to them by our voices, to raise them by our hands. Shall we say, " No ; I would rather live in happy England than in heathen China," when He calls us to be His messengers ?

To some He says, " You boys and girls, who cannot go yourselves, I want you to help to send others. For My sake, will you not deny yourselves that the heathen who are in darkness and danger may see the light and be saved ? "

What will you answer ? Will some say, " I have so little money, and I do like sweets, and there are so many pretty things in the shops I long to buy, I really cannot spare anything for the missionary box " ? Did you ever hear of Mencius, one of the greatest of Chinese philosophers? He said, "I like fish, and I also like bears' paws. (Bears' paws are eaten in China as a great delicacy.) If I cannot have the two together, I will let the fish go and take the bears' paws. So I like life, and I also like Tighteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness."

I hope some of you will say, " I like books and toys and sweets, but I like pleasing Christ better. If I cannot buy the nice things tNfRODUCftON vii

T should like for myself, and also help to send the Gospel to the heathen, I will do without the things I want, and do what I know Christ wishes me to do."

When the last hour of your life comes, those fleeting pleasures that look so tempting now will appear very small indeed ; but you will rejoice greatly if, looking back over your life, you can feel that, with all its imperfections, yet its aim has been, not to please self, but Christ.

Although this book is called In the Valley of the Yangtse, some of the events related in it have taken place in Peking, Canton, and other parts of China. But in many things life is much the same throughout the Empire, and I have tried only to mention those that illustrate Chinese life as it is in the valley of the Yangtse.

Though most of this book has been written from personal experience gained during the eighteen years which I have spent in China, still in some chapters I have made much use of the works of various authors, to whom I now wish thankfully to acknowledge my obligations.

The chief books which I have consulted besides the L.M.S. Chronicle and other . missionary magazines are the following: —

The Middle Kingdom^ by Dr. Wells Williams.

Social Life of the Chinese, by the Rev. Justus Doolittle.

Hanlin Papers^ by Dr. Martin.

The Chinese, by Sir John Davis.

Mesny's Miscellany.

Chinese and Their Rebellions, by T. T. Meadows,

I have not thought it necessary to give references to tl-.psc vili , iNtkODtJCtlON

works in footnotes, though in some cases sentences have been quoted almost verbatim from them, for I have abridged the descriptions, and simplified the language, to make my book more suitable for young readers.

Contents

PAGte

Introduction v

CHAPTER

Chapter I

THREE thousand miles from the sea, among the " Pillars of Heaven," the Yangtse has its source.

The mighty stream has many names. Away in the west they call it the River Golden Sand ; then, as flows on towards Hankow, it is spoken of as the Great River ; below that town it is known as

THE BUND, HANKOW.

the Long River. Steamers of light draught can go up it for a thousand miles as far as Ichang, and large ocean steamers come up to Hankow every summer, though that is more than six hundred miles from its mouth.

Thousands of Chinese boats carry passengers and* cargo from place to place on its banks, and great rafts of timber are floated down, from the forests in the west. Those in charge of these unwieldy rafts live in little huts built on the floating timber. Sometimes a whole hamlet seems to be drifting leisurely down, as if a few extra weeks on the way would make no difference to the passengers. You get used to long journeys in China. Distances are more often measured by days than by miles. Missionaries will tellyou that their stations are "a month's journey from Hankow," or "three weeks! journey from Chungking," instead of "saying how far off they are from those cities.

We have no railways yet in the valley of the Yangtse, though we hope for them before long. Meanwhile the quickest way of travelling is by water. As I have said, steamers go up and down the Yangtse, but elsewhere we go in small native boats. If there is a fair wind, they sail pretty quickly ; if not, they must be rowed, poled, or towed, and all these are very slow ways of getting from place to place.

And distances are long in China. It seems, strange at first, as you look at the narrow river Han, to hear that boats go up it for a thousand miles, for its mouth is very narrow, and is often blocked with boats. It empties its waters into the Yangtse at Hankow. Hankow means the "mouth of the Han." When we take a boat to go up the Han to the other end of the city, it is not at all unusual for the boatman, after rowing a few minutes, to declare "that he can go no farther, the river, is blocked ! For some way he works his flat-bottomed boat along, pushing off from the boats on either side of him, using his hands and his boat-hook a good deal more than his oars, but after a time the crowd of boats gets more dense, and he has to give it up. If possible, he gets near the bank for us

FLOODS, REFUGEES, AXD BEGGARS 3

to land ; if not, we must walk across the boats that lie between us and the shore, and get to land as best we can !

Large boats that have brought a cargo from the north or the west often anchor in the Han till all their cargo is sold. Some of these have a small log tied to the mast, to signify that fircAvood may be bought on board ; others hang up a large basket, which means that the^' have rice for sale; others sell oil, and others paper. All

AT THE MOUTH OF THE H.\.V.

along by the bank of the river there are rows of these boats, leaving only a rather narrow passage free for navigation. And that is how it is that Avhen there are more boats than usual the river so easily gets blocked.

The banks of the Han are a strange sight. Some part or other is always being washed away by the river, and yet the Chinese build to the very edge of the bank. The houses are, many of them, supported by piles — long poles driven into the bottom of the river, their tops on a level with the streets. Built on these the houses are out of reach of the summer floods. When a freshet (or sudden rise of the river in consequence of rain) occurs, the water rushes down with siich force that no boatman dares to venture on it. Then much of the earth is washed away from the banks, and piles often give way. Many of them lean over the river, slanting dangerously. Yet the people living in the wooden houses built upon them do not move, and no inspector comes round to tell them that the houses must be pulled down ! Poor things ! they have no place of refuge to which they can go, and so they live on in their slanting homes till the tiles fall off the roof and part of the walls gives way ; even then they often patch up the holes Avith matting, and stay on. You can tell that the house is still inhabited by the clothes hung out to dry on the little wooden drying-ground built out on its roof: blue cotton trousers stretched out at full width, calico stockings stuck wrong way up on poles, children's red jackets, much wider than. they are long, a pair of leather boots that have just been washed and put out to dry, and all the strange medley that go to make up the washing of a Chinese family, — all are hung out on the sloping platforms over many a ruinous house.

Sometimes under these dangerous buildings you see beggars living between the piles, at least they get a roof over their heads there, though it seems likely that it may fall upon them one day soon! But it is only in winter that they can sleep there, for in summer the river rises to the top of the bank.

A flood in China is a terrible thing. When the great river Yangtse is full to the brim, and pours its waters out over all the country round, it is a wonderful sight. There is great excitement as the river rises from day to day. Sometimes we go up to the city wall, and look out over the plain. A walk of about half a mile from our house brings us to a quaint gateway, with picturesque corners to its roofs, curving upward like the prow of an old Roman boat. Three large Chinese characters inform us that this is the

A HbHEK ON THE liA.N'Kb OF THE YANGTSE. 6

" Gateway of Great Wisdom." When the river rises, a dam is built across it to keep the water out.

At each side of the gate there are steps leading up on to the wall, which is a great embankment of earth, the outside being faced with stone and brick. Going up the steps, we find ourselves on a broad path, some fifteen feet wide, at the top of the bank, and gazing out over the parapet, we can see for many miles out over the plain that stretches to the north of Hankow.

We know it is a plain, or else in summer we might think it was the sea! For there is nothing but water as far as the eye can reach, except a few little islands dotted about here and there, and some distant hills on the horizon. The islands are mounds that have been made by the farmers on which to build their houses, as they know that every year their fields will go under water. So ' from ten to twenty farmers build their houses on one large mound, and when the river rises and floods the whole surrounding country they take it very quietly, merely putting out great nets over their fields, to catch fish in the very spot from which they have just reaped their harvest! Only sometimes the river rises early, and they lose all their crops ; but they generally reap in May, before the flood comes. It would have to be a very high flood indeed to come into their houses on the mounds.

But there are huts just outside the city gate that are not built on mounds, so every summer they go quite under water, with only the roofs showing: and as we look sadly at them we know that hundreds of poor people from other low-lying places must be flooded out of house and home too.

Where do they go ?

Walking on a little, we see a number of huts on the wall. They are made of straw mats tied together on poles ; some have neatly rounded roofs, high enough for the inmates to stand upright under them, while others are low and shapeless, and the mats are so old and torn that the next high wind will probably tear them to pieces. The people living in these wretched huts have been obliged by the rising water to leave their own houses, and not having moneyenough to rent even a single room, they have come up on to the city wall and pitched their mat tents there.

The chief attraction of this site is that, besides being above the reach of the flood, there is no ground-rent to be paid, but the poor people may be turned out by the authorities if they stay too long. Notices are often put up when the flood is over, telling them to return to their homes and cultivate their fields; and if after a reasonable time • they did not do so, soldiers would probably be sent to pull down their little huts ! Some of these huts are eight or nine feet long and four or five broad ; some are larger, and some smaller ; but in most of them a whole family live, sleeping on the bare earth often at night, with only a mat or an old quilt under them, while in some of the huts two families have taken up their abode. And yet, perhaps, these are not the very poorest people. Some have not ^ money enough even to buy mats, and have to stay as long as possible in their half-flooded dwellings, the only other thing for them to do being to sleep in the street, with no roof at all to shelter them ! • I remember one year when the whole neighbourhood was under water. We could row about in our garden, and one Sunday we went from our verandah to the chapel in a boat ! Our English houses have good, high- foundations, and none of them were flooded ; but it was sad indeed for many of the poor Chinese, whose houses were on low ground, especially as they had no second storey into which they could escape when the water rose.

As we looked into their wretched houses we felt so sad. They put a few boards on trestles, raising them day by day as the water rose, and on this little platform the whole family sat — children, babies, dogs, pigs, fowls and all. I do not think the small boys minded it much, — it was hot weather, and they ran about without any clothes, in and out of the water as they liked, their brown little bodies soon drying in the sun, — but it was miserable work for the women and girls sitting indoors, anxiously watching the rise of the water till it was so high that their heads touched the tiles ; and then they had to move, even if there was no house to which they could go. For there are no workhouses in China to take such people in, and very few asylums of any sort to help the miserable and wretched. China is a heathen land, and where people have not learnt to keep the first great commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," they do not keep the second either, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And so it is that in a heathen land those that are rich and strong for the most part just live to please themselves, and do not go about doing good and helping the poor and sad, as we know we ought to.

But when missionaries go to heathen lands they want the people to understand that God loves them all, and that He has taught us to love them too. So when great trouble comes, like the terrible famine in North China in 1878, inissionaries go to visit the sufferers, and distribute relief sent out by Christian people in England ; and even in a smaller trouble, like a flood in Hankow, we try to do what we can.

So one day, when the water was over all the roads, we hired a boat and rowed to the city wall. We had written a number of tickets for two hundred cash, which we distributed from house to house, and then we. brought the money in a boat. It is never wise to carry much money with you when visiting among the very poor in China ; if they saw you giving it away they would probably mob you, and the strongest would get it all, while you would be thankful if you escaped from their clutches with nothing worse than a torn coat. And that is why we gave tickets and took the money in a boat. Also the . money is very heavy. Have you ever seen Chinese cash? They are copper coins about the size of a farthing, with a square hole in the middle of each, so that you can string them together. This is the easiest way of carrying them, for it takes forty to make a penny ; we keep them tied up in strings of a hundred, which saves trouble in counting them too. As soon as the boat appeared near the city wall the people came running down the steep slope with their tickets, which were quickly exchanged for cash ;

and then we knew that all those living in the mud huts on that part of the Avail, at any rate, had money enough to buy food for two or three days.

If any of you boys and girls Avould like to help in this sort of work.

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THE RIVERSIDE SUBURB OF A CHINESE CITY.

you can send money to some missionary you know, saying it is for the relief of the poor. I am sure any missionary in China would find it easy to make a good use of it.

When the flood is over and the water gradually goes down, the poor people go back to their houses, but they often find them in ruins. Where the walls are made of wattle and mud, the water washes away the mud, and only, the split bamboos remain, forming very airy walls indeed, better for ventilation than for privacy ! The tiled roof with its heavy beams is supported by wooden posts ; these sometimes ' give way if there is a storm while the water is high, and then the whole roof comes down and the ruin is complete. Even if this has not happened, the mud floors take a long time to dry, and there is generally a good deal of illness while the water is subsiding in the flooded districts.

Wlien the Yellow River bursts its banks, and suddenly floods vast tracts of country, the distress is much greater than when the Yangtse quietly overflows, its banks at Hankow. In some places' Iiigher up the Yangtse is embanked, and so are many rivers, in other parts of China; and wherever , this is the case the people are; liable to sudden and terrible disaster. Many lives are lost in this way every year, and promising crops are destrqyed, while the dead bodies of cows and buffaloes are often swept down past Hankow by the rushing waters.

In closing this account of our. fl;oods, I will quote an' Imperial decree from the Peking Gazette of October 30th, 1897. The Emperor says : " We have received the usual report from the Director-General of the Yellow River in Honan, reporting that the embankments of the said river have been so i well attended to during the autumn that there has been no trouble: along the whole course guarded by the memorialist this year. This is certainly due to the benevolence of the river gods, and we feel duly thankful for their protection over t3le people. We therefore command that ten large-sized Tibetan incense sticks be sent by the Imperial Household Department to the said Director-General of the Yellow River, who is also commanded to offer them at the altars of the gods in the Dragon King's Temple in the vicinity."

It is not only in time of flood that the poor people suff"er so much. Every winter when the great river Yangtse falls it leaves

FLOODS, REFUGEES, AND BEGGARS II

a wide margin of dried mud by each bank ; on this mud hundreds of little mat huts are put up, just like those on the city wall in time qf fiooci. Who live in these huts ?

Poor people from the country, who have come into the great city to escape starvation.

In China, most of the country people own a little land; this they cultivate carefully, and manage generally to get enough to eat through the summer, and perhaps they grow enough cotton to make themselves some- coarse clothes. The women and girls spin it for home use. But they often eat up all their little harvest before the winter comes, and as there is nothing to do in the country then, they come into the towns. The men try to get work, and the women and children beg in the streets. These are the people who put up the little mat huts by the side of the river. Even if the men get work, the pay for what they can do is very small. Sometimes a number of them get employed in carrying earth. A piece of ground is to be raised, so as to be well above the level of 'the summer floods, and this is done by hiring coolies" to bring earth from the river banks. Each man has two baskets, wjtiich he suspends from either end of a bamboo placed across his shoulder. He goes to the river, fills his baskets with mud, and brings it to the lot which is to be raised. When the distance is about a quarter of a mile, he will get a farthing for two journeys. But digging up the earth and filling his baskets takes time, so he cannot earn very much even if he is busy all day. Yet the number of unemployed is so great that, as soon as it is known that a plot of land is to be raised, scores, if not hundreds, of coolies quickly appear, anxious to be engaged for carrying the earth needed. In China there are always very many wanting work, but not able to get it even for the very smallest pay.

So while the men are working, or looking for work, their wives and children are making what they can by begging. Walking up the crowded, narrow streets of any Chinese city, especially in winter, we are beset by beggars. Women with tiny.

\ wailing babies, ragged little boys and girls — they literally swarm in every direction. The women often try to seize our sleeves, begging loudly in their country speech, "Give us money to buy rice-gruel! Heap up happiness for yourself!" jThis means, " Do good, and Heaven will reward you." , Like true heathen, they only expect to influence us by selfish motives. The children run after us long distances shouting, " Give us foreign money ! Give us foreign money!"' (They naturally prefer silver ten-cent pieces to copper cash.) Besides these there are people in all stages of misery and disease. A loathsome leper sits by • the side of the road, displaying his sores, an old, white-haired woman knocks her forehead on the pavement to excite pity, while a. blind boy sits next her holding out his little basket of cash, that we may judge by the number already given what a deserving case his is ! Some of these are old residents, and have been begging in the same streets for many years, while others only come in for the winter, and return to their fields in the spring.

The usual gift to a beggar is one cash (the tenth part of a farthing), but people often give small cadi, which are only worth half as much ; so that it takes a great many of these gifts to get a good meal.

But these beggars do not expect good meals. There are benevolent institutions in many large cities in China which are opened in the winter ' months for supplying rice-gruel at very small cost to the poor. For three cash they can buy a bowl of this watery rice, and it is on this that jnost of the beggars live as long as the rice kitchens are open. The struggle to get it is so great that the weak, half -starved women and children sometimes get badly crushed or trampled on as they try to approach the door. Yet if this unsweetened, tasteless rice- gruel were given to you, English boys and girls, for dinner, I hardly think you would be thankful for it! Next time you are tempted to grumble because of some food you do not like will you think of Chinese beggars in their hunger, and remember to be thankful ?

Many of these poor people have no homes at all, not even a mat shed, but sleep out of doors, on the roughly paved streets. In Central China the weather is often frosty, and hardly a night passes during the coldest part of the year without some poor beggar dying of cold and hunger in the street.

In most of the large cities there are professional beggars under the control of certain head-men, whose names are entered in the office of the district magistrate in the city. These head-men do not beg themselves, and are often well-off and live quite comfortably — they might be called the kings of the beggars. They divide the streets of the city among the beggars, who then go in little companies to make as much as possible out of the district allotted to them. They go about with sticks and gongs; entering shops, they make so much noise that the buyers and sellers can hardly hear one another speak ; this makes the shopkeeper so anxious to get rid of them that he gives them a cash each, and then they go away at once.

Some of these shopkeepers make an agreement with the head-man of the district, by which they pay him a certain sum every 3-ear on condition that the beggars under his control shall not come to beg of them. He takes the money, dividing part of it among the beggars, and, of course, keeping a good share for himself. He then gives the shopkeeper a strip of red paper to paste up by his door, on which is written a Chinese sentence meaning, " The brethren must not come hefe to disturb and annoy." After this, if any of the professional beggars come to that shop they are shown this strip of paper and told to go away, which they usually do at once. Should they persist in begging, the shopkeeper may beat them and drive them away, which he would not dare to do unless he had this proof of an agreement between himself and the king of the beggars.

Of course, poor people who have come in from the country are not under the rule of this head-man — they beg wherever they can, whatever agreements may have been made by him. These are the people whom we pity most, and for whom we long to do something.

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BLIND BEGGARS.

A great many of the beggars are blind ; we often see a string of blind women walking through the streets, holding on to one another and begging as they go, the one who leads them feeling her way with a stick from street to street. There are no blind asylums among all the hundreds of millions in China, except a very few started by missionaries from Christian lands.