Lawrence Dundas

“ For a brief and breathless moment the whole continent of India vibrated beneath the magnetic touch of the dramatic figure of Dupleix, and when the glittering prospect opened up by him faded before the grim tenacity and forceful determination of the seamen and traders of Great Britain, a craving for empire sprang up in adjacent territories and found expression in a series of ill-conceived enterprises in the direction of Burma and Siam. ”

“ To any one who has travelled in the interior of China the word "inn" does not conjure up those visions of delight which excited the enthusiasm of Dr Samuel Johnson. "There is nothing," he declared, "which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn." It would probably be nearer the mark to say that "there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much unhappiness is produced as by a Chinese tavern or inn!" ”

“ Thirty and more years have rolled by since the defeat of the ill-starred expedition, Upper Burma has since fallen into the lap of Great Britain, the ponderous wheels of the Chinese diplomatic machine have been set in motion from time to time with a view to determining boundaries between the now coterminous empires, but the engaging spectacle of India and China grasping hands can even now be only said to have been realised in a modified degree. ”

“ A mile or two above Ichang rise the mountain portals giving entrance to the first great gorge, and for ten days on end the traveller is borne through a wonderland of cliffs and towering pinnacles, where in some past geologic era whole mountain-ranges have been twisted and torn asunder by some terrific convulsion in the earth's surface. Nature has here assumed her grandest and most solemn garb. ”

“ In the treaty ports much may be heard of a new China, but much that is met with in the treaty ports is mere froth and bubble; and to be real, the spirit of regeneration must be found moving among the people, in the villages and in the country towns hidden away from the eye of Europe in the dim recesses of the inland provinces, severed from the outer world by hundreds and even thousands of miles of medieval communications—unimaginable cart roads and tortuous coolie tracks. ”

“ Social intercourse in China, especially among the upper classes, is a science in itself, the complex nature of which is quite beyond the grasp of the average European intellect. To the Chinese versed in all the intricacies of an etiquette which is the product of generations of the most subtle-minded race on earth, every action, every gesture, every carefully-worded phrase, is replete with hidden meaning. ”

“ We were, in all truth, at last in Yün-nan—the land "south of the clouds." Two miles over a flat, peaty, grass-covered tableland, hedged in between ranges of mountains, brought us to the tiny village of Wu-chai, 6000 feet above the sea. From here, a march of about twenty-two miles over a level plain, except for one mountain-ridge of no very great height, brought me on the morrow to Chao-t'ung Fu, a moderate-sized town situated in the centre of an agricultural plain. ”

“ I was dressed after the manner of the West, and was therefore an object of respect. You ask why? Because the Japanese are the most sensitive people in the world; because the day has already dawned when much that is artistic and characteristic of real Japan must be sacrificed at the altar of progress; because Europeanisation is the fetich of the day; and because European clothes are the hall-mark of progress and modernity in the gentlemen of New Japan. Is it not forbidden to the ladies of Japan to present themselves at Court in Japanese dress? ”

“ To form any adequate idea of China, the inquirer must leave the foreign settlements which dot the coast-line and travel into the interior of this vast empire. There he may observe for himself the manner of life of the real Chinese,—the teeming millions who live the immemorial life of China, as distinct from the men of the coast, who rub shoulders daily with peoples thinking other thoughts and observing a different mode of life from themselves. He will live among the Chinese people and learn for himself the nature of their requirements, and their ability or otherwise to satisfy them. ”

“ To root out in a period of ten years the insidious vice of opium-smoking, which on their own showing has laid its palsied touch upon no less than 40 per cent of a population computed at 400,000,000, is an undertaking which may well stagger the imagination of even the most visionary of moral reformers. ”

“ Here and there where outcrops of coal were visible in the hillsides, crude openings like the burrowings of brobdingnagian rabbits were to be seen, calling to mind the extraordinary antiquity of the practice of burning coal in China,—a practice which excited the interest and the admiration of Marco Polo, who informed his astonished readers on his return to Europe that "all over the country of Cathay there is a kind of black stones existing in beds in the mountains which they dig out and burn like firewood; ... and they make such capital fuel that no other is used throughout the country." ”

“ The position which China must inevitably acquire some day will not be won with the same startling rapidity with which Japan pressed home her claims to the title of a first-class Power. There are too many factors which will war against the reconstruction of Chinese society and the Chinese State, and which will act as clogs upon the wheels of Chinese progress. Loyalty to and adoration of the Sovereign, which bind the people of Japan into a united whole, is wanting in the case of China, for the scion of an alien race sits upon the throne of the Mings. ”

“ Why should a Chinese who aspired to solve abstruse mathematical problems concern himself with such mathematical puerilities as the silly rule which says that 2 + 2 are to make 4? Why, likewise, should a Yün-nan student who aspires to construct mountain railways of a highly complicated kind bother his head about such elements of road-making as levels, gradients, and curves? ”

“ The cave-dwelling aborigines are despised by the Chinese, who call them Man-tzŭ or wild people. Facing the town a huge Buddha, 304 feet in height, is carved crudely on the cliff, while in dim outline in the distance, looming faintly through the mist, I could just make out the far-famed summit of Mount O-mei, the sacred mountain of Western China. ”

“ Surprise gives way to unfeigned astonishment when it is realised that the banking system of China is the oldest in the world, and was the father, in all probability, of the vast credit and exchange system of Europe. The oldest bank-note known to be extant is a Chinese bank-note issued during the reign of Hung Wú in the fourteenth century, 300 years before the issue of bank-notes in Europe, and 600 years after their earliest appearance in Asia. There is, indeed, little doubt that Europe has to thank Asia for the foundations of her modern civilisation. ”

“ I made the distance from Sui Fu 160 miles—but 160 miles of gaping chasm and frowning precipice, which it had taken us twelve days to cover. Here I was hospitably entertained by Dr and Mrs Savin of the Bible Christian Mission, and right glad I was to find myself for a brief space enjoying the comfort and cleanliness of an English home and the pleasant society of fellow-countrymen.
The country all round looks bare and brown, plough land, some of which is irrigated, covering the plain. On all sides, filling in the distance, rise mountains of a ruddy- coloured soil. ”

“ ACROSS THE HEART OF CHINA
"The principal advantage of travel must be the opportunity which it affords us of becoming acquainted with human nature; knowledge, of course, chiefly gained where human beings most congregate—great cities and the courts of princes: still, one of its great benefits is that it enlarges a man's experience, not only of his fellow-creatures in particular, but of nature in general. Many men pass through life without seeing a sunrise; a traveller cannot." ”

“ It generally irritates. You feel a wild desire to rush in and hit out right and left, and chance the consequences. Nothing will move it when once it has made up its mind that it wishes to place you under its observation. It just stares with an exasperating, unblinking, vacuous stare. How often when gazing at the empty expressionless features of a Chinese face have I recalled the half-humorous query which a French diplomatist once put to a French bishop apostolic in China: "Et croyez-vous vraiement que les Chinois ont une âme?" ”

“ During the night the usual hubbub of a Chinese inn was accentuated by the late arrival of a caravan of twenty mules, bound from Tali Fu with a consignment of opium for the capital.
North-west of Hūnghai the road ascends a range of mountains, and passing through a gap at no very great altitude, drops by a gradual descent to another plain, in which stands the town of Ch'ao-chou. A heavy crop of beans stood in the valley, and poppy was also growing in large quantities. ”

“ My interest in Chinese reformatory methods was sufficiently aroused by this glimpse to induce me to pay an unofficial visit to the yamen courtyard on the following morning, and the insight into Chinese magisterial methods which half an hour's inspection gave me, more than repaid me for my trouble. In the street itself, immediately in front of the courtyard gateway, lay two stiff and twisted corpses, scantily clad in rags and tatters,—two hideous distorted human husks, pitchforked out of the adjacent prison just as they had died during the night. ”

“ There is another, a powerful—perhaps a sinister—influence eating slowly but surely into the old communal life of the people,—the influence of modern industrial requirement. Already thousands of women and children are toiling wearily in factory and workshop, attending mechanically to the great steam-driven spindles and looms which are slowly but inexorably crushing the life out of the old family hand–machines on which were made the exquisite fabrics embodying the artistic soul of Japan. ”

“ Beyond the settlement of the much-debated frontier, some attention was paid to the all-important matter of commerce and communications, which had been productive of a vast outpouring of literature and discussion, of fruitless action, and of no little disappointment and humiliation in the past. With certain specified exceptions, Great Britain granted free entry and free exit to importations and exportations across the frontier, while China gave reductions of three-tenths of the general tariff of the Imperial Maritime Customs on imports and four-tenths on exports over the same ground. ”

“ It would be difficult to find a more striking example of that complete lack of imagination which has doomed China to a perpetual back seat among the competing Powers in the present advanced stage of the progress of humanity.
On the ninth day out from Ichang we reached K'uei Fu, the first town worthy of the name that we had passed, built on the steep hillside of an open valley. Our struggle with the rapids and gorges proper is at an end; henceforth our way will lie along the bottoms of more open valleys, with only an occasional rapid here and there to interrupt our passage. ”

“ Even the present generation will see vast changes in East Asia, and it was with my mind full of such thoughts as are suggested by considerations of this kind that I started on a journey which was to take me into the very heart of China, up the swelling bosom of the mighty Yang-tsze, into the recesses of the wide-stretching and wealthy province of Ssŭch'uan, across the bleak highlands of Yün-nan, and out, finally, on the far side, through the tropical swamps and jungles of British Burma. ”

“ A large proportion of the officials are not only opium-smokers themselves, but are pecuniarily interested in its production. From 30 to 40 per cent of the population are estimated by the Chinese Government to be addicted at the present day to a habit which first found its way into the country two hundred years ago. With a view to eradicating the vice, a succession of Imperial Edicts has been issued and a set of sweeping regulations has been drawn up, while the Government of Great Britain has agreed to limit the export of opium from India pari passu with the reduction of the Chinese crop. ”

“ Two nations are engaged in rough-hewing the destiny of Asia. Japan, a conquering and colonising nation, is engaged in a grim endeavour to become an industrial and commercial Power: China, the home of a peace-loving, trading people, is groping blindly after proficiency in arms. If the Japanese are successful in cultivating in the fighting classes a love and aptitude for commerce, without at the same time impairing their fighting qualities, then it may be predicted that, despite the comparative poverty of their natural resources, they will become a great people ”

“ When we take into consideration the difference in the price of labour between Manchester and Wan Hsien, and the heavy freights which Manchester goods are called upon to bear, to say nothing of the risks incurred, we see one of the reasons why the "millions of China," who are not infrequently held up by those whose too great enthusiasm outruns their reason, as the components of a prodigious market for British goods, are not unlikely to continue in the future, as in the past, to adequately supply their own demand. ”

“ The road, which perhaps scarcely deserves the unmeasured condemnation which it appears to have called forth from such travellers as have covered it, is a stony, but tolerable, mountain track, which swarmed with coolies carrying skins, hides, copper, and lead from Yün-nan, and salt and cottons from Ssŭch'uan. ”

“ I suppose the road, which, be it remembered, is the main line of communication across the province from the capital to the frontier of the empire, is the most execrable example of a highway which it is possible for the mind of man, with its necessary limitations, to conceive. As a hindrance to traffic it can indeed lay claim to considerable distinction, but this, outside China, would scarcely be voted a desirable recommendation for a road, and as a highway qua highway, it can only be described as a dismal and sorrowful failure. ”

“ When we begin to sum up the assets of China,—its 400,000,000 of frugal and industrious people, its incalculable mineral wealth scattered bounteously over a compact territory nearly half as large again as the United States of America, its variety of soil and climate, its immense rivers and vast sea-board,—we need not feel surprised if the mind is staggered at the thought of what a regenerated China may mean to posterity. ”

“ A force of incalculable potentiality for influencing the destinies of the world has been given birth, and it is no longer possible to ignore the immense significance of the movement which, beginning in the extreme East, is sweeping back over Asia and leaving an indelible mark upon every country in its flight. Japan has already emancipated herself from the fetters of Oriental fatalism and inaction—with what startling results we already know. China stirs uneasily with the child national assertion in her womb. ”

“ The defiant rock walls of the gorges give place by degrees to less aggressive mountain slopes. Disintegrated sandstone colours the land with a warm, rich red; well-to-do looking farmsteads with gabled roofs and white-washed walls nestle among clumps of bamboo in pleasant hollows; and bright patches of sugar-cane and a variety of vegetables add to the general air of rural prosperity. ”

“ Beyond Hankow the yellow waters of the great river stretch away westward like a ribbon, between low-lying plains cultivated with cotton. The resources of a river steamer are not great, and the lack of interest is doubly emphasised by the dull monotony of the landscape, broken only by the occasional graceful outline of argosies of white-sailed junks. ”