Lawrence Dundas

“ The tremendous strides which China will have to take before recovering her place among the competing nations of the world are forced upon the notice of the traveller at every turn. Thus the immense obstacles which stand in the way of even so elementary and so necessary a reform as the construction of railways were brought to light during my stay at Ch'êngtu by the publication, for the first time, of a balance-sheet of the proceeds of three years' enforced contributions and taxation towards a fund for building a line from Ch'êngtu to Hankow. ”

“ In China there is always a big element of uncertainty in all official transactions connected with finance, and the only point in the present arrangement which apparently admitted of no doubt, was the abstraction of large sums from the fund specifically collected for the purpose of railway construction. Armed with this knowledge, the local gentry hurled their bolt from the blue into the viceregal yamen, in the shape of a memorial insisting on the restoration to the fund of the sum of 1,000,000 taels unlawfully extracted. ”

“ This magnificent prospect did not appear to excite the enthusiasm among the taxpayers that was hoped for, and at the time of my arrival at the capital inflammatory placards appeared in the neighbourhood, in which it was pointed out that while taxation was increasing, the interests of the people were being neglected, and amiably concluding, in one case, by offering rewards for all foreigners brought in dead or alive, and by appointing a date for a general attack upon the foreign population. ”

“ An ingenious method of raising money had for some time been put into force. A special income tax of 3 per cent was being levied on all who possessed an income of more than ten piculs of rice. In order to make it clear that this tax was levied in the interests of the taxpayer, it was declared that interest at the rate of 4 per cent would be paid on the sum thus raised, and that when any individual taxpayers contribution had amounted to 50 taels he would be awarded a share in the Ch'êngtu-Hankow railway scheme. ”

“ The college for modern learning, erected in compliance with the peace protocol of 1900, I found in a flourishing condition, with 378 students voraciously seeking the knowledge of the peoples of the West. It started late and badly, a building for the purpose having been reluctantly erected by official orders in 1904, which building had shortly afterwards to be destroyed as unsafe, the contractor having expended upon it only 10,000 out of the 30,000 taels for which he contracted to do the work. Students were not easy to find ”

“ It is not, like Ch'ung-k'ing, a great distributing centre for foreign goods; but there are large and well-stocked shops at which the products of Europe and America are on sale, and there must be a very large local trade. Silk is conspicuous among the local productions, the Ch'êngtu Fu district itself being responsible for an annual production valued at upwards of 33⁄4 million taels, out of a total production for the whole province of Tls. ”

“ History sometimes repeats itself, and it is worth recalling that Mr Cooper found a similar expedition, whose commander remained in Ch'êngtu, occupied in drawing pay at the monthly rate of 14s. a man for a paper army of 40,000 men, consisting of 250 men only, who had accomplished the truly magnificent feat of occupying nearly six months in covering a distance of thirty miles. ”