Guangxi

“ From the north came China's foes, the sturdy horsemen from Mongolia, the mountain men from the Manchurian Hills, and because the peaceful, industrious inhabitants of the rich; alluvial plains feared greatly the raiders, they, just at the Nankou Pass, where these inaccessible hills might be passed, built watch-towers and kept ward. There they stand, even to this day, upon jutting peaks where the pass opens into the plain, grey stone watch-towers with look-outs and slits for the archers, and beacon-towers which could flash the fiery warning that should rouse the country to the south. ”

“ THREE years ago West China seemed at the back of beyond. To make your way in you had either to traverse the length of Upper Burma and then cross the great rivers and ranges of western Yunnan, a weary month-long journey, or else spend tedious weeks ascending the Yangtse, the monotony of the trip tempered by occasional shipwreck. To-day, thanks to French enterprise, you can slip in between mountain and river and find yourself at Yunnan-fu, the provincial capital, after a railway journey of only three days and a half from Haiphong, the port of Tonking. ”

“ Europeans who have experienced the biting winds of Peking, the damp heat of Canton, or the gray skies of Chengtu find in the bright days and cool breezes of Yunnan some mitigation of their exile to this remote corner of the empire. The city itself is not very attractive in spite of its many trees, for it seems a network of narrow lanes, only broken here and there by a temple enclosure or a stretch of waste land, the whole shut in by sound thirty-foot high walls ”

“ The people in Yunnan seem cowed and crushed. That arrogance which characterises the Chinese elsewhere is entirely wanting here. They have seen the horrors of rebellion and civil war, of battle, murder and sudden death, of devastation by the sword, famine, ruin, and misery. They are resigned and spiritless. But their friendliness is charming; their courtesy and kindliness is a constant delight to the traveller. ”

“ No one can gain any adequate idea of the magnitude of the Empire of China until he has journeyed up that great waterway, the Yang-tse-Kiang, and observed the millions upon millions of natives that throng both the river and its banks. For the first four hundred miles of its twisting, serpentine course, the Yang-tse seems to wind through one successive village, back of which the skilfully cultivated gardens and fields are visible. The people as a rule seem peaceful and plodding ”

“ The last viceroy, the much respected Hsi Liang, the one Mongol in the Chinese service, himself not an opium smoker, had shown great determination in carrying out the imperial edicts against its use or production, and rather unwillingly Yunnan was brought into line with the new order. Under his successor, Li Ching Hsi, a man known to be given over to the use of the drug, unwilling converts hoped for better days, only to be disappointed. After a more or less serious effort to reform, he announced that he was too old to change, but the province had a long life before it, and must obey the law. ”

“ When the Imperial Manchus sought a last resting-place for themselves they had the whole of China to choose from, and they took with Oriental disregard for humbler people; but—saving grace—they chose wisely though they chose cruelly. They have taken for their own a place just where the mountains begin, a place that must be miles in extent. It is of rich alluvial soil swept down by the rains from the hills, and all China, with her teeming population, cannot afford to waste one inch of soil. ”

“ At the close of the troubles that devastated the province during the third quarter of the nineteenth century it is said that the population of Yunnan had fallen to about a million, but now, owing in part to the great natural increase of the Chinese, and in part to immigration chiefly from overpopulated Szechuan and Kwei-chou, it is estimated at twelve million. At any rate, those who know the country well declare there is little vacant land fit for agriculture, that the province has about as many inhabitants as it can support, and can afford no relief to the overcrowded eastern districts. ”

“ When an exodus takes place from Szechuen to this province, there is little reason why Yunnan should not become one of the richest provinces in China. It has every advantage of climate, great fertility of soil, and immense mineral resources hardly yet developed. It needs population. It needs the population that dwelt in the province before the rebellion involved the death of millions. It can absorb an immense proportion of the surplus population of China. During, and subsequent to, the Taiping rebellion the province of Szechuen increased by 45,000,000 in forty years (1842-82) ”

“ The Imperial City, all round the Forbidden City, consists of a network of narrow streets and alleys lined with low buildings with windows of delicate lattice-work, and curved tiled roofs. Here, hidden away in silent peaceful courtyards shaded by gnarled old trees, are temples guarded by shaven priests in faded red robes. Their hangings are torn and faded, the dust lies on their altars, and the scent of the incense is stale in their courts, for the gods are dead; and yet because the dead are never forgotten in China—China that clings to her past—they linger on. ”

“ But Sun Ts‘ê boiled with rage at seeing his officers and the people gathered in groups and kneeling in the water regardless of the damage to their clothing.
“Rain or shine are as nature appoints them and the wizard has happened to hit upon a moment of change; what are you making all this fuss about?” cried he.
Then he drew his sword and told the attendants to smite the Taoist therewith. They all besought him to hold his hand.
“You want to follow Yü Chi in rebellion, I suppose,” cried Sun Ts‘ê. ”

“ After Xuande finished reading the letter, he asked Ci, "Who are you?" Ci said, "I am Taishi Ci. I come from a remote area of Donghai Commandery. Kong Rong is not a member of my family, and we don't come from the same hamlet. However, we have made it a point to forge a bond with each other on the basis of mutual aspirations and mutual goodwill. I also share his concerns and worries. Now that Guan Hai has staged a rebellion, Beihai is in a state of siege, cut off from the outside with nowhere to turn. The people there are in imminent danger. ”

“ It is a long, long nine miles over a stony mule track where only a donkey, a pony, or a chair can go, and yet here centuries ago, when it was ten times farther away, China buried her dead, the men who sat on 121the Dragon Throne, and bridged for the nation the gap that lies between mortal men and high Heaven. It is lonely now when the roadway of the West brings Nankou close to the capital, it must have been unspeakably lonely in the days before the opening of the railway. ”

“ Usually they were fast shut, but they were open to-day, guarded by soldiers in full-marching order, soldiers of the New Republic in modern khaki looking out of the picture, and there streamed into the tunnellike entrance as curious a crowd as ever I set eyes upon. All must walk, old and young, great and lowly, representatives of the mighty nations of the world and tottering Chinese ladies swaying like “lilies in the wind” upon their maimed feet, only one man, a Mongol Prince, an Incarnation of a Buddha, a living Buddha, was borne in in a sedan chair. ”

“ Hsi An Fu is situated in Shensi, roughly, about a fortnight's journey from the nearest railway, with walls that rival those of Peking, and like Peking, with a Manchu City walled off inside those walls. There on the 22nd October, 1911, the Revolutionaries, the apostles of progress, shut fast the gates of the inner city and butchered the Manchus within the walls. From house to house they went, and slew them all, old women on the brink of the grave and the tiny infant smiling in its mother's arms. ”

“ Urga the Sacred City, the home of the Gigin, [276] the Living God, third in the Buddhist hierarchy, is not so much one city as three, all located on a high ridge above the Tola. Each is distinct, separate, entrenched. Arriving from the south, the one you reach first is Mai-ma-chin, the Chinese trading settlement, a tangle of small houses and narrow lanes hemmed in by stockades of wooden slabs and unbarked fir trees. Here are the eight or ten thousand Chinese who control the trade of North Mongolia. ”

“ It is not to be wondered at that the people of Yunnan are alive to the danger of foreign interference, for they see the British on the west and much more the French on the south, peering with greedy eyes and clutching hands over the border. In the last fifteen years commissions of the one and the other have scoured the province with scarcely so much as "by your leave," investigating the mineral resources and planning out practicable railway routes. Within the capital city the French seem entrenched. ”

“ For more than 200 years, the Court had always acted in deep kindness to those foreigners of great distances. Our ancestors had always treated them with respect. During the reign of Daoguang Emperor and Xianfeng Emperor, said foreigners began to be allowed to trade with China, and yet they begged for the permission to preach the teaching of Christ, since the teaching was for the good of the people ”

“ Somebody had reported that Li Jue and Guo Si were leading an army and would be there soon. The emperor was shocked. He asked Yang Feng, saying, "The envoy has not yet returned from the east of the mountains. What's more, the armies of Li and Guo will be here soon. What shall we do?" Yang Feng and Han Xian said, "We are willing to fight to the death with those traitors in order to protect Your Majesty." Dong Cheng said, "The city's walls will not withstand the onslaught. We do not have a lot of weapons or armor. ”

“ The two Kwang provinces, Kwang-tung and Kwang-si, were the first affected by the leaven of European example, and were so the more readily because our violent acts, irrespective of any question of justification, were congenial to the predatory tastes of the inhabitants of that portion of China. That region, which contains from twenty-six to twenty-eight millions of Chinese, has always been the last to submit to the rule of a new dynasty, and the first to revolt. Six centuries ago, the Mongol conquerors of China had no easy task in mastering these southerners ”

“ Xuande said, "My two brothers, which of you can watch over the city while I'm gone?" Lord Guan said, "I would like to watch over the city." Xuande said, "Sooner or later, I will want to discuss things with you. How can we be separated from each other?" Zhang Fei said, "I would like watch over the city." Xuande said, "You're not capable of watching over the city. For one thing, after you've been drinking, you become brazen and beat the soldiers. For another thing, you don't take your duties seriously, and don't heed the advice of others. ”

“ No place in China is lonely. There were strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats—second-hand goods, Mark Twain calls them—there were strings of pack-mules and still longer strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos across their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men had come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of Shensi; but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of them stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side of the river. ”

“ Yunnan (4,000) , the extreme south-western province of the Chinese Empire; is fertile particularly in the S.; yields large quantities of maize, rice, tobacco, sugar, and especially opium, and abounds in mineral wealth, including gold, silver, mercury, as well as iron, copper, and lead; the country was long a prey to revolt against the Chinese rule, but it is now, after a war of extermination against the rebels, the Panthays, the Burmese, reduced to order. ”

“ In 1126, the Sung capital, the modern Kʽai-fêng Fu in Honan, was twice besieged: on the first occasion for thirty-three days, when a heavy ransom was exacted and some territory was ceded; on the second occasion for forty days, when it fell, and was given up to pillage. In 1127, the feeble Chinese Emperor was seized and carried off, and by 1129 the whole of China north of the Yang-tsze was in the hands of the Nü-chêns. The younger brother of the banished Emperor was proclaimed by the Chinese at Nanking, and managed to set up what is known as the southern Sung dynasty ”

“ THE CHIEF OF THE CUSTOM-HOUSE GIVES A LESSON IN OPIUM SMOKING. Urumtsi, or Hun-miao (red temple) of the Chinese, still retains its ancient prestige in being the seat of government for the viceroyalty of Sin-tsiang, which includes all that portion of western China lying without the limit of Mongolia and Tibet. Thanks to its happy position, it has always rapidly recovered after every fresh disaster. It now does considerable trade with Russia through the town of Chuguchak, and with China through the great gap which here occurs in the Tian Shan range. ”

“ The first division comprises the holders of high office in Peking; the second the governors of the eighteen provinces in which China proper is comprehended, and of the three provinces of the district loosely termed Manchuria, which stretches north-eastward of Peking. In the third class we may place the officials resident in those vast regions known as Inner and Outer Mongolia, in the country between Mongolia and Thibet, and lastly In Thibet itself. Every Manchu mandarin of high standing has military as well as civil rank. ”