Yunnan

“ 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 Yunnan, the Kwang-si, and the Kwei-chau are the three poorest provinces of China, and cover a fifth of her territory, whilst possessing barely the fifteenth of her population, or, in other words, about 24,000,000 out of 380,000,000. They have been unfortunately devastated by the great insurrection of the Taipings and the Mohammedan revolts, especially Yunnan; the country is really only a conglomeration of mountains and plateaux, some of them 6,500 feet in height, and, 262moreover, the communications are very scanty, and it would cost an enormous sum to improve them. ”

“ It is the centre of a large though rather scantily populated district abounding in the great staples, rice, beans, and millet, as well as in fruit and vegetables. Formerly Yunnan stood in the forefront of opium-producing provinces, but when I was there not a poppy-field was to be seen. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Soon afterwards Garnier was joined by the rest [108] of the expedition; and setting out from inhospitable Lin-ngan, the little company of explorers proceeded on their way to Yunnan, the capital of a province of the same name.
Yunnan is a town of some importance, with a very numerous and industrious population. Every thoroughfare presents a scene of the liveliest activity. The town is surrounded by a high and massive wall ”

“ At present Eastern Yunnan sends her trade through the provinces of Kweichow and Hunan to the Yangtse above Hankow, or viâ the two Kuangs to Canton. Shortness of distance, combined with facility of transport, [Pg 149] must soon tap this trade or divert it into the highways of Tonquin. Northern Yunnan must send her produce and receive her imports, viâ Szechuen and the Yangtse. As for the trade of Szechuen, the richest of the provinces of China, no man can venture to assert that any other trade route exists, or can ever be made to exist, than the River Yangtse ”

“ 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. ”

“ Immense tracts in the north and west of the province (Yunnan) have lain waste since the Mahommedan rebellion, and owing to the antipathy of the Chinese to settle on lands which they look upon as the property of people who may still be living, or whose descendants may still be living, it must be many years before the agriculture of the province is properly developed. ”

“ Under the command of Major Slade, this little army made its way safely through the debatable land of the Kakhyens and Shans, and, entering the province of Yunnan, penetrated as far into the Chinese empire as the city of Momien. But here its further progress was checked.
Yunnan was at the moment in the very crisis of a rebellion against the imperial government. The population of the province is largely Mohammedan. How the religion of the Prophet first obtained so firm a foothold there is still for antiquaries to discover. ”

“ Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first city of China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect a sanitary modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan, though an extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that the people, who live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and are in constant slavery to oppressive landlords who are really foray chiefs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, though it had scarcely been realised in all its bearings by our own British officials, Yunnan was no longer a well ordered province of the Chinese empire; it was disorganised by the successful rebellion of the Mahommedan Chinese, called Panthays by the Burmese, who had established a partial sovereignty, extending from Momien to Tali-fu. The frontier trade had been materially interrupted, partly by the desolation caused by the internecine warfare, and partly by the depredations of imperial Chinese partisans. ”

“ Yunnan's chequered history is revealed in the varied peoples that inhabit the deep valleys and narrow river banks. Nominally annexed to the empire by Kublai Khan, the Mongol, in the thirteenth [50] century, ever since the Chinese people have been at work peacefully and irresistibly making the conquest real, and now they are found all over the province, as a matter of course occupying the best places. ”

“ The French, however, can change their policy in these respects if they think best. But the proposed construction by the Chinese Government of a railway connecting Yunnan-fu and the West River valley would cut the ground out from under their feet. For the moment, the Revolution has stopped the enterprise, but it is certain to be taken up again, as there are no insuperable engineering obstacles in the way, and every economic and political reason for giving Yunnan an outlet to the sea through Chinese territory. ”

“ The Min-chia type is quite un-Chinese in appearance. That most members of the tribe speak Chinese is no strong argument in favour of their Chinese descent. It is a well-known fact that it was the deliberate policy of the Chinese emperors—especially in the early years of the present dynasty—to compel the conquered people of Yunnan to learn the language of northern China; and this policy was so wonderfully successful that at the present day nearly every one in Yunnan speaks a dialect which is easily intelligible to any one who has learned Pekingese. ”

“ The best trade school, however, is the modern jail, which is very popular! When you hire a mechanic in Yunnan you are reasonably sure that you have a former jailbird, just as in Peking, if you have a good clerk you are sure he is a Manchu prince incognito, for pensions have been stopped of late! One sees here the famous Yunnan yellow pigs, and peculiar white and black fowl, whose bones and skin are black, probably on account of iron and copper in what they eat. Boys are driving water buffaloes to the rice and maize fields, which have superseded the poppy plantations. ”

“ And at Yuen-kiang he remarks: “The Tai, whom the Chinese call Pa-y, are the ancient inhabitants of the country of Muong-Choung, which is now called Yuen-kiang. They are more numerous and more independent as the frontier of Tong-king is approached.” Thus the Chinese province of Yunnan on the one side and the upper portion of the valley of the Irawady on the other contain a largely preponderating element of Shan population, [Pg 288] their national characteristics, however, gradually becoming obliterated by the influence of the ruling races respectively. ”

“ The king deputed a man of his own—a Tibetan who spoke a little Chinese—to act as my guide to the boundary of his territory on the Yalung river, and the prefect and colonel ordered three soldiers to escort me as far as the town of Yung-ning, just within the Yunnan frontier. I had also previously engaged a young man, whose father was a Chinese and his mother a Tibetan from Lhasa, to act as my personal servant, and this youth accompanied me almost as far as the frontier of Upper Burma. ”

“ A number of Chinese proper have from time to time been added to this community, which, in all places, seems to have included the wealthiest and best class of the population. The [Pg 233] rebellion in Yunnan seems to have been brought about solely by the oppression to which the Mahommedans were subjected by the mandarins. Their proud independent spirit would not brook the tyranny and extortion universally practised by the official class, from which they were excluded. ”

“ The Red River of Tongking and Yunnan is so much dreaded by the Chinese on account of its deadly fevers that nothing will induce them to spend a night on its banks.217 The Salwen, the valley of which forms a yawning chasm from north to south of the Yunnan plateau, has an even worse reputation, as is well known to all who have travelled from Talifu to Bhamo.218 Charms against disease are worn by the men of the Yalung valley as well as by the women, but they do not take the same form. ”

“ To-day the tribes constitute more than one half the population, and an ethnological map of Yunnan is a wonderful patchwork, for side by side and yet quite distinct, you find scattered about settlements of Chinese, Shans, Lolos, Miaos, Losus, and just what some of these are is still an unsolved riddle. To add to the confusion there is a division of religions hardly known elsewhere, for out of the population of twelve millions it is estimated that three or four millions are Mohammedans. ”

“ Meanwhile, with foresight and astuteness, General Tsai Ao and Liang Chi-chao were planning their movement against Yuan. By establishing the first independent government in the remote province of Yunnan they made sure that Yuan Shih-kai would be unable to vindicate his authority over all China at an early time. With Yunnan as starting point, it was hoped that the provinces of Kweichow, Kuangsi, and Szechuan could be induced to associate themselves with the anti-monarchist movement. Though Canton had a large garrison of Yuan's troops, it was hoped that inroads would be made even there. ”

“ Later came the outbreak of the tribesmen, while the Boxer movement of the north found a vigorous response here. Bloodshed and disorder have given the country a set-back from which it is only beginning to recover.
But the coming of the railway has brought fresh life to Yunnan, and the prospects for the future economic development are very promising. In the capital there were many signs of a new day. The Reform movement had taken good hold in this remote corner of the empire. A hospital with eight wards and under Chinese control was doing fine work. ”

“ In ancient times, this Yunnan-Guizhou plateau/Sichuan basin transition area was the domain of the Bo people, whose neolithic but similarly cliff-inspired culture incorporated hanging cliff tombs, a tradition still preserved to this day in only one location by an offshoot emigrant community who moved to Bainitang in Wenshan prefecture, southeastern Yunnan. Sadly that community is now endangered by open cut mining. See for example this Chinese source for further information on the pass itself, which is discussed further subsequently in this section of the text. ”

“ Then it crosses the border into Yunnan at Poyai, and by way of Pamen, Koukan, Tungtu and Putsitang to Amichow, where it crosses the French Laokay-Yunnan line. From Amichow it proceeds to Linanfu, Shihping and Yuankiang where it crosses the river of the same name. Thence it passes through Talang, Puerhfu and Szemao and finally ends at the border of Burma near the Mekong River. This line taps the rich tin, silver, and antimony deposits of south Yunnan and Kwangsi, while rich iron and coal fields are found right along the whole line. Gold, copper, mercury, and lead are also found in many places. ”

“ We side with our source edition's interpretation and consider this character separately. Distances within Yunnan and at its Borders (云南界内途程; yúnnán jiè nèi túchéng) Jiāozhǐ (交阯城) to Yángxiefai (陽苴咩城) Photo toward the Tonghai plain (and the 'ocean'-like lakes) from a temple on a mountain, taken 2009 by Christopher, Tania and Isabelle Luna. Chéngdū (成都府) to Yángxiefai (陽苴咩城) Note that the borderland region between modern Yunnan proper and the Sichuan basin through which this section's route passes is historically inhabited by the Yi. ”