I was now two days' march from the British Burma border. The landscape in this district was solemn and imposing as I trudged on again, very tired indeed, after a day's rest at Chiu-ch'eng. In the morning heavy tropical vapors of milky whiteness stretched over the sky and the earth. Nature seemed sleeping, as if wrapped in a light veil. It attracted me and absorbed me, dreaming, in spite of myself; ennui invaded me at first, and under the all-powerful constraint of influences so fatal to human personality thought died away by degrees like a flame in a vacuum; for I was again in the East, the real, luxurious, indolent East, the true land of Pantheism, and one must go there to realize the indefinable sensations which almost make the Nirvana of the Buddhist comprehensible.
The river Taping farther down, so different from its aspect a couple of days ago, where it rushed at a tremendous speed over its rocky bed, was now broad and calm and placid, and extremely picturesque. The banks were covered with trees beyond Manyüen. Near the water the undergrowth was of a fine green, but on a higher level the yellow and red leaves, hardly holding on to the withered trees, were carried away with the slightest breath of wind.
At Hsiao Singai, on February 15th, I again had difficulty in getting a room; so I waited, and whilst my men searched about for a place where I could sleep, an extremely tall fellow came up to me, and having felt with his finger and thumb the texture of my tweeds and expressed satisfaction thereof, said--
"Come, elder brother, I have my dwelling in this hostelry, and my upper chamber is at your disposal." And then he added with a twinkle in his eye, "Ko nien, ko nien," whereat I became wary.
Lao Chang, however, was more cute. Whilst I was assuring this well-dressed holiday-maker that he must not think the stranger churlish in not accepting at once the proffered services, but that I would go to look at the room, he sprang past us and went on ahead. In a few moments I was slowly going hence with the multitude. Lao Chang nodded carelessly to the strange company there assembled, and passing through the room with a soft, cat-like tread, began to ascend a dark flight of narrow stairs leading to the second floor of the inn. And I, down below startled and bewildered by mysterious words from everyone, watched his blue garments vanishing upwards, and like a man driven by irresistible necessity, muttered incoherent excuses to my amazed companions, and in a blind, unreasoning, unconquerable impulse rushed after him. But I wish I had not. There were several ladies, who, all more or less _en déshabille_, scampered around with their bundles of gear--sewing, babies' clothes, tin pots, hair ornaments, boxes of powder and scented soap of that finest quality imported from Burma, selling for less than you can buy the genuine article for in London!--and then we took possession.
If once there is a railway to Tengyueh from Burma, a visit to West China, even on to Tali-fu, for those who are prepared to rough it a little, will become quite a common trip. A few days up the Irawadi to Bhamo, through scenery of a peculiar kind of beauty eclipsed on none other of the world's great rivers, would be succeeded by a day or two over some of the best country which Upper Burma anywhere affords, and then, when once past Tengyueh, the grandeur of the mountains is amply compensating to those who love Nature in her beautiful isolation and peace. From a recuperating standpoint, perhaps, it would not quite answer--the rains would be a drawback to road travel, and it would at best mean roughing it; but for the many in Burma who wish to take a holiday and have not the time to go to Europe, I see no reason why Tengyueh should not develop into what Darjeeling is to Calcutta and what Japan is to the British ports farther East. Expense would not be heavy. To Bhamo would be easy. As things now stand, with no railway, one would need to take a few provisions and cooking utensils, and a camp bed and tent, unless one would be prepared to do as the author did, and patronize Chinese inns, such as they are. The rest would be easy to get on the road. For three days from Bhamo dâk bungalows are available, and to a man knowing the country it would be an easy matter to arrange his comforts. To one who knows the conditions, there is in the trip a good deal to fascinate; for in the lives and customs of the people, in the nature of the country, in the free-and-easy life the traveler would himself develop--having a peep at things as they were back in the ancient days of the Bible--to the brain-fagged professional or commercial there is nothing better in the whole of the East.
He would get some excellent shooting, especially in the Salwen Valley, not exactly a health resort, however; and had he inclinations towards botanical, ethnological, craniological, or philological studies, he would be at a loss to find anywhere in the world a more interesting area.
But a man should never leave the "ta lu" in China if he would experience the minimum of discomfort and annoyance, which under best conditions is considerable to an irritable man. As I sit down now, on the very spot where Margary, of the British Consulate Service was murdered in 1875, I regret that I have sacrificed a great deal to secure most of the photographs which decorate this section of my book. No one, not even my military escort, knows the way, and is being sworn at by my men therefor. How I am to reach Man Hsien, across the river at Taping, I do not quite know. Manyüen, so interesting in history, is a native Shan-Kachino-Chinese town untouched by the years--slovenly, dirty, undisciplined, immoral, where law and order and civilization have gained at best but a precarious foothold, the most characteristic feature of the people being the gambler's instinct. But I remember that I am coming into Burma, into the real East, where the tangle and the topsy-turvydom, the crooked vision and the distorted travesty of the truth, which result from judging the Oriental from the standpoint of the Europeans and looking at the East through the eyes of the West, impress themselves upon one's mind in bewildering fashion as a hopeless problem. Everything is all at cross purposes.
However, although I lost my way from Manyüen to Man Hsien, I got my photographs of Kachins, those people whose appearance is that they have no one to care for them body or soul. Their thick, uncombed locks, so long and lank as to resemble deck swabs, overlapped roofwise the ugliest aboriginal faces I ever saw in Asia or America, and their eyes under shaggy brows looked out with diabolical fire.
So much information is to be tained from the Upper Burma Gazetteer_ about the Kachins that it is needless for me to write much here, especially as I can add nothing. But I feel I should like to say just a word of praise of the remarkable work of the American Baptist Mission, which has its headquarters at Bhamo, among this tribe in Burma. At the time I arrived in the city the annual festival was being conducted at the Baptist Church, and hundreds of Kachins were assembled in the splendid premises of this mission. They had come from many miles around; and to one who at previous times in his residence in the Far East had written disparagingly about missionaries and their work, there came some little personal shame as he looked upon the extremely creditable work of the American missionaries in this district. Kachins are a somewhat uncivilized and quarrelsome race, unspeakably immoral, and steeped in every vice against which the Christian missionary has to set his face--a most difficult people to work among. But there I saw scores and scores of baptized Christians living a life clean and ennobling, endeavoring honestly to break away from their degrading customs of centuries, some of them exceedingly intelligent people.
I speak of this because I feel that in the face of untruthful and malicious descriptions which in former years have got into print respecting this very mission and the very missionaries on this field, it is only fair that people in the homeland interested in the work should know what their American brethren are doing here. I cannot praise too highly this mission and the enthusiastic band of workers whom it was my pleasure to meet. In Mr. Roberts, the superintendent of the field, the American Baptist Board have a man of wonderful resource, who is not only an ardent Christian evangelist and capable administrator, but a gentleman of considerable business ability and a remarkable organizer. A writer who, passing through in 1894, was indebted to Mr. Roberts for many kindnesses, found that the only adverse criticism he could make of the missionary was in respect to his knowledge of horses. My experience is that in the whole of the Far East there can be found no more capable pioneer missionary, and his friends in America should pray that Mr. Roberts may be spared many years still to control the work on the successful mission field in which he has spent so much of his labor of love for the Kachins.
Kachins form the bulk of the population in the extreme north of Burma. To the west they extend to Assam, and to the south into the Shan States, as far even as latitude 20° 30'. By far the largest proportion of them live in Burmese territory, but they also extend into Western Yün-nan, though nowhere are they found farther east than longitude 99°.
Man Hsien is the last yamen place before reaching the British border. I crossed the river Taping from Manyüen, being shown the road by a Burmese member of the Buddhistic yellow cloth, who was most pressing that I should stay with him for a few days. Again did I get a fright that my manuscript would never get into print, for my pony, Rusty, probably cognizant of the fact that he, too, was finishing his long tramp, nearly stamped the bottom of the boat out, and threatened to send us down by river past Bhamo quicker than our arrival was scheduled.
The large official paper given to one's military escort from point to point was here produced for the last time, and great ado was made about me. Reading this document aloud from the top of the steps, when he came to my name the mandarin bowed very low, called me Ding Daren , asked if I would exchange cards, and then lapsed unconsciously into profuse congratulation to myself that I should have been born an Englishman. So far as he knew, I could be assured that the existing relations between the administrative bodies of his contemptible country and my own royal land were of a nature so felicitously mutual and peaceful--in fact, both Governments saw eye to eye in regard to international affairs in Far Western China--that he felt sure that I should arrive at the bridge leading into Burma without personal harm. He then, with a colossal bow to myself and a gentle wave of his three-inch finger-nail, handed me over with pungent emphasis of speech to the keeping of a Chinese and a Shan, who with a keen sense of favors to come were to form my escort to Burma's border.
A low grunt of unrestrained approval came from the multitude. The underlings--Chino-Kachino-Burmo-Shan people--who ran about in a little of each of the clothing characteristic of the four said races, were all busy in their endeavors to extricate from me a few cash apiece by doing all and more than was necessary.
Then the great man rose. He condescended to depart. He passed from the threshold, turned, paused, bowed, turned again, went down the steps, bowed again--a long curving bow, which nearly sent him to the ground--and then continued with a light heart towards that loveliest land of the East. My men exhibited no emotion. That they were coming into British territory was of no concern to them; they had come from far away in the interior, and were the greenest of the green, the rawest of the raw.
But soon I passed over a small bridge, a spot where two great empires meet. I was in Burma.
* * * * *
So I have crossed from one end of China to the other. I entered China on March 4th, 1909; I came out on February 14th, 1910.
I had come to see how far the modern spirit had penetrated into the hidden recesses of the Chinese Empire. One may be little given to philosophizing, and possess but scanty skill in putting into words the conclusions which form themselves in one's mind, but it is impossible to cross China entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of propulsion from within, but produced, on the contrary, by artificial means, in bitter conflict with inherent instincts, inherited traditions, innate tendencies, characteristics, and genius, racial and individual. In the eyes of the Chinese of the old school these changes in the habit of life infinitely old are improving nothing and ruining much--all is empty, vapid, useless to God and man. The tawdry shell, the valueless husk, of ancient Chinese life is here still, remains untouched in many places, as will have been seen in previous chapters; but the soul within is steadily and surely, if slowly, undergoing a process of final atrophy. But yet the proper opening-up of the country by internal reform and not by external pressure has as yet hardly commenced in immense areas of the Empire far removed from the imperial city of Peking. And the mere fact that the Chinese propose such an absurd program as that which plans the building of all their railways without the aid of foreign capital is sufficient to react in an unwholesome manner economically.
I cannot but admit that, whilst in most parts of my journey there are distinct traces of reform--I speak, of course, of the outlying parts of China--and some very striking traces, too, and a real longing on the part of far-seeing officials to escape from a humiliating international position, it is distinctly apparent that in everything which concerns Europe and the Western world the people and the officials as a whole are of one mind in the methods of procrastination which are so dear to the heart of the Celestial, and that peculiar opposition to Europeanism which has marked the real East since the beginning of modern history.
* * * * *
And now lovely, lovely Burma!
I had not been in Burma two minutes before the very box containing the clothes into which I must change before I could enter into the social life of Bhamo swung from the broken pole of one of my coolies, and rolled rapidly towards the river. It was recovered after great trouble.
Thick jungle land lay out before me, fleecy clouds in the dense blue sky hung lazily over the green hills, the heavy air was pregnant with that delicious ease known only in the tropics--all was still and sweet. The river flowed grandly from the interior through magnificent forest country, receiving on either shore the frequent tribute of other minor streams, and its banks were marvelous cliffs of jungle--tangles of giant trees on crowding underwood, clinging vine and festooning parasite--rising sheer from the water's brink. Now long clusters of villages, deep in the shade of palm and fruit trees; now wide expanses of grass-grown meadow, where the grazing grounds dip to the river, and where the only echoes of China are the resting pack-horse caravans--the banks cut into huge trampled clefts by the passage of the kine trooping down to drink. Occasional wooded islands broke the monotony of the river, and were just discernible from the magnificent English roads which skirted the hills high up from the river, and yellow sandspits and big wedges of granite and rock ran far out into its uneven course. By day the joyous Burma sun smiled upon all, and at midday poured its merciless heat down upon all mankind, unheeding the weary wanderer whose tramp was now near done. At night the tropical moon turned all this riverine world to the likeness of a very fairyland. Lying in a long chair in the dâk bungalows one drank in the scenes which succeeded one another in bewildering succession, and felt himself thrilled by an almost fierce appreciation of eastern beauty. It was good to meet again an Englishman, a sturdy, firm-featured Englishman, whose love of the East, like mine own, was a veritable obsession. The sun glare of the tropics had parched the color out of our white skin, and despite the fact that malaria came back again here to taunt me, yet I was again in the East that I loved, that had scarred and marked me ere my time mayhap. And yet I, with many such of my own countrymen, despite her rough handling, worship her.
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