courteous americans—nankou pass—beacon towers—inaccessible hills—“balbus has built a wall”—tiny towns—“watchman, what of the night?”—deserted watch-towers—-thoughtful chinese waiter—ming tombs—chinese carrying chair—stony way—greatest p'ia lou in china—amphitheatre among the barren hills—tomb of yung lo—trunks of sandal-wood trees—enterprising chinese guard.
wherever i might wander in china, and with the rumours of war that were in the air, it looked as if my wanderings were going to be somewhat restricted, to one place i was bound to wander, and that was the great wall of china. even in the days of my grandmother's curios, i had heard about that, one of the wonders of the world, and i could never have left china without seeing it.
“you can do it in a couple of days,” said the young man, who had chastened me gently when first i entered peking. “i'm going up on tuesday, you'd better come along. the poet's coming too,” he added.
114the poet, a real live poet, who thought a deal more about his binding than his public, was like me i think, he did not like seeing places in crowds, and at first he did not give us much of his society. there was also a millionaire, an american millionaire, his little wife, his big daughter, and his angular 114maiden sister. they had an observation-car fixed on to the train, and the guard came along and said that if we ordinary travellers, who were not millionaires, cared to come in the car, the millionaire would be very pleased.
i have travelled so much by myself that the chance of congenial company once in a way was delightful, but i did feel we ought not to have taken the train to the nankou pass. a mule litter, or a peking cart would have been so much more suitable. however, it is as well to be as comfortable as possible.
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. for thirteen miles we went up the pass, the cleft that the stream, babbling cheerfully now in april over its water-worn rocks, has carved for itself through the stony hills, and its weird beauty never palls.
115always there were the hills, broken to pieces, tossed together by the hand of a giant, there were great clefts in them, vistas looking up stony and inaccessible valleys, gullies that are black as if a burning fiery furnace had been set in their midst, little pockets where the stream widened and there was a patch of green pasture, some goats grazing, a small, neat farm-house and fruit-trees, pink and white, almond, peach, or pear, a wealth of blossom. on every patch of those barren hill-sides where a tree might grow, a tree—a fruit-tree—because the chinaman is strictly utilitarian, had been planted; only here and there, over the sacred graves of china, there was a patch of willow, tender with the delicate dainty green of early spring.
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always in china there are people; and here there were tiny towns packed together on ledges of the eternal hills, with the fruit-trees and the willows that shade the graves, and there were walls—walls that stretch up to the inaccessible portion of the hills, where only a goat might climb, and no invading army could possibly pass. so numerous were these walls that my cheery young friend suggested that if ever a village head-man had a little spare time on his hands he remarked: “oh, i say, here's a fine day and plenty of stones, let's go out and build a wall.” and then next day the villagers in the next hamlet looking out said, “by jove, balbus, no wong, has built a wall. we can't be beat.” but i don't think in the old days the villagers on those hills ever took life quite as lightly as that.
over and over again it is repeated, the watch-towers on the hills and the strips of wall running down into the valley, walls with wide tops on which companies of archers might stand, protected by a breast-work slit for arrows, with a wall behind again to which they might retire if they were beaten, making the space between hard to hold, even for a victorious enemy. always there were the walls and watch-towers as we went on up the valley, telling (116)in their own way, the story of the strenuous lives of the men who lived here in the old days.
down the mule track these walls command came an endless company of people, wandering along, slowly, persistently, as they have wandered since the dawn of history. they had mules, and donkeys, and horses—muzzled so that they cannot eat the tufts of herbage by the roadside—laden with grain, and hides, and all manner of merchandise. there were blue-coated coolies trudging along with bamboos across their shoulders, their heavy loads dangling from either end; and there were laden camels, the ragged dromedaries from mongolia, long lines of them, picking their way among the stones along the road by the side of the stream. the camels, and the walls, and the watch-towers go together, they enhance the wonder and the charm of this road to the great wall.
up and up we went, up the valley, past the great archway where is the customs barrier even to-day, and on, higher and higher, deeper into the hills, till ahead, crowning them, climbing their steepest points, bridging their most inaccessible declivities, clear-cut against the blue sky, i saw what i had come out to see, one of the wonders of the world, the great wall of china! here among the stony, arid hills, that anywhere else in the world would be left to the rock-doves and the rabbits, we came upon a piece of man's handiwork that for ages has cried aloud to those who have eyes to see, or ears to hear, of the colossal industry of china, nay of more than that, of the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the community. on and on went the wall, up and up and up, climbing steadily, falling, climbing again, 117and again dropping into the valleys. there were watch-towers and a broad highway along its top; here stood the sentries, who kept ceaseless watch and ward looking ever for the invader, whether he came in countless array, a conquering army, or in small raiding bands that might take toll of the rich crops to the south, steal a few women, or hold a wealthy squire up to ransom.
“watchman, what of the night? what of the night? is the road clear to the north? hist! hist! what is that beneath the loom of the hills? what is the sound that comes up on the wind?”
“there are always dark shadows in the loom of the hills, and it is only a stone falling down the gully.”
“ah, but the dark shadows have hidden a band of manchurian archers, and the stone might be loosened by the hoof of a mongol pony. watchman! watchman, what of the night? what of the night?”
that was the way i felt about it as, having got out of the train, and taken a chair, we made our way through the desolate country to the nankou pass, and i, forgetting all else, stood gazing my fill at the wall i had heard about ever since i was a little child. dreaming of what it must have been in the past, i forgot, for the moment, the present, and the passing of time. i was alone, as the poet wished to be, and then a high-pitched voice brought me to this present day again.
“say momma,” said the millionaire—we thought he was a millionaire because of the observation-car, but he may have been just more ordinarily well-to-do than a writer of books—“where's cora?” 118"search me,” said momma placidly.
he didn't search her, perhaps because, seeing she was but five feet and small and thin at that, he did not think it likely that cora, who was a buxom young person close on six feet, could possibly be concealed anywhere about her person.
the maiden aunt pointed an accusing finger up the rough, grass-grown stones that make the top of the wall.
“skipping like a young ram,” she snorted, and then all three raised their voices, and those old-world rocks rang with shouts of “cora! cora!! cora!!!”
i trembled for the poet's feelings, if he were anywhere within range, but after all, in their own way and time, i dare say the keepers of the wall were just as commonplace. my companion, who was steadily making his way up the wall beside cora, turned at the ear-piercing yells, looked at his watch, spoke to the girl, and came slowly back while she quickened her pace for a moment, as if determined to get over the other side of the hill, whatever happened.
“the young gentleman has the most sense,” opined momma.
“she'll come now he's turned,” said the maiden aunt acidly, and even though she did come, down across the rough stones, by the ruined watch-towers, i felt the insinuation was unjust.
those watch-towers are empty now, deserted and desolate. no thoughtful captain, weighed down with responsibility, looks through their arched windows, no javelin men stand on the stone steps, no sentry tramps along peering out to the north. 119the wall is tumbling into disrepair, the grass and weeds grow up between the stones, and the wonder of the world is a mighty ruin, stately even in its decay, for never again beneath the sun will such another wall be built. look at it climbing up those hills, cutting the blue sky, bridging the gullies, and think of the tears, and sweat, and blood, that went to the building of it! that foundations may be well and truly laid, so says tradition, they must be laid on a living human being. it is one way of saying that on sacrifice our lives are based, that for every good thing in life something of value must be given; so to the building of the wall, that was to hold china safe, went hundreds and thousands of lives, and its upkeep and its watching cost more than we can well imagine.
we went back to the ching er hotel at nankou, the little hotel close to the railway and plunged once more into modern life for, unpretentious and kept by chinese as it is, it still represented the present day. it is just one big room, divided into a hall and many little rooms by so many sheets of paper, so that the man in the room in front may whisper and nothing be lost upon the man in the room at the back, six rooms away, while to have a bath is a matter of public interest, for the smallest splash can be heard from one end of the building to the other.
nevertheless, i shall always have friendly feelings towards that little hotel, where they lodged me so hardly, and fed me so well.
they considered one in every way, too. the poet had evidently not been troubled by the family affection of the millionaires, he walked back from the 120wall, and was so full of enthusiasm he forgave my presence, came to me as i sat at dinner and, covered with the dust of the way as he was, stood, and just as i should expect of a poet, waxed eloquent on the glories he had seen. the chinese waiter, with shaven head and long blue smock, let him go on for a few minutes, then he took him gently and respectfully by the sleeve.
“vash,” he said solemnly, without the ghost of a smile on his face; “vash,” and the poet came to earth with a laugh. we both laughed.
“well, yes,” he said looking at his dust-begrimed person. “i suppose i had better wash. i'll be back in a moment. may i sit at your table?”
and next day i went to see the ming tombs.
st paul's and westminster are set in the heart of a mighty city, ever by the peaceful dead sounds the clamour of the living, yet the living forget, in spite of the daily reminder they forget. in china, where graves dot every field, and are part and parcel of the lives of the people, they bury the honoured dead far apart from the rush and roar of everyday life, and they never forget. the nankou pass is two hours from peking, and the tombs of the ming emperors are nine miles from the nankou pass, set in the very heart of the hills. the entrance to the pass is barren and lonely enough, but the extra nine miles is like journeying into the wilderness where the scapegoat, burdened with the sins of the community, was driven by the israelites. 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. a chair seemed to me the only way to get there, a chair borne by four blue-clad coolies with queues wrapped round their shaven heads, and while my companion rode a pony, in a chair i swung over the stony narrow track away towards the hills. the hills were rugged and barren, the same hills that the wall crossed; on their stony sides no green thing could ever grow, and they were brown, and pink, and grey, and when a white cloud gathered here and there in the faraway blue sky, the shadows lay across them in great purple patches. and the road was stony, barely to be seen, impossible for wheeled traffic, even the primitive wheeled traffic of northern china. i doubt even if a wheelbarrow could have gone along it. i doubted often whether the heaps of stones on the slope could possibly be a road, but the coolies seemed to know, and went steadily on, changing the pole from one shoulder to the other so often that it gave me a feeling of brutality that i should use such a means of locomotion. the only person who was comfortable was i.
my companion rode beside me sometimes. he felt himself responsible for my well-being, and it was good to be looked after.
“are you all right?”
all right! if the country round was desolate, the sunshine was glorious, the air, the clear, dry air of northern china was as invigorating as champagne, 122and i knew that i could go on for ever and feel myself much blessed. the ming tombs were but an excuse; it was well and more than well to be here in the open spaces of the earth, to draw deep breaths, to feel that neither past nor future mattered; here beneath the open sky in the golden sunshine swinging along, somewhere, anywhere, i had all i could ask of life.
and always it was a stony way. sometimes the coolies climbed up a bank of loose stones that slipped and rolled away as they passed, sure-footed as goats, sometimes the stones were piled on either side and a sort of track meandered in between, sometimes they were scattered all over the plain in such masses that even the industrious chinese seemed to have given up the task of clearing them away as hopeless, and had simply tilled the land in between. for this was no uninhabited desert, desolate as it seemed. always we came across little stone-built hamlets, there were men and women working in the fields, and rosy-cheeked children stood by the wayside and waved their little hands to the passing stranger. there would be the sound of bells, and a string of mules or donkeys came picking their way as soberly as the coolies themselves, and left much to themselves by their ragged drivers. they looked of the poorest, these people, men and women clad much alike in dirty blue that, torn here and there, let out the cotton-wool which padded it for winter warmth.
probably they knew nothing, nothing of the world beyond their little dusty, stony hamlets, they prayed perhaps for the rain that should moisten their dusty, stony fields, and give them the mess of meal, the 123handful of persimmons that is all they ask of fate, and they watched the few strangers who came to visit the tombs, and perhaps never even wondered what the outside world might be like, if it gave to those who lived there anything more than fell to the lot of the humble dwellers on the road to the ming tombs.
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and at last in the pleasant noontide we came to the p'ia lou at the entrance, the greatest p'ia lou in china, that land of p'ia lous, and standing there i realised, not only the beauty of the archway, but the wonder of the place the mings had chosen to be theirs for all time. it is a great amphitheatre among these barren hills. st paul's or westminster could not hold these tombs, for hyde park might be put in this valley and yet not half fill it; and round it, set against the base of the hills, in great courts enclosed in pinkish-red walls, the counterpart of those round the forbidden city, and planted with cypress and pine, are the various tombs. a magnificent resting-place, truly! and the dignity is enhanced by the desolate approach. through the p'ia lou is the famous holy way, the avenue of marble animals, of which all the world has so often heard. what mystic significance had the marble elephant and the camel, the kneeling horse and the sedate scholar? possibly they had no more than the general suggestion that all things did honour to the mighty dead laid away in their tombs. a paved way runs between them, paved with great blocks of marble brought from the hills, placed there in bygone ages by the hands of slaves, sweating and struggling under their loads, or possibly by men just exactly like the men who were bearing me, men slaves in all but name, who each day must earn a 124few pence or go under in the pitiful struggle for life. the paved way that runs on for three miles is worn and broken, the grass comes up between the blocks, the bridges are falling into disrepair, but these things are trifles in the face of the amphitheatre set among the eternal hills, the blue sky and the sunshine, these are a memorial here, a memorial that makes the work of men's hands but a small thing.
nevertheless that work is very wonderful. no one, i suppose, except he were making chinese art or antiquities a special study, would visit every tomb in turn. it would take a week, and we, like the majority of visitors, contented ourselves with that of yung lo, the principal one. and here is a curious thing worth noting, a thing that possibly would happen nowhere else in the world, showing how irrevocably china feels herself bound to the past. the ming emperor was a chinese, and the republic that has just overthrown the manchu dynasty, is also chinese, so as a mark of respect, they have repaired, after a fashion, this, the tomb of the greatest of the ming emperors. that is to say—oh china! they have whitewashed the marble, painted the golden-brown tiled roof of the temple, and swept and garnished the great audience hall.
a tomb in china reminds me in no way of death. we entered through a door studded with heavy brazen knobs a grass-grown courtyard, where were trees, pine and cypress. we went along a paved way, and before us was a building with a curved roof, with the tiles broken here and there; it was set on a platform reached by flights of marble steps, or rather the flights of steps were on either side, while in the centre was a ramp on which was beautifully 125carved in relief the dragon, the sign of empire, and the horse, which i have heard some people say is the sign of good-fortune. on the platform, through all the cracks in the marble, violets were forcing their way, making a purple carpet under the golden sunshine. we crossed to a hall, which is surely most wonderful. the light was subdued a little, and the hall that contains in its centre the memorial tablet of red and gold is as magnificent in its proportions as york minster. the roof is supported by trunks of sandal-wood trees, smooth, straight, and brown, they run sixty feet up to the roof, and after more than five hundred years the air is heavy with the sensuous scent of them. where did they get that sandal-wood, those trunks all of such noble proportions? they must have cost an immense sum of money, for they never grew in northern china.
another courtyard is behind this hall of audience, where is a marble fountain, whitewashed, and a spring that is supposed to cure all ills of the eyes, and a door apparently leading into a hill-side, behind which is a grove of cypress trees. the door being opened, we entered a paved tunnel which led upwards to a chamber in the heart of the hill, whence two more ramps led still upwards, one to the right and the other to the left, into the open air again. here the coffin was placed in the mound through the top of the ramp. the stones with which the ramps were paved were worn and slippery, the angle was steep, the leaves from the trees outside had drifted in, and the effect was strange and weird. nowhere else but in china could such a thing be. and right on top of the mound, over the 126actual grave, is another memorial tablet to the dead emperor, looking away out over the valley to the stony hills, that are the wall which hedges off this sacred place from the outside world.
and yung lo, the emperor, died in the first half of the fifteenth century. how many people in england know or care, where henry v. lies buried?
the evening was falling when we went back by the stony mule path, by the little stony villages, where the mothers were calling their children in from the fields, and the men were gathering at the meeting-places for the evening gossip. of what did they talk? of the emperor dead in his tomb hundreds of years ago? of the new republic away in the capital? the emperor seemed somehow nearer to the village people. there was the sound of quaint, tuneless, eastern music, and sitting with the sun on his sightless face, surrounded by a listening little crowd, was a blind musician holding across his knees a sort of lute. the people turned and watched as the strangers and the aliens passed, and the musician thrummed on. light or dark was the same to him. the clouds piled now in the western sky, and the stony land looked unutterably dreary in the gathering gloom, the coolies must have been weary, but they went steadily on, changing the chair pole from one shoulder to the other. the slopes that had been hard to scramble up were harder to scramble down, but they made no complaint. this was their work, and the night was coming when they might rest. the night was coming fast, but we were nearing the end of our journey. the hills looked cold, and gloomy, and threatening, and then the heavy clouds above them 127broke, and through them burst the setting sun in all the glory of silver, and purple, and ruddy gold. down on the barren hills, like a benediction, fell his last rays, telling of hope for the morrow, and we turned into the yard of the little inn, and the coolies bowed themselves to the ground, one after the other, because they got a pitiful little over and above their hard-earned wages.
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and the next day we went back to peking, back through the pass.
the ching er hotel provided tiffin on the train, curried chicken and mutton chops, some form of cakey pudding, cheese, and bread and butter, all excellent in its way—and we were all so amiable, even the poet had come down from the clouds and joined us, that we only laughed when we found we were expected to pile all these good things on one plate, and do it quickly before the train left!
as we were eating it, the guard came round and collected one dollar and ninety cents extra apiece, because we had ridden on the observation-car. we paid, and said hard things about the millionaire, but a little more knowledge of ways chinese has convinced me we accused him unjustly. i feel sure that enterprising and observant guard took stock of us, saw that we did not know the american, and collected, for the benefit of a highly intelligent, and truly deserving chinese railway official.
we seldom think of the chinaman with the glamour of romance, but this nankou pass is well-calculated to upset all our former ideas, and give us a setting for china such as might apply to barbaric italy or provence of the middle ages, only—and it is well to remember, what we barbarians of the west 128are apt to forget—that in china, things have always moved in mightier orbits, that where there were ten men in the western world, you may count a hundred in china, for a hundred a thousand, for a thousand ten thousand.
what must the nankou pass have been like on some bitter night in winter, when the stars were like points of steel, and the stream was frozen in a grip of iron, and the still air was keen, and hard, and cold, with the bitter, biting sting of the northern winter? when the fires blazed in the beacons on the hillsides, flinging their ruddy light, their message of fear and warning. the keepers of the wall were failing, the mongol hordes were pouring over the barrier, and it behoved every man who saw that ruddy glare to arm and come to the keeping of the pass, to die in its guarding. they died and they held it, and they died and the invaders flung their bodies to the wolves and the crows, and swept on and took the country beyond for their own.
but the country to the south is china, china of the ages and she absorbs nations, mongol or manchu, or men from her western borders, and makes them one with herself.
this is the message i read in the nankou pass. i have changed my mind again and again, and generally i do not believe what i read that day. but it was firmly impressed on me then. china is not dead. the spirit that conceived and built that mighty wall is a living thing still. all down the pass, alongside the age-old mule track, runs a new road, a road of the west, a railway, planned, and laid, and built entirely by chinese without any western help except such as the sons of china got 129for themselves in the schools of america and england. and it is not only well and truly laid, as well as, and better than, many a western railway, but behold the spirit of china has entered in, the spirit, not of her poor, struggling for a crust of bread, a mess of meal, but the spirit of the men who conceived and planned the wall, the beautiful lama temple, or the spacious courtyards and glorious palaces of the forbidden city. they have built embankments and curves, tunnels and archways that are things of beauty, and glorious to look upon, as surely never was railway before. they have built, and it is saying a great deal, a railway that is worthy of the nankou pass. they are the lineal descendants of the men, who, two thousand years ago, built the great wall. hail and all hail!
and then a railway man talked to me. the railway might be beautiful, but it was costly beyond all excuse. the best of the ideas had come from europe, certainly these highly civilised, these over-civilised people might be trusted to see and make a beautiful thing, the question was, could they be trusted to manage a railway as a railway should be managed? he thought not. they had somehow lost force. well, we shall see. one thing seems certain, between us westerners and the chinese, is a great gulf fixed. we look across and sometimes we wonder, and sometimes we pity, and sometimes we admire, but we cannot understand.
