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Updated: July 2, 2025
Coal comes from a mine two or three days inland; white-wax trees provide an important industry; the hills to the west contain the most celebrated copper mines in the empire. The cash of Tongchuan are very small and inferior, 2000 being equivalent to one tael, whereas in Chaotong, 110 miles away, the cash vary from 1260 to 1640 the tael.
A cow was killed near the south gate on whose intestine and this fact can be attested by all who saw it was written plainly and unmistakably the character "Wong," which proved, they told me, that the soul of one whose name was Wong had returned to earth in the body of that cow. I stayed two days in Chaotong, and strolled in pleasant company through the city.
This was the only wolf I saw on my journey, though they are numerous in the province. Last year, not twenty li from Chaotong, a little girl of four, the only child of the mission cook, was killed by a wolf in broad daylight before its mother's eyes, while playing at the cabin door.
Go into his temple in Western China, and you will find this deity dripping with plasters, with scarcely an undesecrated space on his superficies. At the yamen of the Brigadier-General in Chaotong, the entrance is guarded by the customary stone images of mythical shape and grotesque features.
Opium is very cheap in Chaotong, costing only fivepence an ounce for the crude article. You see it exposed for sale everywhere, like thick treacle in dirty besmeared jars. It is largely adulterated with ground pigskin, the adulteration being detected by the craving being unsatisfied.
Climbing up the bank into the city, I passed by a busy thoroughfare to the pretty home of the Inland Mission, where I received a kind welcome from the gentleman and lady who conduct the mission, and a charming English girl, also in the mission, who lives with them. At Suifu I rested a day in order to engage new coolies to go with me to Chaotong in Yunnan Province, distant 290 miles.
An instance of the undoubted truth of the doctrine of transmigration occurred recently in Chaotong and is worth recording.
Chaotong is an important centre for the distribution of medicines to Szechuen and other parts of the empire. An extraordinary variety of drugs and medicaments is collected in the city. No pharmacopoeia is more comprehensive than the Chinese. No English physician can surpass the Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms that he does not understand.
The convert employed by the mission as a native helper is one of the three converts of Chaotong. He is a bright-faced lad of seventeen, as ardent an evangelist as heart of missionary could desire, but a native preacher can never be so successful as the foreign missionary. The Chinese listen to him with complacency, "You eat Jesus's rice and of course you speak his words," they say.
My men, who had come with me from Chaotong, were paid off in Yunnan; but it was pleasant to find all three accept an offer to go on with me to Talifu. But no coolies, owing to the increase in the price of food, were now willing to go for so little. To Laohwan, who had no load to carry, but had to attend to me and the pony and pay away the cash, I made a similar offer.
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