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Updated: June 1, 2025
It was a dull, chilly morning that I left Sui-fu, leading my little procession through the city on my way to Anpien, which was to be reached before sundown.
Reckonings do not tally. An eventful day. At the China Inland Mission. Impressions of Sui-fu. Fictitious partnerships. The people of Szech'wan, compared with other Yangtze provinces, must be called a mercenary, if a go-ahead, one. Balancing myself on a three-inch form in a tea-shop at a small town midway between Li-shïh-ch'ang and Luchow, I am endeavoring to take in the scene around me.
Just outside the city, a large area is taken up with grave mounds common with nearly every Chinese city. Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Herbert, who was passing through Sui-fu en route for Ta-chien-lu, where he is now working, showed me around the city one afternoon, and one could see everything typical of the social life of two thousand years ago.
There was nothing else to do. That no one ever walked to Sui-fu from this place the district potentate assured me in a private chit, which I could not read, when he laid his gunboat at my disposal. This, he said, would take me up very quickly.
At the half-way place a fearful ascent is experienced, the most notable precipice on the route between Sui-fu and Yün-nan-fu, up a broad zigzag path, and as I sat at dinner I could see neither top nor bottom owing to the overhanging masses of rock: this is after having negotiated an ascent quite as steep, but smaller.
I was assured that no European ever walked to Sui-fu from Lan-chï-hsien, and that if I attempted to do such a thing I should have to go alone, and that I should never reach there. I remonstrated, but my boy was firm. He took me to him and fathered me. He almost cried over me, to think that I, that I, his master, of all people in the world, should doubt his allegiance to me.
One may step aside a few feet with no fear of falling a few thousand, a danger so common in most of the country from Sui-fu downwards. The scenery is magnificent range after range of mountains in whatever direction you look, nothing but mountains of varying altitudes.
Sui-fu has a population of roughly 150,000, and the overcrowding question is not the least important. It is situated to advantage on the right bank of the Yangtze, and does an immense trade in medicines, opium, silk, furs, silverwork, and white wax, which are the chief exports. Gunboats regularly come to Sui-fu during the heavy rains.
I duly arrived at Lan-chï-hsien, and was told that Sui-fu, 120 li away, would be reached the next day, although I had my doubts. A deputation from the local "gwan" waited upon me to learn my wishes and to receive my commands.
The whole route from Chung-king to Sui-fu, paved with flagstones varying in width from three to six or seven feet the only main road, of course is creditably regular in some places, whilst other portions, especially over the mountains, are extremely bad and uneven. In some places, I could hardly get along at all, and my boy would call out as he came along in his chair behind me
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