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Exports and imports. Hints to English exporters. Food at famine rates. A wretched inn at Wuchai. Author prevents murder. Sleeping in the rain. The foreign cigarette trade. Poverty of Chao-t'ong. Simplicity of life. Possible advantages of Chinese in struggle of yellow and white races. Foreign goods in Yün-nan and Szech'wan. Thousands of beggars die. Supposed lime poisoning. Content of the people.
For many reasons a camp-bed is to Europeans an indispensable part of even the most modest traveling equipment. I was many times sorry that I had none with me. The inns of Szech'wan, however, are by many degrees better than those of Yün-nan, which are sometimes indescribable.
It is probable that the solidity of the great paved highways of China have been exaggerated. I have not been on the North China highways, but have had considerable experience of them in Western China, Szech'wan and Yün-nan particularly, and have very little praise to lavish upon them. Certain it is that the road to Sui-fu does not deserve the nice things said about it by various travelers.
I do not wish to enter into a controversy on this subject, but I should like to quote the following from a speech delivered by Tseh Ch'un Hsüan, when he was leaving his post as Governor of Szech'wan: "The officials of China are gradually acquiring a knowledge of the great principles of the religions of Europe and America.
In traveling in Yün-nan one's practice should be: start early, have as few stops as possible, when a stop is made let it be long enough for a real rest. In Szech'wan, where the tea houses are much more frequent, men will pull up every ten li, and generally make ten minutes of it.
But the thirst of Szech'wan that thirst which is unique in the whole of the Empire, and eclipsed nowhere on the face of the earth, except perhaps on the Sahara one does not hear about. Many an Englishman would give much for the Chinese coolie's thirst so very, very much. I wonder whether you, reader, were ever thirsty? Probably not. You get a thirst which is not insatiable.
And then, of course, over the river, in Szech'wan, they are met with again, and in Kwei-chow, farther west, we have their real home. Their modes of living contain many points in common. Ethnologists probably may smile at this assertion, the same as I, who have lived among the Miao, have smiled at a good deal which has come from the pens of men who have not.
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