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X
MISSIONARIES, TRACTS, AND A JOB WORTH WHILE
The missionary met me at the door and I told him who I was – a wayfaring man in Japan, and would he show me somewhat of his work?
He would, and gladly. If I had been a long lost brother or a wealthy uncle with a will to make, he couldn't have been more cordial – a keen young man of thirty-six or thirty-eight I found this missionary.
"Do you mind walking?" he asked.
"I have a team of rikisha coolies at your gate," I said.
"Well," he replied, "our work is scattered over Kioto. We can reach it by trolleys and walking, with an occasional rikisha ride between trolley lines, better than to try to do it all by rikisha from here. Better pay off your coolies and dismiss them."
"I've chartered them for the day," I said.
We started out to see the missionary work in Kioto, that young missionary and I.
At the gate I told my boys to loaf, or play, or fish, or pick up fares which they might pocket for themselves – they were on my payroll for the day – but to report for duty there at the gate at 1 P. M.
The missionary and I walked a mile and passed two of his mission churches on the way, where services were being held, and which through the week were used for schools and meetings; the missionary dispensing tracts as we walked along. That young missionary seemed to exude tracts – I didn't know one missionary could hold so many.
We boarded a trolley, and all the passengers got a tract. We dismounted at a corner to look over another mission church where the natives were holding a meeting; a little walk and we boarded another trolley and the missionary started in to give the passengers tracts.
"Here, dominie," I said, "give me some of those tracts and I'll help you to push God's word along" – I rather surmised by then that he was out of tracts and had a momentary – just a teenty, decent little momentary pang of shame that I hadn't offered sooner.
But the missionary wasn't out of tracts. His clothes were full of pockets and they all held tracts. He dug up a pack and handed them to me.
I started at one end of the car and he at the other, and every Jap in that car had a tract when we met midway.
We must have boarded six more trolley cars and still the tracts held out, and I had a few left in my pocket after the last car was served.
No tract was thrown away. They were read on the spot and then safely tucked away in the folds of kimonos, or respectfully received and tucked away to be carried home and read.
Every tract would serve five readers, on an average, the missionary told me.
We looked in on little mission churches scattered over Kioto, all under the jurisdiction of that one missionary. He told me how, through himself, his board had bought land and built the little missions, or were renting places for their work.
We worked our way across that tremendous town and at the end of a rikisha ride he showed me his chief pride – a plot of several lots he'd bought, and on them erected a splendid church at the very gates of one of Japan's chief universities of learning.
Ten thousand dollars had been donated toward the work by an American soap manufacturer who had visited Kioto and seen his work, and placed the cash in the young man's hands to build that church.
"Dominie," I asked, as we worked our way back to his home, via rikisha, trolleys and on foot, "what is your yearly budget for all this work you are carrying on here in Kioto?"
"Twenty-five hundred gold dollars," he told me. His and his wife's salary (he married a missionary) was $750.00 each.
Only one thousand dollars for the annual expense, outside their salaries, to pay for tracts and current expenses for the work – native preachers and teachers to keep the enterprise going – twenty-five hundred dollars came from the homeland to push the gospel in Kioto under his charge.
I mentally took this missionary's measure as he told me his story. He was more than preacher, as we know the ordinary type at home. Of necessity his was a wider range of activities; a business man, a man of affairs, keen, alert, his eye on the gun.
His heart was in his work, to hold up his end in bringing over to Christianity a constituency of half a million souls – a young man putting in ability which, if as intelligently and earnestly directed in a business career in America, should win him ten, twenty – who knows how many thousand dollars per year reward?
I doubt if a guarantee of that difference in pay would tempt the young man from his chosen work – at least that was the impression I got as he unburdened his heart to me.
The young man had a vision of things worth more to him than money.
We wound up the forenoon tour at one o'clock at a union meeting of missionaries – got in as the meeting was drawing to an end.
He introduced me to these missionaries as they passed out at the close. I told each one whose hand I shook that the meeting gave me pleasure, and handed out a tract.
One or two of the bunch without the saving sense of humor the Lord meant all should have, didn't receive them as gratefully as the Japanese I passed them to – it takes all kinds of folks to make a world, I find, and most all of them are good, I think – but some are better than others.
The best thing in Japan I missed this trip – a kindergarten of Japanese children.
This missionary's wife had, among other things, this work in hand. I saw the room and the little empty chairs where fifty Japanese children, of from three to five years, were taught.
Babies are always a lot of fun. The young of the animal kingdom are always interesting – a baby colt, a baby calf, or pig, or dog, or cat – I can't think of the young of anything that don't appeal to me (except potato bugs – I always want to poison them), and most of all human babies. I'd turn aside from any task to see a lot of babies in a bunch.
But fifty Japanese babies in their fantastic clothes doing kindergarten stunts – my eye! a show to please the gods!
The obsequies of the Empress Dowager had closed the kindergarten school for days, and I missed the best show in Japan.
The missionary and his wife insisted that I take lunch with them. My team of coolies were champing at their bits – my lunch was ready at my hotel – I told them so. They told me that the hotel would excuse me and they would not.
XI
YAMAMOTO AND HIGH COST OF LIVING
After lunch at the missionary's I found my team at the gate spoiling for a run.
"Yamamoto, take me to your home," I said; "I want to meet your family. I want to see how a rikisha man lives. And, Yamamoto, I'll give you a yen if you'll invite me to supper at your home tonight."
The yen looked tempting, but Yamamoto wouldn't play the game.
He said to have a foreigner as a guest at his humble home would bring around his house such a crowd of curious neighbors that all pleasure in the repast would be spoiled – or words to that effect; but he would take me to his home. Off we started, a three-mile run; Ushi pushed and Yamamoto pulled, and I was soon a self-invited guest in Yamamoto's home; and, if to break bread or chopstick rice in Yamamoto's home would have brought a greater horde of curious neighbors than gathered to witness a foreigner's call at that home, then Yamamoto's head was level – Yamamoto's head was level anyway.
A little house 8 x 16, two rooms 8 x 8, the front opening on a street about eight feet wide; a yard in the rear 6 x 8, was Yamamoto's home.
It was as neat as wax and furnished with an hibachi on which to cook, a tanstu in which to store their clothes. No chairs – they sit on the floor; no beds, save futons, to lay on the floor; and an okimono dai, a sort of what-not stand, on which a few ornaments and articles of household use were placed.
The wife was gone for the day, but his children were at home, and a more interesting trio of children one wouldn't ask to meet.
My team took me back to the hotel. I dismissed them for the day at five o'clock. I paid off Ushi, and made a deal with Yamamoto to go home and write me the story of his life. I told him I'd pay him a yen to tell me all about himself, his family, how they lived, and what it cost. To bring me the letter written the next morning and get one yen fifty for the day and an extra yen for the letter. Two yen fifty I would hand him in the morning when he handed me the letter; and Yamamoto said he would, and Yamamoto did – I imagine one of his daughters did the writing.
Here is an exact translation of Yamamoto's letter as he handed it to me the next morning – and Yamamoto has his stand within the wall, but Ushi does business without the gate:
The present living condition of Tokichi Yamamoto. He was born in the 12st May 2nd year Meiji 1869. I was born and bred in the city of Kioto, and have been engaging in the job of Rikisha for these twenty years, and my family is consisting of my wife and three children. Elder and younger girls who have had finished the whole course of the Primary school (4 years), and they are now working in the factory of the Tobacco Monopoly Buelow, and the young son is attending the Primary school.
I am somewhat puzzling with the expense of living. My estimated income is 30 yen each month in the months of April, May, October and November and the rest of is about 18 yen per month, therefore, I make it average, it becomes about 22 yen per month, and two girls get 16 yen, so all the income of my house is reckoned 38 yen per month.
The elder sister has just abandoned her work in the factory, and she attends a house for learning of sewing. The list of paying out a month:
* $16.45 American money.
Fortunately I am in robust health. Though I am not educated myself, I am thinking that the dutifulness and truthfulness are the most important to intercourse with people, and as I am truthful and dutiful to my friends, I am rather welcomed by them.
XII
THE SOLDIER SAID SOMETHING IN CHINESE
Before starting on this around-the-world trip a friend of mine in the United States said to me: "When you get to Shanghai look up my friend, Dr. "John Blank." He has been in China over thirty years. He is the biggest individual intellectual asset in China today – the founder and moving spirit of an International Institute which recognizes the good in all religions and gives them all a hearing.
"He is a graduate of Hamilton College in your town of Clinton. He is a strong, a busy man, and true. Please look him up and arrest his attention long enough to give him my regards" – and I promised this enthusiastic friend of "John Blank's" I would do this thing.
"Missouri" had, by rare good luck, driven his business in Japan ahead of him to such purpose that he was ready to sail on the same ship that brought me from Nagasaki to Shanghai. He had, in his peregrinations through Japan, run his intense Americanism plumb against an English tea. Somehow, when "Missouri" and an English tea collided the tea got spilt – as "Missouri" told me the tale en route from Nagasaki to Shanghai the tea took second honors.
Arriving in Shanghai, "Missouri" went his way on business bent, while I looked up Dr. "John Blank," only to find that this busy man was out of town, and I regretted that I should have to disappoint our mutual friend and not be able to deliver his regards to Dr. "Blank." And I took a railroad trip to Pekin.
While I have come to China several times, until this trip I had never ridden a mile on a railroad in China, nor had I been north of Shanghai, and I was full of curiosity to see what I should see on a thousand-mile ride through China with its teeming millions.
At eleven P. M. of a sweltering night I found myself ensconced in a very comfortable sleeping car, composed of commodious staterooms of four berths each, two upper and two lower, and as the only traveling companion to share my stateroom, a young German of twenty-six years.
He was a keen young chap who had right ideas of life. Dropped in Shanghai four years ago, with an expired term in the German navy and fifty Mexican dollars in his pocket, bare-handed and alone, he had hit the Orient with such sturdy resolution and solid German sense that he had, in four short years, added to the fifty Mex. a young Urasian wife, half German and half Chinese (he assured me she was the dearest, sweetest little thing), a baby, and nine thousand good hard Mexican dollars in the bank.
A feat like that is worth mentioning – when you know the Orient – they don't all do so well, even with pull and influence to help.
It's good to have a chap like that, a right-principled, wholesome chap, who can speak your tongue and Chinese as well, in the berth across from you on a lonesome thousand-mile trip through China. A night's run and Nankin is reached at seven A. M. with a three hours' wait for breakfast, and to ferry across the Yangtze to Pukow to connect, at ten A. M., with the Pukow-Tientsin road – then settling down in a comfortable train, carrying a good restaurant car, for a ride of thirty hours without change of cars until we should reach Tientsin.
For an hour we followed up the delta of the Yangtze, low, level land devoted to rice culture, splendidly tilled. The only remarkable thing about the landscape was dearth of population.
We passed no towns of any size. A lonesome railroad station, now and then some little mud-walled, straw-thatched hamlets. A like ride over such agricultural land in any of our Middle States at home would show much greater evidence of population.
Then for another hour a poor strip of territory, a hilly, semi-barren country, then we rolled out onto level plains which stayed with us until darkness shut out the scene.
From a little after noon till dark on a day in early June we passed through Illinois and Iowa land, prairies bounded by the horizon, with fields of waving wheat and barley just coming into harvest, and fields of corn and beans six inches high. And in all that seven or eight hours of travel, at an average speed of twenty-five miles an hour, we passed no city of any size.
Lonesome, solidly well-built brick railroad stations, at long intervals villages and hamlets, set back from the railroad, of the same one-story, mud-walled, thatched construction.
The wonder to me was: Where did the population live to till the land so thoroughly? – for it was all tilled like a well-kept garden. Where the early wheat and barley was harvested it was threshed on threshing floors, even as Boaz threshed his grain, and all of those millions of acres of grain we passed was cut either with a crude cradle or sickle, or pulled up by the roots; and the farm animals used were the caribou, the ox, and ass.
No fences, no wagon roads. Where one man's land ended and another man's began you'd never guess, viewed from the car windows.
And all that plain defaced with graves! Out in the fields, helter-skelter, here and there. Here a single grave, there two or three, again six in a row. Pa, and ma, and brother John, sister Ann, and Will, and baby Tim, were buried there. Pa had a big grave. Ma's not so large, and tapering down in size to a small one for baby Tim, all of the same pattern; a haycock-shaped mound of earth topped with a wad of mud.
I had it in for the geography I studied as a boy that told me of China's teeming population. That geography told me that China was so full of folks that to support the congested population they loaded dirt onto flat boats and moored those boats in rivers and utilized the ground thus made for gardens – and in that same geography lesson I learned that these boats were called flower boats.
The erudite writer of that geography got mixed in his metaphors. The flower boats of China have been pointed out to me in the rivers of China. They are places where "gilded youth" resort, and it is not garden truck they raise on them, but Sherman's definition of war – but let it pass.
Night shut out the scene, and morning dawned and found us at a city. I was glad to find a city in China, and here I lost my German friend. I regretted the parting, for I could talk to him. We were in a mountainous country now with some vegetation snatched in spots. Not much, but some, and through this strip of meagre land they had good stone houses and wagon roads – and it looked more prosperous and more like folks back home.
For a couple of hours we passed through that kind of country, then came out onto prairies, and as far as the eye could reach the same sparse population, mud huts, and ugly graves, but all tilled like a well-kept garden. I'd lost my German friend for six hours now – and from morning until noon, having had no one to talk to, there had accumulated in me a considerable store of oratory.
We had stopped at a splendid brick station – perhaps some day a town will grow around that spot – and I got out to stretch my legs. A row of Chinese soldiers stood on guard; and in good old United States, the only tongue I speak, I broke loose on one of them: "China is a fine country, sir," I said; "a fine country, sir. The agricultural possibilities of China, sir, are great! Your boundless plains and mighty rivers are grand, sir; grand! Unshackled from your past, you've burst the bands of superstition, lethargy, inertia. You've climbed out of your rut. Unleashed from all your past, you've grasped the pregnant present, and now, with your eyes turned to the mighty achievements yet to come – with this glorious new Republic you've achieved, what the future holds for China is impressive, sir; impressive."
The soldier said something in Chinese.
"This railroad over which I've ridden, sir, is an earnest of greater things in store for China. The rolling stock is fine, the road well built, and wonderfully well ballasted.
"There is little left to be desired in the service on your trains. With the architectural taste displayed in this splendid station house, none but a carping critic could find fault. I'm pleased with what I've seen, sir; pleased – delighted, sir."
The soldier said something in Chinese.
I felt a good deal better after what I'd said, and I think what the soldier said made a hit with him, but we weren't getting anywhere, when, at that moment, there came along a foreigner to board the train. He'd overheard part of my talk. He looked at me and said: "You're from the United States, aren't you?"
"Pretty near," I said.
"Oh, from Canada?" he asked.
"No," I said, "I'm from New York State."
"Why," he said, "I was educated in Oneida County, your State."
"Indeed!" I said. "What institution?"
"Hamilton College," he said.
"And your name is?"
"'John Blank'," said he. With a mighty bound I landed in that man's arms. I fell on his neck and wept.
"Dr. 'Blank'," I said, "you're the one man in China I'm looking for. I have a warrant for your arrest."
We got into the dining car, and dined and talked, and talked and dined, and talked, until we reached Tientsin, four hours later.
We changed cars there and rode into Pekin. All the way it was the same level country, well-tilled fields, mud huts, and ugly graves. From Tientsin, a city of 1,000,000, to Pekin, a city of 1,300,000, is ninety miles, and not one-tenth the population in evidence that you'll find on that ninety-mile ride between New York and Philadelphia.
XIII
TEN THOUSAND TONS ON A WHEELBARROW AND THE ANANIAS CLUB
I was glad of the opportunity to come to Pekin, where I might see with my own eyes a Pekin cart.
Modes of travel and transportation have always had a fascination for me.
For instance, I was so captivated with the Shanghai wheelbarrows, that the first thing I did after arriving in Shanghai on my first trip to China was to tackle the first Chinaman I saw in the street pushing one of those empty barrows, dicker with him, and then and there buy that wheelbarrow.
Three dollars was the consideration, but, with first cost, boxing, freight, and duty it cost me $29.05 landed in Clinton – and I've never regretted the purchase.
When telling circles of chance acquaintances and friends at home that a Chinaman would carry a mixed cargo of from five to ten thousand tons on one of those barrows, the chance acquaintances would cast significant glances and cough, while my dear friends would hand me life membership cards in the Ananias Club.
My only regret in the matter is, that in telling about the Shanghai wheelbarrow I was not acquainted with all its possibilities. When a chance acquaintance doubts my word it's immaterial to me whether he is caught with a nasty little hacking cough, or contracts a violent and fatal congestive chill, and as for those dear doubting Thomas friends of mine who, from me, might have stood for a load of, say from three to five thousand tons – for their benefit I want to chronicle here that as you travel north from Shanghai they put bigger loads on that same pattern of wheelbarrow and rig them up with mules or sails, and I have photographs to prove it; and apologies will be accepted.
Now as to the Pekin cart:
We have all read of it and seen pictures of it, and travelers, irresponsible travelers of no reputation, or travelers without a sensitive and jealous regard for their veracity, have so misled me about that vehicle that what I expected to see was two wheels sawed off the end of a log, set on an axletree, a hood covering, and two stiff saplings for shafts. And, as I shut my eyes to let the picture sink in and tried to recall the motive power, I couldn't recall that there was any motive power. The cart was stuck in an awful rut in the streets of Pekin, and even though motionless, I could hear it squeak. A dead dog was lying to the right of the cart, the carcasses of a couple of cats to the left, and in the cart a load of human corpses – the life having been joggled out of them by being jounced over the awful ruts in the Pekin streets.
But now I find the Pekin cart with a well-tired wheel, having a felloe six inches wide, and for ornamentation studded thickly with wrought-iron headed nails the size of boiler rivets. The wheel is thickly set with spokes centering in a splendid hub set on a well-oiled axletree. The hood, however, is true to the picture, but the whole affair is varnished and shines like an undertaker's cart; and hitched to it is the most splendid mule I have ever seen in all my wanderings.
That mule would redeem any kind of a vehicle he might be hitched to – such a large, fat, well-groomed, glossy mule.
His ears are several sizes shorter than those of the mule of story and of song – an urbane, genial, gentle, loving-looking mule – I don't believe the Pekin mule would kick. Judged from the obvious care that's bestowed on him, the Pekin mule has no kick coming.
And the ruts in the streets of Pekin? – there are no ruts. Wide thoroughfares, well paved.
And the rubbish in the streets? Not there. It's a fairly clean city; a city of many modern and splendid buildings. A city of many legations set in ample grounds, with beautiful and imposing entrances bordered with trees, shrubbery and flowers. A city of ancient Chinese temples; a city set in a fertile plain and walled about – Pekin is a different-looking city than I expected to see.
Martial law prevails – the country is under martial law.
China a republic? A joke!
No more absolute monarchy could be imagined than Yuan Shih-Kai's China today.
An upper and lower house of his own choosing, an autocrat, a dictator, wishing for the old order, and himself the emperor. These are pretty generally the opinions you'll hear expressed. He seems to be the one statesman in a country of 400,000,000 whom foreigners and Chinese generally center on as the only man to hold the reins. Hated by many, feared by more, plots and counterplots against his life – all agree that chaos would result were he taken away.
China today, some say, is a smoldering volcano, but more will not venture an opinion as to what the future holds for her.
With her centuries of conservatism drilled into a population which has submitted to official greed and graft, and accepted it as a matter of course, China has few statesmen, none on the horizon to contest the supremacy of Yuan Shih-Kai, who has seized the reins of power. That China has not fallen to pieces long before is the wonder of students who have spent their lives in China, and the most profound opinion hazarded is – she has lumbered along because she has; and because she has, the chances are she will continue to lumber along. What seems to be her weakness is her strength – 400,000,000 patient endurers, with power to endure and not ask too much for the privilege to exist. There are no other people with their peculiar temperament. With a nervous organization that don't give way to trifles, a people who can grin and bear it – this seems to be the opinion of those who are in best position to render judgment.
Greedy nations have stood by and waited for her to fall to pieces, and are even now waiting. China has fooled them right along, and she may fool them yet a spell – so keep your eye on China, but keep on winking.
