CHINA 



180 



nearly at the northern limit of Shen-hsj, when it 

 turns directly south, and flowing for 500 miles 

 between that province and Shan list, comes to the 

 edge of the Great Plain, and pursues an cant ward 



course. Tin- <'lii:inu: "II tin- contrary tlou - south 



from Hatang, between S/e-ch'wan and Vun-nan, 

 till it readies tin* southern limit of tin; former pro- 

 \ ince. Then it turns north, and hold* its way east- 

 ward through S/e-ch'wan and the other intervening 

 provinces till it enters the ocean in lat. 32. The 

 llo does not pursue so regular a course. It- direc- 

 tion indeed from the edge of the plain is eastwards, 

 hut in tin- course of time it has ever and an<in 

 changed its channel. Chinese history opens, in the 

 Sln'i King, in the 24th century B.C., with an act-omit 

 of one of its inundations, descrihed in terms which 

 have suggested to some students the Noachian 

 deluge, and the Ial>our8 on it of the Great Yii. 

 The terrible calamities caused hy it so often have 

 procured for it the name of 'China's Sorrow.' So 

 recently as 1887 it burst its southern bank near 

 Chang Chau, and poured its mighty flood, with 

 hideous devastation and the destruction of millions 

 of lives, into the populous province of Ho-nan. 

 It is now the task of the Manchu rulers of the 

 empire to remedy this disaster, and regulate the 

 terrible river for the future. Both the Ho and the 

 Chiang must have a course of more than 3000 miles. 

 These two rivers are incomparably the greatest in 

 China, but there are many others which would 

 elsewhere be accounted great. And among those 

 rivers we may well account the Grand Canal, in- 

 tended to connect the northern and southern parts 

 of the empire by an easy water communication ; 

 and this it did when it was in good order, extending 

 from Peking to Hang-chau in Cheh-chiang, a dis- 

 tance of more than 600 miles. The glory of making 

 this canal is due to Kublai, the first sovereign 

 of the Yuan dynasty, of whom Marco Polo says : 

 ' He has caused a water communication to be 

 made in the shape of a wide and deep channel 

 dug between stream and stream, between lake 

 and lake, forming as it were a great river on 

 which large vessels can ply.' Steam communi- 

 cation all along the eastern seaboard from 

 Canton to T'ien-tsin has very much superseded its 

 use, and portions of it are now in baa condition, 

 but as a truly imperial achievement it continues to 

 be a grand memorial of Kublai. Even Barrow 

 wrote of it in 1806 : ' In point of magnitude, our 

 most extensive inland navigation in England can 

 no more be compared to the grand trunk that inter- 

 sects China than a park or garden fish-pond to the 

 great lake of Winandermere. ' 



After the Grand Canal a few sentences may be 

 given to the Great Wall, another vast achieve- 

 ment of human labour, especially as in 1887 there 

 were paragraphs in many of our newspapers re- 

 presenting its existence as merely a myth. Not so 

 useful as the canal, and having failed to answer the 

 purpose for which it was intended to be a defence 

 against the incursions of the northern tribes, there 

 it still stands, while the walls of Hadrian and 

 Antoninus in our own country have crumbled to 

 the ground, and their course can only be indistinctly 

 traced here and there. It was in 214 B.C. that 

 Shih Hwang Ti determined to erect a grand barrier 

 all along the north of his vast empire. The wall 

 commences at the Shan-hai Pass (40 N. lat., 119 

 50' E. long. ), where it was visited by a squadron of 

 Her Majesty's vessels of war in 1:$39, and was seen, 

 as Lord Jocelyn describes it, ' scaling the precipices, 

 and topping the craggy hills of the country.' From 

 this point it is carried westwards till it terminates 

 at the Chia-yii barrier gate, the road through which 

 leads to the 'Western Regions.' Its length in a 

 straight line would be 1255 miles, but, if measured 

 along its sinuosities, this distance must be increased 



to 1500. It is not built HO grandly in it* western 

 portions after it has met the Ho Kiver, nor Khould it 

 ! -upposed that to the east of this point it iall *olid 

 masonry. It in formed by two strong retaining 

 walls of brick, rising from granite foundations, the 

 space Ijetwcen leing filled up with stones and earth. 

 The breadth of it at the base IK about _'.". ( -t. at the. 

 top 15, and the height varies from 15 to 30 feet. The 

 surface at the top was covered with bricks, and in 

 now overgrown with gnms. What foreigners go to 

 visit from Peking is merely a loop-wall of later 

 formation, inclosing portions of Clnh-li and Shan- 

 hsf. 



The lakes are very many, but not on so great a 

 scale as the rivers. It will be sufficient to mention 

 three the T'ung-ting Hu, the largest, having a 

 circumference or 220 miles, and entering into tin- 

 names of the provinces Hu-pei and II u nan ; the 

 Po-yang Hu, in the north of Chiang-hsl, the seat 

 of the manufactories of the best porcelain ; and the 

 T'fti Hu, partly in Chiang-su and partly in Cheh- 

 chiang, famous for its romantic scenery and 

 numerous islets. 



The country is rich in the products necessary for 

 the support and comfort of the people, and for the 

 adornment of their civilisation. There is in it 

 every variety of climate ; but the average tempera- 

 ture is lower than in any other country in the same 

 latitude. The Chinese themselves consider Kwang- 

 tung, Kwang-hsi, and Yun-nan to be less healthy 

 than the other provinces ; but foreigners using 

 proper precautions may enjoy their life in every 

 province. 



"Wheat, barley, maize, millet, and other cereals 

 are chiefly cultivated in the northern regions, and 

 rice in the southern. The writer once had a bag of 

 oatmeal sent to him from Kalgan, north of the loop- 

 wall mentioned above. Culinary or kitchen herbs, 

 mushrooms, and aquatic vegetables, with ginger 

 and a variety of other condiments, are everywhere 

 produced and largely used. From Fonnosa there 

 comes sugar, and the cane thrives also in the 

 southern provinces. Oranges, pummeloes, lichis, 

 pomegranates, peaches, plantains, pine-apples, 

 mangoes, grapes, and many other fruits and nuts, 

 are supplied in most markets. Tea is noted 

 below. Opium has been increasingly grown of 

 late within the country. The Chinese are em- 

 phatically an agricultural people. From time 

 immemorial the sovereign has initiated the year, 

 which begins with the spring, by turning over a 

 few furrows in the ' sacred field ; ' and in each pro- 

 vince the highest authority performs a similar 

 ceremony to impress on the people the importance 

 of husbandry. The hoe holds the place of our 

 spade ; the plough retains its primitive simplicity ; 

 irrigation is assiduously and skilfully employed. 

 The tsing, or well, which was anciently in the 

 centre of the plots of land assigned to the families 

 which cultivated them, is still seen in the north ; 

 and where the canal or river-beds are l>elow the level 

 of the fields much ingenuity is displayed in raising 

 the water to them by wheels and scoops. No other 

 people show such a sense of the value of human 

 ordure as manure. Nothing that comes from man 

 or beast is allowed to be lost. All is preserved 

 and prepared for use. This does not conduce to the 

 cleanliness of the towns or the fragrancy of the 

 country ; but it largely increases the productiveness 

 of the field and the garden. 



The horse, the ox, the sheep, the fowl, the dog, the pig ; 

 These are the six animals which men breed for food, 

 are well-known lines ; but we do not now hear of 

 horses being eaten ; and though dogs are to be 

 seen in baskets in thb markets, or cut up on the 

 stalls, they are such as have been carefully fed. 

 Fowls, including ducks and geese, are abundantly 

 bred and consumed ; of ducks, immense numbers 



