Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter XIV
THOUGH I landed at Chefoo in heavy tweed clothing, I was obliged to walk up the steep hill to the British Con-sulate, though the mercury was 84° in the shade, because I had no money with which to pay for a jinriksha! My reflec-tions were anything but pleasant. My passport and letters of introduction, both private and official, were in Seoul, my travel-ling dress was distinctly shabby, and I feared that an impecu-nious person without introductions, and unable to prove her identity, might meet with a very cool reception. I experi-enced something of the anxiety and timidity which are the everyday lot of thousands, and I have felt a far tenderer sym-pathy with the penniless, specially the educated penniless, ever since. I was so extremely uncomfortable that I hung about the gate of the British Consulate for some minutes before I could summon up courage to go to the door and send in a torn address of a letter which was my only visiting card ! I thought, but it may have been fancy, that the Chinese who took it eyed me suspiciously and contemptuously.
The sudden revulsion of feeling which followed I cannot easily forget. Mr. Clement Allen, our justly popular Consul, met me with a warm welcome. I needed no proof of identity or anything else, he only desired to know what he could do for me. My anxiety was not quite over, for I had to make the humiliating confession that I needed money, and immedi-ately he took me to Messrs. Ferguson and Co., who transact banking business, and asked them to let me have as much as I wanted. An invitation to tiffin followed, and Lady O' Conor, and the wife of the Spanish minister at Peking, who were stay-ing at the Consulate, made up a bundle of summer clothing for me, and my “deportation” enriched me with valued friend-ships.
Returning in a very different frame of mind to the Higo Maru, I went on in her in severe heat to the mouth of the Peiho River in sight of the Taku forts, and after rolling on its muddy surges for two days, proceeded to Newchwang in Man-churia, reaching the mouth of the Liau River in five days from Chemulpo. Rain was falling, and a more hideous and disas-trous-looking country than the voyage of two hours up to the port revealed, I never saw. The Liau, which has a tremen-dous tide and strong current, and is thick with yellow mud, is at high water nearly on a level with the adjacent flats, of which one sees little, except some mud forts on the left bank of the river, which are said to be heavily armed with Krupp guns, and an expanse of mud and reeds.
Of the mud-built Chinese city of Ying-tzu (Military Camp), known as Newchwang, though the real Newchwang is a dere-lict port 30 miles up the Liau, nothing can be seen above the mud bank but the curved, tiled roofs of yamens and tem-ples, though it is a city of 60,000 souls, the growth of its population having kept pace with its rapid advance in com-mercial importance since it was opened to foreign trade in 1860. Several British steamers with big Chinese characters on their sides were at anchor in the tideway, and the river sides were closely fringed with up-river boats and sea-going junks, of various picturesque builds and colors, from Southern China, steamers and junks alike waiting not only for cargoes of the small beans for which Manchuria is famous, but for the pressed bean cake which is exported in enormous quantities to fertilize the sugar plantations and hungry fields of South China. There is a Bund, and along and behind it is the foreign settlement, occupied by about forty Europeans. The white buildings of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, the houses of the staff, the hongs of two or three foreign merchants, and the British Consular buildings, may be said to constitute the settlement. It has the reputation of being one of the kindliest and friendliest in the Far East, and the fact that the river closes annually about the 20th of November for about four months, and that the residents are thrown entirely on their own re-sources and on each other, only serves to increase that inter-dependence which binds this and similarly isolated communi-ties so strongly together. I was most kindly welcomed at the English Consulate then and on my return, and have most pleasant remembrances of Newchwang, its cordial kindness, and cheerful Bund, and breezy blue skies, but at first sight it is a dreary, solitary-looking place of mud, and muddy waters for ever swallowing large slices of the land, and threatening to engulf it altogether.
“Peas, ” really beans,1 are its chief raison d'etre, and their ups and downs in price its mild sensations. “Pea-boats,” long and narrow, with matting roofs and one huge sail, bring down the beans from the interior, and mills working night and day express their oil, which is as good for cooking as for burning.
The viceroyalty of Manchuria, in which I spent the next two months, is interesting as in some ways distinct from China, be-sides having a prospective interest in connection with Russia. Lying outside of the Great Wall, it has a population of several distinct and mixed races, Manchus (Tartars), Gilyaks, Tung-usi, Solons, Daurs, and Chinese. Along with these must be mentioned about 30,000 Korean families, the majority of whom have left Korea since 1868, in consequence of political disturb- ance and official exactions.2
The facts that the dynasty which has ruled China by right of conquest since 1644 is a Manchu dynasty, and that it im-posed the shaven forehead and the pigtail on all Chinese men successfully, while it absolutely failed to prevent the women from crippling their feet, though up to this day no woman with “Golden Lilies” (crushed feet) is allowed to enter the Imperial palace, naturally turn attention to this viceroyalty, which, in point of its area of 380,000 square miles, is larger than Austria and Great Britain and Ireland put together, while its population is estimated at from 18,000,000 to 20,000,000 only. Thus it offers a vast field for emigration from the con-gested provinces of Northern China, and Chinese immigrants are steadily flocking in from Shan-tung, Chi-li, and Shen-si, so that Southern Manchuria at this time is little behind the inner provinces of China in density of population. It is different in the northern province, where a cold climate and vast stretches of forest render agriculture more difficult. If it had not been for the war and its attendant complications, I had purposed to travel through it from Northern Korea. But it is unsettled at all times. The majority of its immi-grants consists of convicts, fugitive criminals, soldiers who have left the colors, and gold and ginseng hunters. There is something almost comical about some of the doings of this unpromising community.
It comprises large organized bands of mounted brigands, well led and armed, who do not hesitate to come into collision with the Imperial troops, frequently coming off victors, and at times, as when I was in Mudken, wresting forts from their hands. During the Taiping rebellion, when the Chinese troops were withdrawn from Manchuria, these bands carried havoc and terror everywhere, and seizing upon towns and villages, ruled them by right of conquest!1 In recent years the Government has decided to let voluntary colonists settle in the northern provinces, and has even furnished them with material assistance. Still, things are bad, and the brigands have come to be re-garded as a necessary evil, and are “arranged with.” They are not scrupulous as to human life, and when they catch a rich merchant from the south, they send an envoy to his guild with a claim for ransom, strengthened by the threat that if it is not forthcoming in so many days, the captive's head will be cut off. Winter, when the mud is frozen hard, is the only time for the transit of goods by land, and long trains of mule carts may then be seen, a hundred or more together, starting from Newchwang, Mukden, and other southern cities, each carrying a small flag, which denotes that a suitable blackmail has been paid to an agent of the brigand chiefs, and that they will not be robbed on the journey ! Later, when I was on the Siberian frontier of Manchuria, the brigands were in great force, and having been joined by half-starved deserters from the Chinese army, were harrying the country, and the peasants were flying in terror from their farms.
Among the curious features of Manchurian brigandage, is that its virulence rises or falls with good or bad harvests, inun-dations, etc. For many of the usually respectable peasant farmers, in times of floods and scanty crops, join the robber bands, returning to their honest avocations the next season !
In spite, however, of this terrorism in the northeast, Man-churia is one of the most prosperous of the Chinese viceroy-alties, and its foreign trade is assuming annually increasing importance.1 I was disappointed to find that the Manchus (or Tartars) differ little in appearance from the race which they have sub-dued. The women, however, are taller, comlier, and more robust in appearance, as may be expected from their retaining the natural size and shape of their feet, and not only their coiffure but their costume is different, the Manchu women wearing sleeveless dresses from the throat to the feet, over under dresses with wide embroidered sleeves. With some ex-ceptions, they are less secluded than their Chinese sisters, and have an air of far greater freedom.
Most of the Manchu customs have disappeared along with the language, which is only spoken in a few remote valleys, and is apparently only artificially preserved because the ruling dynasty is Manchu. It is only those students who are aspir-ants for literary degrees and high office in the viceroyalty who are obliged to learn it.
People of pure Manchu race are chiefly met with in the north. Manchus, as kinsmen of the present Imperial dynasty, enjoy various privileges. Every male adult, as soon as he can string a short and remarkably inflexible bow (no easy task), becomes a “ Bannerman,” i.e. he is enrolled in one of eight bodies of irregulars, called “ Banners” from their distinctive flags, and from that time receives one tael (now about three shillings) per month, increased to from five to seven taels a month when on active service. These “Bannermen,” as a rule, are not specially reputable characters. They gamble, hang about yamens for odd bits of work, in hope of permanent official employment, and generally sublet to the Chinese the lands which they receive from the Government.
It is a singular anomaly that bows and arrows are relied upon as a means of defence in an empire which buys rifles and Krupp guns. Later, in Peking, which was supposed to be threatened by the Japanese armies, it was intended to post Bannermen with bows and arrows at the embrasures of the wall, and on the Peking and Tungchow road I met twenty carts carrying up loads of these primitive weapons for the de-fence of the capital ! Bow and arrow drill is one of the most amusing of the many military mediaeval sights of China. The Chinese Bannermen are descendants of those Chinese who, in the seventeenth century, espoused the cause of the Manchu conquerors of China. The whole military force of the three provinces of the viceroyalty is 280,000 men. Tartar garrisons and “Tartar cities” exist in many of the great pro-vincial cities of China, and as the interests of these troops are closely bound up with those of the present Tartar dynasty, their faithfulness is relied upon as the backbone of Imperial security.
From its history and its audacious and permanent conquest of its gigantic neighbor, its mixed population and numerous aboriginal tribes, its mineral and agricultural wealth, and a certain freedom and breeziness which constitute a distinctive feature, Manchuria is a very interesting viceroyalty, and the two months which I spent in it gave it a strong hold upon me.
Mud is a great feature of Newchwang, perhaps the leading feature for some months of the year, during which no traffic by road is possible, and the Bund is the only practicable walk. The night I arrived rain began, and continued with one hour's cessation for five days and nights, for much of the time com-ing down like a continuous thundershower. The atmosphere was steamy and hazy, and the mercury by day and night was pretty stationary at 78°. About 8.46 inches of rain fell on those days. The barometer varied from 29° to 29.3°. After-wards, when the rain ceased for a day, the heat was nearly unbearable. Of course, no boat's crew would start under such circumstances. Rumors of an extensive inundation came down the river, but these and all others of purely local interest gave place to an intense anxiety as to whether war would be declared, and what the effect of war would be on the great trading port of Newchwang.
1 Glycene hispides (Dr. Morrison).
2 According to information obtained by the Russian Diplomatic Mission in Peking.
1 Information received by the Russian Diplomatic Mission in Peking.
1 Taking the port of Newchwang, through which, with certain excep-tions, all exports of native produce and imports of foreign merchandise and Chinese productions pass, in 1871 16 steamers and 203 sailing vessels entered the port, with a total tonnage of 65,933 tons; in 1881, 114 steamers and 218 sailing vessels, with a tonnage of 159,098 tons; and in 1891, 372 steamers and 61 sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 334,709 tons. In the same period, British tonnage had increased from 38.6 of the whole to 58 per cent, of the whole. In 1871 German tonnage nearly equalled British, being 37,6 of the whole, but it had declined in 1891 to 28 per cent, of the whole.