Across China on Foot | Page 6

indifference shown to British travelers by their own
consuls at these ports. We found the brethren at the Hankow Club a

happy band, with every luxury around them for which hand and heart
could wish; so that it were perhaps ludicrous to look upon them as
exiles, men out in the outposts of Britain beyond the seas, building up
the trade of the Empire. Yet such they undoubtedly were, most of them
having a much better time than they would at home. There is not the
roughing required in Hankow which is necessary in other parts of the
empire, as in British East Africa and in the jungles of the Federated
Malay States, for instance. Building the Empire where there is an
abundance of the straw wherewith to make the bricks, is a matter of no
difficulty.
And then the Chinese is a good man to manage in trade, and in business
dealings his word is his bond, generally speaking, although we do not
forget that not long ago a branch in North China of the Hong-kong and
Shanghai Bank was swindled seriously by a shroff who had done
honest duty for a great number of years. It cannot, however, be said that
such behavior is a common thing among the commercial class. My
personal experience has been that John does what he says he will do,
and for years he will go on doing that one thing; but it should not
surprise you if one fine morning, with the infinite sagacity of his race,
he ceases to do this when you are least expecting it--and he "does" you.
Keep an eye on him, and the Chinese to be found in Hankow having
dealings with Europeans in business is as good as the best of men.
We wended our way one morning into the native city, and agreed that
few inconveniences of the Celestial Empire make upon the western
mind a more speedy impression than the entire absence of sanitation. In
Hankow we were in mental suspense as to which was the filthier native
city--Hankow or Shanghai. But we are probably like other travelers,
who find each city visited worse than the last. Should there arise in
their midst a man anxious to confer an everlasting blessing upon his
fellow Chinese, no better work could he do than to institute a system
approaching what to our Western mind is sanitation. We arrived, of
course, in the winter, and, having seen it at a time when the sun could
do but little in increasing the stenches, we leave to the imagination
what it would be in the summer, in a city which for heat is not excelled
by Aden.[A] During the summer of 1908 no less than twenty-eight

foreigners succumbed to cholera, and the native deaths were
numberless.
The people were suffering very much from the cold, and it struck me as
one of the unaccountable phenomena of their civilization that in their
ingenuity in using the gifts of Nature they have never learned to weave
wool, and to employ it in clothing--that is, in a general sense. There are
a few exceptions in the empire. The nation is almost entirely dependent
upon cotton for clothing, which in winter is padded with a cheap
wadding to an abnormal thickness. The common people wear no
underclothing whatever. When they sleep they strip to the skin, and
wrap themselves in a single wadded blanket, sleeping the sleep of the
tired people their excessive labor makes them. And, although their
clothes might be the height of discomfort, they show their famous
indifference to comfort by never complaining. These burdensome
clothes hang around them like so many bags, with the wide gaps here
and there where the wind whistles to the flesh. It is a national
characteristic that they are immune to personal inconveniences, a
philosophy which I found to be universal, from the highest to the
lowest.
Everybody we met, from the British Consul-General downward, was
surprised to know that my companion and I had no knowledge of the
Chinese language, and seemed to look lightly upon our chances of ever
getting through.
It was true. Neither my companion nor myself knew three words of the
language, but went forward simply believing in the good faith of the
Chinese people, with our passports alone to protect us. That we should
encounter difficulties innumerable, that we should be called upon to put
up with the greatest hardships of life, when viewed from the standard to
which one had been accustomed, and that we should be put to great
physical endurance, we could not doubt. But we believed in the
Chinese, and believed that should any evil befall us it would be the
outcome of our own lack of forbearance, or of our own direct seeking.
We knew