Place the butt of the pole against the shoulder, brace your feet, clutch the side of the boat and pull the body flat, and thus gain a few inches against the current or the gravel bottom. A MUD SLIDE SERVES AS A CANAL "LOCK" NEAR HANGCHOW The canals vary in level, and locks are numerous, especially in southern China, where they are often little more than mud slides, over which the boats are pulled by windlasses. THE WASP-WAIST BOAT WAS DESIGNED TO OUTWIT CUSTOMS OFFICIALS This craft comes down the Han River to Hankow. It has to pass a likin, or local customs station, where from time immemorial the practice has been to determine the capacity of the boat by its girth at the insert of the mast. This measurement is taken in order to estimate the amount of cargo and the duty to be levied. Boatmen decided to avoid what they regarded as excess likin rates by constricting their vessel at the insert of the mast and rapidly widening the hull to the rear of it so that it looked somewhat like the body of a wasp. The Chinese are as fond of humor as are the Irish, and the customs officers, in appreciation of the joke on the government, allowed the old method of computation to stand. punt and plank, expecting at any moment to be flung into the surf. We were a mile from the shore and probably would never have reached it in safety. Finally a gigantic wave carried us over the dike. We dropped a reserve anchor with a bamboo cable fastened to the mast. Working in the teeth of a spray that felt like a shower of lead shot, we had to tug at the cable after each wave assault to keep the mast from being uprooted by the next blow. After a day of desperate struggle the storm abated at nightfall and the next morning we found ourselves on a grassy plain, far from the sea. Fortunately, not far away we saw an inlet from the sea. We obtained twenty coolies, who in time dug a canal in front of the junk, and three days after the storm we were able to get back to the Inland Sea. While pirates are to be feared in Chinese waters, piracy in this part of the world is not necessarily a lifelong profession. One may be engaged in a decent boat occupation in normal times, but when trade is dull the temptation to piracy may become too strong to resist. In ancient times so terribly did the sea rovers infest the coast that one emperor with a stroke of his vermilion brush solved the problem by ordering all his seaports to move inland 20 miles. Vast populations and great cities were moved from the mouths of rivers by this one act. Old walls and dwellings were abandoned; new walls and properties were set up. The old sites were used as observation points, and fortresses were located near them, so that it was no longer possible for a fleet to descend without warning upon the inhabitants of an unsuspecting city. This is why to-day there are no ports on the actual seacoast of China. BY PAUL HUTCHINSON The Empire of China will crumble down, When the sun and the moon have crumbled It may be that the American poet is right. It may be that China possesses the world's one lasting civilization. It may be that ten thousand years from now the books and bookworms that have caught Lindsay's imagination will still be in placid possession of a vast portion of the Asiatic mainland. It may be. SYMBOL OF NEW CHINA IS THE CYLINDER PRESS But there are bound to be changes, subtle differences in spirit, between the China of Confucius and the China of the future. These changes are already appearing. In most cases they are not as spectacular as the shift from Manchu dynasty to republic, but they go farther beneath the surface of things and they will mean more. They are the true New China. Probably the clearest indication of the kinship between Old and New China is the place given literature. Old China venerated the printed page; New China depends upon it for success. If the symbol of Old China was the examination halls, where the students of the twenty-one provinces (the three eastern provinces of Manchuria coming under the same system) sought official preferment by writing essays in the accepted classic form, then the symbol of New China is the whirling cylinder press, which sends out its millions of pages each year to every part of the country. Until he has actually lived in their midst, it is almost impossible for the Westerner to appreciate the position which literature. holds in the minds of the Chinese-nine in every ten of whom can make no pretense of reading the classical language. Since the Golden Age of Greece, the Occident has known nothing like it. In the Middle Ages learning was confined to a monkish minority, but it was a minority that the mass of men rather despised in their hearts. In China the scholar has always despised all others. And he always will. Since the days of the sages it has been the duty of a Chinese to preserve from destruction any scrap of paper bearing a written message. In many cities boxes are provided in which may be placed character-bearing papers rescued from the streets (see illustration, page 689). One enterprising Japanese liver-pill concern has erected thousands of wastepaper boxes, and the gatherer of merit. who brings his retrieved bit of salvage to their guardianship must look into the face of the ubiquitous admiral who advertises the benefits of the "Benevolent medicine." Rich men may add to the merit of their other good deeds by employing the poor to go about this business of waste-paper rescue. I have seen a ragged wretch shave death before a tramcar by inches in order that he might grasp a fluttering bit of newspaper that probably extolled the merits of some guaranteed consumption cure. With the scrap secure, he tucked it into a wooden box, built to protect a rain-pipe, doubtless mistaking it for a receptacle specially designed for his pious purpose. A SCHOLAR DEFEATED CHINA'S FIRST Not but that China has had her iconoclasts. Shih Hwang-ti (also spelled Chin Shih Huang Ti), the emperor who founded the Chin dynasty and built the A SCROLL AND PICTURE SHOP OF SHANGHAI The Chinese venerate learning, and the walls of their living rooms and studies are often covered with scrolls upon which have been written excerpts from their classics. Such scrolls and water-color paintings are sold at street shops where, in some instances, the proprietors cannot read. THE RED TRIANGLE PROCLAIMS ITS MESSAGE TO CHINA The Association has taken its program of threefold development into many parts of China and has been especially active among the students. These posters are announcements of its activities and program, and also illustrate how, contrary to popular belief, the Chinese language may be written laterally as well as vertically. A WAYSIDE SHRINE TO THE WRITTEN WORD There is in excess of 90 per cent illiteracy in China, but the unlearned masses reverence the written word. Since the days of the sages it has been the duty of a Chinese to preserve from destruction any scrap of paper bearing a written message. In many cities boxes such as this are provided in which may be placed character-bearing papers (see text, page 687). The circulation figures of a Chinese newspaper are not a fair record of the number of its readers. Many get their news free, from the bulletin boards, while copies of the paper are also passed on from reader to reader, selling a trifle cheaper with each transfer, until they are so worn and ragged as no longer to be legible. |