Graham Earnshaw
walks west from Shanghai when he has the time, always starting from the last place he stopped. This month we find him in the village of Sanzhengpu, Chongqing municipality
Sanzhengpu, Chongqing Municipality
Coordinates
108.09.18 East
30.46.10 North
Distance from Shanghai – 1,310 km
I was following in the footsteps of Isabella Bird, the intrepid adventurer, who trekked across the Sichuan basin in 1898, journeying west from the Yangtze River port of Wanzhou. She traveled in a palanquin, a stripped-down chair suspended on bamboo poles held up by a chair bearer at either end, rented from a travel operator in Wanzhou along with three chair bearers and four coolies.
"I may say at once that they behaved admirably; made the journey in two days less than the stipulated time; trudged cheerfully through rain and mud; never shirked their work; and were always sober, cheery, after obliging," she said.
They passed a constant stream of baggage coolies, each carrying a bamboo pole over his shoulder with a package at either end, for a total weight of 80-140 pounds. Those coming toward Wanzhou carried opium, tobacco, indigo, or paper; while those heading west were loaded with cotton yarn, piece goods and salt.
"These men, carrying the maximum load mentioned, walk about 13 miles a day, and chair and luggage coolies about 25," said Isabella. "Occasionally I made 30 miles in a day, as my men were carrying only 70 pounds each."
On that first day out of Wanzhou, Isabella’s chair bearers covered 27 miles. Trudging along highway 318 just over 111 years after she had passed this way, I was enjoying the same views, but feeling the distance in a way she did not.
"Chair travelling is, I think, the easiest method of locomotion by land," she declared. "My one objection to it is the constant shifting of the short bamboo carrying pole on which the long poles hang, from one shoulder of each bearer to the other. It has to be done simultaneously, involves a stoppage, occurs every hundred yards and under, and always gives the impression that the shoulder which is relieved is in unbearable pain."
It was on this stretch of highway that I spotted my favorite Chinese road sign of all time, which is reproduced here. It looked so ordinary, I almost missed it.
Chinese characters are these days usually displayed left-to-right, but that was not always so. The direction for Chinese writing traditionally was right-to-left, and today both directions are acceptable, although the Western way dominates. Chinese road signs these days often have both the Chinese characters and the pinyin pronunciation underneath. The sign writer in this case was dealing with a right-to-left Chinese road name and came up with a creative way of handling the pinyin. My guess is that it is not a mistake but a brilliant joke.
The coolies accompanying Isabella each day chose a place for breakfast and a midday stop of one hour. Her description of the village restaurants, now frequented by the modern day equivalents of coolies – truck drivers – is more than vaguely reminiscent of some places I have seen on the road.
"The halting-place is a shed projecting over the road in a town or village street, black and grimy, with a clay floor, and rough tables and benches, receding into a dim twilight; a rough cooking apparatus and some coarse glazed pottery are the furnishings. On each table a bunch of malodorous chopsticks occupies a bamboo receptacle," said Isabella. "One or more exceptionally dirty men are the waiters. Bowls of rice and rice water or weak tea are produced with praiseworthy rapidity, and the coolies shovel the food into their mouths with the air of famished men, and hold out their bowls for more. People intending to be kind sometimes take pork, rice, or fish out of a common bowl and put it into yours, and to ensure cleanliness draw the chopsticks with which they perform the transference through their lips, giving them an energetic suck!"
Isabella passed this way in February. In mid-August as I walked through the heat, the rice paddies on either side of the road were heavy with ripened plants, and the screaming of the cicadas in the trees rose and fell in waves. I was delighted to see a slogan on a farmhouse wall, a variant on one of my favorites of the current Hu era, which could be read, depending upon how you cluster the characters and how warped your brain is, as "Use the advanced sex education activities of Communist Party members to satisfy the masses".
The coolies carried her through the afternoon and into the dusk.
"Towards evening the hills became more mountainous, and were wooded with cypress and pine, and it was very lovely in the gold and violet light," Isabella said.
More than a century later, those hills have been largely denuded of trees. But there are delightful stands of fast-growing bamboo along the way, and a few majestic and aged trees still arch out over the road in villages, with people gathered underneath in a semi-conscious homage to these wonderful artifacts of nature.
The road followed a lovely river, crossed by stone bridges and roamed by flocks of ducks. Isabella described in some detail the wonderful arches she found in profusion spanning the road.
"These arches, or paifangs, are put up frequently in glorification of widows who have remained faithful to the memory of their husbands, and who have devoted themselves to the comfort and interests of their parents in law and to good works," she said. "The whole affair lends some éclat to the town or village. Many of these arches are extremely beautiful. Chinese carving in stone has much merit, even in such an intractable material as granite. The depth and sharpness of the cutting and the undercutting are remarkable, and the absolute realism, [but] I never saw a bit of sculpture which showed a trace of imagination."
That sounds a little unfair, but it is impossible to take a categorical view on the quality of the artistic work, as all the paifang were demolished in the 1950s by the Communist Party. They have been replaced today by paifang carrying advertisements for baijiu brands or property developments. I am just glad the concept of paifang has survived the transition into the modern era in any form at all.
We halted for the night at the large village of San-tsan-pu, where, though I had travelled for seven months in China, I had my first experience of a Chinese inn, and I did not like it," said Isabella.
The village she called San-tsan-pu is in fact Sanzhengpu, and it is indeed fairly large. I wanted to find the location of the inn in which she stayed, and as I walked into town, I came to an intersection, which is often the center of a settlement. I asked a couple of old guys where the inn used to be, but they pointed down the road further west, so I kept walking, and came to a narrower, more built-up, older part of the village. There was a small inn there called the Peace Hotel in a recently constructed four-story building, but no one could help me on the location of the inn Isabella stayed at. I sensed, however, that a location on the street now occupied by an agricultural market and an internet café was most likely the place.
She was carried in her chair through the hotel restaurant which fronted onto the street, and into a paved yard behind "where, in the midst of abominations, was the inn well."
"My chair was set down, and, after extricating myself from it according to the rules of etiquette, I was attempting to see it unpacked, when I was overborne by a shouting crowd of men and boys, which surged in after me, and I had to retire hastily into my room," she said.
The descendants of these individuals who were driven by curiosity or fear of foreigners to such impoliteness toward Ms Bird were calm and pleasant to me. A man who said he was aged close to 80 invited me to sit with him. He said he had joined the Communist Party in the 1950s and repeated several times during the conversation that one should I
was following in the footsteps of Isabella Bird, the intrepid adventurer, who trekked across the Sichuan basin in 1898, journeying west from the Yangtze River port of Wanzhou. She traveled in a palanquin, a stripped-down chair suspended on bamboo poles held up by a chair bearer at either end, rented from a travel operator in Wanzhou along with three chair bearers and four coolies.
"I may say at once that they behaved admirably; made the journey in two days less than the stipulated time; trudged cheerfully through rain and mud; never shirked their work; and were always sober, cheery, after obliging," she said.
They passed a constant stream of baggage coolies, each carrying a bamboo pole over his shoulder with a package at either end, for a total weight of 80-140 pounds. Those coming toward Wanzhou carried opium, tobacco, indigo, or paper; while those heading west were loaded with cotton yarn, piece goods and salt.
"These men, carrying the maximum load mentioned, walk about 13 miles a day, and chair and luggage coolies about 25," said Isabella. "Occasionally I made 30 miles in a day, as my men were carrying only 70 pounds each."
On that first day out of Wanzhou, Isabella’s chair bearers covered 27 miles. Trudging along highway 318 just over 111 years after she had passed this way, I was enjoying the same views, but feeling the distance in a way she did not.
"Chair travelling is, I think, the easiest method of locomotion by land," she declared. "My one objection to it is the constant shifting of the short bamboo carrying pole on which the long poles hang, from one shoulder of each bearer to the other. It has to be done simultaneously, involves a stoppage, occurs every hundred yards and under, and always gives the impression that the shoulder which is relieved is in unbearable pain."
It was on this stretch of highway that I spotted my favorite Chinese road sign of all time, which is reproduced here. It looked so ordinary, I almost missed it.
Chinese characters are these days usually displayed left-to-right, but that was not always so. The direction for Chinese writing traditionally was right-to-left, and today both directions are acceptable, although the Western way dominates. Chinese road signs these days often have both the Chinese characters and the pinyin pronunciation underneath. The sign writer in this case was dealing with a right-to-left Chinese road name and came up with a creative way of handling the pinyin. My guess is that it is not a mistake but a brilliant joke.
The coolies accompanying Isabella each day chose a place for breakfast and a midday stop of one hour. Her description of the village restaurants, now frequented by the modern day equivalents of coolies – truck drivers – is more than vaguely reminiscent of some places I have seen on the road.
"The halting-place is a shed projecting over the road in a town or village street, black and grimy, with a clay floor, and rough tables and benches, receding into a dim twilight; a rough cooking apparatus and some coarse glazed pottery are the furnishings. On each table a bunch of malodorous chopsticks occupies a bamboo receptacle," said Isabella. "One or more exceptionally dirty men are the waiters. Bowls of rice and rice water or weak tea are produced with praiseworthy rapidity, and the coolies shovel the food into their mouths with the air of famished men, and hold out their bowls for more. People intending to be kind sometimes take pork, rice, or fish out of a common bowl and put it into yours, and to ensure cleanliness draw the chopsticks with which they perform the transference through their lips, giving them an energetic suck!"
Isabella passed this way in February. In mid-August as I walked through the heat, the rice paddies on either side of the road were heavy with ripened plants, and the screaming of the cicadas in the trees rose and fell in waves. I was delighted to see a slogan on a farmhouse wall, a variant on one of my favorites of the current Hu era, which could be read, depending upon how you cluster the characters and how warped your brain is, as "Use the advanced sex education activities of Communist Party members to satisfy the masses".
The coolies carried her through the afternoon and into the dusk.
"Towards evening the hills became more mountainous, and were wooded with cypress and pine, and it was very lovely in the gold and violet light," Isabella said.
More than a century later, those hills have been largely denuded of trees. But there are delightful stands of fast-growing bamboo along the way, and a few majestic and aged trees still arch out over the road in villages, with people gathered underneath in a semi-conscious homage to these wonderful artifacts of nature.
The road followed a lovely river, crossed by stone bridges and roamed by flocks of ducks. Isabella described in some detail the wonderful arches she found in profusion spanning the road.
"These arches, or paifangs, are put up frequently in glorification of widows who have remained faithful to the memory of their husbands, and who have devoted themselves to the comfort and interests of their parents in law and to good works," she said. "The whole affair lends some éclat to the town or village. Many of these arches are extremely beautiful. Chinese carving in stone has much merit, even in such an intractable material as granite. The depth and sharpness of the cutting and the undercutting are remarkable, and the absolute realism, [but] I never saw a bit of sculpture which showed a trace of imagination."
That sounds a little unfair, but it is impossible to take a categorical view on the quality of the artistic work, as all the paifang were demolished in the 1950s by the Communist Party. They have been replaced today by paifang carrying advertisements for baijiu brands or property developments. I am just glad the concept of paifang has survived the transition into the modern era in any form at all.
We halted for the night at the large village of San-tsan-pu, where, though I had travelled for seven months in China, I had my first experience of a Chinese inn, and I did not like it," said Isabella.
The village she called San-tsan-pu is in fact Sanzhengpu, and it is indeed fairly large. I wanted to find the location of the inn in which she stayed, and as I walked into town, I came to an intersection, which is often the center of a settlement. I asked a couple of old guys where the inn used to be, but they pointed down the road further west, so I kept walking, and came to a narrower, more built-up, older part of the village. There was a small inn there called the Peace Hotel in a recently constructed four-story building, but no one could help me on the location of the inn Isabella stayed at. I sensed, however, that a location on the street now occupied by an agricultural market and an internet café was most likely the place.
She was carried in her chair through the hotel restaurant which fronted onto the street, and into a paved yard behind "where, in the midst of abominations, was the inn well."
"My chair was set down, and, after extricating myself from it according to the rules of etiquette, I was attempting to see it unpacked, when I was overborne by a shouting crowd of men and boys, which surged in after me, and I had to retire hastily into my room," she said.
The descendants of these individuals who were driven by curiosity or fear of foreigners to such impoliteness toward Ms Bird were calm and pleasant to me. A man who said he was aged close to 80 invited me to sit with him. He said he had joined the Communist Party in the 1950s and repeated several times during the conversation that one should
"do more good things and less bad things." I found the second half of the sentence more revealing than the first.
A 15-year-old boy whose albino father was playing mahjong in the convenience store he owned, said his family had lived in Sanzhengpu for at least five generations, which could have put his great great great grandfather in the inn yard with Isabella. I asked the boy if he went to school and he said not any more. I asked him if he read books. "I have done," he answered carefully.
The room Isabella stayed in was "long and narrow, and boarded off from others by partitions with remarkably open chinks, to which many pairs of sloping eyes were diligently applied; but I was able to baffle curiosity by tacking up cambric curtains brought for the purpose."
The roof was sloping, the walls were black with dirt, the floor was damp and irregular, and on the other side of the outer wall was a pigsty. The room contained two rough bedsteads on which the coolies laid down wadded quilts, and slept four or more to a bed. "It is needless to say that these beds are literally swarming with vermin of the worst sorts."
Isabella arranged herself as best she could. "Between two of the bedsteads there was just space enough for my camp bed and chair without touching them. The oiled sheet was spread on the floor, and my ‘furniture’ upon it, and two small oiled sheets were used for covering the beds, and on these my luggage, food, and etceteras were deposited. The tripod of my camera served for a candle stand, and on it I hung my clothes and boots at night, out of the way of rats. With these arrangements I successfully defied the legions of vermin which infest Korean and Chinese inns, and have not a solitary tale to tell of broken rest and general misery. With absolute security from vermin, all else can be cheerfully endured."
Which reminded me of a sleepless night I spent once with a number of rats in the Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai in 1979.
The Sichuan inns, she said, were "worse than the Persian ordinary caravanserai, or the Kurdistan khan, or even the Korean hostelry."
Times have changed in this regard. My main interest now is finding a hostelry that provides broadband internet access. As this is provincial China, hot and cold running whores are a given.
The inn quieted down by about 8 p.m., karaoke not yet having been invented, and Isabella slept well. She liked to begin the day with a cup of tea and some "flour stirabout." Chinese hotels and inns now almost always have electricity and hot tea in the early morning. I, however, like to begin the day with coffee, and that is still a way off for most places in China.
On this day, Isabella was awoken at 7 a.m. by her servant with the information that there was no fire, and therefore no breakfast and no tea. She was not pleased. I could relate.
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