New Forces in Old China The Building Of Railways

XI



THE extension of trade has naturally been accompanied not only by the increase of foreign steamship lines to the numerous port cities of China, but by the development of almost innumerable coastwise and river vessels. Many of these are owned and operated by the Chinese themselves, but as steamers came with the foreigners and as they drive out the native junks and bring beggary to their owners, the masses of the Chinese cannot be expected to feel kindly towards such competition, however desirable the steamer may appear to be from the view-point of a more disinterested observer. But this interference with native customs has been far less revolutionary than that of the railways.

The pressure of foreign commerce upon China has naturally resulted in demands for concessions to build railways, in order that the country might be opened up for traffic and the products of the interior be more easily and quickly brought to the coast. The first railroad in China was built by British promoters in 1876. It ran from Shanghai to Woosung, only fourteen miles. Great was the excitement of the populace, and no sooner was it completed than the Government bought it, tore up the road- bed, and dumped the engines into the river. That ended railway-building till 1881, when, largely through the influence of Wu Ting-fang, late Chinese Minister to the United States, the Chinese themselves, under the guidance of an English engineer, built a little line from the Kai-ping coal mines to Taku, at the mouth of the Pei-ho River and the ocean gate way to the capital. Seeing the benefit of this road, the Chinese raised further funds, borrowed more from the English, and gradually extended it 144 miles to Shan-hai Kwan on the north, while they ran another line to Tien-tsin, twenty-seven miles from Tong-ku, and thence onward seventy-nine miles direct to Peking. This system forms the Imperial Railway and belongs to the Chinese Government, though bonds are held by the English, who loaned money for construction, and though English and American engineers built and superintended the system. The local staff, however, is Chinese.

No more concessions were granted to foreigners till 1895, but then they were given so rapidly that, in 1899 when the Boxer Society first began to attract attention, there were, including the Imperial Railway, not only 566 miles in operation, but 6,000 miles were projected, and engineers were surveying rights of way through whole provinces. Much of the completed work was undone during the destructive madness of the Boxer uprising, but reconstruction began as soon as the tumult was quelled. According to the Archiv fur Eisenbahnwesen of Germany, the total length of the railways in use in 1903 in China was 1,236 kilometers or about 742 miles.

Several foreign nations have taken an aggressive part in this movement. In the north, Russia, not satisfied with a terminus at cold Vladivostok where ice closes the harbour nearly half the year, steadily demanded concessions which would enable her Trans-Siberian Railway to reach an ice-free winter port, and thus give her a commanding position in the Pacific and a channel through which the trade of northern Asia might reach and enrich Russia's vast possessions in Siberia and Europe. So Russian diplomacy rested not till it had secured the right to extend the Trans-Siberian Railway southward from Sungari through Manchuria to Tachi-chao near Mukden. From there one branch runs southward to Port Arthur and Dalny and another southwestward to Shan-hai Kwan, where the great Wall of China touches the sea. As connection is made at that point with the Imperial Railway to Taku, Tien-tsin and Peking, Moscow 5,746 miles away, is brought within seventeen days of Peking. Thus, Russian influence had an almost unrestricted entrance to China on the North, while a third branch from Mukden to Wiju, on the Korean frontier, will connect with a projected line running from that point southward to Seoul, the capital of Korea. A St. Petersburg dispatch, dated November 26, 1903, states that a survey has just been completed from Kiakhta, Siberia, to Peking by way of Gugon, a distance of about a thousand miles. This road, if built, will give the Russians a short cut direct to the capital.

In the populous province of Shantung, a German railroad, opened April 8, 1901, runs from Tsing-tau on Kiao-chou Bay into the heart of the populous Shantung Province via Weihsien. The line already reaches the capital, Chinan-fu, while ulterior plans include a line from Tsing-tau via Ichou-fu to Chinan-fu, so that German lines will ere long completely encircle this mighty Province. At Chinan-fu, this road will meet another great trunk line, partly German and partly English, which is being pushed southward from Tien-tsin to Chin-kiang. An English sydicate, known as the British-Chinese Corporation, is to control a route from Shanghai via Soochow and Chin-kiang to Nanking and Soochow via Hangchow to Ningpo, while the Anglo-Chinese Railway Syndicate of London is said to be planning a railway from Canton to Cheng-tu-fu, the provincial capital of Sze-chuen. Meanwhile, the original line from Shanghai to Wu-sung has been reconstructed by the English.

One of the most valuable concessions in China has been obtained by the Anglo-Italian Syndicate in the Provinces of Shan-si and Shen-si for it gives the right to construct railways and to operate coal mines in a region where some of the most extensive anthracite deposits in the world are located. A beginning has already been made, and when the lines are completed, the industrial revolution in China will be mightily advanced.

An alleged Belgian syndicate, to which was formed with then wholly disinterested assistance of the French and Russian legations, obtained in 1896 a concession to construct the Lu Han Railway from Peking 750 miles southward to Hankow, the commercial metropolis on the middle Yang-tze River. It is significant, however, that while the Belgian syndicate was temporarily embarrassed, the Russo-Chinese Bank of Peking aided the Chinese Director-General of Railways to begin the section running from Peking to Paoting-fu. The road is open to Shunte-fu, 300 miles south of Peking and to Hsu-chou, 434 kilometers north of Hankow. The Russo-Chinese Bank is building a branch line from Ching-ting via Tai-yuen-fu to Singan-fu in Shen-si, where it will be well started on the beaten caravan route between north China and Russian Central Asia. On November 13, 1903, the Belgian International Eastern Company signed a contract to construct a railway from Kai- feng-fu, the capital of the Province of Honan, 110 miles west to Honan-fu.

I found the line running south from Peking well-built with solid road-bed, massive stone culverts, iron bridges, and heavy steel rails. The first and second class coaches are not attractive in appearance, and though the fare for the former is double that of the latter, the chief discernible difference is that in the first class compartment, which is usually in one end of a second- class car, the seats are curved and the passengers fewer in number, while in the second-class the seats are straight boards and are apt to be crowded with Chinese coolies. Neither class is upholstered and neither would be considered comfortable in America, but after the weeks I had spent in a mule-litter, anything on rails seemed luxurious. Our train was a mixed one,-- the first-class compartments containing a few French officers, the second-class filled with Chinese coolies and French soldiers, while a half-dozen flat cars were loaded with horses and mules. A large Roger's locomotive from Paterson, New Jersey, drew our long train smoothly and easily, though the schedule was so slow and the stops so long that we were seven hours and a half in making a run of a hundred miles.

Railway-building in South China, outside of French territory, began with a line from Canton to Hankow which was projected in 1895 by Senator Calvin S. Brice, William Barclay Parsons being the engineer. The usual governmental difficulties were encountered, but in 1902 an imperial decree gave the concession to the American-China Development Company. American capital was to finance the road, though with some European aid. The company had the power, under its concession, to issue fifty-year five per cent. gold bonds to the amount of $42,500,000, the interest being guaranteed by the Chinese Government. The main line will be 700 miles long, and branches will increase the total mileage to 900. On November 15, 1903, a section ten miles long from Canton to Fat-shan was formally opened for traffic in the presence of the Hon. Francis May, colonial secretary and registrar-general of the Hongkong Government, a large number of Europeans and Americans, and immense crowds of Chinese who manifested their excitement by an almost incessant rattle of fire-crackers. By October, 1904, trains were running regularly to Sam-shui, about twenty-five miles beyond Fat-shan. This is a branch line. The main line will run on the other side of the West River. In 1905, the government decided to complete the line itself and cancelled the concession, paying the company as indemnity $6,750,000. A line from Kowloon to Canton has been planned for some time and it is likely to be hastened by the announcement in the South China Morning Post, May 12, 1904, that an American- Chinese syndicate had obtained a concession, granted to the authorities of Macao by China through a special Portuguese Minister, to construct a railway from Macao to Canton. The syndicate hopes to secure American capital and the British merchants of Hongkong are a little nervous as they think of the possibility of an independent outlet for the Canton-Hankow Railway at Macao.

It will thus be seen that if these vast schemes can be realized there will not only be numerous lines running from the coast into the interior, but a great trunk line from Canton through the very heart of the Empire to Peking, where other roads can be taken not only to Manchuria and Korea but to any part of Europe.

In the farther south, the French are equally busy. By the Franco-Chinese Convention of June 20, 1895, a French company secured the right to construct a railroad from Lao- kai to Yun-nan-fu. The French had a road from Hai-fong in Tong-king to Sang-chou at the Chinese frontier, and in 1896 they obtained from China a concession to extend it to Nanning- fu, on the West River. This privilege has since been enlarged so that the line will be continued to the treaty port of Pak-hoi on the Gulf of Tong-king. The French fondly dream of the time when they can extend their Yun-nan Railway northward till it taps and makes tributary to French Indo-China the vast and fertile valley of the upper Yang-tze River. Meanwhile, the English talk of a line from Kowloon, opposite Hongkong, to Canton, and of connecting their Burma Railroad, which already runs from Rangoon to Kun-long ferry, with the Yang-tze valley, so that the enormous trade of southern interior China may not flow into a French port, as the French so ardently desire, but into an English city.

It would be impossible to describe adequately the far- reaching effect upon China and the Chinese of this extension of modern railways. We have had an illustration of its meaning in America, where the transcontinental railroads resulted in the amazing development of our western plains and of the Pacific Coast. The effect of such a development in China can hardly be overestimated, for China has more than ten times the population of the trans-Mississippi region while its territory is vaster and equally rich in natural resources. As I travelled through the land, it seemed to me that almost the whole northern part of the Empire was composed of illimitable fields of wheat and millet, and that in the south the millions of paddy plots formed a rice-field of continental proportions. Hidden away in China's mountains and underlying her boundless plateaus are immense deposits of coal and iron; while above any other country on the globe, China has the labour for the development of agriculture and manufacture. Think of the influence not only upon the Chinese but the whole world, when railroads not only carry the corn of Hunan to the famine sufferers in Shantung, but when they bring the coal, iron and other products of Chinese soil and industry within reach of steamship lines running to Europe and America. To make all these resources available to the rest of the world, and in turn to introduce among the 426,000,000 of the Chinese the products and inventions of Europe and America, is to bring about an economic transformation of stupendous proportions.

Imagine, too, what changes are involved in the substitution of the locomotive for the coolie as a motive power, the freight car for the wheelbarrow in the shipment of produce, and the passenger coach for the cart and the mule-litter in the transportation of people. Railways will inevitably inaugurate in China a new era, and when a new era is inaugurated for one-third of the human race the other two-thirds are certain to be affected in many ways.

That the transformation is attended by outbreaks of violence is natural enough. Even such a people as the English and the Scotch were at first inimical to railroads, and it is notorious that the great Stephenson had to meet not only ridicule but strenuous opposition. Everybody knows, too, that in the United States stage companies and stage drivers did all they could to prevent the building of railroads, and that learned gentlemen made eloquent speeches which proved to the entire satisfaction of their authors that railways would disarrange all the conditions of society and business and bring untold evils in their train. If the alert and progressive Anglo-Saxon took this initial position, is it surprising that it should be taken with far greater intensity by Orientals who for uncounted centuries have plodded along in perfect contentment, and who now find that the whole order of living to which they and their fathers have become adapted is being shaken to its foundation by the iron horse of the foreigner? Millions of coolies earn a living by carrying merchandise in baskets or wheeling it in barrows at five cents a day. A single railroad train does the work of a thousand coolies, and thus deprives them of their means of support. Myriads of farmers grew the beans and peanuts out of which illuminating oil was made. But since American kerosene was introduced in 1864, its use has become well-nigh universal, and the families who depended upon the bean-oil and peanut-oil market are starving. Cotton clothing is generally worn in China, except by the better classes, and China formerly made her own cotton cloth. Now American manufacturers can sell cotton in China cheaper than the Chinese can make it themselves.

All this is, of course, inevitable. It is indeed for the best interests of the people of China themselves, but it enables us to understand why so many of the Chinese resent the introduction of foreign goods. That much of this business is passing into the hands of the Chinese themselves does not help the matter, for the people know that the goods are foreign, and that the foreigners are responsible for their introduction.

Nor are racial prejudices and vested interests the only foes which the railway has to encounter in China. As we have seen, the Chinese, while not very religious, are very superstitious. They people the earth and air with spirits, who, in their judgment, have baleful power over man. Before these spirits they tremble in terror, and no inconsiderable part of their time and labour is devoted to outwitting them, for the Chinese do not worship the spirits, except to propitiate and deceive them. They believe that the spirits cannot turn a corner, but must move in a straight line. Accordingly, in China you do not often find one window opposite another window, lest the spirits may pass through. You will seldom find a straight road from one village to another village, but only a distractingly circuitous path, while the roads are not only crooked, but so atrociously bad that it is difficult for the foreign traveller to keep his temper. The Chinese do not count their own inconvenience if they can only baffle their demoniac foes. It is the custom of the Chinese to bury their dead wherever a geomancer indicates a ``lucky'' place. So particular are they about this that the bodies of the wealthy are often kept for a considerable period while a suitable place of interment is being found. In Canton there is a spacious enclosure where the coffins sometimes lie for years, each in a room more or less elaborate according to the taste or ability of the family. The place once chosen immediately becomes sacred. In a land which has been so densely populated for thousands of years, graves are therefore not only innumerable but omnipresent. In my travels in China, I was hardly ever out of sight of these conical mounds of the dead, and as a rule I could count hundreds of them from my shendza.

Every visitor to Canton and Chefoo will recall the hilly regions just outside of the old city walls that are literally covered with graves, those of the richer classes being marked by small stone or brick amphitheatres. Yet these are cemeteries not because they have been set apart for that purpose, but because graves have gradually filled all available spaces.

The Chinese reverence their dead and venerate the spots in which they lie. From a Chinese view-point it is an awful thing to desecrate them. Not only property and those sacred feelings with which all peoples regard their dead are involved but also the vital religious question of ancestral worship. Accordingly Chinese law protects all graves by heavy sanctions, imposing the death penalty by strangling on the malefactor who opens a grave without the permission of the owner, and by decapitation if in doing so the coffin is opened or broken so as to expose the body to view. Imagine then their feelings when they see haughty foreigners run a railroad straight as an arrow from city to city, opening a highway over which the dreaded spirits may run, and ruthlessly tearing through the tombs hallowed by the most sacred associations.

No degree of care can avoid the irritations caused by railway construction. In building the line from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou, a distance of forty-six miles, the Germans, as far as practicable, ran around the places most thickly covered with graves. But in spite of this, no less than 3,000 graves had to be removed. It was impossible to settle with the individual owners, as it was difficult in many cases to ascertain who they were, most of the graves being unmarked, and some of the families concerned having died out or moved away. Moreover, the Oriental has no idea of time, and dearly loves to haggle, especially with a foreigner whom he feels no compunction in swindling. So the railway company made its negotiations with the local magistrates, showing them the routes, indicating the graves that were in the way, and paying them an average of $3 for removing each grave, they to find and settle with the owners. This was believed to be fair, for $3 is a large sum where the coin in common circulation is the copper ``cash,'' so small in value that 1,600 of them equal a gold dollar, and where a few dozen cash will buy a day's food for an adult. But while some of the Chinese were glad to accept this arrangement, others were not. They wanted more, or they had special affection for the dead, or that particular spot had been carefully selected because it was favoured by the spirits. Besides, the magistrates doubtless kept a part of the price as their share. Chinese officials are underpaid, are expected to ``squeeze'' commissions, and no funds can pass through their hands without a percentage of loss. Then, as the Asiatic is very deliberate, the company was obliged to specify a date by which all designated graves must be removed. As many of the bodies were not taken up within that time, the company had to remove them.

In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that some of the most furiously anti-foreign feeling in China was in the villages along the line of that railroad. Why should the hated foreigner force his line through their country when the people did not want it? Of course, it would save time, but, as an official naively said, ``We are not in a hurry.'' So the villagers watched the construction with ill-concealed anger, and to-day that railroad, as well as most other railroads in North China, can only be kept open by detachments of foreign soldiers at all the important stations. I saw them at almost every stop,--German soldiers from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou, British from Tong-ku to Peking, French from Peking to Paoting-fu, etc.

Nevertheless, railways in China are usually profitable. It is true that the opposition to the building of a railroad is apt to be bitter, that mobs are occasionally destructive, and that locomotives and other rolling stock rapidly deteriorate under native handling unless closely watched by foreign superintendents. But, on the other hand, the Government is usually forced to pay indemnities for losses resulting from violence. The road, too, once built, is in time appreciated by the thrifty Chinese, who swallow their prejudices and patronize it in such enormous numbers, and ship by it such quantities of their produce, that the business speedily becomes remunerative, while the population and the resources of the country are so great as to afford almost unlimited opportunity for the development of traffic.

As a rule, on all the roads, the first-class compartments, when there are any, have comparatively few passengers, chiefly officials and foreigners. The second-class cars are well filled with respectable-looking people, who are apparently small merchants, students, minor officials, etc. The third-class cars, which are usually more numerous, are packed with chattering peasants. The first-class fares are about the same as ordinary rates in the United States. The second-class are about half the first-class rates, and the third-class are often less than the equivalent of a cent a mile. This is a wise adjustment in a land where the average man is so thrifty and so poor that he would not and could not pay a price which would be deemed moderate in America, and where his scale of living makes him content with the rudest accommodations. Very little baggage is carried free, twenty pounds only on the German lines, so that excess baggage charges amount to more than in America.

The freight cars, during my visit, were, for the most part, loaded with the materials and supplies necessitated by the work of railway-construction and by the extensive rebuilding of the native and foreign property which had been destroyed by the Boxers. But in normal conditions the railways carry inland a large number of foreign manufactured articles, and in turn bring to the ports the wheat, rice, peanuts, ore, coal, pelts, silk, wool, cotton, matting, paper, straw-braid, earthenware, sugar, tea, tobacco, fireworks, fruit, vegetables, and other products of the interior. Short hauls are the rule, thus far, both for passengers and freight. This is partly because the long-distance lines within the Empire are not yet completed, and partly because the typical Chinese of the lower classes in the interior provinces has never been a score of miles away from his native village in his life, and has been so accustomed to regard a wheelbarrow trip of a dozen miles as a long journey that he is a little cautious, at first, in lengthening his radius of movement. But he soon learns, especially as the struggle for existence in an overcrowded country begets a desire to take advantage of an opportunity to better his condition elsewhere. Once fairly started, he is apt to go far, as the numbers of Chinese in Siam, the Philippines, and America clearly show. The literary and official classes are less apt to go abroad, but they are more accustomed to moving about within the limits of the Empire, as they must go to the central cities for their examinations, and as offices are held for such short terms that magistrates are frequently shifted from province to province. When this vast population of naturally industrious and commer- cial people becomes accustomed to railways and gets to moving freely upon them, stupendous things are likely to happen, both for China and for the world.

And so the foreign syndicates relentlessly continue the work of railway-construction. Trade cannot be checked. It advances by an inherent energy which it is futile to ignore. And it ought to advance for the result will inevitably be to the advantage of China. A locomotive brings intellectual and physical benefits, the appliances which mitigate the poverty and barrenness of existence and increase the ability to provide for the necessities and the comforts of life. In one of our great locomotive works in America I once saw twelve engines in construction for China, and my imagination kindled as I thought what a locomotive means amid that stagnant swarm of humanity, how impossible it is that any village through which it has once run should continue to be what it was before, how its whistle puts to flight a whole brood of hoary superstitions and summons a long-slumbering people to new life. We need regret only that these benefits are so often accompanied by the evils which disgrace our civilization.