SEPTEMBER IN WUHU
Grand pagoda — Missionary houses — Lotus ponds and sunflower avenues — Lovely coloured silks — Cormorants — Pheasants — Yellow lilies carved out of the living rock — Sunset lights — Reputed bottomless pit — Village festival — Blue-gowned men, redtrousered women — Looking into many lives .69
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WUHU, about half way between Chinkiang and Kiukiang, appears at first sight one of the pleasantest ports on the Yangtze. It is not crowded in amongst Chinese houses, but lies amongst hills, and is exceptionally rich in pagodas; that in the Chinatown, just where a wide creek crowded with masts diverges from die main river, being one of the grandest and most ancient looking I have seen. The European community is small ; the Consul's house stands upon a hill with a fine view, the Commissioner's house on a still higher hill with a finer view ; the missionaries have withdrawn themselves to a distance of several miles, where their handsome houses, situated on a well-wooded hill overlooking the river, and surrounded by uninhabited country, dicit many expressions of envy from merchant captains and engineers, who, judging by its exterior near Wuhu, are fain to pronounce a Chinese missionary's life a very easy one. But nesded in beneath their villas is a school, and the education of the young is probably the most satisfactory form of missionary work, while the big building cresting the hill is really a hospital. The Jesuits have built what looks like a positively colossal building alongside its Chinese neighbours, but it is intended to serve as a house of rest for those of their order all through the two provinces. Thus each big building may be explained, yet they look rather like fortresses beleaguering the one-storied Chinese town.
In the lotus-flowering season Wuhu must be a thing of beauty, for all around there are large lake-like ponds with firm, blue-green, platter-like leaves rising out of them, not lying on the surface like our own water-lilies. And it is between lotus-covered ponds and avenues of tall, stately sunflowers that the little European community goes to and fro to its lawn-tennis ground upon the plains. Those accustomed to China can fill up the interstices with dirt and smells, which make, what might be so charmingly romantic, distressingly Zolaesque.
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Wuhu Chinatown did not appear particularly interesting, but lovely silk stuffs are to be had there, and huge skeins of filoselle silk in various exquisite hues, or dyed to order at fabulously low prices. And in the country round there are many objects of interest One day we went to the Chin Shan, or Golden Mountain. In one place the creek along which we sailed was full of little cormorant boats. These uncouth-looking birds drive the fish along, much as we drive pheasants at home, before they catch them, and finally deliver them up to their keepers. We lunched in a little harbour with various flowering plants near us, then landed and walked along through sweet w3d rosemary and wistaria, with which Wuhu also must be lovely in its season, to some small hills near the Golden Mountain. A pheasant whirred from almost under my feet, and one of the party got enough snipe for the six of us for dinner. The coimtry to our left looked like Westmorland with a lovely farmstead in the middle distance with smoke rising from it. Before us rose a further hill, from which evidendy an all-round view could be obtained ; beneath us in the hollow to our right nestled a temple. " Hills from the bottom! Temples from the outside!" murmured one of the party. We were undecided. It IS wonderful what a short time in China inclines one to this underneath and outside view. But an adventurous spirit, who had already ascended the hill, was now to be seen making his way to the temple. So we tried for a short cut to it, and found one rather rocky and somewhat precipitous, and there in the rockiest and steepest part cluster of delicate, yellow lilies growing. Lilies of the daffodil yellow, but quite large and growing like belladonnas, six or more flowers on a head, and with a faint, delicious perfume. We gathered our hands full, dug up some roots, admired the fine sand-like mould in which the lilies were growing, then descended on the temple.
A very sensual, jolly sort of Falstaff figure sat as an image of some god at the entrance, handsomely gilded and done up. Behind on the altar the usual three Buddhas of the Past, Present and Future, and around the twelve disciples. There seemed nothing of special interest. But behind this temple we entered an inner shrine, the most remarkable I have yet seen in China. For there, out of the face of the living rock, to a height of some forty feet or more, were carved images innumerable, some standing out as statues, life size — man's life size that is to say — some only in alto relievo. On each side there were quaint figures, the one of a mythological sort of horse, the other of a bull, as far as I remember. And some way up among the figures on the face of the rock was a dove standing out by itself in complete relief. " You see that dove } " asked a Chinaman. *' There were two, but the other flew away." There was a rough roof covering in the whole and protecting the brilliant colours and
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gilding of the images. In Europe one would hear long descriptions of such a shrine, when the images were carved, by whom, with what intent. In China one hears — nothing! We all — newcomers and old residents alike — came upon it by chance, as it were. Two young priests with a very lowly dwelling, one half of whose courtyard was given up to the keeping of gilded images, and of a miniature shrine of like nature as the other, were alone in charge. They looked very poor, and had very simple, guileless faces.
As we left the temple the setting sun was banning to dye the distant Yangtze, and an intervening lake-like expanse, all manner of beautiful tints of saffron and red. Looking back at the temple we saw a large owl fly slowly across it, and settle on a spur of hill running down, all rocks, into the alluvial plain. The contrast of rocks and mud was heightened by all the grass having been burnt black round the foot of the rocks. Turning away again I could not but be reminded of one of Mason's evening scenes ; the figures of our party standing out against the brilliant sunset, the huge bunch of yellow lilies harmonising with the yellow sunset tints, as if a bit brought down from heaven to earth. Bui gradually the mud began to smell, whilst mosquitoes and gnats called forth many an exclamation. As we pushed off in our boat a g^oup of some twenty natives standing on the bank watching stood out as black silhouettes against the last bright redness, and the creek with its bamboo grove to the left, and water no longer visibly muddy in the twilight, looked very quiet and dreamlike. It had been a fiercely hot day, and it was very pleasant to sit on the top of the houseboat, and be quiedy pushed along in the moonlight
Another excursion we made was to the San Shan or Three Hills. These were higher than the others. Again a temple at the foot, but a temple of no special interest, only with a very charming shady grove leading up to it, in which the wistaria must be glorious in the spring time. We climbed to the top of one of the three hills, but the view round was more interesting than beautiful. At the top of the hill was a pit said to be bottomless — but we thought we saw the bottom — ^and to communicate by subterranean passages with more than one place in the country round. There were many beautiful ferns growing in it And again the question, what caused it ? The sides were straight down almost like a well that had been sunk. The country people tell many wonderful tales about it ; how a creature like a bird flew out of the hill one day.
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and left that hole where it came out; how a dragon with an egg In its mouth descended into the earth there, and the egg formed the pit, etcetera. Coming back, through a rather large village, we found it en fHe^ matting covering in the principal, very winding street, and all the street hung with lanterns so close together as to be almost touching. The lanterns were mostly red, but there were occasionally others more elaborate; the effect was exceedingly pretty even by day, and would be still prettier by night Every now and then in the middle of the narrow street were stood altars with candles and artificial flowers, and at all the doors and at all the windows were all the inhabitants of the village in their gala clothes, silendy waiting there to see us pass by. I never saw such a complete turn-out of a village before. As we passed numbers of men and boys fell out and followed us. We passed by large lotus ponds and temples, whose admirable proportions and air of utter desolation much tempted me to pause. But evening was drawing on, and many hundreds were now following us. It seemed more convenient to enter our boat and push off, looking out for Irag-l^lged, cream-coloured cranes, and fire flies, which last when they came on board our boat turned out to be fat, limiinous beedes.
And now the pleasant week at Wuhu had come to an end, and the water of the Yangtze flowed yellow brown, as we passed by fields of millet and sorghum, quiet farmsteads shut in by trees, temples with finely-curved roofs, distant blue mountains, and creeks full of masts leading up to them. Here is a town all agog. Bluegowned Chinamen massed by hundreds here, there, and again there in each clear space by the water to see the steamer pass, blue-gowned men and red-trousered women standing out against the sky in high-up Shai-tai, staring with all their might and main. There is a wedding procession with gay scarlet umbrellas, or is it some grand Mandarin the people are welcoming ? For there are triumphal arches. Here are frightened buffaloes and homely peasants pausing from their daily toil. We pass by in the steamer, as we do in life, seeing the outside of many public events, of many individual lives, ignorant altogether of those realities beneath, which make life worth the living to the people we pass by, going about our own business, and wholly preoccupied by it, as they also by theirs.
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