Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-08-11
THE HIGHWAYS OF CHINA
ONE AUTHORITY SAYS THEY MIGHT
WELL he TERMED LOwwAYs.
Roads Are Never Repaired and Soon
Become Worse Than No Roads
at All-SuRgestion for Relief

Relative to the subject OF highways OF
| travel in the Chinese empire the Rev Ar
thur II. Smith. DID. author of Chinese
characteristics" and Village Life in Chi
| ma" and who was at last accounts still
in the city of Pekin. says in part in the
latter publication:
| The contracted Quarters in which The
Chinese live compel them to do most of
their work in the streets Even in those
cities which are provided with but the mar
rowest passages, these slender avenues arc
perpetually choked by the presence Of peril
| patetic vendors of every article that is sold
and by the peripatetic craftsmen, who have
no other shop than the street. The butcher,
the baker, the cande-stick maker, and hun
dreds OF other workmen as well. have their
representatives in perpetual motion. 10 the
great impeachment OF travel. The wider the
street, the more the uses TO which it can
| be put, that travel In the broad streets
| Of Pekin is often as difficult as that in the
| narrow alleys of Canton. An imperial
| highway" in China Is not one which is
| kept in order by the emperor, but rather
one which may have to be put in order for
| the emperor. All such highways might
| rather be called lowways for, as they are
never repaired they soon become incom-
parably worse thar no road at all.
o
| over the empire, We must not expect 10 fird
| the village road an Illustration of any doc
| Urine of political economy. Each of them
| is simply a forced contribution on the part
| OF the owner of the land to the general
welfare. 1t is SO much soil on which he is
compelled to pay taxes, and from which he
| gets no more good than any one else Each
| landowner will, therefore, throw the road
! on the edge of his land so that he may not
| be obliged to furnish more than half the
| way But as the pieces of land which he
| happens to own may be, and generally are.
| of miscellaneous lengths, the road will wind
around so as to accommodate the prejudices
| of the owner in this particular. which ex-
| plains the fact that in travelling on village
| roads it is often necessary to go great
! distance to reach a place not far off.
An ordinary road is only wide enough
| for one vehicle, bat as it is often necessary
| for carts to pass one another, this can only
be done by trespassirg the crops. To
| prevent this the farmer digs deep bitches
along his land, resembling gas mains. Each
| farmer struggles to protect his own land.
but when he drives his own cart he, too,
| becomes a 'trespasser;' thus a state OF
| chronic and immitigable warfare is estab-
| lished, for which there is absolutely no
| remedy. The occidental plan of setting
apart strip of land OF uniform width, free
| from taxes and owned by the state the
| grade of which shall be definite, is utterly
| beyond the comprehension of any Chinese
| Where land is valuable and is all private
properly, road repairs are out of the Ques-
| ton. There is no earth to repair with. and
| without repair the roads soon reach n con-
| dition beyond the possibility of any repairs.
Constant travel congresses and hardens the
soil, making ii lower than the adjacent
| fields: perpetual attritjon grinds the earth
| into banks which by heavy gales are blown
in the form of thick dust on the fields.
I'm the rainy season the fields are drained
into the road. which at such times is con-
stantly under water. A slight change Of
| level allows the water to escape into some
still lower road, and thus current is set
| fret ht@F.. md hon
rushing torrent, constantly wearing out
its bed. This process repeated for decades
and for centuries turns the road INTO a
canal, several feet below the level of the
fields. 1t is a proverb that a road 1000
years old becomes river, just a daugh-
ter-in-law of many years standing grad
| ually summers into a mother-in-law.'
by the time the road has sunk TO the
| level of a few feet below the adjacent road.
ii is liable to be wholly useless thor
oughfare. 1t is a canal. but it can neither
| be navigated nor crossed Intercourse be-
| tween contiguous villages lying along
common highway is often for weeks to-
gether entirely interrupted. The water
drained from the land often carries with IL
large areas Of valuable soil, leaving in its
place yawning chasm- When the water
subsidies the owner of the land sallies out
to see what has become of this section of
the farm. 1t has been dissolved in the
canal, but il the owner cannot find that
particular earth he can find ether earth Just
as good. Wherever the light soil called
d
vertical cleavage, leaving high banks on
each side of rent in the earth. To repair
these the owner takes the soil which he
needs from a pit excavated by the side of
the road, or more probably from the road
itself, which may thus in single season be
lowered foot or more in depth. All of 1t
is his land, and why should he not take it?
If the public wish TO use road and do not
find this one satisfactory, then let the pub
lie go somewhere else.
IF a road becomes so bad as to necesSi-
tate its abandonment, a new one must be
opened, or some old one adapted 10 the
altered circumstances. The latter is almost
sure to be the alternative, for who is will
ing to surrender part Of his scanty farm
to accommodate SO imperSonal being as
the public? In case of floods. either from
heavy rains break in some stream. the
only feasible method is thought to be To sit
still and await the gradual retirement If
the water. A raised road through the In
undated district, which could be used a. all
seasons, is triple impossibility. The per
sons whose land must be disturbed would
not suffer 1t, no one would lift finger to
do the work-eXcept those who happened To
own land along the line of the route-and
no one, no matter where he lived, would
furnish any of the materials which would
be necessary to render the road permanent.
IAN illustration of this state of things is
found in a small village in central Chih-li,
where lives an elderly lady, in good cir
cumstances, part Of whose land is an
nually subject to flood from the drainage Of
the surrounding region. The evil was so
serious that IL was frequently impossible to
haul the crops home on carts. but they had
either to be brought on the backs OF men
wading. or, if there We're water enough.
toilfully dragged along on stalk RATS. To
this comparatively enlightened woman oc-
CURED the idea of having her men and
teams dig trenches along the roadside raise
the road to level above possible flooding.
and thus remedy the trouble permanently.
This she did wholly at her own expense.
the emerging road being benefit to the
whole country side The following winter
during which the contagious influenza was
world-prevalert, there were several cases IN
the village terminating fatally. After five
or six persons had died the villagers be-
came excited to discover the latent cause
of the calamity. which was traced to the
| new highway. Had another death occurred
they would have assembled with spades
and reduced ii to its previous level thus
raising radical barrier against the grip.
THE great lines of Chinese travel might
| be made permanently passable instead oe
| being, as now, interrupted several months
| of the year, If the governor of a province
chose to compel the several district magis-
| trates along the line to see that these i'm
portant arteries kept free from stand