^he oS uteat ICHANG: The Gateway to Western China Being a "Brief Study of a Typical Frontier Station in the Tdistrict of Ffankow. tVith some account of the work that is being done and the work that should be done By the Rev. D. Trumbull Huntington I CHANG is the most westerly station in the District of Hankow. The clergy in charge are the Rev. D. T. Huntington, who succeeded Dr. Collins in igoi, and the Rev. T. F. Tsen, Chinese priest. Last year 729 public services were held. The number of baptized Church members is 156, and the number of communicants 74. Copies 0/ this leaflet may be obtained from the Corresponding Secretary^ 281 Fourth Avenue^ New Yorky asking for Leaflet No. 219. First Edition, March ioth, 190?. THE MISSION HOUSE AT ICHANG Ichang: The Gateway to Western China BY THE REVEREND D. TRUMBULL HUNTINGTON* I CHANG, Oil the Yang-tse River one thousand miles west of Shanghai and four hundred miles w’est of Hankow, is one of the most beau- tifully situated cities in the world. Five miles to the north the Yang-tse emerges from the last of the gorges. It bends sharjily to the southwest as it leaves the gorge, then turns again to the south- east opposite the city and rolls away through lower mountains to the great plain. To the w’est and south and north rise wild, picturesque mountains, some over five thousand feet high. The city itself is no more beautiful than most Chinese cities; it has, how- ever, some peculiar features of its own. The streets are rather broader than those of Hankow, donkeys and little horses are more common, and wheelbarrows are al- most unknown, for it would be impos- sible to push them over the mountain paths that serve for roads. The carry- ing-pole, with its load susixmded from each end, is the commonest means of transportation, but coolies from the more mountainous districts are also seen with pack-baskets on their backs similar to those used in Maine and the Adiron- dacks. Most of the houses here are washed dark gray instead of the white which is usual elsewhere. The chief importance of Ichang from a commercial point of view is that it is the gate to the rich province of Szchuan. The city itself has only sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants and the surround- ing country is not rich. For two hun- dred miles above us the Yang-tse passes through a series of mountain ranges — a wild and not very populous country. Then come the fertile valleys of Szchuan and, five hundred miles away, the open port of Chung-king. So far, this section of the river has proved impracticable for merchant steamers, though several gun- boats — British, French and Japanese — are now patrolling Szchuan waters. All goods going to Szchuan must, therefore, 1x3 transhipped here, and the rest of the journey must be made by native junks, and even then it is attended with con- siderable risk. Our mission compound is situated out- See note at the end of the article. ••THE LIVELIEST STREET IX THE CITY” merchants and women and children and beggars — but chiefly coolies. The stores are decorated with handsome signs in black and gilt and red and green, and within are displayed various foreign and native wares — tin ware, made of old kerosene cans, native tobacco in whole leaves or cut very fine, pipes, medicines, rice, tea, cotton cloth, silk, pottery, china and a hundred other things. The tea houses are crowded with men, usually laughing and talking, but sometimes dis- puting and quarrelling. Inside the city gates the shops are not so good, nor is the street so crowded. Over the gate is a temple to the god of war, and a little further on an “Eastern Hell Temple.” In this are to be seen in figures one or two feet high all the suf- ferings of the Buddhist hell, or perhaps we should rather call it purgatory, as, after passing through the ten halls, or as many of them as they deserve, the souls are expected to drink some tea with lyCthean properties, and then come back to the upper world. Most of the tor- ments Dante saw. and some he did not see, are to be found there. Besides these two larger temples we pass twelve smaller temples to local divinities between the side the South Gate, where are all the foreign houses, except that of the Swedish Mission. The ehapel and schools are about three-quarters of a mile away, inside the city. Passing out of the compound, you leave a bad looking, bad smelling duck pond on the left and go first between some old, tumble-down mud houses, and then between some good new houses. Then you turn to the left and pass a sacred tree, which is worshipped by many and hung with votive offer- ings. Some are round pieces of wood witli one word “Divine” painted on them. Others are oblong, inscribed with the words “Prayer will certainly be an- swered,” or other pious saying. We go through an alley, in which all the houses but two are opium dens, to the South Gate, Main Street. This is the liveliest street in the city — or rather out of it. It is usually crowded with coolies and THE SACRED TREE AT ICHANG IVorshipped with prayer and incense by the Chinese as a tree inhabited by a divinity compound and the chapel. These are eight or ten feet high and from four to ten feet square, and always contain two very respectable looking old people — a man and a woman — usually dressed in gilt but sometimes in blue, and often at- tended by two servants. I have never gone to the chapel in the evening with- out seeing candles and incense burning before some of these shrines. The rest of the walk to the chapel is through a fashionable re sidence street, where some of the richest people in I c h a n g live. The line of blank wall which i n d i cates large houses is broken by a black- smith’s shop, a paint shop and several other not very attrac- tive looking stores — in- cluding two or three opium dens — which would not be found on such a street in an American city. There are also certain stalls of sweetmeat sellers and fortune tellers. The people of Ichang seem to be more religious than those of the cities lower down in the plain. Besides the little shrines to local divinities mentioned above, there are many larger temples, some in the city and more in the country, some in the valleys and more on the hills, and some on the tops of the most precipitous peaks. The trade in in- cense and candles is large. All this religion has not produced a great amount of organized benevolence. There are two or three benevolent guilds, but their works are small. One dis- tributes considerable free rice to the poor and another dispenses some medi- cines. There are no free schools, no hos- pitals, and of course no attempt at car- ing for the deaf, the blind or the insane. The people seem slower than the people of Hankow ; they stare at the foreigner more stupidly, and are slower at taking in an idea. Opium smoking is more common, too. This is to be ac- counted for partly by the large pop ulation of Szchuan boatmen and partly by the fact that opium i s cheaper here, since most of it comes down from Szchu- an and a little has been raised in this vicinity during the last few years. Our day - school teacher from Shasi, to whom I was try- ing to give a little instruction in geography during his last vacation, characterized the people of the province by saying that those in the eastern part were more false and deceitful and those in the west more fierce and brutal. How- ever, they are not all bad. Another feature of the place is the beggars. Relatively to the size of the city, they are more numerous here than in any town T know. This may be part- ly due to the poverty of the surrounding country, but I think much more to the prevalence of opium smoking. And such miser- a b 1 e folk ! Last winter there were two or three who pro- gressed along the street not by walking (I am not sure whether they could walk or not) but b y rolling along in the mud and tilth. Others sit beside the street and pound their heads on the stone paving, call- ing on the p 3 S S G r s by to give them mon- ey. “Oh, good p e 0 - pie” — whack — “I am blind” — whack — “Lay up merit” — whack — and so on all day long. Others adopt the more commonplace method of standing in the shop or house doors shivering and calling for alms until the benevolent shopkeeper gives them a few cash to get rid of them. But whatever their method, they are all about equally filthy and wretched and degraded. Any money they can get will probably go for opium. The worst toughs in our Amer- ican cities seem comparatively hopeful. We have wandered a long way from the chapel. It faces this fashionable street— though not the best part of it — and the back door opens on the city wall where it overlooks the river. On enter- ing, we turn to the left into the guest- room. From the guest-room we go into the church, a very pretty Gothico- Chinese structure. The altar rail. lectern and font of carved lime- stone are particularly fine. With the gallery over the guest - room it can be arranged to seat over two h u n - dred, and it is so built that when we need to enlarge w e can tear down the p a r t i t i on and throw the guest- room into the church, i n creasing the seating capacity by sixty or seventy. If on entering we do not turn to the left we go through a small court into the boys’ schoolroom. Beyond this is Mr. Tsen’s guest-room, which is also the women’s guest-room. To the right is the kitchen and to the left the girls’ school. Upstairs are Mr. Tsen’s study and bedrooms and behind is the city wall. Our work was started fourteen years ago, and while progress has never been rapid, it has been fairly steady. We now own property adequate to our present needs, but allowing very little room for growth. If the increase next year is as great as it has been this year we shall be decidedly crowded. Recently we decided to open a girls’ school, and were fortunate enough to secure the services of an old pupil of Mrs. Graves’s as teacher. We have fif- teen girls studying daily, learning to read and learning some Christian truth. The teaching is not all we could wish, but it is a vast improvement on no teaching at all. I know of no women in the Ichang church who could read before they entered the church. Last year there were eighteen boys in the boys’ school and I found them very well taught. They study Chinese — still largely on the old memorize-hut-do-not- try-to-understand system, but with im- provements — arithmetic, geography, English — the older boys only — and Christian doctrine. We found that by employing one of the older hoys as a desks would not, I fear, meet with the approval of any school committee in the United States. They are flat, and not very well made, and the benches have no backs, but they have some relation te the size of the pupil, they enable the teacher to tell whether he is in his place or not, and they make it possible to in- sist that each one keep his place moder- ately neat. These schools must in the future, even more than in the past, be the feeders for our higher schools. There are now four Ichang hoys in St. John’s College, and four in Boone School. The girls’ THE CHANCEL OF THE ICHANG CHURCH pupil-teacher we could increase the num- ber to forty without making the work too hard. We have a number on the wait- ing list, and next year hope to increase still further. The school fees pay nearly half the expenses, and I think in a few years we can make it self-supporting. We have tried a little experiment in desks and benches. In the ordinary Chinese school there are long desks and benches, all of about the same size, and that rather high for grovm people. The little ones sit there with their heads just over the top of the desk, and their feet a foot or more from the floor. Discipline is not very strict and you could never tell just where a boy was if he had not a desk of his own to sit at. Our new school is new, so that there are no graduates from it in other schools, be- cause there are no graduates. Every Wednesday evening there is a meeting of from thirty to fortj'-five men in the guest-room. A few verses from the Bible are given out as a subject and two men are appointed as leaders. Mr. Tsen opens the meeting with some of the Prayer Book collects. Then the chapter in which the text occurs is read, each taking a verse. A little over half the men take part in this, and some others who are not sure enough of the char- acters to read aloud follow in their Bibles. Then the two leaders expound the passage and anyone else who has a word of exhortation is given a chance to speak. The meet- ing then closes with prayer. The men stay for a little while