p. 412 | Untitled article by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 26.

FROM SIBERIA TO CHINA.

By Editor

The following interesting sketch of travel is from George Kennan's illustrated paper in the May Century:—

On Friday, October 2, Mr. Frost and I again visited Kiakhta, and went with the boundary commissioner, Mr. Sulkofski, to call upon the Chinese Governor of Maimachin. The Mongolian town of Maimachin is separated from Kiakhta by a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards of neutral ground, through the middle of which is supposed to run the boundary line between the two great empires. Maimachin is further separated from Kiakhta by a high plank wall and by screens, or pagoda-shaped buildings, that mask the entrances to the streets so that the outside barbarian cannot look into the place without actually entering it, and cannot see anything beyond its wooden walls after he has entered it. It would be hard to imagine a more sudden and startling change than that brought about by a walk of two hundred yards from Kiakhta to Maimachin. One moment you are in a Russian provincial village, with its characteristic shops, log houses, golden-domed churches, droshkies (drosh-kees), soldiers, and familiar peasant faces; the next moment you pass behind the high screen that conceals the entrance to the Mongolian town, and find yourself apparently in the middle of the Chinese Empire. You can hardly believe that you have not been suddenly transported on the magical carpet of the "Arabian Nights" over a distance of a thousand miles. The town in which you find yourself is no more like the town that you have just left than a Zuni pueblo is like a village in New England, and, for all that appears to the contrary, you might suppose yourself to be separated from the Russian Empire by the width of a whole continent.

The narrow, unpaved streets are shut in by gray, one-story houses, whose windowless walls are made of clay mixed with chopped straw, and whose roofs, ornamented with elaborate carving, show a tendency to turn up at the corners; clumsy two-wheel ox-carts, loaded with boxes of tea, and guided by swarthy Mongol drivers, have taken the place of the Russian horses and telegas; Chinese traders, in skull-caps, loose, flapping gowns and white-soled shoes, appear at the doors of the court-yards, instead of the Russian merchants in top-boots, loose waistcoats, and shirts worn outside their trousers, whom you have long been accustomed to see; and wild-looking sunburned horsemen, in deep orange gowns and dishpan-shaped hats, ride in now and then from some remote encampment in the great desert of Gobi, followed, perhaps, by a poor Mongol from the immediate neighborhood, mounted on a slow-pacing ox. Wherever you go, and in whatever direction you look, China has taken the place of Russia, and the scenes that confront you are full of strange, unfamiliar details.

We drove with a Russo-Chinese interpreter to the residence of the "surguhce" (soor-goo-chay), or Chinese Governor—which was distinguished from all other houses by having two high poles tipped with gilded balls erected in front of it—and, after being introduced to His Excellency by Mr. Sulkofski, were invited to partake of tea, sweetmeats and maigalo (my-ga-lo), or Chinese rice brandy. We exchanged with the Governor a number of ceremonious and not at all exciting inquiries and replies relative to his and our health, affairs, and general well-being, drank three or four saki-cups of maigalo, nibbled at some candied fruits, and then, as the hour for his devotions had arrived, went with him, by invitation, to the temple, and saw him say his prayers before a large wooden idol to an accompaniment made by the slow tolling of a big deep-toned bell. The object of the bell ringing seemed to be to notify the whole population of the town that His Excellency, the Governor, was communing with his Joss. When we returned to his house Mr. Frost drew a portrait of him, as, with an amusing air of conscious majesty, he sat upon a tiger skin in his chair of state, and then, as we had no excuse for lingering longer, we took our leave, each of us receiving a neatly-tied package, in which were the nuts, sweetmeats and candied fruits that had been set before us but had not been eaten.

We wasted the rest of the afternoon in trying to get photographs of some of the strange types and groups that were to be seen in the Maimachin streets. Again and again we were surrounded by forty or fifty Mongols, Buriats, and nondescript natives from the great southern steppes, and again and again we set up the camera and trained it upon a part of the picturesque throng. Every time Mr. Frost covered his head with the black cloth and took off the brass cap that concealed the instrument's Cyclopean eye, the apprehensive Celestials vanished with as much celerity as if the artist were manipulating a Gatling gun. We could clear a whole street from one end to the other by merely setting up the camera on its tripod and getting out the black cloth, and I seriously thought of advising the Chinese Governor to send to America for a photographic outfit to be used in quelling riots. He could disperse a mob with it more quickly and certainly than with a battery of mountain howitzers. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frost did not succeed in getting pictures of any animated objects that day, except a few Mongol ox-teams and two or three blind or crippled beggars, who could not move rapidly enough to make their escape.