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Read Ebook: Wandering in Northern China by Franck Harry Alverson Adapter
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Ebook has 734 lines and 240521 words, and 15 pages
The frontier post of Ude, fifty miles beyond the uninhabited frontier between Inner and Outer Mongolia, where Mongol authorities examine passports and very often turn travelers back 128
Chinese travelers on their way to Urga. It is unbelievable how many muffled Chinamen and their multifarious junk one "Dodge" will carry 128
Mongol women make the felt used as houses, mainly by pouring water on sheep's wool 129
The upper town of Urga, entirely inhabited by lamas, has the temple of Ganden, containing a colossal standing Buddha, rising high above all else. It is in Tibetan style and much of its superstructure is covered with pure gold 144
Red lamas leaving the "school" in which hundreds of them squat tightly together all day long, droning through their litany. They are of all ages, equally filthy and heavily booted. Over the gateway of the typical Urga palisade is a text in Tibetan, and the cylinders at the upper corners are covered with gleaming gold 144
High class lamas, in their brilliant red or yellow robes, great ribbons streaming from their strange hats, are constantly riding in and out of Urga. Note the bent-knee style of horsemanship 145
A high lama dignitary on his travels, free from the gaze of the curious, and escorted by mounted lamas of the middle class 145
A youthful lama turning one of the myriad prayer-cylinders of Urga. Many written prayers are pasted inside, and each turn is equivalent to saying all of them 152
The market in front of Hansen's house. The structure on the extreme left is not what it looks like, for they have no such in Urga, but it houses a prayer-cylinder 152
Women, whose crippled feet make going to the shops difficult, do much of their shopping from the two-boxes-on-a-pole type of merchant, constant processions of whom tramp the highways of China 153
An itinerant blacksmith-shop, with the box-bellows worked by a stick handle widely used by craftsmen and cooks in China 153
Pious Mongol men and women worshiping before the residence of the "Living Buddha" of Urga, some by throwing themselves down scores of times on the prostrating-boards placed for that purpose, one by making many circuits of the place, now and again measuring his length on the ground 160
The Mongols of Urga disposed of their dead by throwing the bodies out on the hillsides, where they are quickly devoured by the savage black dogs that roam everywhere 160
Mongol women in full war-paint 161
Though it was still only September, our return from Urga was not unlike a polar expedition 161
Our home in Peking was close under the great East Wall of the Tartar City 176
The indispensable staff of Peking housekeeping consists of ama, rickshaw-man, "boy," coolie, and cook 176
A chat with neighbors on the way to the daily stroll on the wall 177
Street venders were constantly crying their wares in our quarter 177
At Chinese New Year the streets of Peking were gay with all manner of things for sale, such as these brilliantly colored paintings of native artists 192
A rich man died in our street, and among other things burned at his grave, so that he would have them in after-life, were this "automobile" and two "chauffeurs" 192
A neighbor who gave his birds a daily airing 193
Just above us on the Tartar Wall were the ancient astronomical instruments looted by the Germans in 1900 and recently returned, in accordance with a clause in the Treaty of Versailles 193
Preparing for a devil dance at the lama temple in Peking 208
The devil dancers are usually Chinese street urchins hired for the occasion by the languid Mongol lamas of Peking 208
The street sprinklers of Peking work in pairs, with a bucket and a wooden dipper. This is the principal street of the Chinese City "outside Ch'ien-men" 209
The Forbidden City is for the most part no longer that, but open in more than half its extent to the ticket-buying public 209
In the vast compound of the Altar of Heaven 224
Mei Lan-fang, most famous of Chinese actors, who, like his father and grandfather before him, plays only female parts 224
Over the wall from our house boats plied on the moat separating us from the Chinese City 225
Just outside the Tartar Wall of Peking the night soil of the city, brought in wheelbarrows, is dried for use as fertilizer 225
For three thousands miles the Great Wall clambers over the mountains between China and Mongolia 240
One of the mammoth stone figures flanking the road to the Ming Tombs of North China, each of a single piece of granite 240
Another glimpse of the Great Wall 241
The twin pagodas of Taiy?an, capital of Shansi Province 241
In Shansi four men often work at as many windlasses over a single well to irrigate the fields 249
Prisoners grinding grain in the "model prison" of Taiy?an 249
A few of the 508 Buddhas in one of the lama temples of Jehol 256
The youngest, but most important--since she has borne him a son--of the wives of a Manchu chief of one of the tomb-tending towns of Tung Ling 256
Interior of the notorious Empress Dowager's tomb at Tung Ling, with her cloth-covered chair of state and colors to dazzle the stoutest eye 257
The Potal? of Jehol, said to be a copy, even in details, of that of Lhasa. The windows are false and the great building at the top is merely a roofless one enclosing the chief temple 257
Behind Tung Ling the great forest reserve which once "protected" the tombs from the evil spirits that always come from the north was recently opened to settlers, and frontier conditions long since forgotten in the rest of China prevail 260
Much of the plowing in the newly opened tract is done in this primitive fashion 260
The face of the mammoth Buddha of Jehol, forty-three feet high and with forty-two hands. It fills a four-story building, and is the largest in China proper, being identical, according to the lamas, with those of Urga and Lhasa 261
The upper half of the ascent of Tai-shan is by a stone stairway which ends at the "South Gate of Heaven," here seen in the upper right-hand corner 268
One of the countless beggar women who squat in the center of the stairway to Tai-shan, expecting every pilgrim to drop at least a "cash" into each basket 268
Wash-day in the moat outside the city wall of Tzinan, capital of Shantung 269
A traveler by chair nearing the top of Tai-shan, most sacred of the five holy peaks of China 269
A priest of the Temple of Confucius 272
The grave of Confucius is noted for its simplicity 272
The sanctum of the Temple of Confucius, with the statue and spirit--tablet of the sage, before which millions of Chinese burn joss-sticks annually 273
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