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Read Ebook: Primitive Manners and Customs by Farrer James Anson
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Ebook has 57 lines and 5213 words, and 2 pages
At Shanghai there is the harbour and also a small creek about the size of the Cam, both of which afford ample facilities. The club has two excellent boathouses and plenty of boats, and is composed of the finest material possible, all the best men in Shanghai, as is ever the case elsewhere, going in for rowing at one time or another; but the rowing is not first-class, and unless things have greatly changed since I was an active member, a crew capable of sitting a light cedar ship could not be mustered, all the racing being done in clinker boats.
The reason for this lack of watermanship is partly due to the difficulty in coaching otherwise than from the stern of a boat, there being no towing path on which the coach can ride or run alongside his men, as is done at Oxford or Cambridge, while the hire of launches is too expensive. Also, part of the reason is due to beginners being seldom taken out and coached in tubs by expert senior men who have had the benefit of a professional or scientific training, but are put into a bad four and left to develop themselves as best they may. It would well repay the club to have a path made alongside the creek and to get a professional out from home for a year or two to initiate a high-class style, after which the traditions, once firmly established, would pass down naturally to succeeding generations of oarsmen.
The coxing is on a par with the rowing. I have seen a length lost at a corner, the rate of striking reduced by ten a minute and the crew badly pulled to pieces, through the rudder being hard on when the oars were in the water.
After all, skill in rowing is but a question of degree and of no vital importance in a place so isolated from other rowing centres as is Shanghai, while the club is certainly one of the best to get into on arriving there, especially for youths, as plenty of good, open-air exercise can thus be obtained in the society of strong, healthy-minded men.
If hills or mountains be within easy distance bungalows are there built, to which most ladies and children retire for the hot weather, the men snatching hasty visits when business allows them to leave the settlement. At one place down south such bungalows are built on a tiny island four or five miles out at sea, and there it is never very hot, while in the evenings it is delightful to bathe, stroll along the sands, or sit with the pilot on watch up by the old ruined fort, where you can see rays from the lighthouses flashing far, far across the waves, watch the lights of steamers as they pass beneath and listen to the cadenced throbbing of their screws. For those residing in Central China a sanatorium has lately sprung up near Kiukiang, at Kuling, a valley some 4,000 feet above sea-level in the Lushan mountains, which overlook the Yangtse on one side and the Poyang lake on the other. This valley was unknown to Europeans a few years ago, but has now the appearance of a country town, there being probably a hundred and fifty well-appointed bungalows strongly built of stone quarried on the spot, a church, shops, laundry and a network of roads and paths.
When feeling run down after a long spell of intense heat in the plains, a trip to this resort is most refreshing, for there it is always cool enough to wear light tweeds during the day and to sleep under a blanket at night. The mountain rambles are lovely, be it over the lofty peaks, through the trees and scrub in the valleys or along the bed of a stream, where frequent pools of running, crystal water afford good bathing or a little fishing for those addicted to the gentle art.
Never shall I forget one glorious
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