on Foot

_From the Straits to Shanghai_

INTRODUCTORY

_The scheme_. _Why I am walking across Interior China_. _Leaving
Singapore_. _Ignorance of life and travel in China_. _The "China for the
Chinese" cry_. _The New China and the determination of the Government_.
_The voice of the people_. _The province of Yuen-nan and the forward
movement_. _A prophecy_. _Impressions of Saigon_. _Comparison of French
and English methods_. _At Hong-Kong_. _Cold sail up the Whang-poo_.
_Disembarkation_. _Foreign population of Shanghai_. _Congestion in the
city_. _Wonderful Shanghai._

Through China from end to end. From Shanghai, 1,500 miles by river and
1,600 miles walking overland, from the greatest port of the Chinese
Empire to the frontier of British Burma.

That is my scheme.

* * * * *

I am a journalist, one of the army of the hard-worked who go down early
to the Valley. I state this because I would that the truth be told; for
whilst engaged in the project with which this book has mainly to deal I
was subjected to peculiar designations, such as "explorer" and other
newspaper extravagances, and it were well, perhaps, for my reader to
know once for all that the writer is merely a newspaper man, at the time
on holiday.

The rather extreme idea of walking across this Flowery Land came to me
early in the year 1909, although for many years I had cherished the hope
of seeing Interior China ere modernity had robbed her and her wonderful
people of their isolation and antediluvianism, and ever since childhood
my interest in China has always been considerable. A little prior to the
Chinese New Year, a friend of mine dined with me at my rooms in
Singapore, in the Straits Settlements, and the conversation about China
resulted in our decision then and there to travel through the Empire on
holiday. He, because at the time he had little else to do; the author,
because he thought that a few months' travel in mid-China would, from a
journalistic standpoint, be passed profitably, the intention being to
arrive home in dear old England late in the summer of the same year.

We agreed to cross China on foot, and accordingly on February 22, 1909,
just as the sun was sinking over the beautiful harbor of Singapore--that
most valuable strategic Gate of the Far East, where Crown Colonial
administration, however, is allowed by a lethargic British Government to
become more and more bungled every year--we sett