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"Little" and the "Great" East Gates. The western limit of this, the first suggested "Gare de Yunnan-sen" is a paved road that runs due south at about a third of a mile from the eastern wall, and joins at right angles a second and wider stone road coming from opposite the approach to the South Gate.
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This latter road crosses by the "Bridge of Victory" a stream that may be destined to play a not unimportant part in the coming commerce of Yunnan-fu. The stream will be seen to meander through the plain from the local Black Dragon fount - there is a Hei-lung-t'an near every place of consequence in Yunnan - on the north-east till it strikes the city precincts near the Little East Gate.
Thence it runs, not far from the wall, in a fairly straight course till it is well past the city, after which it resumes its wandering ways until it is finally merged in the Yunnan Lake. Meanwhile, about a mile south of the city, it has put out a channel running westward, a channel that also eventually leads to the lake. The new gare will be found marked as extending along the east of the parent stream, from the Bridge of Victory to the parting of the channels. I may mention here that I have just been told by my colleague of France that this emplacement of the "gare" has been accepted by the local authorities.
It is proposed to canalize the stream by means of locks, and so to obtain a head of water sufficient to enable small steam-tugs to bring boats up from the lake to alongside the railway station. As coal good enough for use in railway engines has been discovered among the hills west of the lake, whence, too, abundance of building stone is to be had, as, moreover, a ferry service could thus be maintained with K'unyang and other places on the lake, the advantages to be gained by this project of canalization are obvious. Whether the project is practicable, however, I have not yet learnt on good authority.
It is also proposed by the French to induce the officials to set apart all the ground between the "gare" and, at any rate, the western channel to the lake as a sort of European, or at least Europeanized, Settlement. The northern strip along the great paved road from the South Gate to the Bridge of Victory, a strip already largely taken up with Chinese houses, would be left to Chinese dirt and disorder, but the bulk of the ground would be laid out in foreign fashion, with straight broad roads that should be kept clear of offal, dogs, pigs, and intermittent paving stones.
France, however, by M. Constans, her former Minister at Peking, renounced the right to demand a concession or settlement at any Treaty port where she did not then (1887) possess one; and Yunnan-fu is not yet even a Treaty port. Moreover, as was shown the other day, when negotiations for the "gare" were in progress, the Local Government demur to the acquisition of land here by foreign traders. It is certain, nevertheless, that on the completion of the railway Yunnan-fu will become, in reality if not in name, an open mart; and, meanwhile, the necessity of a "magasin" for the railway employés will be maintained, and will lead to the introduction of a foreign - that is, of course, a French - store, just as somewhat similar conditions led to the establishment at Peking in the seventies of Kiérulff's and Vrard's hotels. The Chinese will become gradually aware that the arrival of the first locomotive must greatly increase the value of land all about the "gare," and they will buy up the neighbouring sites. What is worse, they will build on them; and, instead of an orderly Settlement, we shall have a filthy human warren alongside the first-class station.
As far as I am aware, Great Britain has nowhere tied her hands in regard to demands for settlement areas. At Têngyüeh the T'aotai accepted my suggestion that the neighbourhood of the ground purchased for a British Consulate should be laid out as a Europeanized Settlement, with a Municipal Committee of Chinese and foreigners. Mr. Litton now sends me a notification by the Sub-Prefect forbidding Chinese to encroach on the roads - 3 chang or 35 English feet wide - that have been marked out in this area, or to bury their dead within the Settlement. Concerted action by the British and French should be able to secure similar treatment for the square mile adjoining the proposed "gare."
As a place of residence, this area is not at present at all inviting; but neither was in 1843 the mud flat "full of all abominations" (as a Chinese author has it) that has since become the British Settlement at Shanghai.
Meanwhile, the combined establishment of M. de Pauliny, the Chief of Section, and of M. Sorrel, the contractor, is lodged in an extensive annexe to a native temple, a few hundred yards north-east of the future railway station. Even to foreigners, the annexe - which was built by the Chinese authorities for this purpose - is known as the "t'ieh-lu Kung-so" or railway offices. On the other side of the paved road that forms its western limit - this is the paved road already described as running parallel to the east wall of the city - is a large open space, some 30 mou (about 5 acres) in extent.
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This, M. François, the late Consul-General, told me had been offered to him as a Consular site, at the price of 3,000 taels. The surroundings are, however, unpleasant (as they are everywhere in the immediate neighbourhood of Yunnan-fu, except to the north) and, in any case, no definite decision has yet been reached by the French Government for the erection of a Consulate.
The railway establishments at Mengtse remain much as they were described by Mr. Litton in his admirable Report of the 1st October last, but along the road leading to them from the East Gate of the town, a number of buildings are going up, half Chinese, half European, for the accommodation of what might be called the camp followers of the undertaking - Annamese hotelkeepers, Japanese "filles de joie," and the rest.
This apparent prosperity of Mengtse must, I fear, be only transitory, since the railway will not now avail itself of the spacious green between the French post-office and the French hospital that was originally set aside for its "gare." The new "gare" for Mengtse, a third-class "gare," will be situated 6 kilometres (4 miles) to the east, and some 500 feet up the mountain side. There is talk of constructing a short branch line thence to the town, and it seems certain that the existing road, even now of fair dimensions, will be enlarged and improved. Moreover, the conservatism of trade is always to be reckoned with. Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that when the railway is in working order, the caravans with tin slabs from Kuochin, to the west, will proceed straight to the "gare" and so pass Mengtse by. It is even more certain that the trade with K'aihua and Kuangnan, to the east, will not come down to the Mengtse Plain merely to return over those four miles to the station in the hills.
At Mengtse, I was received by the French colony with the greatest courtesy and an abounding hospitality. M. Guibert caused copies to be struck off for me of the plans which I have just described, and sent a circular along the line up to I-liang, requesting for me a "bon accueil." M. Richard sketched out my route, indicating the places where I could spend the night, or, as the case might be, make my mid-day halt. M. Sainson, the Consul, accompanied me twice to the workings on the hill, arranging on the second occasion for a picnic at the spring (another Hei-lung-t'an) below the site of the future "gare."
That site, as Mr. Litton suggests, is very limited in area, nor from the nature of the ground can it well be otherwise. And yet, if the Customs are to continue to be established at Mengtse, it will obviously be necessary to maintain at least an examiner and his staff alongside the railway station, together with the usual apparatus of sheds and godowns. In the event, it would seem exceedingly likely that the Mengtse establishment will be broken up, and its constituents distributed between the two termini of the line, Yünnan-fu and Ho-K'ou.
I followed the "tracé" southwards only as far as the Mi-la-ti "col," the watershed between the Mengtse Plain (which belongs to the West River system) and the Nam-hti (an affluent of the Red River). Work on the tunnel here was proceeding at a reasonably rapid rate: several courses of stone facing are in position. Indeed, the two lots (Nos. 10 and 11 in the fourth section) for which M. Péraglié is contractor are considerably further advanced than any others along the line. One reason for this is doubtless because they are the nearest to head-quarters, and are under the immediate supervision of the Directeur des Travaux. Another reason is that they are the first lots on the Yunnan Plateau, and therefore secure many of the Chinese labourers who have found the Nam-hti Valley impossible.
The progress of the railway, indeed, is now almost entirely a question of labour. All along the road, I heard the same complaint - lack of the "main d'œuvre." The Regulations require that recourse should be had in the first instance to the populace of Yunnan, and that only when this source fails should Chinese from other provinces be engaged. But the Yünnanese is a man of few wants, and with a strong dislike to prolonged exertion. As soon as he has earned a dollar or two as wages, he throws up his work for the month, for he has gained enough to keep him in rice and opium. Furthermore, there is no excess of population in Yunnan, as there is, for example, in congested Kuangtung. When the season comes for breaking up the opium fields and planting out the summer crop of paddy, the Yunnan coolies desert, almost to a man. The same will happen again at rice harvest and poppy sowing. In short, as M. Prud'homme told me, it is impossible to reckon on a steady supply of Yunnan labour during more than five months in the year.
[2172 -1]
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