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the new officer to remove himself and his troops from the village where we were staying immediately. Poor man, he was only obeying his orders and did not know what to do; but he went. After that we were only watched by plain clothes men; but the dismissal of the escort, or prisoner's guard, as it would be called to the natives, showed the natives that we intended to be masters in our house, and helped to break down the fear under which they laboured.
I was sorry to lose the men of the escort: they came from far away Hunan, and were good representatives of the salty peasant stock of a great nation.
Except on certain main routes used by the Chinese troops the villages in Kokang were not deserted, like many of those we had passed in Yunnan. It is an old story. A British officer, H.P. Davies, who was travelling through these parts in 1895, wrote: 'Our first march only took us back to Na-hsang, the place I had passed through on my way to Tawnio. This village which appeared quite prosperous a month before, we found almost entirely deserted. On enquiry we learned that some Chinese soldiers were expected there soon as escort to the boundary commission. No doubt these worthy villagers had had previous experience of Chinese troops and were determined to hide themselves and their property as much as possible.
Tawnio in Burmese, and Malipa in Chinese, is the name of the chief town in south Kokang; Na-hsang is a village across the border on the Chinese side. Here again it is most unfair to blame the Chinese troops. They are expected to move without commissariat and to live off the country; they have no money with which to pay for what they take, so no wonder the people of the villages make themselves scarce.
At Nancha we came across the makings of a small tragedy. The old headman had two unmarried daughters - his son had been carried off by the Chinese to attend school at Kun-ming, in other words he was a hostage - the elder of whom had bound feet, and the younger not bound. The modern young men would no longer look at any girl with bound feet; that was out of fashion; but until the elder sister was married, the younger, a bright good-looking girl, could not marry. It was a puzzle to which there appeared to be no solution. But the women in these parts are very independent; I heard later that the younger girl had run away from home and married the swain of her choice by just going to live
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the new officer to remove himself and his troops from the village where we were staying immediately. Poor man, he was only obeying his orders and did not know what to do; but he went. After that we were only watched by plain clothes men; but the dismissal of the escort, or prisoner's guard, as it would be called to the natives, showed the natives that we intended to be masters in our house, and helped to break down the fear under which they laboured.
I was sorry to lose the men of the escort: they came from far away Hunan, and were good representatives of the salty peasant stock of a great nation.
Except on certain main routes used by the Chinese troops the villages in Kokang were not deserted, like many of those we had passed in Yunnan. It is an old story. A British officer, H.P. Davies, who was travelling through these parts in 1895, wrote: 'Our first march only took us back to Na-hsang, the place I had passed through on my way to Tawnio. This village which appeared quite prosperous a month before, we found almost entirely deserted. On enquiry we learned that some Chinese soldiers were expected there soon as escort to the boundary commission. No doubt these worthy villagers had had previous experience of Chinese troops and were determined to hide themselves and their property as much as possible.
Tawnio in Burmese, and Malipa in Chinese, is the name of the chief town in south Kokang; Na-hsang is a village across the border on the Chinese side. Here again it is most unfair to blame the Chinese troops. They are expected to move without commissariat and to live off the country; they have no money with which to pay for what they take, so no wonder the people of the villages make themselves scarce.
At Nancha we came across the makings of a small tragedy. The old headman had two unmarried daughters his son had been carried off by the Chinese to attend school at Kun-ming, in other words he was a hostage - the elder of whom had bound feet, and the younger not bound. The modern young men would no longer look at any girl with bound feet; that was out of fashion; but until the elder sister was married, the younger, a bright good-looking girl, could not marry. It was a puzzle to which there appeared to be no solution. But the women in these parts are very independent; I heard later that the younger girl had run away from home and married the swain of her choice by just going to live
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