The Face of Manchuria, Korea, & Russian Turkestan by Emily Georgiana Kemp

We reached Pyöng Yang (written Ping Yang by the war correspondents, and universally pronounced Piang) in the early afternoon, and found chairs sent by our kind hosts to take us from the station to the town, a distance of about one and a half miles. Other passengers got into rickshas, and others again into the drollest little trolleys on wheels, like boxes with the front side missing, and containing a bench to seat two persons. These trolleys run on the narrowest gauge tram lines, and are propelled with great rapidity by a coolie running on each side: I have never seen them anywhere but at Pyöng Yang.

We set off in our chairs, our luggage being carried on frames called "giggies" on the backs of coolies, and the Chinese interpreter, whom we had brought from Tai Yuan Fu (Mr. Chiao, pronounced "jow," as in jowl) walking with a friendly Korean evangelist sent to meet us. We had been told that Chinese was understood everywhere, but this proved entirely incorrect (like most of the information we had received), and we were vastly entertained to see that these two could only communicate by writing; this they did on the surface of the dusty road as they went along. Our pace was fortunately slow, as Korean carriers are not like the Chinese, and they set us down pretty frequently for a rest, which was an opportunity for communication eagerly seized by the writers. Near the station are handsome large new red brick barracks, and a Japanese suburb is growing up: it is sad to see every place being disfigured by European-looking erections of the ugliest and most aggressive type. The American Presbyterian group of buildings are a delightful contrast to these, and are Korean in style with necessary adaptation for Western requirements, but there is a hideous new school on the brow of the hill facing them, which stands in conspicuous nakedness like a blot on the landscape. A sort of building epidemic seems to have broken out, which threatens to sweep away all picturesqueness from the important towns in Korea.