The Face of China by Emily Georgiana Kemp

The first glimpse of the Tali lake with snow-capped mountains running along its western bank is very beautiful. It is a typical Chinese landscape, namely, a "mountain and water picture"; but at this time of year (the beginning of March) the winds are so high that the distant range of snow mountains to the north is invisible, and during the five days that we spent in the neighbourhood we did not once catch a glimpse of them. At the south of the lake is a large and important village, Siakwan, much more important in some respects than the prefectural town of Tali Fu itself, as it lies on the high-road from Yünnan Fu to Teng Yueh.

All the trade caravans pass directly through Siakwan without branching off to Tali. At the markets, which are frequently held, there may be seen various aboriginal tribes such as the Miaos, the Lolos, the Ming Chiaos, and the Shans. The place is noted for being one of the windiest spots to be found anywhere, and we found it unpleasant both coming and going to Tali. At Tali the wind was most riotous at nights, and came in great gusts, dismantling the walls of our rooms and covering my bed with a little shower of photographs and texts, and nearly blowing us out of bed. The lake is always dangerous on account of these winds, and when we visited the shore, about an hour's walk from the city, there were only a few little fishing-boats to be seen close inland. The villages along it are mainly inhabited by Ming Chiaos, who speak a language of their own. It is but few comparatively of these villagers who can speak or even understand Chinese, and those who learn it do so for the sake of trading in the city. The women and girls wear their hair dressed rather differently from the Chinese, and have a different type of face. Also, they do not bind their feet, nor wear such elegant shoes. They seemed quite friendly, but were rather too inquisitive, which prevented our enjoying our picnic as much as we should have done.

I made a sketch of a little bridge with a picturesque archway in the shape of a tower leading on to it, behind which may be seen the mountains towering up to a great height. These mountains are very little known, and a European who went up to visit a temple some hours distant got lost, and was three days before he was able to find his way back; when he returned he was quite exhausted for lack of food, and his clothes were almost torn to pieces by the bushes through which he had been obliged to force his way. There are very few inhabitants amongst these mountains, and they are of a fierce and uncertain character.

The Tali Fu women were the most pleasant and responsive we met in the province, and some looked decidedly intelligent. They did beautiful embroidery of various kinds, and we were glad of the opportunity to order straw hats from them with which to protect ourselves from the sun. We were _not_ glad, however, to see them being brought home on the heads of the woman and child; though this seems to be considered quite the correct thing in China. There was no alternative between having these particular hats or going without any, which was too risky. We are quite convinced that the wearing of a "bandeau" inside the hat must have originated in China, where the use of it is universal from the lowest to the highest. The poorest coolie has a basket bandeau in the huge, pancake-like straw hat which shelters him equally from sun or rain. The size of these hats is two feet in diameter, and the bandeaux raise them so high above the head that the effect is extremely comic, and they have to be held on by an elaborate system of strings at the sides and back, sometimes ornamented by the gayest of tassels, and with bright-green strings tied under the chin. The favourite colour of a bandeau is magenta, and the material of which it is made is satin. The portrait of myself at the beginning of this volume shows our complete travelling costume, together with the Buddhist pilgrim stick and the horn spectacles which were formerly a distinctive mark of the "scholar. " On returning home we found the hats were hardly an exaggeration of the size worn in London. Liu had procured himself a different variety of straw hat (see page 211) and a bright-green waterproof cover for it.

Few foreign ladies visit Tali Fu, so our arrival created a mild excitement in the place. An official lady (the highest but one in the city) took the opportunity of paying a call on the missionary nurse who was our hostess. She had assisted at the operation performed by the doctor on the lady's daughter, who was suffering from a disfigurement of the face. The lady called at the moment lunch had been served, so of course it had to be indefinitely postponed (the Chinese calls not unfrequently last for several hours). She was gorgeously attired in a heliotrope skirt embroidered with magenta and green, which had come from Chengtu, and a fur-lined plum-coloured coat. She wore gold pins galore in her hair, and a large amber bead; gold tooth-picks and ear-picks hung from a button, and she used these with French _aplomb_. Our clothes were examined with much minuteness; she even pinched my toe to see if it could really extend to the full length of my shoe, so I took it off to satisfy her on the subject. Perhaps it was this that encouraged her to begin to undress my friend down the back in order to see how her clothes were put on; but the unfastening of the blouse and camisole still left it a mystery how the skirt could be made to encompass so small a waist -- a problem which I fear will never be solved, for Chinese skirts are completely open down one side and are merely folded round the person. On the opposite side they also are open up to the waistband, though this does not show, owing to the upper part of the dress hanging over it. We spent some time drinking tea, and the lady talked impartially with her hostess and her hostess's servants, her own remaining in the room all the time and also drinking tea.