In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at
times are constantly under water, and beyond Yuen-nan-fu, on my way to
Tali-fu, I often found it easier and more speedy to tramp bang across a
rice field, taking no notice of where the road ought to be. By the time
the road has sunk a few feet below the level of the adjacent land, it is
liable to be absolutely useless as a thoroughfare; it is actually a
canal, but can be neither navigated nor crossed. There are some roads
removed a little from the main roads which are quite dangerous, and it
is not by any means an uncommon thing to hear of men with their loads
being washed away by rivers where in the dry season there had been the
roads.
The great lines of Chinese travel, so often impassable, might be made
permanently passable if the governor of a province chose to compel the
several district magistrates along the line to see that these important
arteries are kept free from standing water, with ditches in good order
at all seasons. But for the village roads--during my travels over which
I have come across very few that could from a Western standpoint be
called roads--there is absolutely no hope until such time as the Chinese
village may come dimly to the apprehension that what is for the
advantage of the one is for the advantage of all, and that wise
expenditure is the truest economy--an idea of which it has at the
present moment as little conception as of the average thought of the
Englishman.
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