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Passage 1
Although the camel caravan is recognized as the best means of transport for valuable goods over great distances, yet, for local journeys or when, owing to the perishable nature of the cargo, time is of great importance, the Turki with his drove of little donkeys is the man. He is met on every road of Turkestan, always hustling his beasts through a cloud of dust and lashing them right and left to keep them up to speed. He is a great burly fellow, dressed in loose clothes which increase his bulk, and his baggy trousers are stuffed in to high leather boots. His chapan(coat) is tied in with a thick belt, and he wears a round hat with a sheepskin border which mixes with his loose hair to form a shaggy frame to the weather-beaten face. One man, or at the most two, will drive twenty donkeys, riding behind them, shouting incessantly, and never letting them slacken to normal walking-pace.
He mainly conveys melons, early vegetable and fruits — apricots peaches, grapes and pears according to season — but makes up his load with rolls of loosely woven, undyed cotton. He knows no organization of travel life, but pushes on from stage to stage with restless energy. When the donkeys must be fed he drives them in to an inn-court, tosses the panniers from their backs, carelessly throws fodder in to the manger, pulls some hard cakes of bread from his own food-bag and sits down to a meal of bread soaked in tea. He carries with himself what he will need to eat on the road. He takes a short sleep while the animals finish their grain, then he flings himself on to his beast’s back and urges the drove on for as far as he dare before feeding them again.
The donkeys are small and cheap, so he is careless of life and sacrifices them in large numbers to his passion for speed and his reckless output of strength. He will use dangerous short-cuts over which no other class of transport-man will use venture, and in bad weather many beasts die by the roadside. This does not trouble him, and he just lifts the load from the exhausted creature and divides its weight among the others, then pushes on again, regardless of suffering, to deliver the cargo at market, for he has a master as impatient as himself waiting at the other end. He will normally do five stages in three days and nothing may stand in his way, but when the goods are handed over and he can lodge in an inn, he enjoys twenty-four hours of sheer luxury. There is hot, greasy pilau to eat, women to wait on him, and long carefree hours of sleep to enjoy before he stars again on the hectic return journey.
The Chinese method of transport is quite different. Great carts which cross the Gobi link the commercial life of China proper with the raw material markets of Turkestan, and a carter who leaves Kashgar in February will swing through the gates of his Honan home town in August without having shifted his splendidly packed cargo. In the course of this phenomenal journey he will only need to change the axle a few times in order to adjust the cart to the wider desert gauge or the narrowing Kansu or Honan ruts. The widest axle is required between Suchow and Hami, and the narrowest in Honan.
The Chinese transport agent makes constant use of the words ta-suan, which mean to compute, calculate, think out, arrange ahead, organize and consider carefully. It represents a characteristic so much admired by the Chinese as to be regarded by them almost as a virtue, and is an integral part of their economy of life. The man who can ta-suan gets full value from time, strength, capacity and money, and anyone who has not the intelligence to ta-suan is, in Chinese eyes, an uncivilized barbarian. The classic example of ta-suan is the incident of a Chinese general who, centuries ago, was sent out with an expeditionary force to conquer the land beyond the deserts. He sat down to ta-suan, and doing so he realized that it might be all too easy to conquer the land yet lose the campaign through inability to feed his own troops He therefore selected bodies of men versed in agriculture, and sent them ahead with supporting forces to select suitable sites where
they must plough and sow, then reap the harvest. If the grain were carefully stored against the arrival of his troops, it would support them through the following year. Thanks to such good ta- suan, he carried the campaign to a successful issue.
The Chinese transport system across the Gobi has been built up on the principle of ta-suan, and in entire contrast with the native genius of the reckless Turki driver. The distances which make a possible stage for man and beast have been meticulously calculated, as well as the equipment necessary to ensure reasonable ease on the journey. The Chinese understand the art of elimination and how not to encumber themselves with superfluous impedimenta. Before leaving home the Chinese carter has thought out where he can exchange his money to best advantage, what goods can be bought and sold most profitably in each place, and where money invested in an extra horse or mule will bring in most profit. He leaves Central China with large sleek mules for which he himself has paid a good price, but which he sells to rich Tungans at Suchow at tremendous profit, and himself buys rough but desert-hardened beasts. For the return journey he will invest some of his depreciated paper taels in good Turkestan horses, which are very cheap in Dzungaria but fetch a big price in Central China.
By this means his round trip has brought in many advantages apart from the straightforward profit of his hire. In manipulating each exchange, this seemingly simple creature shows himself to be actually a financier of no means order, and handles the complicated money market of Central Asia like on his hands, for he has always exchanged it in time for carefully selected goods, and if he has an employer he will stipulate that his wages be paid at the place and in the coin most to his advantage.