Here we changed from the tenth to the 20th century and took a bus.
We bought an inside ticket for three dollars for a 400 li ride. Tickets
for the top of the bus would have been $2.00. Our bus was filled with
camel hair and wool with only Laurie and me inside. It was an eight to
nine hour ride over rather bumpt roads at what seemed flying speed. At
the first hundred li place was PA TS?(Z) PU LUNG in the site of a C. & ?.
??(As) experiment, similar to the R.C one in Norther Ningsia, but with much
less success. Most of the trip was over semidesert and grassland with
very little sedentary life. The last 300 li was South of the TA CH'ING
SHAN. Every now and then at a distance we could see a lamasary. Half
way we stopped at KUNG MIAO where we had lunch: boiled eggs and bitter
water. Finally we a strong wind behind us we reached Paotow.
PAOTOW, SUIYUAN. Just as we reached the city it started to rain.
Had this happened anywhere else our journey would have stopped until
the sun came out to dry things. They say that this is the first good
rain in 6 months. We went directly to the Swedish Mission where mail
was awaiting us. Mr. and Mrs. Swenson took us in and treated us kindly.
This town is very large and the center of much trade with Inner Mongolia
and Sinkiang. It was formerly one of the centers of trade with
?rga, but this is now stopped. One wonders what will happen when Japan
takes Inner Mongolia. Of course, it is also the beginning of the camel
caravans that go to and from Ningsia and Kansu. There are huge and
impressive inns and shops with Mongolian and Chinese characters on them.
There are two mosques here, but I was too tired to look for them."
The day of the Eclipse. 20 li from where we stayed the night we
saw a chortan, rather dilapidated. This probably marks the border between
Ningsia and Suiyuan, though we were told the canal a li or so
away was the present one. Possibly this chortan is the ethnological
border of the Mongolian plain. This chortan having been erected to
keep the influence of the Chinese to the South. At the canal construction
work was going on to erect a motor bridge across. ...
We went for a walk out to visit the pagoda. It stood in a great
open space outside the West wall of the city in an enclosure that
looked as though at one time it had been part of the city wall. There
were no temples or other buildings about. Two tablets dating from the
Ming period stood close by, but they were of soft sandstone so badly
defaced that it was impossible to make out many characters. One tablet
had the characters first year telling of repairs to the pagoda.
It is extraordinary to find in a 100% Moslem town such a thing. I
wonder if this dates from the Hsi Hsia or Tangut Dynasty? This country
was depopulated by Geengis Khan and later under the Mings the Moslems
came. Certainly Persian and Arab faces are very common.
If you have GoogLe Earth plugin installed, you can look at
Weizhou 3D map in Google Earth
