Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1898 — A CHINESE RAILWAY. [ARTICLE]

A CHINESE RAILWAY.

Numerous Difficulties That Confronted Its Constructors. The train service on China’s one and only railway comprises? according to Black and White, four trains daily in each direction, the average speed being 15 miles an hour. The traffic is worked by natives who receive two shillings a week for their services. The rails and'the machinery come from England. The first railway constructed in China was completed in 1876. It was built by British engineers in the face of many difficulties, all of them arising from the prejudice of the Chinese. John Chinaman worships his ancestors, and while a daily course of lying forms part of his education, and an occasional murder is regarded as an incident, the neglect of or even a casual trespass on the grave of an ancestor is held to be a crime for which no punishment known to the ingenuity of man is sufficient. And to make matters more complicated, the Celestials have a knack of burying their dead in all sorts of places, according to how they are indicated by the soothsayers invariably employed for the purpose. To construct a railway through a country so pledged to ancestor warship is rather a big order, and the plans had to be modified any number of times; indeed, seldom a day came without some objection being taken to a particular piece of road. Thus in one case, an embankment would have had to be constructed over the grave of a deceased warrior. In another the shadow of a signal post was found to fall, during at least one hour a day, across the grave of one who had been murdered; and again the sinking of a well within a hundred yards of a cemetery nearly caused a riot. Eventually, however, the road was built, and the trains bega*n to run, but not for long. The astrologers found that the doom of the empire was sealed. The dynasty was threatened, and the mandarins were in arms, for the line was worked by Europeans, and the officials were denied their inalienable right of levying blackmail on the traffic. It was officially announced that the spirits of the air and water were against the exist once of the railway. The engineers had to make themselves scarce, and the rails were torn up by officials specially requisitioned for that purpose. The second introduction of railways into China was in 1879, and the present 177 miles of railroad are to be shortly supplemented by an additional 70* miles at a cost of £4,000 per mile. — _