THE FAMINE IN CHINA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5360, 1 June 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FAMINE IN CHINA.

(From the Saturday Review.) “Misfortunes never come, singly” is a proverb which applies with terrible force to China at the present time. While floods have swept away a large proportion of the grain crops in the southern parts of the Empire, and while in the central provinces swarms of locusts have cleared whole districts of everything growing in the fields, a desolating famine has for three years been ravaging the four principal provinces in the north. Fortunately the means at hand will be sufficient to cope with the distress caused by the inundations in Kwaugtung and Kwaugse, and the, vigorous measures adopted to exterminate the locusts in the plague-stricken districts of Gan-hwuy and the neighboring provinces promise to be speedily successful; but nothim* which has as yet been done, or which it is ‘"proposed to do, can make any pretence to grapple with the overwhelming want aud misery. tsTwhieh seventy million human beings are now a prey in Northern China. .. We may leave meteorologists to discuss the causes of the phenertnehon presented by the synchronous and long-continued absence of rain in India, China, Corea, and Any theory professing to account for the existence of identical conditions in countries the physical circumstances of which are so entirely different must be made capable of a very wide and varied application. Most people will be content to know the facts connected with each calamity. Of the; history of the terrible sufferings endured by our fellow-subjects in India we had full details 'from the first; but of the famine which durit/g 1 the last three years has brought want aud sfarvatiou to almost every homestead in the rural districts of four of the largest provinces.-id‘*Northern China nothing was known until llle’broacl features of the case were lately brought to the notice of the public by Sir Thomas Wilde. The fact that such dire misery could'have existed so long, and yet should have' been so little known beyond the limits of the* suffering districts, might in any other country in the world be expected to teach the wisdoriS of improving the means of communication from place to place ; but in China this is the time selected for the uprooting of the only railway existing in the Empire. The scene of the famine is the vast delta plain which- forms one of the most noticeable features in the surface of China, and which includes the provinces, of Chihle, Shanse, Shense, and Honan. This immense plateau covers an area ’of 246,721 square miles, and is inhabited by a population of upwards of seventy millions. The soil, which consists almost entirely of loess, is so highly productive when watered by'seasonable rains that the district covered by it used to be regarded as the Eden of China. But, on the other hand, it is easily percolated by water, and consequently fails to retain moisture for any but short periods, 1 while a few days’ dry weather is enough to convert the surface iuto dust. Tradition says that in bygone ages the mountains which fringerthe plain on all sides were thickly wooded, and-that iu those halcyon days con- 1 slant and temperate showers almost invariably ensured to the farmers rich, and plenteous crops ; hurt at the present time so completely have these forests been destroyed that from Peking to Hankow—a distance of 700 miles—scarcely a, tree or a shrub is to be seen, except in the immediate neighborhood of some of the villages. .Without recognising this wholesale clearing of. timber as the cause, old men say that now rain falls less frequently and with greater vehemence than formerly, and that tbe showers which used to water the earth at seed-time Can no longer be reckoned upon. The success or failure of the crops has thus of late become much of the nature of a lottery, and, as often as not, the seed sown in the dry ground has been laid bare by the action of the wind, to be destroyed by the scorching rays of the sun. Such a state of things implies, even under the most favorable circumstances, a vast amount of poverty. Even in good seasons meat is a rare luxury to the people of Shanse and Honan, and salt fish, which- serves as a substitute for meat, is only consulted by the wealthier classes. But when it is bjjrne iu mind that the absence of engineering energy has left the mountain barriers which nature has interposed between these provinces and the outer world almost intact, it will readily be seen that tbe complete failure of even a single year's crop must bring thousands of people face to face with pressing want. So true is this that Baron Richthofen, who in 1870 visited these regions, found the people in the mountain districts on the verge of starvation, owing to tho failure of . the summer crops of the year. ■ - But at tbe present moment it is not a question of the failure of one year's crops, but of three, aud this triple calamity is aggravated by the fact that during several previous seasons the yield was far below tho average. What, then, is the result I It Is this—that seventy millions of people are in the direst want of food, of ; whom it is reckoned that nine millions are actually starving. The imagination fails to picture the amount of misery and distress represented by these figures, and the accounts which reach this country from sionaries and others bn the'spot, of houses tenanted only by the starved dead* of thousands of emaciated corpses lying by the roadside and in the streets of villages, of the frantic efforts made by some to gain nourishment from the bark of trees, the thatch from the roofs of houses, and even from earth and slate-stone, give us but a faint glimpse of tbe 'unutterable woe which has overwhelmed a population nearly twice as numerous as that "of the whole German Empire. One of the most horrible aspects of severe and long-con-tinued want is the prominence which. the instinctive law of self-preservation almost invariably attains at the expense of every human tie and of every: virtue. The gnawings of hunger ’ gradually ' blunt and destroy every feeling which is not centred in self,’ and there is always the suggestion ready to band, that, as food for the whole household is not to be bad, it is better that one or two of its members should bo sacrificed for the rest. There w no reason to suppose that the sufferers in China yielded more readily to tbe temptation than others have done under similar circumstances, hut now at least the traffic iu human beings is openly carried on. Husbands sell their wives, and parents their children, in open market. Husbands sell their wives,, and parents their children, in open market. A traveller recently returned from China writes When 1 left the country a respectable married woman could bo easily bought for six . dollars and a little girl for two. In cases, however, where it was found impossible to dispose of their children, pareutshaveboen known to killthcm sooner, than witness their prolonged sufferings, in many instances throwing themselves afterwards down wells, or committing suicide by arsenic,” A less avowed form of selfishness, but one not the less cruel, is the desertion of- households by tho bread-winners. Thousands of ablebodied men are daily emigrating from the famine-stricken districts to Mongol in mid elsewhere, leaving the old men, worn mid children to die of hunger or to alruggli,..Uuy;igh as host they may. It would seem almost impossible to aggravate the horrors of the situation; hut opium, which is pernicious everywhere when, smoked po excess, is doubly so in those regions, where tho most fertile tracts are devoted to its cultivation. Writing of Shanse in 1870, Baron Richthofen says The crops there have been a failure during several succeeding years.

And yet the ; only fields which would give two safe crops a year—those, namely, which are in the bottoms of the valleys—are almost throughout planted with the poppy. . iuiß criminal raal-appropriatiou of the land can find its only justification in the acquiescence of the people to whom in times of scarcity the opi»am~pipo furnishes a temporary protection against the pangs of hunger. But when times of scarcity .become seasons of famine, and when no money remains to buy the tempting drug, a fearful penalty is exacted for former indulgences. The simulated strength imbibed from the pipe utterly fails the smoker when the stimulant is withheld, and he falls before the stroke of want almost as weak ann resistless as a child. .

In the presence of so overwhelming a calamity it is not imputing reckless iucompetency to the Chinese Government, even if we wore to measure them by a .European standard, to say that • they have-proved themselves quite unable to cope with the prevailing distress. It is, however, acknowledged on all sides that they are employing unwonted energy in their endeavors to mitigate to some extent the sufferings of the people. As we have already indicated, the great obstacle in tho way of relieving the immediate the sufferers is the difficulty of distributing food throughout the famine-stricken districts. Chihle is the only one of the four desolated provinces which has any direct water communication with the outer world, and it’is from the one port of Tientsin that goods make their laborious way over lofty and precipitous mountains into the even less fortunate provinces of Shanse, Shense, and Honan. But during tho winter months the port of Tientsin is frozen up, and at such periods the only means of reaching tbe inland districts is by longer and still more difficult land routs. The task which has thus fallen to the lot of the Government is no light one, and it is gratifying to find that they are grappling with it iu an earnest and practical manner. Belief establishments have been instituted at convenient centres where food is freely distributed to all, and an effective system of transport has been established to carry grain iuto the districts beyond the reach of these agencies. Nor have they been backward iu providing funds for this expenditure. Recent edicts have ordered the appropriation of sums, together equivalent to more than a quarter of a million sterling, for, the purposes described, and large stores of rice have been despatched for the relief of the sufferers. 1 Meanwhile private charity has been active in supplementing the efforts of the Government. Twenty thousand pounds have been subscribed by the natives of Tiensin alone ; from other large centres of commerce, such as Shanghai, Soochow, Canton, and Hangchow, more or leas handsome contributions have been received, and the Chinese residents at Hongkong and Singapore have forwarded 22,000 dollars for the use of their starving fellow-countrymen. At the treaty ports the foreign residents have liberally contributed to the same cause; and, in response to a telegraphic request lately received from Shanghai, a London committee, under the presidency of Sir Rutherford Aleook, has been formed to collect and forward funds to responsible agentsin the famine districts. ; It must be acknowledged that this committee has commenced its task under great disadvantages. The English public have had many calls on their liberality of late, and no such bond of sympathy exists between ourselves and the Chinese as that which unites.us to our Indian fellow-subjects, or even to the sufferers iu the present war.' Every friendly overture we have made to the Chinese Government has hitherto been repulsed, and the mandarins have lost few opportunities of displaying their hostility at the expense of our comfort and well-being in China. The committee can only therefore look for support from those who, out of simple charity, desire to relieve distress wherever it may be found, and these are just tho people who are never appealed to iu vain.