Small Footsteps in the Land of the Dragon by Barbara Brooks Wallace

Author:Barbara Brooks Wallace [Barbara Brooks Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

PEITAHO

DUSTY STREETS AND DONKEYS

SEASHELLS, SUNSETS AND A GLASSY SEA

There can’t be a child in the world who ever went to the seaside village of Peitaho on the Bay of Chihli and didn’t look back on it with wonder that such a place ever existed at all. But it did. Latitude 39.50 degrees N and longitude 119.30 degrees E I found once in Goode’s index. It was truly an idyllic place, created for a child’s summer. We spent three magical summers there when we lived in Tientsin.

As with most foreign families, Mother went with my sister Connie and me and servants, especially Amah, leaving Father at home with Shao and I suppose a substitute cook. We traveled by train to a junction a few miles short of Peitaho where we transferred to a smaller train for the rest of the trip.

On the train ride, we passed small clay villages and willow trees drifting over ponds. We saw farmers in faded blue jackets digging in the fields, wearing the pagoda-shaped hats that we would soon be wearing ourselves in Peitaho. And then there would be the clusters of small children staring wide-eyed as our train rolled by. Some were stark naked. Some simply had pants open at the back, the sensible Chinese way we always thought of making it unnecessary to pull pants down in times of need.

There was always an element of danger because of the everlasting threat of bandits along the way who had the bad habit of blowing up bridges. There was one heart-stopping masterpiece of bridgework, long and with a frightening drop to the gorge below, that seemed to appeal to bandits the most. They had, we were always told, blown it up several times. Nobody breathed easily until our train had slowly chugged its way across the bridge and an eternity later reached the opposite side. But Peitaho was worth every hair-raising moment of that train ride.

It was not much more than a rustic village when we were there, made up of three clusters of summer houses called East Cliff, Rocky Point and West Cliff. They were connected by a dusty road of hard-packed dirt, bordered by donkey paths, that threaded its way down the coastline. Smaller roads turned off from it, most of them leading to the houses that dotted the cliffs, all with wide verandas overlooking the sparkling blue sea.

There were no cars in Peitaho then, so we were met at the station not only with rickshaws but also shaggy grey donkeys with immaculate white cloths draped over their saddles.

All winter these donkeys worked for their masters in a city near Peitaho called Shanhaikwan, or mountain-sea-gate, because the city lies where the mountain reaches the sea at the very end of the Great Wall of China. Each day, the donkey’s master hung on its back two baskets filled with dried salt from the sea. Up the rocky mountain path would trot the donkey. When the salt had been sold, the donkey would trot back down again, this time with heavy bundles of pine logs on its back.

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