T'ong would persist in
stealing the peas and beans to feed me on, and for the life of me I
could not get him to see that he should not do this sort of thing. But
how continually one was impressed with the great need of roads in
Western China! It is natural that, walking the whole distance, I should
notice this more than other travelers have done, and, to my mind, roads
in this part of the country rank in importance before the railways.
To the foreign mind it is more to the interests of China that railways
should be well and serviceably built than that the money should be
squandered to no purpose. If the railway has rails, then in China it can
be called a railway, and China is satisfied. So with the roads. If there
is any passage at all, then the Chinese call it a road, and China is
satisfied.
As one meanders through the country, watching a people who are equalled
nowhere in the world for their industry, plodding away over the worst
roads any civilized country possesses, he cannot but think, even looking
at the question from the Chinese standpoint so far as he is able, that,
were free scope once given for the infusion of Western energy and
methods into an active, trade-loving people like the Chinese, China
would rival the United States in wealth and natural resources.
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