The traffic on the
river is something enormous, scores of boats dotting the river at every
turn. It is no longer difficult to believe the oft-heard assertion, that
the tonnage of China's inland fleet is equal to the ocean tonnage of all
the world.
Below me on the right the scene is scarcely less animated; one would
think the whole population of the country were engaged in pumping water
over the rice-fields, by the number of tread-wheels on the go. One of the
most curious sights in China is to see people working these irrigating
machines all over the fields. Instead of the buffaloes of Egypt and
India, everything here is accomplished by the labor of man. The
tread-wheel is usually worked by two men or women, who steady themselves
by holding to a cross-bar, while their weight revolves the tread-wheel
and works a chain of water-pockets. The pockets dip water from a hole or
ditch and empty it into troughs, whence it spreads over the field. The
screeching of these wheels can be heard for miles, and the grotesque
Chinese figures stepping up, up, up in pairs, yet never ascending, the
women singing in shrill, falsetto voices, and the incessant gabble of
conversation, makes a picture of industry the like of which is to be seen
in no other part of the world.
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