"The Mail Must Go”

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 2 March 1935, Page 11

"The Mail Must Go”

dash from Marathon, the message I to Garcia, the pony express—brilJL liant feats though they ar.e in man’s endless striving for swift communication—cannot compare with the panorama of China’s sustained and magnificent efforts.” . With these words, the China National Aviation Corporation pays tribute to the old-fash-ioned mail couriers of America, whose laborious work is being taken over rapidly now by American air-mail pilots, writes Dorothy Gould in the Christian Science Monitor.

This corporation is owned co-operatively by the Chinese Government, which controls 55 per cent, of its stock, and by China Airways, Federal Inc., U.S.A., which owns the remaining 45 per cent. The business and. financing of the company is under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications of the Republic of China, but the management and flying of the aeroplanes is all done by Americans. Recently, one of. the rarest books in the worl was published by the aviation corporation as a compliment to the Chinese postal service which, without the aid of foreign inventions, has—for so many long centuries —faithfully carried the mails even to the extreme frontiers o± this vast nation. Nowhere in print has a moic vivid description been given of the work of the Chinese mail couriers than in this beautiful illustrated book, whose edition is limited to twenty copies only. Under the title ‘‘The Mail Must Go!” the tribute continues —- “In the great wastes of China’s furthest hinterland, plain and desert and rock-strewn foothills stretch out, far as the eye can reach, hot and brilliant in the summer sun. Miles o± wilderness lie between hamlet and village and towns. Between them are no roads, only a footpath winding its tortuous way where the going seems least difficult. “Along this path a man moves at a brisk jog-trot, alone in all this vast terrain. Balanced on° his shoulder is a pole, from either end of which are suspended bags of mail. He is one of the fast couriers of the Chinese Post Office, one of the thousands of men to whose courage, stamina and faithfulness are entrusted the mails along China’s 250,000 miles of overland fast courier service.

‘‘ He has come 20 miles. He has another 20 miles to go before his day is done, before he turns his trust over to the next runner, who jog-trots on through the night. Forests, uplands, and wilderness, the autumn night merges them in a blur of blackness. Only the mountains are half distinct as they bulk against the sky. Across the landscape, a tiny glow of light bobs along unflagging, purposeful. It is the lantern the courier carries to light his footsteps through the night. He earries a spear, too, protection against wolves, whose howling he can hear in the dark.” -

More than 6000 of these foot couriers are employed by the Chinese Post Office to-day. Their standard journey is 30 miles, which must he covered in 10 hours or less, carrying an average of 70 pounds of mail. ►So sturdy are these mailmen of interior China that many of them have requested that they be permitted to make a continuous rUn of 50. miles, with a correspondingly longer rest period at their home terminal points. Compared with this 250,000 miles traversed by foot couriers ,the total of all the other mail routes of China, shrinks into, insignificance. Letters are carried 12,000 miles by motor-cars at present, 9000 miles by railway, 3000 miles by air-mail routes, and 33,000 miles by coast steamers and river boats. The most interesting water route is up the Yangtze River, where men and boats share, the burden of carrying the mail. For boats unaided cannot fight their way through the Yangtze gorges; they must be pulled up river by men on foot.

Describing this feature of the postal service in China, the air company’s tribute says—- “ High up in the mountains where the head-waters of the Yangtze lie, the . packed snows thaw slowly in a warming spring sun. The waters begin to flow, slowly at first, then more and more swiftly. They tumble, swirl, and froth, and on reaching the narrow gorges they become a mighty river, tumultuous,, whitecapped, roaring, and echoing up the towering mountain sides, obliterating all other sound. “Against this inferno of water a junk moves upstream, from her prow the tow ropes stretch, taut as power lines, to curl around the shoulders and bodies of her trackers trudging the narrow towpath along the rivers’ edge. Foot by foot they fight their way forward. Hour after hour, undaunted, these hardy men toil on, till the great rapids are passed and another battle is won for transportation.”

Amazing Feats in China’s Service

While men and junks struggle together to conquer the Yangtze mail route, men and animals co-operate elsewhere in China. Shaggy ponies are ridden in many districts; yaks go into Tibet; in Hopei province, two-wheeled carts are pulled by mules; water buffaloes drag boats in the shallow river beds of Anhwei province; bullock carts are used in far-away Sinkiang; and camels carry the heavy mails in Mongolia. In the eitiesj motor-trucks and bicycles are commonplace, of course, and every form, of wheelbarrow is used by couriers in the interior. At one place in Szechuan, the mailman crosses a river by clinging to a swaying cable; in Honan a fast courier is hauled by ropes over a city wall. An infinite variety of boats is used on the water routes, the most remarkable of which is the raft of inflated hides which one sees on. the upper Yellow River. The skins are rolled into compact, little bundles and are carried thus until the mailman comes to the river. There the hides are blown up like balloons and then tied to each other to make a little raft on which the courier and his load float downstream. On- the fast mail routes, where night and day shifts are run, a courier works back and forth over a small stretch of country. But on many long routes the mail is carried only by day, and a courier assigned to such a run may traverse many hudreds of miles. The longest courier mail line in China is that connecting Peiping, ICalgan and Tihwa, a distance of 4400 miles.

Unusual weather conditions, civil warfare, and bandit zones seldom delay and never totally prevent the mail being carried to its destination. In certain dangerous sections, the post office refuses to accept valuable parcels for delivery, but in most districts even the bandits respect the postman’s uniform, welcoming him, in fact, as the bearer of messages from their own loved ones who may be far away. The history of the Chinese postal service goes back to the Chou dynasty (1122-255 8.C.), but the present national institution was established by an Imperial decree in 1896. The growth of the service is indicated by the fact that in 1902 there were but 446 post offices in all China, while now there are more than 12,000. Other statistics, gleaned from annual department reports, reveal that 15,000,000 letters were carried in 1905, compared with 501,000,000 letters in 1931. China is a member, of course, of the International Postal Union. Prior to the inauguration of the Imperial postal system, the mails in China were carried by private letter companies. Besides operating regular routes, these private companies would undertake to send a courier to any place in China with an urgent message, wait for a reply if required, escort a person through a stretch of unfamiliar country, purchase goods in a distant town and bring them back, or execute any other business commission ordered. Regular patrons of these companies paid an annual sum as fee for all the services they might require. Although these letter companies conducted remarkably safe and rapid services for their time, they naturally developed only the most profitable routes and neglected other districts entirely. Survivals of these -private companies still exist to-day, in Shanghai alone there being 40 such concerns, but they are disappearing rapidly as the Government post office extends its services. One of the uses of these surviving companies is that, no longer operating on the main-travelled routes, they are, on the contrary, offering service to those small hamlets and sparsely settled areas where even the Government post to-day does not. maintain offices. For generations these private mail carriers, ancestors of to-day’s trackers and boatmen, have moved tip and down the rivers and canals of China, by tow and sail and ear. For generations, the forefathers of the couriers have beaten down the same pathways through forest and wilderness, up mountain and down valley. But now, over this scene which has witnessed little change through the years, a dramatic change has come. The tracker in the Yangtze gorges looks up and sees in the rift of the precipices a shape like a swooping hawk—the mail aeroplane flying to Chungkung. It takes the tracker 15 days to carry a letter from Shanghai to Chungkung. The air mail does it in two.

The courier in the desert hears a great droning’ overhead ,and understands it is the mail aeroplane writing across the trackless sky a new chapter in the history of communication ill which he himself has so long played a part. Past achievements in the Chinese postal service were written on the land and along the rivers. Future achievements will be traced against the sky.’ Both are evidence of that dauntless spirit which, for 30 centuries in this country, has cried “The mail must go!”