WHEELBARROW ROADS OF CHINA.
Next to house-building, food, and dross, transportation is the most Important industry of civilisation. China has no roads, and is only now adopting railways. Modern China may ho said to date from the Boxor rising of ton years ago. At that time railway development was just beginning. The Boxers tore up the tracks and struck a tremendous blow against railroad construction. However, to-day ono may travel from Hankow to Pekin, half across the empire, in a Pullman car, in ono-fifth of the time it took to make the trip ten years ago. China has no roads for wheeled vehicles, except the cart tracks in the north, which are no bettor than the worst of American roads. V’ot it maybe said that China has a greater system of roads than over was developed elsewhere. Those roads, however, are onlylain. wide. They consist of thousands and thousands of miles of square paving stones in single tracks, in the middle of which is worn a single rut. Along the side of the narrow strip of paying meanders a foot trail. The rut serves lof-tv heel bar rows and the trail for donkeys, palanquins, and men. Tho fact that China never has developed the four-wheeled waggon for transport is not proof of want of inventiveness or inability to manufacture it, says Harper’s Weekly. There are other reasons. The two-wheelcd carts of tho north are clumsy affairs, but tbo wheel of tho wheelbarrow proves that the Chinese can build good wheels. The main objection to waggons is the impossibility of maintaining draught animals for want of grazing. Throughout tho length
and breadth of China, except an the remote Mongolian steppes, one never sees a grass field, amf only along yho ditches and along tho grave-sown hills is there sparse grazing lor sheep, donkeys, and buffaloes. All available tillable land is required for the feeding of r. dense two-legged population. This state of affairs might not have existed in tho beginning. Still, tho principle of economy widen underlies all Chinese inventions would have told against the horse or mule-drawn waggon ; hence the wheelbarrow. The Chinese wheelbarrow, which has boon at work, it is presumed, during thousands of years, represents the highest development attainable by a one-whocl vehicle, with the single exception of ball-bearings and grease-cups. The use of axle grease must certainly be known lo tho Chinese, bub, otrnngc to say, it is ignored. The screech of the wheel, like tho pagoda bells, is heard far over the Celestial landscape. On this wheelbarrow, with its high, razor-rimmed whcol-case, like a boat cabin split by the centreboard, loads of 2001 b. are carried for hundreds of miles at a speed of three miles an hour. In the central flat lands tins is tho general form of passenger transport ior the poor, the dire ol a barrow being about od a day. When a family moves to a new district, the women and old lolk are wheeled, one or two to a harrow, while the men walk, carrying their dunnage slung from the two ends of a shoulder polo. But riding on a wheelbarrow must bo an excruciating experience for anyone but a nerveless and cotton-wool-padded Chinese woman. The paving blocks have spread or dipped, and between each—Hint is to ray, at every revolution—plunk goes the iron wheel in a hole, while’there are no shock-absorbing springs or rubber tiros to take up the jar. No white man could wheel freight in this manner for a mile. The secret seems to be in tho shoulder strap, which is attacked to tho handles of the b irrow anil passes over the back of the nock of the pusher. It would almost seem as though centuries of use have developed in the race a special muscular resistance at that particular part of tho make-up of a Chinaman.
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Bibliographic details
Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 14399, 6 January 1911, Page 7
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640WHEELBARROW ROADS OF CHINA. Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 14399, 6 January 1911, Page 7
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