Volume 2 / Part 2 — CHAPTER XXXVII.
Henry Yule translation
The Kingdom of Taianfu.
After riding then those ten days from the city of Juju, you find yourself in a kingdom called Taianfu, and the city at which you arrive, which is the capital, is also called Taianfu, a very great and fine city. [But at the end of five days’ journey out of those ten, they say there is a city unusually large and handsome called Acbaluc, whereat terminate in this direction the hunting preserves of the Emperor, within which no one dares to sport except the Emperor and his family, and those who are on the books of the Grand Falconer. Beyond this limit any one is at liberty to sport, if he be a gentleman. The Great Kaan, however, scarcely ever went hunting in this direction, and hence the game, particularly the hares, had increased and multiplied to such an extent that all the crops of the Province were destroyed. The Great Kaan being informed of this, proceeded thither with all his Court, and the game that was taken was past counting.]{1}
Taianfu{2} is a place of great trade and great industry, for here they manufacture a large quantity of the most necessary equipments for the army of the Emperor. There grow here many excellent vines, supplying great plenty of wine; and in all Cathay this is the only place where wine is produced. It is carried hence all over the country.{3} There is also a great deal of silk here, for the people have great quantities of mulberry-trees and silk-worms.
From this city of Taianfu you ride westward again for seven days, through fine districts with plenty of towns and boroughs, all enjoying much trade and practising various kinds of industry. Out of these districts go forth not a few great merchants, who travel to India and other foreign regions, buying and selling and getting gain. After those seven days’ journey you arrive at a city called Pianfu, a large and important place, with a number of traders living by commerce and industry. It is a place too where silk is largely produced.{4}
So we will leave it and tell you of a great city called Cachanfu. But stay—first let us tell you about the noble castle called Caichu.
[The main road turns due west at Cheng-ting fu, and enters Shan-si through what is known among Chinese travellers as the Ku-kwan, Customs’ Barrier.—H. C.]
Between Cheng-ting fu and T’ai-yuan fu the traveller first crosses a high and rugged range of mountains, and then ascends by narrow defiles to the plateau of Shan-si. But of these features Polo’s excessive condensation takes no notice.
The traveller who quits the great plain of Chihli [which terminates at Fu-ch’eng-i, a small market-town, two days from Pao-ting.—H. C.] for “the kingdom of Taianfu,” i.e. Northern Shan-si, enters a tract in which predominates that very remarkable formation called by the Chinese Hwang-tu, and to which the German name Löss has been attached. With this formation are bound up the distinguishing characters of Northern Interior China, not merely in scenery but in agricultural products, dwellings, and means of transport. This Löss is a brownish-yellow loam, highly porous, spreading over low and high ground alike, smoothing over irregularities of surface, and often more than 1000 feet in thickness. It has no stratification, but tends to cleave vertically, and is traversed in every direction by sudden crevices, almost glacier-like, narrow, with vertical walls of great depth, and infinite ramification. Smooth as the löss basin looks in a bird’s-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable countries conceivable for military movements, and secures extraordinary value to fortresses in well-chosen sites, such as that of Tung-kwan mentioned in Note 2 to chap. xli.
Agriculture may be said in N. China to be confined to the alluvial plains and the löss; as in S. China to the alluvial plains and the terraced hill-sides. The löss has some peculiar quality which renders its productive power self-renewing without manure (unless it be in the form of a surface coat of fresh löss), and unfailing in returns if there be sufficient rain. This singular formation is supposed by Baron Richthofen, who has studied it more extensively than any one, to be no subaqueous deposit, but to be the accumulated residue of countless generations of herbaceous plants combined with a large amount of material spread over the face of the ground by the winds and surface waters.
[I do not agree with the theory of Baron von Richthofen, of the almost exclusive Eolian formation of loess; water has something to do with it as well as wind, and I think it is more exact to say that loess in China is due to a double action, Neptunian as well as Eolian. The climate was different in former ages from what it is now, and rain was plentiful and to its great quantity was due the fertility of this yellow soil. (Cf. A. de Lapparent, Leçons de Géographie Physique, 2e éd. 1898, p. 566.)—H. C.]
Though we do not expect to find Polo taking note of geological features, we are surprised to find no mention of a characteristic of Shan-si and the adjoining districts, which is due to the löss; viz. the practice of forming cave dwellings in it; these in fact form the habitations of a majority of the people in the löss country. Polo has noticed a similar usage in Badakhshan (I. p. 161), and it will be curious if a better acquaintance with that region should disclose a surface formation analogous to the löss. (Richthofen’s Letters, VII. 13 et passim.)
[“From Khavailu (Hwo-luh’ien), an important commercial centre supplying Shansi, for 130 miles to Sze-tien, the road traverses the loess hills, which extend from the Peking-Kalgan road in a south-west direction to the Yellow River, and which are passable throughout this length only by the Great Central Asian trade route to T’ai-yuan fu and by the Tung-Kwan, Ho-nan, i.e. the Yellow River route.” (Colonel Bell, Proc. R. G. S. XII. 1890, p. 59.) Colonel Bell reckons seven days (218 miles) from Peking to Hwo-lu-h’ien and five days from this place to T’ai-yuan fu.—H. C.]
Dr. Bretschneider (Botanicon Sinicum, I. p. 25), relating the mission of Chang K’ien (139 B.C. Emperor Wu-Ti), who died about B.C. 103, writes:—“He is said to have introduced many useful plants from Western Asia into China. Ancient Chinese authors ascribe to him the introduction of the Vine, the Pomegranate, Safflower, the Common Bean, the Cucumber, Lucerne, Coriander, the Walnut-tree, and other plants.”—H. C.] The river that flows down from Shan-si by Cheng-ting-fu is called “Putu-ho, or the Grape River.” (J. As. u.s.; Richthofen, u.s.)
[Regarding the name of this river, the Rev. C. Holcombe (l.c. p. 56) writes: “Williamson states in his Journeys in North China that the name of this stream is, properly Poo-too Ho—‘Grape River,’ but is sometimes written Hu-t’ou River incorrectly. The above named author, however, is himself in error, the name given above [Hu-t’o] being invariably found in all Chinese authorities, as well as being the name by which the stream is known all along its course.”
West of the Fan River, along the western border of the Central Plain of Shan-si, in the extreme northern point of which lies T’aï-yuan fu, the Rev. C. Holcombe says (p. 61), “is a large area, close under the hills, almost exclusively given up to the cultivation of the grape. The grapes are unusually large, and of delicious flavour.”—H. C.]