POSTAL SERVICE

Many residents in China are profoundly ignorant of the existence of a native postal service; and even the few who have heard of such an institution, are not aware of the comparative safety and speed with which even a valuable letter may be forwarded from one end of the Empire to the other.  Government despatches are conveyed to their destinations by a staff of men specially employed for the purpose, and under the control of the Board of War in Peking.  They ride from station to station at a fair pace, considering the sorry, ill-fed nags upon which they are mounted; important documents being often carried to great distances, at a rate of two hundred miles a-day.  The people, however, are not allowed to avail themselves of this means of communication, but the necessities of trade have driven them to organise a system of their own.

In any Chinese town of any pretensions whatever, there are sure to be several “letter offices,” each monopolising one or more provinces, to and from which they make it their special business to convey letters and small parcels.  The safety of whatever is entrusted to their care is guaranteed, and its value made good if lost; at the same time, the contents of all packets must be declared at the office where posted, so that a corresponding premium may be charged for their transmission.  The letter-carriers travel chiefly on foot, sometimes on donkeys, to be found on all the great highways of China, and which run with unerring accuracy from one station to another, unaccompanied by any one except the hirer.  There is little danger of the donkeys being stolen, unless carried off bodily, for heaven and earth could no more move them from their beaten track than the traveller who, desirous of making two stages without halting, could induce them to pass the door of the station they have just arrived at.  Carrying about eighty or ninety pounds weight of mail matter, these men trudge along some five miles an hour till they reach the extent of their tether; there they hand over the bag to a fresh man, who starts off, no matter at what hour of the day or night, and regardless of good or bad weather alike, till he too has quitted himself of his responsibility by passing on the bag to a third man.  They make a point of never eating a full meal; they eat themselves, as the Chinese say, six or seven tenths full, taking food as often as they feel at all hungry, and thus preserve themselves from getting broken-winded early in life.  Recruited from the strongest and healthiest of the working-classes, it is above all indispensable that the Chinese letter-carrier should not be afraid of any ghostly enemy, such as bogies or devils.  In this respect they must be tried men before they are entrusted with a mail; for an ordinary Chinaman is so instinctively afraid of night and darkness, that the slightest rustle by the wayside would be enough to make him fling down the bag and take to his heels as if all the spirits of darkness had been loosed upon him at one and the same moment.