v YELLOW RIVER 61
In the little house where we were welcomed, a
shallow charcoal brazier gave the only heat. The two
rooms were full of children who had never seen a
foreigner before, and were paralysed with shyness
when I spoke to them in Mandarin, which they did
not understand. An old wrinkled mother-in-law was
puffing at a country pipe. The house was bare, but
scrupulously clean, by any Chinese standards short of
the New Life Movement.
Food was brought to us—steaming mien, and
knuckle-bones, and even rice in our honour. This
kind of hospitality, I realised suddenly, was worth a
great deal more than some of the rich official feasts I
had been offered in large cities. The cost of a Chinese
feast in Shanghai or Nanking would have fed this
family for a year.
It was a pleasant interlude, that evening in a
worker's cottage. By the time I had priced every
article of my clothing, bared a hairy forearm to the
entranced gaze of the younger children, and drunk
innumerable bowls of coarse-flavoured tea (offered
with endless apologies), our friend had returned with
news. There had been fighting near Sian; the plane
could not come. We must push on by the night train.
He was a resourceful person, this friend who
seemed to know everybody. Before we left he had
produced food—biscuits and powdered beef—for the
journey. Also, rather surprisingly, he produced a
servant. We must have at least one, he said, for reasons
of "face"; and he would be useful.
The servant was a hatchet-faced Northerner,
formerly a soldier in the Tungpei army, who had been
"lent" by friends in the village. His name was Li, and
he would go with us to Sian. I liked the freemasonry
F