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| Hulda May Culbert & Reverend Charles Rupert Carscallen. Photo courtesy of their granddaughter, Wendy (Gowland) Boole from the collection of Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen. |
On Christmas Day, 1905, just one month after they married, the newlyweds set sail for Chengtu in the province of Szechwan, China to engage in educational missionary work with the West China Mission. (The spellings have since been changed to Chengdu and Sichuan.)
They set sail from Vancouver, British Columbia at 7:20 p.m. on the Empress of India.
The next day, Hulda May wrote a letter to her sister, Ethel Culbert saying:
The only part not pleasant is the fact, getting more apparent, that every throb of the engine is taking us farther and farther away from 'the land of the maple'.[1]The departure must have been bitter sweet for Hulda May. On the one hand, she was setting off as a newlywed on a great adventure to a new land. On the other hand, she must have been homesick, so far from home. She pleaded with her family for weekly regular letters.
The sea was rough for most of the journey. The ocean liner docked 9 January 1906 in Japan, where they spent almost three weeks. In Tokyo, they had their first ride in a jinrikisha also known as a rickshaw.
Hulda May had the rare experience of standing in the crowd that welcomed back a hero of the Russo-Japanese War: Japanese General Oku Yasukata and his staff.
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| General Oku Yasukata. Image via the National Diet Library, Japan. |
The decorations were gay -- flags and bunting all over the city. Often we saw the Union Jack floating side by side with the flag of the Rising Sun. The Lancers were there with their horses, and followed the carriage in which the great General drove from the station. We were fortunate enough to secure places close by the entrance and so got a good view of the entire proceedings. The General was accompanied by H.H. Prince Nashimoto. They were welcomed by large numbers of military and naval officers . . . and many other illustrious persons. Troops lined the streets from Shimbashi to the Imperial Palace.
The large crowds of people were apparently very patriotic and yet they did not make much noise. There were a few cheers, and shouts -- 'Banzai! Banzai!' (Hurrah!), but for the most part the crowd was silent.[2]The further they travelled from Tokyo, the more they were looked upon with curiosity by the locals who were unaccustomed to seeing foreigners. However, Hulda May felt welcome in their company and wrote to her sister that she wished they could stay in Japan, and that she was in love with the Japanese people.
The Carscallens left Japan for Shanghai, China on 29 January 1906 aboard the RMS Tartar.
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| RMS Tartar. |
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| Interior view in the first class saloon of RMS Tartar Source: Historic England Archive. |
They arrived in Shanghai on 2 February 1906 and spent more than five weeks there. They spent much of this time shopping for items they needed to start housekeeping, and assisting the organizers of the mission.
Next, they boarded a steamer on 13 March from Shanghai to Hankow (now Hankou.) Arriving in Hankow the evening of 17 March, they slept on board that night.
Next morning, they transferred to another steamer, the Kwei Lee of the China Merchants Company. They arrived in Ichang, (now Yichang) spending a week there.
The rest of the voyage was by house-boat along the Yangtze, the longest river in Asia, running almost 4,000 miles (6,380 km).
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| Source: Baptist Missionary Magazine, volume 74. |
The Yangtze River was one of the most inaccessible parts of China. Travel on the Yangtze could be perilous with its varying altitudes, deep gorges and dangerous rapids.
A saying goes that "it is easier to travel to Heaven than to Szechwan!"
When they reached the Yeh-tan Rapid, Hulda wrote:
Here we saw some fishermen diving for fish. They catch them in their hands, but appear on the surface with them in their mouths -- a strange sight.[3]On the morning of 26 June 1906, the Carscallens arrived safely at their final destination: Chengtu, China. Allowing for stops along the way, the journey had taken six months.
Hulda May's next challenge was to adjust to a climate and culture completely unlike that of her home on the outskirts of Lucan, Ontario.
On the journey to China, Hulda May experienced frequent bouts of sea-sickness. She was also expecting her first child!
Join us again soon as the Carscallen's life in China unfolds. Click here for the next installment.
But before we go...
Jeff Culbert grew up in Lucan, Ontario in Biddulph Township where his great-aunt Hulda May Culbert was born. 81 years after Hulda May's voyage to China, Jeff paid tribute to her memory. He followed part of her path when he made his own journey to Chengdu and along the Yangtze River to Shanghai.
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| Jeff Culbert, grandson of Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen's brother, Myron Culbert. |
In early 1987, I finished a teaching contract in Hong Kong and then hit the road: 6 weeks in Thailand, 3 weeks in India (Calcutta, Puri, Darjeeling), then a week in Nepal.
Following some travellers' tips, I took a bus to the Nepal/Tibet border. The road down into the river valley and up the other side had been made unusable (i.e. blown up) for political reasons, but a full day's walk took me from one side of the valley to the other. There, I was told to find one of the truck drivers who had just dropped off a load of goods (which were being carried into Nepal by huge teams of Tibetan porters on foot). Without any load to carry back, they were open to the idea of giving travellers a ride in the back of the truck for a small fee. So that's what I did. It was an unusual way to get into China, and just a short time after I went through, that option was closed off completely, and getting into Tibet would mean flying in.
After some time in Tibet (which was utterly fantastic), I got a ride with some Chinese truckers into China (This time in the cab). I think that was all the way to Chengdu, China. Then I caught a train to Chongqing, which is on the upper Yangtze. From there, it was the slow boat to Shanghai at the mouth of the river.
One of my immediate memories is that the food changed a lot from region to region in China - everyone was doing their own cuisine - but in Shanghai, all of the food of China seemed to be available. Then, back in Hong Kong, it was all the food of the world there for the taking.
Another thing I remember is that there were two streams of currency in China - renminbi, or "People's money", which the locals used and foreigners were not supposed to have, and FECs (Foreign Exchange Certificates) which all foreigners were supposed to use exclusively. Things were much cheaper in renminbi, so travellers would use that when they could, but in the remote areas, during the first part of my China visit, the locals had never heard of FECs and wanted nothing to do with them. Things changed the closer we got to the more cosmopolitan area around Shanghai, where officials were on the lookout for foreigners trying to use renminbi.
Of course, the scenery was spectacular through the river valley, and the people in the west were especially friendly and homey.
Footnotes:
[1] Eula C. Lapp, China Was My University. Agincourt, Ont.: Generation Press, 1980, 26.
[2] Ibid., 27.
[3] Ibid., 30.
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