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Show fight against superstition, and to give the population that spirit which makes it easier to bear what is unchangeable and which helps them to have strength and courage. "No, bandits won't get me", was the answer to my question, "but I had better take another pair of padded trousers with me. It will be cold out there." So she wrapped another pair of unbelievably thick trousers in a piece of blue cloth and hurried away so as not to miss the bus. Three busses were leaving in the direction she wanted to go, but there was a crowd which could have filled at least five. Thus our Alice Murphy had a tough fight to get into one of these vehicles, and having had lots of experience she somehow managed not only to get in but to get a seat too. It was lucky also that her bus left first so that she didn't have to swallow all the terrible dust from the car ahead. Alice was sitting wedged in from both sides, and she couldn't raise her head because this would mean bumping the ceiling, but she minded only the fact that she couldn't move her legs. It was impossible to keep the windows closed because of the crowd inside; so they were opened after some effort and a cold wind swept in clouds of dust. Cyclists and pedestrians escaped into the fields as the bus approached, but wheelbarrows loaded with heavy burdens or more typically with an old lady could not escape as quickly, and they could be seen left behind coughing and rubbing their eyes. Monotonously the car rattled through the monotonous land, and to forget her already painful legs Alice decided to get out a little book when she observed something very strange. On the other side of the car she saw a little girl playing with a string, and this was a "well to do" string such as is not common in this country. After reading a while she by accident took a look in the same direction and saw something still stranger: a woman eating a piece of white bread. Now she knew what had happened; her lost lunch had been found. She couldn't help smiling about this little incident, glad that the lunch was being enjoyed. At last the bus reached its destination, Lintsing. The next day Alice went on from there with some Chinese workers to a small village where the population from a flooded area had sought refuge. This place was reached in the dark, and it was impossible to obtain an idea as to what the work of the following days and weeks would amount to. She found a place in one of the little brown houses, and being tired she slept on the hard "k'ang" nearly as well as in her bed at home. What she observed next morning was worse than she expected. Hundreds of people cowered around forming a moving bundle of misery. There was no food and no money to buy food; there weren't houses enough to protect the crowd from the cold and no fuel to make fires. Wearing Chinese clothes she was not recognized as a foreigner at first; but when she was, a wave of hope came over the sufferers; and all of a sudden the feeling that help was near cheered them up. Hundreds of questions |
