Chungking Transport Company (which deals especially
with the transport of cargo from Ichang up the rapids), whose book on
"The Yangtse Gorges" is known to every reader of books on China.

I was dressed as a Chinese teacher in thickly-wadded Chinese gown, with
pants, stockings, and sandals, with Chinese hat and pigtail. In my dress
I looked a person of weight. I must acknowledge that my outfit was very
poor; but this was not altogether a disadvantage, for my men would have
the less temptation to levy upon it. Still it would have been awkward if
my men had taken it into their heads to walk off with my things, because
I could not have explained my loss. My chief efforts, I knew, throughout
my journey would be applied in the direction of inducing the Chinese to
treat me with the respect that was undoubtedly due to one who, in their
own words, had done them the "exalted honour" of visiting "their mean
and contemptible country." For I could not afford a private sedan chair,
though I knew that Baber had written that "no traveller in Western China
who possesses any sense of self-respect should journey without a sedan
chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the honour and glory of
the thing. Unfurnished with this indispensable token of respectability
he is liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at
ferries, to be relegated to the worst inn's worst room, and generally to
be treated with indignity, or, what is sometimes worse, with
familiarity, as a peddling footpad who, unable to gain a living in his
own country, has come to subsist on China." ("Travels and Researches in
Western China," p. 1.)

Six li out (two miles), beyond the gravemounds there is a small village
where ponies are kept for hire. A kind friend came with me as far as the
village to act as my interpreter, and here he engaged a pony for me. It
was to carry me ten miles for fourpence. It was small, rat-like and
wiry, and was steered by the "mafoo" using the tail like a tiller.
Mounted then on this small beast, which carried me without wincing, I
jogged along over the stone-flagged pathway, down hill and along valley,
scaling and descending the long flights of steps which lead over the
mountains. The bells of the pony jingled merrily; the day was fine and
the sun shone behind the clouds. My two coolies sublet their contracts,
and had their loads borne for a fraction of a farthing per mile by
coolies returning empty-handed to Suifu.

[Il