|
|
|
Robert Fortune I am not sure - but Robert Fortune, as his name implies, might have been really 'fortunate' and 'lucky' to have survived as long as he did - for he was a truly a mad-cap, full blooded, adventurist. It was a time when there was so much control over the tea growing regions of China that even accidental trespassing carried death penalty !. Robert, soon after the opium wars, dared to wander in to those very regions in disguise - disguised as a China man, claiming to be traveler from a distant province of the Empire ! He did not even speak good 'Chinese' for that matter ! Never the less, that didn't stop him wandering in China and eventually publishing "Wanderings through China". On July 6th, 1843 Fortune arrived in Hong Kong after four months at sea. Over a period of three years, Fortune made many excursions to the northern provinces in China and encountered many harrowing adventures along the way. From angry mobs caught up in a xenophobic frenzy, to killer storms in the Yellow Sea, to pirates on the Yangtse River, he managed to survive them all.
The following is an interest account provided by J.N.Pratt in his 'New tea lover's
treasury'. To paraphrase that will be a crime !
Roused from his bed of pain by the commotion,
Fortune appeared on deck armed with a pair of pistols and a ferocious
blunderbuss. "The pilot, an intelligent
old man, now came up to me and said that he thought resistance was of no
use: I might manage to beat off one junk, or even two, but I had no chance
with five of them. Being at the time in no mood to take advice or be
dictated to by anyone I ordered him off to look after his own duty. ....
The pirates now seemed quite sure of their prize and came down upon us
looking and yelling like demons. This was a moment of intense interest...
I raised myself above the high stern of our junk and while the pirates
were not more than twenty yards from us, hooting and yelling, I raked
their decks fore and aft with shot and ball from my double-barreled
gun.... They could not have been more surprised. Doubtless many were
wounded and probably some killed. At all events the whole crew, not fewer
than forty or fifty men, disappeared in a marvelous manner."
Film made on his adventures shown in Paris film festival He
dealt with the second junk in the same fashion and all five of them turned
away !! Only to be challenged in the afternoon by a group of six !
He eventfully became proficient enough with speaking Mandarin that he was able to adopt the local dress and move among the populous largely unnoticed. By shaving his head and adopting a ponytail, this rather gruff Scotsman was able to effectively blend in. So well in fact, that he was able to enter the forbidden city of Souchow (now Wuhsien) unchallenged. Fortune made several shipments back to England during the three years of his first mission, proving the great value of. Upon his return to London in May 1846, Robert Fortune published his journals in the book 'Three Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China'. When he was asked to go into China again to collect that 'curse of Indian tea industry' china tea seeds, he dutifully obliged. He got out of China in time to escape the ransom offered by the Chinese government on his head. In 1851, he brought with him 'quantities of seeds and tools, skilled team of Chinese workmen and 20,000 plants' All this valor and chivalry as an effort which he describes them as mire "tiresome difficulties", to provide the seeds of " the curse of the Indian tea industry" !!! Fortune made two more trips to China (1853-56, 1858-59) and one trip to Japan (1860-62), and was responsible for the introduction of over 120 species of plants to western gardens. His publications include:
He lived comfortably on the proceeds of his book sales and enjoyed a long retirement. He died in 1880.
Learned something *****************
*****************
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
