Fortunately along this new highway there are some highly-trained Chinese engineers who have spent some years in the States studying road construction, so know their business.
Among them are Dr. Yao and Loh Meiluen, both graduates from American schools of engineering. Between the border and Erlang Pass some 20,000 men are engaged on road construction working like bees removing stones and rocks.
While the road is under construction lower down, the stone masons late blasting enormous rocks outside the east gate, preparing a wide boule-yard for the motor traffic. The river is being re-directed into a main channel enabling the city to reclaim a large tract of country which later on will be known as the East Suburb.
It is outside the east gate that thousands of people lie buried and whose bones are now being rudely disturbed to make way for the new motor terminus. The authorities have erected a large bone house away up on the mountain side and here the bones will be placed that lie in the way of the new motor road. Already hundreds of graves have been disturbed and the relatives of those buried in the graves are, naturally, feeling somewhat anxious. Knowing what was coming, the wealthy and influential inhabitants, had the bones of their ancestors removed to a place of safety; but the poorer people have been unable to do thi The east gate is very largely a common burial ground thousands being buried there who found only a temporary residence here on the frontier. It is the bones of these people that the authorities are taking care of and removing to the bone house away up onthe mountain side. would mean going right through a mission compound. Tachieniw, of course, is only now facing what many other cities on the plain have experienced long ago. With the advent of motor traffic on the frontier the streets of this border town will call for considerable re-construction and this will involve the merchants in heavy expense. So narrow are some of the thoroughfares that some years ago the authorities forbade the entrance of yak into the city.
Mr. Ralph Holder from Texas. apart from his activities on behalf of the American Bible Society, has introduced a young foreign bull calf to the Tibetan frontier. As he tells the story, Mme Picot and her party travelled' with the bull calf; this however was a bull calf complex, as Mme Picot, wife of the French Charge d'Affaires, and her party very kindly allowed the calf to come along with them, This is the second time a foreign bull calf has been introduced to the border. In 1926 Dr. Hardy took one into Batang from Chengiw and the day after its arrival in that distant outpost it completely and mysteriously disappeared. Mr. Holder's idea is quite altruistic-as he hopes to lend the bull calf to the woolly nomads away up on the plateaux, and thereby improve the stock along the frontier. He was brought up on a farm and since his arrival on the border in 1935 he has often wondered why ihe Tibetan cows give so little and such poor milk. An ordinary Tibetan cow will not give much more than three or four cups of milk per day: which is not quite one quart. With the introduction of foreign stock it is hoped there will be an improvement in the breed and a greater output of milk and a larger supply of butter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.