Considering that we were a party of seven travelling over a new road with two new cars, we fared very well indeed and had no major accidents of any kind, though one or two minor ones. Our letters, visas, and so on were sufficient to get us through the formalities. Actually at the border there is no examination of any kind; indeed you would hardly know you had crossed the border at all were it not that you knew by the distance that it must be at that place. You pass across a very small bridge over a very small stream, and that is all there is. We did notice a burnt house, which we discovered afterwards was the remains of the Chinese Custom-house, which had been raided and burnt by the local tribespeople about two months before, when twelve Chinese had been killed. They apparently resented the coming of the Central Government, which threatened the local tax they had been in the habit of moking.
The people on both sides of the border belong to various tribes very picturesque in their costumes, and are neither Burmese nor Chinese, though in looks they seem more like Chinese. We saw a gay-looking market of the tribespeople at Kutkai, the last town of any size before crossing the border. The Chinese Customs is now established at Lungling, about 58 miles from the border, and thanks to our various letters we had no difficulty there.
We passed relatively little trafic on the road—a private car or two, buses on certain sections, and a few trucks,—but the road is not yet really fully opened up and the heavy traffic has not yet got going on it. The road has been pushed through in so short a time because of the need for new routes through which China can bring in ammunition and other war supplies now that the Canton-Hankow railway has become useless, and one realizes acutely how deserate are her needs along those lines, A
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.