Читать книгу The Awakening of the East: Siberia—Japan—China - Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Special character of trade in Siberia—Importance of the tea transport—Kiakhta—The annual arrival of tea at the Irkutsk Customs-house—Road followed by the tea caravan—Dilatory and expensive methods of transport—Comparison between the land road viâ Kiakhta and the sea-route viâ Odessa—Other articles of commerce, exportation of cereals, etc.

Commerce is much more important in Siberia than either agriculture or manufacture, and forms the basis of all the great fortunes that have been made in the country. Siberian commerce is mainly concerned with transport, and if we except the traffic in gold by the Government, the only other objects of export are cereals and furs. The importation, on the other hand, is very limited, consisting merely of manufactured articles necessary for the material comfort of a very scanty and primitive population, whose wants are correspondingly few. The commerce of the country would be infinitesimal were it not that nearly all the tea consumed in Russia passes through Siberia.^[8] Tea in Russia occupies even a more important position than it does in England. The average Russian takes between a dozen and fifteen cups per day, and he will not travel without his tea, tea-pot, and his sugar, and the samovar, a sort of glorified kettle, is never absent from every table in Russia, and is always full of hot water ready to moisten the leaves of the plant that comforts but does not intoxicate. The Russians make their infusion very weak, pouring the boiling water a great many times over the same leaves. The peasantry, unlike the English of the lower classes, who like their tea very strong, use the same leaves over and over again until the decoction ends by being only straw-coloured water. This explains the fact that whilst the Russians drink three times as much tea as the English, the quantity of it imported into Russia is at least two-thirds less than that which China and India send annually to Great Britain.

It was by the overland route that the Russians first came in contact with the Chinese somewhere towards the end of the seventeenth century, and their commerce with the Celestial Empire continued until the middle of the present century exclusively overland. Almost all the tea which enters Russia has to pass through the town of Kiakhta, about 180 miles south-east of Irkutsk as the crow flies, but 430 miles by the postal-road, which is only used during two short periods of the year, the first in December and the second in spring, when, owing to the quantity of ice on Lake Baikalia, navigation is impossible. During the rest of the year the tea is transported across the lake, in winter on sledges, and in summer by steamers, whereby not less than 93 miles are gained. Occasionally, as, for instance, on the banks of the Solenga, the road rises to about 4,000 feet above the level of Lake Baikalia. Here the scenery becomes extremely fine, and the traveller obtains between the branches of the magnificent trees glimpses of the beautiful lake far below, forming a very welcome change to the monotony of the plain in which the caravans spend the greater part of their journey. Kiakhta consists of three parts: the town of Troitskosavsk, about two miles north of the Russo-Chinese Frontier; the town of Kiakhta proper, which is on the immediate frontier, but on Russian territory; and separated from the last only by a strip of neutral ground a hundred yards wide is the Chinese town of Maimatchin. Troitskosavsk is the most important of the three, and offers an exceedingly agreeable aspect to the traveller who has been obliged to climb up the reverse side of the steep and barren hill overlooking the town. The houses lining the road are of wood, comfortable, and painted a light colour. Even the lateral streets are well kept, and it is, taking it for all in all, the cleanest town I have seen in all Siberia. One soon realizes that the tea trade supplies the whole population with ample means of earning a livelihood, and also that the wealthy take an interest in their town. On one side of the road, for instance, is the communal school, built out of funds originally intended for the erection of barracks, but, soldiers not being required, the place was converted into a school, munificently supported by the merchants of the city. The children pay a small entrance fee. Opposite stands another very large educational establishment, also supported by voluntary contributions.

The dwellings of the principal tea merchants are situated at Troitskosavsk, whose population numbers quite 7,000 souls; but it is at Kiakhta,^[9] on the frontier, that the tea-leaves are manipulated. The two towns are linked by an excellent road, which passes between desolate-looking sand-hills, sparsely covered with wretched fir-trees. The blue outline of the mountains of Mongolia closes in the horizon to the south. The houses of the wealthier inhabitants are painted white, as is the church, the interior of which is extremely rich with massive silver candelabras and a gorgeous iconostase. Beyond a group of isbas, where the workmen dwell, and half hidden by the cupolas of the church, stands the vast but very low one-storied building of the Tea Warehouse. Such is Kiakhta, through which passes annually into the Russian Empire from 40,000,000 to 60,000,000 pounds of tea, costing, before the Custom duties are paid, between £1,500,000 to £2,000,000. The following are the figures obtained from the tea registers during the last five years, kindly supplied to me by the authorities at Kiakhta.

Year.	Weight of Tea.	Value of Tea.
1892	42,596,500 lbs.	£1,672,143
1893	43,123,250 〃	1,659,134
1894	51,086,900 〃	1,932,318
1895	52,439,500 〃	2,043,086
1896	55,369,200 〃	2,128,402

The tea begins to pour into Kiakhta in winter from the month of November to February. In December it is not at all an uncommon thing to see as many as 5,000 boxes delivered daily. The total number of boxes of tea which passed the Customs in 1896 was 412,869.

The tea harvest in China takes place generally in spring, the first gathering of the leaves occurring in April, the fourth and the last in June. The latter is compressed into bricks, is of very inferior quality, and bought only by the poorer people. The great tea-market is Hankow on the Yang-tsze. All the great Russian houses have representatives who arrive here annually to purchase, and expedite the tea either by sea, viâ Odessa, or overland by Kiakhta. We must not, however, imagine that caravan tea, which the Russians consider to be the finest, is all carried overland. Far from it, but then the purchasers are not supposed to know this, as there exists a prejudice to the effect that tea which travels by water is thereby deteriorated, which is nonsense, since all tea must perform a journey by water of greater or less length. Even that which is destined for Kiakhta is sent by boat to Tien-tsin, whence it has to ascend the Pei-ho on junks, and it is only packed on the camels’ backs at Kalgan, at the foot of the Great Wall. Thence it has to perform a journey of not less than 900 miles across the desert before it reaches Urga, the sacred town of Mongolia, which is situated at a distance of 160 miles south of Kiakhta. Transport can only take place in the month of October, when the roads begin to get hardened by the first frosts, and the camels have returned from the pasture lands where they pass the greater part of the summer. These camels are hired from the Mongolians, and there is great competition among the merchants to secure them, the Russians endeavouring to obtain the greater number of beasts before anybody else so as to secure the first crop of tea. A certain quantity of tea is also brought to Kiakhta on little Mongolian carts, which invariably return home carrying with them three pieces of wood, an article which is almost valueless in Siberia, but very dear in China, where it is resold at a profit.

The camels are unloaded at Kiakhta, and the wicker-boxes or baskets, each containing from 100 to 160 pounds of tea, are divested of the light covering of camel’s hair which sufficed to protect them during the journey across the Desert of Obi, where rain is almost unknown. For the rest of the journey through Siberia it is necessary to screen them with a waterproof covering made of camel’s hide, the hair being turned inwards. Whilst the process of enveloping the boxes is proceeding it is almost impossible to bear the intolerable stench. The tea, compressed into bricks, each weighing two pounds and a half, is next sorted, dusted, and those which have been in any degree damaged are separated from the rest and sold at a low price. Then the whole of the tea, be it in leaf or brick, is packed on the sleighs and conveyed, as already stated, across country, partly by water, partly over the routes already described. At Irkutsk, however, the Custom-house officers examine a few of the cases, and stamp the rest with a leaden brand, and the caravan is allowed to proceed to its destination.

The earlier teas which arrive are conveyed by sledge to Irbit, a town on the eastern slopes of the Ural, but beyond the confines of Siberia, and in the Government of Perm. Between February 1st and March 1st Irbit is the scene of an immense fair, which attracts merchants from all parts of Siberia. The principal goods dealt in are Chinese tea, furs from the north and east, and light manufactured articles from Russian Europe. The total sold in the year 1880 amounted to £5,286,000, which has been considerably exceeded since.

The principal tea caravans do not arrive in the region of the Obi before the beginning of April, the sleighs proceeding very slowly, and the stoppages by the way being frequent. Boats convey the fragrant merchandise between Tomsk, Tura, and Tiumen, terminal stations on the Ural Railway, whence they are conveyed to Perm. Here they are shipped up the river Kama, and finally embarked on the Volga and taken to Nijni-Novgorod, the chief centre of the tea trade in Russia. Thence the railways distribute the merchandise over the empire. The results of the tardier crops arrive at Irkutsk, where they are embarked on the Angara and conveyed by boat to the meeting of that river with the Yenissei, where, as it is impossible to ascend the latter, the rudely-constructed boats in which it has hitherto performed the journey are broken up and sold for firewood. By this road only 330 miles are performed by land to Tomsk. Some of the merchants, in order to avoid as much as possible the overland route, take a much longer one by water viâ Uliasutai, a city in Western Mongolia on the Upper Yenissei. The above will suffice to give the reader an idea of some of the exceptional difficulties which the tea merchants have to encounter in conveying their very perishable freight across Northern Asia into Russia, the journey taking not less than a year from the date of the gathering of the leaves. The following official data, registered in 1893, of the expense incurred in conveying a single pood, or thirty-six pounds (English), of tea from Han-Keou to Nijni-Novgorod will suffice to afford a fair notion of the great cost of transport.

	£	s.	d.
From Han-Keou to Kiakhta viâ Tien-tsin and Urga	0	15	5
Manipulation at Kiakhta and transport to Irkutsk	0	6	4
From Irkutsk to Nijni (by sledge to Tomsk, water to Tiumen, railway to Perm, and thence by water)	0	12	9
Insurance from Tien-tsin to Nijni, 2¼ per cent	0	1	10½
Interest on capital	0	3	2
Total	£1	19	6½

On the other hand, the same quantity of tea transported from Hankow to Nijni, viâ the Suez Canal and Odessa, and thence by train to Nijni, costs only thirteen shillings. From these facts it can easily be understood that the great commerce of Kiakhta is purely artificial and abnormal, and exists simply thanks to the enormous difference between the Custom-house duties at Odessa and those at Irkutsk. At the former place the duty is £3 6s. per pood, or thirty-six pounds, for all kinds of tea, whereas at Kiakhta it is only £2 on leaf tea and 5s. 4d. on brick. The insignificance of this latter tax is very important, because brick tea is the only sort which is used in Siberia east of the Volga, the greater part of the leaf tea being forwarded to Russia. On the other hand, notwithstanding its many inconveniences, the tea transport across Russia is a most important factor in Siberian existence, since it furnishes the means of livelihood to thousands of people living along the great postal-road, and indeed is a sort of subvention which the Russian tea-drinkers pay to Siberia, and one which the Government very wisely keeps up by maintaining the high tariff at Odessa. It is interesting to follow the increasing value of a pood (thirty-six pounds) of tea on its way from Irkutsk to Nijni. On entering Siberia at the former place from China it only costs £2 5s. By this time it is already paying the cost of its transport from Hankow, the expenses of insurance, etc., costing about £1 3s., the Custom-house duties amount to about £2, that is, £3 2s. credit, and the transfer thence to Nijni will add about thirteen shillings to its value; so that when we take into account an interest of three shillings on the capital employed we find that a product which cost less than ten roubles where it grew and where it was first purchased, by the time it reaches the market costs forty-eight roubles, nearly five times its original value. On the greater part of the leaf tea which passes through Odessa, the Russian pays on every pound of tea at 3s. 2d. he purchases 1s. to the Treasury. The total amount of Custom-house duties paid on tea at Irkutsk amounted in 1896 to £1,050,361.

Independently of tea, the land commerce between the Russian Empire and China is, comparatively speaking, insignificant, and rarely exceeds £265,000. The principal object of import is Russia leather, and the chief article from China is a very light but strong sort of silk, much worn in Siberia during the summer. For the rest, the trade between Siberia and Russia consists mainly in cereals and flour, but it is difficult to obtain exact statistics on account of the many lines of communication which have been recently opened since the introduction of the railway.