Before the introduction of the engine, trackers were an indispensable feature of transport along the Yangzi. These river people battled daily with the river, providing the muscle to drag 40-100 ton vessels 1500 miles from Shanghai to Chongqing up a series of treacherous gorges and against a current of 6-12 knots. Mostly men, they worked like cattle for 12 hours a day, nine days at a time, to earn enough money to feed themselves poorly and every so often escape to an opium-fueled Elysium.
There were two types of trackers, permanent and seasonal. The permanent trackers were based in local villages along the river. It was usually these that formed the basic crews of many junks. The seasonal trackers would hire themselves out at temporary shantytowns, set up where their need was greatest along the difficult gorge-strewn reaches of the Upper Yangzi, west of Yichang. The risk of storm, the potential for sudden changes in the river's water level, the avarice of ship owners and the charged, violent atmosphere to which this brutal lifestyle tended, introduced many additional, unseen risks into what was already dangerous work.
Commonly, trackers used long ropes to drag craft upriver. Four-inch wide braided, bamboo hawsers were attached to the boat's prow. As many as 400 trackers would hitch themselves in a long series to these and, shoed in straw slippers, would listen for drum signals to direct the progress of their haul. Along some stretches one foot wide "tracker paths", the charitable donation of a wealthy merchant, had been carved into the cliff. Since these had to take into account the frequent change in water level, these tracks could be as high as 300 feet above the river. You might look out for them as you proceed through the gorges. Often however, trackers while heaving their load, had to dexterously pick their way across various-sized boulders lying along the shoreline. If a cliff stood in their way the trackers, having boarded the craft, by inserting hooked poles into nooks in the rock face, would inch the boat laboriously along the cliff.
Descent of the river, though less onerous, was equally dangerous. Trackers would now work mainly in the boat. The bow-sweep, used to direct the boat, demanded fifteen men, while each of the oars ten. In descent, far less important than propelling the boat forwards was maintaining a safe position in the fast-flowing current. For this, at particularly dangerous rapids, skilled captains were on hire, who specialized in negotiating particular set of rapids.
Many trackers drowned in the raging torrents of the Yangzi. Many more suffered from work-induced strains, hernias and other illnesses. We pay tribute to them.
