the the stage of my observations were mainly engaged in bargaining with wily peddlers The only man who might have been a spy was the Japanese barber and he did not lurk in dark corners but contented himself with selling me a very bad razor.
It was evident that I must look further There were missionaries scores of them who had much to say simple God fearing men who spoke the language and lived the life physicians some of them giving their lives to the rescue of the opium ictims There were teachers Chinese secretaries of legation journalists English speaking Chinese officials and merchants and sinologues sprinkled about but where in all this babel of tongues and this flutter of red tape was China Groping along in this spirit forming conclusions one day only to replace them with others the next morning I swallowed gulp by gulp my peck of Peking dust and wrestled with the deliciously absurd system of official etiquette which is the governing principle of Legation Street until it became plain that this ever receding China was still somewhere in the dusty jabbering beyond out there where the camel trains came from perhaps.
The Jumping Off Place
So I went over the rim by way of the Hankow line to Chen Tou pronounced Jun Toe and spelled on a French time table Che ke fiang and westward by way of the brand new Shansi railroad from Chen Tou through the Southern Great Wall and the Shansi hills to Shau Yang This was the jumping off place inside the rim The rest of it had to be done in springless country carts and swaying pitching mule litters crawling along by day in the sunken roads of which I had read in my school geography sleeping by night in unspeakably decrepit native inns It was dirty it was insanitary it was wholly uncomfortable but it was China and my mind cleared day by day Everywhere there was misery The road through the countryside was lined with the caves of beggars The villages in these hills of Shansi were little more than heaps of ruin The faces of young and old were gaunt seamed hopeless At last I was seeing the opium drama Some hint of the meaning of it a faint impression of the terrible devastation of the white man's drug let loose as it has been on a backward poverty stricken race was being seared hour by hour and day by day into my brain It was not pleasant this zigzag journey through an opium province but I had found the wonderful opium drama and I knew then that it would haunt me as long as I lived.
The Chinese Did not Want Opium
In the minds of most of us I think there has been a vague notion that the Chinese have always smoked opium that opium is in some peculiar way a necessity to the Chinese constitution Even among those who know the extraordinary history of this morbidly fascinating drug who know that the India grown British drug was pushed and smuggled and bayoneted into China during a century of desperate protest and even armed resistance from these yellow people it has been a popular argument to assert that the Chinese have only themselves to blame for the jdemand that made the trade possible Of this demand and of how it was worked up by Christian traders I shall speak at some length in a later article Educational methods in the extending of trade can hardly be said to have originated with the modern trust The curious fact is that the Chinese did n t use opium and did n t want opium Yet when the Christians with fleets and treaties had forced their way in opium first the imported then the new native grown swept over the empire like a scourge until to day it menaces China's very existence I have myself been in regions where formerly prosperous families are going to pieces at such an appalling rate that the son of a prominent merchant will be found selling the tiles of his roof and the woodwork of his doors and windows in order to buy the drug The inevitable next step after selling his daughter into slavery is to take his family out on the highroad to beg For the confirmed opium smoker cannot keep up in the struggle for existence The only thing he is fit for is more smoking In the stricken province of Shansi a common remark runs to this effect Eleven out of every ten Shansi men smoke opium A high provincial official put it to me in other words when he said grimly Everybody smokes in Shansi Shansi is but one remember of the seven opium provinces containing together a population of more than one hundred and fifty millions And opium is raised and consumed extensively in every one of the eleven other provinces.
Perhaps the most convincing summing up of China's desperate predicament is found in another translation from a recent Chinese document this time an appeal to the throne from four viceroys The quaintness of the language does not I think impaii its effectiveness and its power as a protest China can never become strong ard stand shoulder to shoulder with the powers of the world i ri e i she can get rid of the habit of opium smoking by her subjects about one quarter of whom have 1 steamed up and down river been reduced to skeletons and look half dead.
It is curious I have suggested that if opium really is new to the Chinese it should have so rapidly gained the upper hand of this huge race Curious but not inexplicable Let me quote from a man who has contributed what promisesto be the last word on the psychology of opium poisoning What was it says De Quincey that did in reality make me an opium eater That affection which finally drove me into the habitur use of opium what was it Pain was it No but misery Casual overcasting of sunshine was it No but blank desolation Gloom was it that might have departed No but settled and abiding darkness And how did De Quincey come to know that opium could relieve misery Because he had taken it before for toothache and had experienced its subtler effects.
Beginning the Habit
Your true opium smoker stretches himself on a divan and gives up ten or fifteen minutes to preparing his thimbleful of the brown drug When it has been heated and worked to the proper consistency he laces it in the tiny bowl of his pipe holds it over a low lamp and raws a few whiffs of the smoke deep into his lungs It seems at first a trivial thing indeed the man who is well fed and properly housed and clothed seems able to keep it up for a considerable time without noticeable ill results The great difficulty in China is of course this that very few opium smokers are well fed and properly housed and clothed.
I heard little about the beautiful dreams and visions which opium is supposed to bring all the smokers with whom I talked could be roughly divided into two classes those who smoked in order to relieve pain or misery and those miserable victims who smoked to relieve the acute physical distress brought on by the opium itself Probably the majority of the victims take it up asja temporary relief many begin in early childhood the mother will give the baby a whiff to stop its crying It is a social vice only among the upper classes The most notable outward effect of this indulgence is the resulting physical weakness and lassitude The opium smoker cannot work hard he finds it difficult to apply his mind to a problem or his body to a task As the habit becomes firmly fastened on him there is a perceptible weakening of his moral fiber he shows himself unequal to emergencies which make any sudden demand upon him If opium is denied him he will lie and steal in order fo obtain it.
Opium smoking is a costly vice A pipeful of a moderately good native product costs more than a laborer can earn in a day consequently the poorer classes smoke an unspeakable compound based on pipe scrapings and charcoal Along the highroads the coolies even scrape the grime from the packsaddles to mix with this dross The clerk earning from twenty five to fifty Mexican dollars a month will frequently spend from ten to twenty dollars a month on opium The typical confirmed smoker is a man who spends a considerable part of the night in smoking himself fo sleep and all the next morning in sleeping off the effects If he is able to work at all it is only during the afternoon and even at that there will be many days when the official or merchant is incompetent to conduct his affairs Thousands of prominent men are ruined every year.
The Cannots of the Cantonese
The Cantonese have what they call The Ten Cannots regarding the Opium Smoker He cannot (1) give up the habit (2) enjoy sleep (3) wait for his turn when sharing his pipe with his friends (4) rise early (5) be cured if sick (6) help relations in need (7) enjoy wealth (8 ) plan anything (9) get credit even when an old customer (10) walk any distance.
This is the land into which the enterprising Christian traders introduced opium and into which they fed opium so persistently and forcibly that at last a good market was developed England did not set out to ruin China One finds no hint of a diabolical purpose to seduce and destroy a wonderful old empire on the other side of the world The ruin worked was incidental to that Far Eastern trade of which England has been so proud It was the triumph of the balance sheet over common humanity.
And so it is to day British India still holds the cream of the trade for the Chinese grown opium cannot compete in quality with the Indian drug The British Indian government raises the poppy in the rich Ganges Valley more than six hundred thousand acres of poppies they raised there last year manufactures it in government factories at Patna and Ghazipur manufactures four fifths of it especially to suit the Chinese taste and sells it at annual government auctions in Calcutta.
I came back over the rim through the same sunken roads over the same brand new railroad where they discounted my Mexican dollars ten per cent through the same dusty crowded Chien Men Gate and into the
(Continued on page 696)
648 SUCCESS MAGAZINE ‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —
