Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/273

Rh it. In Ch'êngtu it was found in 1902 that there were no less than 7500 opium dens, or one den to every 67 of a population of half a million; and 1000 cash a-month was the sum extracted from each den by the provincial governing body. "Much of the land," we are told by a recent traveller in Kan-su, "upon which opium is grown is in the hands of magistrates and even higher officials," and I have shown in an earlier chapter that 50 acres under the poppy means an income exceeding by something like 780,000 cash the income which would be derived by the owner from the same area under wheat. Perhaps the most striking example of what the cultivation of the poppy means to the people in these parts is provided by a statement made to me by the President of the Piece-Goods Guild in Sui Fu. In 1905, I was told, the trade in grey shirtings and cotton Italians done between Sui Fu and Yün-nan amounted to 60,000 taels, whereas, owing to the failure of the Yün-nan opium crop in the spring of