Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/318

246 poverty-stricken wilderness. The plain is 24 miles by 5, and contains about 200 villages, excellently built. The city itself has about 12,000 inhabitants.... The streets are densely crowded every ten days for market." It must be remembered that the buying capacity of the people depends upon the success or failure of the opium and rice crops. The export of opium across the Sino-Burmese frontier is disallowed by treaty, hence the tendency to import foreign goods from other directions—i.e., the direction in which they sell their opium. Other possible exports suggested by Litton are ponies, mules, musk, hemp, straw-braid, rhubarb, drugs consumed by the Chinese, wool and furs from Li-chiang, bristles, and silk from north-west Ssŭch'uan. I am inclined to doubt the value of the mules and ponies of this part of China as an article of export, and if the campaign against opium cultivation is to bear fruit, I see very little prospect of Yün-nan providing an expanding market for foreign goods for many years to come.