Page:James Hudson Maurer - The Far East (1912).pdf/13

 that has struck even the Chinese, its victims, with horror.

China hag passed from misery to disaster.

The trade in Indian opium has been hurt, to be sure, but not supplanted.

It will never be supplanted until the British Government deliberately puts it down. For the Chinese cannot raise opium which competes in quality with the Indian drug. Indian opium is in steady demand for the purpose of mixing with Chinese opium. No duties can keep it out; duties simply increase the cost to the Chinese consumer—simply ruin him a bit more rapidly.

The opium provinces of China, that is, the provinces which have been most nearly completely ruined by opium, lie well back in the interior. They cover roughly an area of 1,200 miles long by half as wide, say about one-third the area of the United States, and they support, after a fashion, a population of about 160,000,000.

Shansi Province is a heap of ruins. The same sad conditions exist at Szechuan, Yunnan and Kneichow, and a half dozen other places.

In the Chao Cheng district the people have been more or less ruined by opium. In Taiku there is a large family by the name of Meng, perhaps the wealthiest family in the province of Shansi. For the past few years they have been steadily going down, simply from the fact that all the heads of the family have become opium users. In Taiken there is a large fair held each year and all the old bronzes, porcelains, furniture, etc., that this family possesses are sold, Each year more is brought out to be sold.

Another rich man in Jen Tsuen possessed a fine summer residence previous to 1900. The residence contained several large houses an@ some fine trees and shrubs, but during the last seven years he has taken to opium it has been steadily going down. He has been selling out his residences, pulling down the houses and cutting down the trees and selling the wood and old bricks. He is now a beggar in the streets of Jen Tsuen. All through the hills west of Tai Yuan-fu the peasants are addicted to the use of opium; about seventy per cent. of the population take opium in one form or another.

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 places it in a tiny bowl of his pipe, holds it over a low lamp and draws a few whiffs of smoke into his lungs.