China and the Chinese

by Edmond Plauchut

The opium of Bengal is still preferred by critical smokers, but that of Smyrna is more largely used in medicine, for it contains a greater proportion of morphine, and is sent in large quantities to England, and to Belgium. The culture of the poppy has of late years also been tried in Africa, Australia, and even in parts of America, but so far the opium produced in those countries does not compete with the Asiatic to any perceptible degree.

OPIUM SMUGGLING

As a very little opium represents a considerable money value, smuggling is of course practised on a very large scale, especially in China, where the ingenuity displayed is really extraordinary. All along the coast, and that coast is of immense extent, the illicit trade is briskly carried on. In the South the smuggled drug is brought in in very fleet vessels, of light tonnage, which easily evade the boats of the revenue officers. The steamers plying daily between the open ports of Hong-Kong and Canton do much to help the traffic, for the Celestials, who take passage on them, secrete the precious drug about their own persons in a manner most difficult to detect. Quantities of opium are also often hidden beneath sham planks, in the paddles of the wheels, in the pipes of the fire-engines, and even in the clocks on board. The struggle between the smugglers and the custom-house officers is never-ending, and the skill displayed in concealment on the one side and detection on the other is so nearly equal, that it is rare indeed for either to gain a decisive victory over the other.

There is something truly pathetic in the futile efforts made at various times by the Chinese Government to prevent the importation of opium into the country, and of the many viceroys of provinces to keep it out of the districts under their care. Here is a typical proclamation, issued by a certain Wang in the early days of the trade in the pernicious drug, which gives a very fair idea of what may be called native administrative literature:

THE EVIL E-JEN

"Wang, Imperial Viceroy, makes known the following: Advices have reached us to the effect that in the capital of Kwang-Tung and the neighbouring districts certain E-jen (barbarians from the West) are going about distributing to the people drugs in the form of pills made by fairies and evil genii. It is asserted that those who have absorbed these drugs sweat terribly all over their bodies to such an extent that they die.

"I order all civil and military authorities to seek out the distributors of these diabolical medicines, to arrest them, and to bring them to the Court of Justice, where I will punish them severely. Although there are no proofs that in my own district the E-jen have ventured to sell the pills in question, I have been assured that cakes injurious to health have been distributed to the people. Analyzed with the aid of white of egg, these cakes yielded a residue of maggots.... I immediately ordered the arrest of the presumptuous merchants, but they had already fled beyond my jurisdiction. Fifty strokes from a bamboo-rod on the soles of their feet would have been their punishment. The fact is, I am very much afraid that these wretches have gone to other provinces, there to carry on their trade and do further mischief.

"From another report I learn that every day certain E-jen throw deadly poisonous powders upon the roads; the rain does not destroy their potency for evil; when these powders are trodden under foot a thin, suffocating smoke rises up from them; there are some E-jen who carry this pernicious substance at the end of their fingers, and they have but to rub the head of any one they meet with it for that person to die, his body becoming covered with red spots.

"Have a care, therefore, not to allow yourselves to be duped; I give you notice that at the gates of the town in which I reside I have posted policemen who examine all strangers."

In 1578 the celebrated Chinese savant, Li-Shi-Shen, published his great book on the materials employed in medicine, to which he had devoted his whole life. In this book he gives the history of the poppy and its cultivation, dividing that history into three parts, the first relating to the early days when its properties were little known, that is to say, from the eighth to the eleventh century; the second to the time when the juice of the capsules was discovered to have medicinal properties and became used to alleviate affections of the stomach; and the third when opium was imported in solid form. Li-Shi-Shen justly remarks that it is in the capsule or seed-pod that the opium juice is secreted, and he recommends the use of that juice mixed with honey for certain maladies. He makes fun of a doctor who lived before his time, and had said that the juice of the poppy could kill as surely as a stroke from a sword, but dwells on the immense relief which those suffering from rheumatism and asthma had obtained from its use. This sage of the sixteenth century adds, that in Pekin opium pills are used to arouse sexual passion. There is nothing surprising in this assertion to those who know the Chinese and their fondness for such queer diet as swallows' nests, ginger, the fins of sharks, sea-urchins, etc., because they think they stimulate the senses. It must, however, be added in justice to the Celestials, that they are far less sensual than their neighbours, the Japanese, and this is no small praise.