Anyone who contemplates a tramp across China must not get the idea that he can still continue the uses of civilization. For the most part he will have to live pretty well as a Chinese the whole time, and he will find, as I found, that it is easy to give up a thing when you know the impossibility of getting it.—E.J.D.
This was written later. I have altered my views since I have traveled from end to end of Yün-nan. The disappearance of opium, on the contrary, apart from the moral advantage to the people, has done much to place them in a better position financially. In Tali-fu I found not a single shop on the main street "to let," and the trade of the place had gone ahead considerably, and this was a city which people generally supposed would suffer most on account of the non-growth of opium.—E.J.D.
May, 1910. As a matter of fact the date makes no difference, because unfortunately the number of suicides from opium does not seem to have decreased materially in Western China since the opium crusade was started. Upon the slightest provocation a Chinese woman in Yün-nan will take her life, and it is probable that for the five cases which came to my notice through the mission house there were treble that number which did not—E.J.D.