The truth about opium

by William H. Brereton

In ascending the river, wherever cultivation existed we found numerous fields of poppy. Even the sandy banks were often planted with it down to the water’s edge: but it was not until we began our land journey in Yunnan that we fairly realised the enormous extent of its production. With some fear of being discredited, but at the same time with a consciousness that I am under-estimating-the production, I estimate that the poppy-fields constitute a third of the whole cultivation of Yunnan.

We saw the gradual process of its growth, from the appearance of the young spikelets above ground in January, or earlier, to the full luxuriance of the red, white, and purple flowers, which were already falling in May. In that month the farmers were trying the juice, but we did not see the harvest gathered. We walked some hundreds of miles through poppies; we breakfasted among poppies; we shot wild ducks in the poppies. Even wretched little hovels in the mountains were generally attended by a poppy patch.

The ducks, called locally “opium ducks,” which frequently supplied us with a meal, do really appear, as affirmed by the natives, to stupefy themselves by feeding on the narcotic vegetable. We could walk openly up to within twenty yards of them, and even then they rose very languidly. We are not, however, compelled to believe, with the natives, that the flesh of these birds is so impregnated with laudanum as to exercise a soporific influence on the consumer. They are found in great numbers in the plain of Tung-ch’uan, in Northern Yunnan, and turn out to be the Tadorna vulpanser.

In the same district, and in no other, we met with the Grus cinerea, an imposing bird, which is also a frequenter of opium-fields.

The poppy appeared to us to thrive in every kind of soil, from the low sandy borders of the Yang-tyu to the rocky heights of Western Yunnan; but it seemed more at home, or at any rate was more abundant, in the marshy valleys near Yung-ch’uan, at an elevation of seven thousand and sixty feet (seven thousand one hundred and fifty feet according to Garnier).

I am not concerned here with the projects or prospects of the Society for the Abolition of Opium: if, however, they desire to give the strongest impetus to its growth in Yunnan, let them by all means discourage its production in India.

Now I have given you some very important evidence upon the two fallacies before us; but perhaps, after all, the best testimony upon the subject is that of Mr. Turner himself. He says, at page 13 of his book:—

“Everywhere, in all climates, on every soil, in every variety and condition of circumstances throughout that vast empire, the Chinese smoke opium, but nowhere do they all smoke. The smokers are but a per-centage, greater or smaller in different places.”

I quite agree with him on this point. But here the question arises, where is the drug procured which is smoked in every part of the eighteen provinces of this vast Empire, equal in extent to Europe? Surely not from abroad, because that great China authority, Sir Robert Hart, tells us in his Yellow Book that all the Indian and Persian opium imported into China is sufficient only to supply one third of one per cent. of the population with a small portion annually of the drug. Not from India, because there are many provinces in China—and a province there means a territory as large as Great Britain—into which a particle of the Indian drug has seldom or never been introduced. Whence, then, comes the great bulk of the drug to satisfy all these smokers? Surely it must be from Chinese soil, from the opium fields surrounding their own homes, which are to be seen in every province of the Empire.

Let us now return to the Yellow-book of Sir Robert Hart, to which I have referred in the former lecture, and which seems to me to afford all the evidence on this subject that is really wanted. It is admitted on both sides that opium smoking is more or less prevalent throughout every province of China, on every soil, whether in the valleys or on the hills and mountains. Sir Robert Hart sent out a circular to the foreign Commissioners of Customs at all the Treaty Ports in China, Hainan, and Formosa,—two large islands lying respectively off the south and south-east coast of China,—and the returns show that there are many opium-smoking shops in each of these Treaty Ports, and that the gross quantity of Indian and other foreign opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests. Those returns also reveal the fact that in almost every case foreign opium is used for mixing with the native drug, which is of inferior quality and, there can be no doubt, invariably adulterated; that a large amount of native opium is grown and sold; and that the custom of opium smoking is more or less universal. Suppose we take the case of Canton, as being a very large city. We may find, perhaps, two or three hundred opium shops there, but the people who attend them are not the better class of Chinese. They are exactly the same class of people who frequent the drinking shops of London and other large cities in England. The respectable, well-to-do people in Canton, who can afford to keep the drug in their own houses, would not enter an opium shop any more than a respectable person here would frequent a public-house. If a stranger in London looked into the public-houses and saw men and women drinking there, he would come to a false conclusion if he thought that none but such people drank beer, spirits, or wine. We know that in almost every private house here there is more or less liquor of all kinds kept and consumed. The drinking shops furnish a mere indication of the amount of alcoholic liquors drunk in a town. It is exactly the same with the opium shops. They show the prevalence of the custom throughout the country. If you find two hundred opium shops in Canton, and I am sure there are not fewer there, you may be not less certain that opium is smoked in the great majority of private and business houses in Canton. It is the same in all the Treaty Ports. The opium-smoking shops in China may be counted by hundreds and thousands, because China is as large as Europe, and more populous.