opium and Tobacco 195 



though foolish pastime. As to eradicating the vice by edict, 

 it would amount to a social revolution, such as in the history 

 of the world has never yet been carried out. Even attempts 

 to stay its cultivation, which have been tried by well- 

 meaning but impracticable philanthropists, who are to 

 be found in China as in the West, have all proved futUe. 

 As my former host at Lin chai kou informed me, himself a 

 non-smoker, if it were forbidden to collect the drug, his 

 winter crop of poppy would still pay him for its other pro- 

 ducts, such as the oil produced from the seed, the lye used 

 in dying, produced from the ash of the stalk, and the heavy 

 crop of leaves which goes to feed the pigs which every 

 Chinaman keeps. Nor, with the Chinese system of apply- 

 ing all the town manure to the fields, does the crop exhaust 

 the ground or render the summer crop of maize any less 

 prolific. Opium seldom appears planted on the level paddy- 

 fields, but commonly on declivities too steep to grow much 

 else with profit. Still it would be best abandoned altogether. 



Tobacco is another very important product, the quality 

 of the Szechuan tobacco being far superior to that of any 

 other of the eighteen provinces. It is curious to a foreigner 

 accustomed only to the smoking of the coast provinces, 

 where a Lilliputian bowl is filled for each inhalation, and the 

 burning ash is perpetually being knocked out on the floor — 

 not a little to the annoyance of the neat-minded Western — 

 to see a totally different method here adopted. The leaf is 

 carried in a pouch (filling and wrapper separate), and a 

 short cigar made up on each occasion, which is leisurely 

 smoked in a pipe. The tobacco is of excellent flavour, and 

 costs about fourpence a pound. 



Our host had expected us to stay a night with him, and 

 was not a little put out upon my representing that I must 

 positively be in Chung-king that day. The fact was, day 



