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Updated: May 31, 2025
It is a well-known fact that should a Chinese suffering from the extreme emaciation of disease be also in the habit of using the opium-pipe, it is the pipe and not the disease that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred will be wrongly blamed as the cause of the emaciation. During the year 1893 4275 tons of Indian opium were imported into China.
The sudden flood of joy which this thought gave rise to came very near upsetting him again, and he had to resort to an opium-pipe to quiet his nerves. He attended personally to the ceremonies of interring the decollated deceased, and then shut himself up for a week, to settle his mind.
He was lying on his side undergoing treatment. An opium-pipe was held to his lips by one comrade, while another rolled the pellet of opium and placed it heated in the pipe-bowl, so that he might inhale its fumes. In the morning the officer accompanied me to the gate of the stockade and bade me good-bye, with many unintelligible expressions of good will.
Two of the men were past middle age; the third was a strapping young fellow of twenty-five. They may have only recently acquired the habit, I had no means of asking them; but those who know Western China will tell you that it is almost certain that the two elder men had used the opium-pipe as a stimulant since they were as young as their companion.
Upon these entrancing and well-discussed plans, however, the shadow of the grasping and commonplace Ah-Ping has fallen like the inopportune opium-pipe from the mouth of a person examining substances of an explosive nature; for the one referred to demands a large and utterly unobtainable amount of taels before he will suffer his greatly-sought-after daughter to accept the gifts of irretrievable intention.
He patiently endeavors to forget it all, however, and to banish the whole troublesome world from his thoughts, by producing his opium-pipe and lamp and attempting to smoke. But just as he is getting comfortably settled down to rolling the little knob of opium on the needle and has puckered his lips for a good pull, a decayed turnip comes sailing through the open panel and hits him on the back.
The dull noxious smell that permeated their quarters at all times, in spite of enforced ventilation and the well-observed rules of the ship, was often wafted unpleasantly towards our cabins and deck, telling a significant story of the opium-pipe, and a certain uncleanliness of person peculiar to Africans and Mongolians.
He was an opium-eater rather than an opium-smoker; and he ate the ash from the opium-pipe, instead of the opium itself the most vicious of the methods of taking opium. He was the nearest approach I saw in China to the Exeter Hall type of opium-eater, whose "wasted limbs and palsied hands" cry out against the sin of the opium traffic.
"'On the bed, close to the left side of the body, was a brass opium-pipe of a pattern which I believe is made in China. The bowl of the pipe contained a small quantity of charcoal, and a fragment of opium together with some ash, and there was on the bed a little ash which appeared to have dropped from the bowl when the pipe fell or was laid down.
Over his shoulder was slung a bag from which projected his opium-pipe; a tobacco pipe and tobacco box hung at his girdle; a green glass bottle of crude opium he carried round his neck. The chairen is the policeman of China, the lictor of the magistrate, the satellite of the official; the soldier is the representative of military authority.
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