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Updated: May 23, 2025
Edicts are still issued against the use of opium. They are drawn up by Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own them. In the City Temple of Chungking there is a warning to opium-eaters.
He knows his own people, from the governor of the island to the ragged opium-smoking beggar, and has influence with them all." There were many others besides A Hoa to render the missionary faithful help; among them Sun-a and Tan He, the latter pastor of the church of Sin-tiam; and just because Kai Bok-su was away they worked the harder, that he might receive a good report of them on his return.
Opium smoking appears to be indulged in to a great extent here, two out of the three chapar men putting in a good portion of their time "hitting" the seductive pipe, and tinkering with their opium-smoking apparatus.
Extreme consideration for infancy and old age, the growing of long finger-nails, the supposed debilitation arising from opium-smoking, the universal usage of fans, the wearing of flowing garments and braided hair, and the discharging of domestic duties which in other countries fall to the lot of women, are probably largely accountable for the charges of effeminacy.
All three men were physically well-developed, with large frames, showing unusual muscular strength and endurance, and differed, indeed, from those resurrected corpses whose fleshless figures, drawn by imaginative Chinese artists, we have known for years to be typical of our poor lost brothers the opium-smoking millions of China.
That spirit-drinking at home is no excuse for opium-smoking abroad, I admit; but I would recommend the well-intentioned persons who have of late been raising such an outcry on the subject of opium, to begin at home, and attempt to reform their own countrymen: they may then come to China with a clear conscience, and preach reform to the poor opium-smoker.
Many thousands of careers were wrecked by the war, and to the war and the consequent absence of her husband Rita undoubtedly owed her relapse into opium-smoking. That she would have continued secretly to employ cocaine, veronal, and possibly morphine was probable enough; but the constant society of Monte Irvin must have made it extremely difficult for her to indulge the craving for chandu.
In some provinces about ninety per cent. of the officials were addicted to opium-smoking, and in all provinces a huge percentage of the people were addicts. Anyway, China has made this gigantic effort to get rid of opium, and she has almost succeeded; April 1 of next year will see the end of the whole sordid business.
These constitute the opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling, purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color. The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse under which vast, populous China groans.
Opium-smoking checks the increase, and thereby does good; a view of the question not altogether unworthy of attention. Checking the increase of population in this way is, at all events, better than adopting the plan of drowning female infants; not an uncommon one in China.
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