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Updated: June 13, 2025
The Chinese do not want our opium it competes with their own. In the three adjoining provinces of Szechuen, Yunnan, and Kweichow they grow their own opium; but they grow more than they need, and have a large surplus to export to other parts of the Empire.
The Viceroy of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow, Wong-wen-shao, is one of the most enlightened rulers in China. No stranger could fail to be impressed with his keen intellectual face and courtly grace of manner. His career has been a distinguished one. Good fortune attended him even at his birth. He is a native of Hangchow, in Chehkiang, a city famous in China for its coffins.
"You don't know what I've endured." "Trading over the border alone?" Gregory inquired. The man shook his head. "Tried to walk across from Pekin," he said, "viâ Szechuen and Yunnan. Nearly died of dysentery in Yunnan city. While I was there my servants deserted me, taking with them every halfpenny I possessed.
But circumstances had made it imperative for him and his friends to telegraph the Yunnan ultimatum a fortnight sooner than it should have been dispatched, and the warning thus conveyed to the Central Government largely crippled the Yunnan offensive. The circumstances which had made instant action necessary were as follows.
The war was conducted with exceptional ferocity on both sides, and witnessed more than the usual amount of falseness and breach of faith common to Oriental struggles. Nobody benefited by the contest, and the prosperity of Yunnan, which at one time had been far from inconsiderable, sank to the lowest possible point.
And the ascent from the river was steeper than the descent into it; yet the railway which is to be built over this trade-route between Burma and Yunnan will have other engineering difficulties to contend with even greater than this. My soldier to-day was a boy of fifteen or sixteen. He was armed with a revolver, and bore himself valiantly.
But finally the position was such that he telegraphed to General Tsao-ao that unless the Yunnan arrangements were hastened he would have to leave Nanking and abandon this important centre to one of Yuan Shih-kai's own henchmen which meant the end of all hopes of the Yangtsze Valley rising EN MASSE.
In conformity with his policy of bringing to Peking all who might challenge his authority, he had induced General Tsao-ao, since the latter had played no part in the rebellion of 1913, to lay down his office of Yunnan Governor-General and join him in the capital at the beginning of 1914 another high provincial appointment being held out to him as a bait.
It is the centre of a large though rather scantily populated district abounding in the great staples, rice, beans, and millet, as well as in fruit and vegetables. Formerly Yunnan stood in the forefront of opium-producing provinces, but when I was there not a poppy-field was to be seen.
Yunnan City is one of the great cities of China, not so much in size as in importance. It is within easy access at all seasons of the year of the French colony of Tonquin, whereas the trade route from here to British Burma is long, arduous, and mountainous, and in its Western portions is closed to traffic during the rains.
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