2
from restrictions there have resulted in a great rise in price which in Urumchi ranges 240 to 280 taels per 100 Chinese ounces. The price in north-west Kansu is from 40 to 50 taels, and a successful smuggler is therefore able to make 100 per cent. profit or more. It is not surprising that most westward travellers attempt to smuggle some of the forbidden drug. A personal incident à propos of this may be of interest. My own servants when at Su Chou were approached by two persons--one of whom was a small official, the other the cart-owner-with proposals to smuggle opium for them in my cart, for which they promised a part of the profits. At Anhsi Chou a similar proposition was made to them, but when they referred the matter to me I strictly forbade them have anything to do with opium. The would-be smugglers no doubt relied on my cart I not being searched by the Customs officials, and in this they were not mistaken. heard no more about the matter, and supposed we had carried no opium, but some days after our arrival in Urumchi it transpired that the carter had himself smuggled 100 ounces for his master. The upshot was curious. Having refused one offer of 240 taels, the mau had with some difficulty found another purchaser, who offered a better price. (The price in Su Chou was 45 taels.) But the latter insisted on having the packet opened, when, to the surprise of the carter, it was found to consist of a layer of opium over a mass of stuff expressed from poppy seeds. Naturally the sale fell through, but the intending purchaser offered to take the packet away and extract the opium, for which he would pay a reasonable price. To this the carter assented. Needless to say, the man did not return, and when the carter found him after much trouble he denied that there was any opium. Though he knew the man was lying, the unfortunate carter had no remedy, as the traffic in opium is illegal, and both would have been punished if the transaction had been discovered by the police. Not only did he lose the handsome profit expected, but he had to return to his master without even the 45 taels which had been spent on the opium in Su Chou,
The visit of Sir A. Hosie to Lanchou has already had effect in stimulating the provincial Government to more energetic efforts to suppress the cultivation of the poppy. Throughout the three districts here dealt with I found proclamations emanating from the Opium Suppression Office at Lanchou had been posted during September in the villages, stating that this form of agriculture was to be stopped once and for all. The local officials were directed to take bonds from the village headmen that no opium would be grown, and every ten families were to be made mutually responsible for infractions of the prohibition. Local authorities of every grade will also be liable to punishment if opium is found growing in their districts. These instructions had already been acted on in Su Chou. I also found another recent proclamation, directing returns to be made of the area under poppy in 1910, and of the amount that had been ploughed up,
The issue of proclamations does not always guarantee that they will be enforced, and next spring must determine how far the provincial Government is in earnest in its campaign against the poppy. In Lanchou a fixed determination to carry it through was professed, and Taotai Peng Ying-chia, the superintendent of the Opium Office, declared to me that he would not have one plant of poppy growing in the province in
1911.
Though I have commented severely on the state of affairs in Kanchou, it is only fair to the present officials to state that they were both new arrivals at the time of my visit.
The loss of the opium trade will inflict a severe blow on the prosperity of north- western Kansu. This district is so isolated from the rest of China that, save for the rice of Kanchou, the export of cereals is unprofitable. Besides medicines such as liquorice and rhubarb, it produces no commodity both portable and of high value, and opium was therefore the staple article on which the people relied to pay for the piece goods, silk goods, and the countless necessaries and luxuries of Chinese life imported from other parts of the Empire.
The Shanshi bankers in Kanchou-fu and Su Chou anticipated a very difficult financial situation in the coming year, owing to the drain of money to the East.
Hsin Chiang.In dealing with the opium question in the new dominion, it has to be borne in mind that this province is inhabited by a mixed population of several races whose attitude to the drug is different. Though, politically, one province, the Chinese habitually speak as if it were divided into a northern and a southern section. The northern section, comprising the valley of the Ili, Tarbagartai, and the series of oases from Manass and Urumchi to Barkul, is called the "Tien Shan Pei Lu," or shortly, the "Pei Lu." The population is preponderatingly Dungan (Mahommedans who are Chinese in all save origin and religion) with an admixture of Turkis and Chinese, the former
3
being more numerous in the west and the latter in the east. The "Tien Shan Nan Lu," or shortly, "Nan Lu," comprises Chinese Turkestan as far as Karashar, and, with Turfan and Hami is inhabited almost exclusively by Mabommedan Turkis (or Ch'an- T'ou's). Of these three races the Turkis do not cultivate or use opium, the Dunguns cultivate but do not use it, and the Chinese both cultivate and use it. It follows, therefore, that very little opium has been grown in Chinese Turkestan, and the only places where I heard of its cultivation were Hami, where there are numerous Chinese and Dungans, and Karashar, where there are Dungans, while in Bugar and Kucha it had been grown by a few Chinese tenant farmers, and in Osh Turfan by Dungans and settled Kirghiz.
On the Pei Lu poppy cultivation was more extensive and carried on in every district, but principally at Kuch'eng (officially Ch'it'ai hsien), Manass (Snilai hsien), and in the valley of the Ili. In the Kuch'eng district it is probable that the Chinese form the majority of the population. They are nearly all recent immigrants, mainly from Shensi and Kansu, and they usually have no wish to make the new dominion their permanent home, but rather intend to make money as quickly as possible and return to their native places. Shensi and Kansu, being two of the principal opium provinces of China, it is not surprising that inmigrants from those parts should turn their attention to this crop, which yields large and quick returns. In consequence there has developed a class of tenant farmers who are known as the "Hua K'o," or "poppy strangers." (In this province the poppy is colloquially called Hua-hua-tan," literally "Flowers," not Ying-su" as elsewhere.) Their practice is to sow the fields in the autumn, and, being enencumbered with wives and families, to spend the long winter in the towns or in their native place, returning in the spring to tend and harvest their crops. They are turbulent people, and a constant menace to peace and good order.
V
65
In the western part of the Pei Lu both Dungans and Chinese engage in cultivating the poppy.
The output of opium in this province seems to have been insufficient even for the needs of the small Chinese population, and was supplemented by imports from other provinces and from Russian Asia. For many years no opium has entered the province from India.
About
Up to the end of 1909 the opium edicts were but languidly enforced in the Hsin Chiang, although the central Government was led to believe that energetic action was being taken. The fault does not seem to rest with the governor so much as with his subordinates, who persistently misinformed him. The first measures to stop the cultivation of the poppy in pursuance of the Imperial decrees were taken in 1907, when the governor instructed the local officials that it was to cease. the same time an" opium-suppression office" was established under the superintendence of the provincial judge (who is also Taotai of Urumchi). As the
governor, however, admits in a later proclamation the subordinate officials having a period of ten years before them in which to carry out his orders did not attack the matter with much zeal, and little was done to restrict cultivation. But in the winter of 1908-9 an Imperial edict was received directing that the opium regulations were to be enforced in their entirety in the new dominion within one year. The governor asked for an extension to three years, but was told by the opium commissioners in Peking that as the Hsin Chiang was one of the minor opium-producing provinces, cultivation of the poppy was to be entirely stopped by the latter part of 1909 so as to further the prevention of the traffic in and consumption of the drug. He was also directed to issue the strictest injunctions in this sense to his subordinates and to report to the throne when they had been effectively executed.
In 1909 the governor seems to have gone still further, for orders were issued that both the sale and consumption of opium was also to be stopped within the year.
In January of the same year the opium office in Urumchi commenced to distribute free an opium remedy, prepared according to a prescription of Lin Tse-hsu, the famous High Commissioner at Canton in the days of the first English war, and also provided a free consulting doctor. About the same time it was directed that smokers were to be registered, and permits to buy opium in decreasing quantities issued to them. June and December were fixed as the dates by which those below and above 60 years of age were to have broken off the habit, but in the former case the limit was subsequently extended to September. In July, in order to enforce the prohibitions niore effectively, the local authorities, in places where the habit was prevalent, were directed to make a census of the population and to affix door-plates on each house, recording the names, number, and occupation of the inhabitants, and details of those who had been or were still smokers of opium. The census, I found, had been made
(1897 -1]
B 2
419