CO129-406 - Public Offices - 1913 — Page 18

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seems little doubt that milder measures would have failed to accomplish the desired end. The sudden and sweeping character of the repressive campaign must be accepted as proof of the determination of the Hunan authorities to justify their claim to a place

on the free list.

From Changsha to Paoching, which is roughly in the centre of the province, the whole party travelled together. With the permanent escort provided by the Provincial Goverument, the local escorts from the various prefectures, and the porters necessary for It was evident that it would so large a party, we often numbered as many as 200 men. be impossible to accommodate and feed so large a party on the small roads, and, when we separated at Paoching, I felt bound to insist on a substantial reduction in the retinue. The murder of two opium deputies at Hsu-pu last year, and the constant skirmishes between the soldiers and the farmers had made the authorities genuinely anxious for our safety. We had no trouble from the people, however, throughout the journey, and our only anxiety was the feeding, even of a small party, in many of the remoter districts.

The Miaos gave no sign of the unfriendliness against which we had been so gravely warned by the officials. They are an unusually fine race of men and women, of good physique and with pleasant open faces. They retain their own language and customs, and their tribal ornaments, but their dress differs little from that of the Chinese. They are the most prosperous and the most civilised of the tribesmen whom I have met in China, and although they give constant trouble to the Chinese, and resent their inter- ference and their attempts at administration, it was evident that they were well disposed towards us as foreigners. Their villages are built in commanding positions on the very crests of the hills, and they are picturesque, well built, and defiant, in striking A line of forts and block- contrast to the hidden villages of the tribesmen further west. houses has been built by the Chinese to command the roads and to keep open communi- cations, and they are now endeavouring to secure moral hold over the tribesmen by founding a regiment of them, in which the men have insisted on the appointment of Miao officers.

There is a tendency for the Chinese to intermarry with Miao women, and, as is generally the case in union between the Chinese and a cognate race, the children are particularly fine specimens both physically and mentally. I imagine that Hunan owes much of its prosperity and individuality to the Miao blood, which is evidently the aboriginal stock of the country,

The greater part of Southern and Western Hunan consists of a plateau of about 1,500 feet, broken by mountain peaks of great grandeur and beauty. Forests of pine and fir cover the mountain sides, the passes are from 3,000 to 5,000 feet in height, and at this season of the year the country is intersected by countless torrents, bordered by a wealth of flowers, with rhododendrons, azaleas, and many flowering shrubs. For only two days were we free of rain, which fell almost incessantly, making the steep tracks difficult and dangerous. In spite of constant fever, arising no doubt from the continual damp and the exhausting marches, the porters and soldiers were willing and good tempered, and the Hunanese are a fine sturdy race with whom it is a pleasure to travel. The mountain roads link up a line of scattered villages surrounded by fields of rice, wheat, rape, buckwheat, and hemp. The villages have an architectural beauty which never ceases to astonish one in these remote and thinly-peopled regions. The timbered farm-houses, the graceful bridges, and fine ancestral halls in their setting of golden rape flowers against dark rocks and pines, show a skill in construction and an artistic perception amongst these farmers of Hunan which marks them with an individuality all their own. Farmers by tradition and inheritance, they have given to China a line of scholars, engineers, administrators, and Empire builders of whom they are justly proud. Their fierce resistance to any foreign encroachment on their province and their rights has created an impression of an anti-foreign sentiment among the people. In the course of our tour, however, we were welcomed every evening by the representative men of the villages, and they seemed to me friendly, interested, and intelligent, with a directness of mind and expression which is unusual among the Chinese.

The evidence of independent travellers tends to show that opium has not been produced near the towns or along the main roads of Hunan for several years past, but official proclamatious and the provincial press have admitted the failure of the authorities to clear these outlying mountain villages, where transport is difficult, and a light easily-carried commodity such as opium produced. The Hunanese farmer, moreover, is an independent and vigorous personality, the most profitable crop which can be and it was evident to us that he would make a definite struggle against official

interference unless it was backed by overwhelming force. The campaign against the poppy has been well organised and effective; a line of garrisons has been stretched along the whole of the southern and western borders; groups of five families have been bound together for preventive purposes with a bond of inutual responsibility under heavy penalties; the teachers in the Government schools now existing in every rural community have been charged with opium-intelligence work as part of their official duties; and numbers of deputies have scoured the country offering rewards for every poppy plant produced by informers. In the Paoching district 5 dollars a root was offered last season, and the fact that the reward was never claimed appeared to prove the prefecture free of poppy. In Kwei-yang Hsien the reward had to be reduced to 1 cash a plant owing to the numbers brought in, but even here a careful examination by Mr. King failed to reveal any crops at harvest time this year.

Throughout the southern and western districts also the military operations have been successful in clearing the country, though the campaign has been accompanied by cruelty and corruption. The evidence all pointed to the fact that the poppy had been sown in small patches over an extensive area, but that the total amount under cultivation was inconsiderable. The fact that few fields were lying fallow appeared to me to prove that the uprooted opium crops could not have covered very much ground, and that the harvest would have had very little effect on the general market even in the province itself. Even the steep hillsides were planted with wood-oil trees of from two to four years' growth, showing that the main campaign against the poppy had taken place several seasons ago. In some places, where the campaign of destruction had been so hurried that there had not been time to uproot all the crops, the water had been let into the fields, and the poppy plants were serving as a somewhat extravagant fertiliser for the ensuing rice crops.

As to the use of opium, it was difficult to obtain precise information, for we were accompanied by large escorts, which were inclined to hamper our free intercourse with the people.

Many of the local soldiers, however, had taken part in the preventive campaigns, and their personal experiences proved au interesting commentary on the accounts of the officials. A number of smokers, both men and women, have undoubtedly been executed in different parts of the province, but I could obtain no exact information as to the numbers of victims in the western area, and I think that the campaign in that part of the province has been conducted on broad lines rather than against individuals, and that it has been mainly concerned with the destruction of the crops.

The Republican officials are generally young men who have been educated in Japan, and few, if any, of them indulge in opium smoking. The soldiers also appear to be quite free from the habit, and in their case the beneficial results of freedom from the drug are beyond all question. In some of the larger centres, notably in Hung-chiang and Shen-chou-fu, large numbers of the people have the opium complexion, but we were unable to obtain any direct evidence of smoking or of the use of opium pills, and the penetrating smell of the drug, once so common in the inns and on the boats, was entirely absent. Opium pills could not be bought by our party in any of the towns or villages through which we passed, nor could they obtain opium. There is little doubt that considerable numbers of the population still use the drug in one form or another, but the sale is always attended with difficulty and danger, and it is only supplied to those who are well known. The price is so high too, ranging from three dollars an ounce in Hung-chiang and Shen-chou to nine dollars in Changsha, that it is far beyond the means of the masses.

I learned from men who were coming in from the neighbouring provinces that opium can still be freely grown and used immediately across the Kueichow border, and that numbers of Hunau coolies prefer to remain in that province, where the scale of wage is lower than in Hunan, rather than abandon the use of the drug, which is of very real service to those engaged in hard manual labour under trying climatic conditions. The abolition of opium would doubtless benefit China in many ways, but an experience of travelling in many provinces in the interior convinces me that it will be a very real loss to the over-burdened carrying coolie and the worker in the wet paddy fields. This last journey was certainly one of unusual hardship for our caravan, owing to the bad weather and the difficult roads, but I have never seen so much suffering among the porters, who arrived day after day at the end of their long marches They wet and cold and too exhausted to sleep or eat without some simple stimulant. used the country liquor as an alternative to opium, but there can be little question that it is more expensive, more deleterious, and less effective as a remedy than the pipe of opium to which they have been accustomed, and which has not prevented the coolie of the interior from pursuing an active life to a ripe and healthy old age.

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