H. E. TONG SHAO-I One of the Leaders of the Opium Reform Movement in China...

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These chapters were originally published during 1907 and 1908 in Success Magazine . Though frankly journalistic in tone, the book presents something more than the hasty conclusions of a journalist. During its preparation the author travelled around the world, inquiring into the problem at first hand in China and in England, reading all available printed matter which seemed to bear in any way on the subject, and interviewing several hundred gentlemen who have had special opportunities to study th

In September, 1906, an edict was issued from the Imperial Court at Peking which states China’s predicament with naïveté and vigour. “The cultivation of the poppy,” runs the edict, in the authorized translation, “is the greatest iniquity in agriculture, and the provinces of Szechuen, Shensi, Kansu, Yunnan, Kweichow, Shansi, and Kanghuai abound in its product, which, in fact, is found everywhere. Now that it is decided to abandon opium smoking within ten years, the limiting of this cultivation sho

In the splendid, golden days of the East India Company, the great Warren Hastings put himself on record in these frank words: “Opium is a pernicious article of luxury, which ought not to be permitted but for the purpose of foreign commerce only.” The new traffic promised to solve the Indian fiscal problem, if skillfully managed; accordingly, the production and manufacture of opium was made a government monopoly. China, after all, was a long way off—and Chinamen were only Chinamen. That the East

The opium provinces of China—that is, the provinces which have been most nearly completely ruined by opium—lie well back in the interior. They cover, roughly, an area 1,200 miles long by half as wide, say about one-third the area of the United States; and they support, after a fashion, a population of about 160,000,000. There had been plenty of evidence obtainable at Shanghai, Hankow, Peking, and Tientsin, of the terrible ravages of opium in these regions, but it seemed advisable to make a journ

China is the land of paradox. If it is an absolute, despotic monarchy, it is also a very democratic country, with its self-made men, its powerful public opinion, and a “states’ rights” question of its own. It is one of the most corrupt of nations; on the other hand, the standard of personal and commercial honesty is probably higher in China than in any other country in the world. Woman, in China, is made to serve; her status is so low that it would be a discourtesy even to ask a man if he has a

In her development China is dependent on the adoption of Western ideas and is influenced by the example set by Western civilization. This modernizing influence is strongest at the point where the Westerner meets the Chinaman, where the two civilizations come into direct contact. At Shanghai, Tientsin, Hankow, Hongkong, and the other ports there are some thirty to forty thousand Europeans, Englishmen, and Americans. They build splendid buildings and lay good pavements. They bring with them the be

If you could avoid the suburbs of mud huts and walled compounds, and step directly down from an airship on the broad piazza of the Astor House at Tientsin (no treaty port is complete without its Astor House), you might also imagine yourself in a thriving English town. Set about this piazza are round tables, in bowers of potted plants, where sit Britishers, Germans, and Americans, with a gay sprinkling of soldiery. Across the street there is a green little park, where plump British babies are whe

We have seen, in the preceding chapters, that the Anglo-Indian government controls absolutely the production of opium in India, prepares the drug for the market in government-owned and government-operated factories, and sells it at monthly auctions. Let me also recall to the reader that four-fifths of this opium is prepared to suit the known taste of Chinese consumers. The annual value to the Anglo-Indian government of this curious industry, it will be recalled, is well over $20,000,000. Now we

An observant correspondent recently wrote from Shanghai to a New York newspaper: “China has missed catching the fire of the West in the manner of Japan, and has lain idle and supine while neighbour and foreigner despoiled her. Her statesmanship has been languid and irresolute, and her armies slow and spiritless in the field. Observers who know China, and are familiar at the same time with the symptoms of opium, say that it is as if the listless symptoms of the drug were to be seen in the very na

Editor “Success Magazine”: It is fitting that in the columns of Success , a magazine which has so recently investigated and so thoroughly and ably reported upon the opium curse in China, there should appear the account of a unique ceremony held in the International Settlement of Shanghai, illustrating in a striking manner the general feeling of the Chinese towards the anti-opium movement and setting an example that will make its influence felt in the most remote provinces of the empire. In respo