Drugging a Nation: The Story of China and the Opium Curse

All these evidences would seem to indicate that the Chinese people, on the one hand, have an innate fear of and respect for their government and their law, such as they are; and that the government, on the other hand, is, in the matter of enforcing the traditional law, one of the most powerful governments on earth. None but an exceedingly well-organized government could deliberately incite its people to repeated riots and massacres without losing control of them. The Chinese government has seemed to have not the slightest difficulty in keeping the people quiet – when it wanted to. The story of Shantung Province makes this clear. It was driven into what appeared to be anarchy by a rabid governor. But only a few months later this governor’s successor had little difficulty in keeping the entire province in almost perfect order while the adjoining province was actually at war with the allied powers of the world and was overrun with foreign troops. No; a government which has within it the power, on occasion, to carry through such an achievement as this, can hardly be called weak.

We begin, then, by admitting that the Chinese government has the strength and the organization necessary to carry out any ordinary reform – if it wants to. The putting down of the opium evil is, of course, no ordinary reform. It is an undertaking so colossal and so desperate that it staggers imagination, as I trust I have made plain in the preceding articles. But setting aside, for the moment, our doubts as to whether or not the Chinese government, or any other government on earth, could hope to check so insidious and pervading an evil, we have to consider other doubts which arise from even a slight acquaintance with that puzzling organism, the Chinese official mind. If the Chinese business man is, as many think, the most honest and straightforward business man on earth, the Chinese official, or mandarin, is about the most subtle and bewildering. His duplicity is simply beyond our understanding. He has a bland and childish smile, but his ways are peculiar. Most of us know that our own state department has a neat little custom of issuing letters to travellers ordering our diplomatic and consular representatives abroad to extend special courtesies, and sending, at the same time, a notice to these same representatives advising them to take no notice of the letters. In Chinese diplomacy everything is done in this way, but very much more so. Documents issued by the Chinese government usually bear about the same relation to any existing facts or intentions as a Thanksgiving proclamation does. You must be very astute, indeed, to perceive from the speech, manner, or writing of a mandarin what he is really getting at. Motive underlies motive; self-interest lies deeper still; and the base of it all is an Oriental conception of life and affairs which cannot be so remodelled or reshaped as to fit into our square-shaped Western minds. No one else was so eloquent on the horrors of opium as the great Li Hung Chang, when talking with foreigners; yet Li Hung Chang was one of the largest producers of opium in China. When the Chinese army, under imperial direction, was fiercely bombarding the legations in Peking, the imperial government was officially sending fruit and other delicacies, accompanied by courteous notes, asking if there was not something they could do for the comfort of the hard-pressed foreigners.

This indirection would seem to be the result of a constant effort, on the part of everybody in authority, to shirk the responsibility for difficult situations. Under a system which holds a man mercilessly accountable for carrying through any undertaking for which he is known to be responsible, he naturally tries to avoid assuming any responsibility whatever. An official is punished for failure and rewarded for success in China, as in other countries. And the official on whom is saddled the extremely difficult job of pleasing, at one time, an empress who believes that a Boxer can render himself invisible to foreign sharpshooters by a little mumbling and dancing, a set of courtiers and palace eunuchs who are constantly undermining one another with the deepest Oriental guile, a populace with little more understanding and knowledge of the world than the children of Israel in the Sinai Peninsula, and a hostile band of keen, modern diplomats with trade interests and “concessions” on their tongues and machine guns and magazine rifles at call in their legation compounds, is not in for an easy time.

It hardly seems, then, as if we should blame the Chinese official too harshly if his whole career appears to be made up of a series of “side-steppings” and “ducks” – of what the American boxer aptly calls “foot work.” On the other hand, it is not difficult to sympathize with the foreign diplomat who has, year after year, to play this baffling game. He is always making progress and never getting anywhere. He has his choice of going mad or settling down into a confirmed and weary cynicism. In most cases he chooses the latter, and ultimately drifts into a frame of mind in which he doubts anything and everything. He takes it for granted that the Chinese government is always insincere. It is incredible to him that a Chinese official could mean what he says. And so, when the Chinese government declared against the opium evil, the cynical foreign diplomats and traders at once began looking between and behind the lines in the effort to find out what the crafty yellow men were really getting at. That they might mean what they said seemed wholly out of the question. But what deep motive might underlie the proposal was a puzzle. At first the gossips of Peking and the ports ran to the effect that the real scheme was to arouse the anti-opium public opinion in England, and force the British Indian government to give up its opium business. Very good, so far. But why? In order that China, by successfully shutting out the Indian opium, might set up a government monopoly of its own, for revenue, of the home-grown drug? This was the first notion at Peking and the ports. I heard it voiced frequently everywhere. But it proved a hard theory to maintain.

In the first place, the Chinese government could set up a pretty effective government opium business, if it wanted to, without bothering about the Indian-grown drug. Opium is produced everywhere in China. The demand has grown to a point where the Indian article alone could not begin to supply it. But, on the other hand, the stopping of the importation is necessarily the first step in combating the evil; for, if the Chinese should begin by successfully decreasing their own production of opium, the importation would automatically increase, and consumption remain the same.

In the second place, if it is wholly a “revenue” matter to the Chinese government, why give up the large annual revenue from customs duties on the imported opium? In asking the British to stop their opium traffic the Chinese are proposing deliberately to sacrifice $5,000,000 annually in customs and liking duties on the imported drug, or between a fifth and a sixth of the entire revenue of the imperial customs.

One very convincing indication of the sincerity of the Chinese government in this matter, which I will take up in detail a little later, is the way in which the opium prohibition is being enforced by the Chinese authorities. But before going into that, I should like to call attention to two other evidences of Chinese sincerity in its war on opium. The first is the patent fact that public opinion all over China, among rich and poor, mandarins and peasants, has turned strongly against the use of opium. I have had this information from too many sources to doubt it. Travellers from the remotest provinces are reporting to this effect. The anti-opium sentiment is found in the highest official circles, in the army, in the navy, in the schools. Within the past year or so it has been growing steadily stronger. Opium-smoking used to be taken as a matter of course; now, where you find a man smoking too much, you also find a group of friends apologizing for him. I have already explained that opium-smoking is not tolerated in the “new” army. There is now a rapidly growing number of officials and merchants who refuse to employ opium-smokers in any capacity.

Now, why is the public opinion of China setting so strongly against opium? Even apart from moral considerations, bringing the matter down to a “practical” basis, why is this so? I will venture to offer an answer to the question. Said one Tientsin foreign merchant, an American who has had unusual opportunities to observe conditions in Northern China: “If the Chinese do succeed in shutting down on opium, it may mean the end of the foreigners in China. Opium is the one thing that is holding the Chinese back to-day.”

Ten or twelve of the legations at Peking now have “legation guards” of from one hundred to three hundred men each. In all, there are eighteen hundred foreign soldiers in Peking, “a force large enough,” said one officer, “to be an insult to China, but not large enough to defend us should they really resent the insult.”

Twelve hundred miles up the Yangtse River, above the rapids, there is a fleet of tiny foreign gunboats, English and French, which were carried up in sections and put together “to stay.” At every treaty port there are one or more foreign settlements, maintained under foreign laws. The Imperial Maritime Customs Service of China is directed and administered throughout by foreigners; this, to insure the proper collection of the “indemnity” money. Foreign “syndicates” have been gobbling up the wonderful coal and iron deposits of China wherever they could find them. And so on. I could give many more illustrations of the foreign grip on China, but these will serve. And back of these facts looms the always impending “partition of China.” The Chinese are not fools. They have sat tight, wearing that inscrutable smile, while the foreigners discussed the cutting up of China as if it were a huge cake. They have seen the Japanese, a race of little brown men, inhabiting a few little islands, face the dreaded bear of Russia and drive it back into Siberia. Now, at last, these patient Chinamen are picking up some odds and ends of Western science. They are building railroads, and manufacturing the rails for them. They are talking about saving China “for the Chinese.” In 1906 they mobilized an army of 30,000 “modern” troops for manœuvres in Honan Province. If they are to succeed with this notion, they must begin at the beginning. Opium is dragging them down hill. Opium will not build railroads. Opium will not win battles. Opium will not administer the affairs of the hugest nation on earth. Therefore, no matter what it costs in revenue, no matter how staggering the necessary reform and reorganization, opium must go.

China may be a puzzling land. The Chinese officials may be capable of the most baffling duplicity. But we are forced to believe that they are “sincere” in putting down the opium traffic. It appears, for China, to be a case of sink or swim.

The next question would seem to be, if the Chinese are really trying to put down the opium traffic, how are they succeeding? We will pass over that part of the problem which relates to Great Britain and the Indian opium trade, with the idea of taking it up in a later chapter. Let us consider now what China, flabby, backward, long-suffering China, is actually doing in this tremendous effort to cure her disorder in order that she may take a new place among the nations. We will deal here with the enforcement of the edict in Shansi Province, taking up in later chapters the results of the prohibition movement in the other provinces.

The plan outlined in the edicts prohibiting opium is clear, direct, forcible. It was evidently meant to be effective. It provides (first) that the governors of the provinces shall ascertain, through the local authorities, the exact number of acres under poppy cultivation. The area of the land used for this purpose shall then be cut down by one-ninth part each year, “so that at the end of nine years there will be no more land used for such purposes, and the land thus disused” – I am quoting here from the Chinaman who translated the regulations for me – “shall never be used for the said purposes again. Should the owners of such lands disobey the decree, their lands shall be confiscated. Local officials who make special efforts and be able to stop the cultivation of poppy before the said time, they shall be rewarded with promotions.”

The plan provides (second) that “all smokers, irrespective of class or sex, must go to the nearest authorities to get certificates, in which they are to write their names, addresses, profession, ages, and the amount of opium smoked each day.” Latitude is allowed smokers over sixty years of age, but those under sixty “must get cured before arriving at sixty years of age. Persons who smoke or buy opium without certificates will be punished. No new smokers will be allowed from the date of prohibition. The amount of opium supplied to each smoker must decrease by one-third each year, so that within a few years there will be no opium smoked at all.” Officials who overstep the law are to be deprived of their rank. In the case of common people, “their names will be posted up thoroughfares, and will be deprived of privileges in all public gatherings.”

Opium dens, as also all restaurants, hotels, and wine-shops which provide couches and lamps for smokers were to be closed at once. If any regular opium den was found open after the prohibition (May, 1907), the property would be confiscated. No new stores for the sale of opium could be opened. “Good opium remedies must be prepared. Multiply the number of anti-opium clubs. If any citizens who can, through their efforts, get many people cured, they will be rewarded… All officials, and the officers of the army and navy, and professors of schools, colleges, and universities, must all get cured within six months.” And further, it was decided to “open negotiations with Great Britain, arranging with that power to have less and less opium imported into China each year, till at the end of nine years no opium will be imported at all.” The Chinese, it is evident, are not wanting in hopeful sentiment. Reading this, it is almost possible to forget that India needs the money.

“There is another drug, called morphia, which has done (thus my Chinaman’s translation) or is doing more harm than opium. The custom authorities are to be instructed to prohibit strictly the importation of it, except for medical uses.”

A clean-cut programme, this; apparently meant to be effective. It was with no small curiosity that I looked about in Shansi Province to see whether there seemed any likelihood of enforcement. The time was ripe. It was April; in May the six months would be up. Opium had ruled in Shansi: could they hope to depose it before the final havoc should be wrought?

The nub of the situation was, of course, the limiting of the crop. Theoretically, it should be easier to prohibit opium than to prohibit alcoholic drinks. Wines and liquors are made from grains and fruits which must be grown anyway, for purposes of food. It would not do to attempt to prohibit liquor by stopping the cultivation of grains and fruits. The poppy, on the other hand, produces nothing but opium and its alkaloids. In stopping the growth of the poppy you are depriving man of no useful or necessary article. The poppy must be grown in the open, along the river-bottoms (where the roads run). It cannot be hidden. As government regulating goes, nothing is easier than to find a field of poppies and measure it. The plans of the Shansi farmers for the coming year should throw some light on the sincerity of the opium reforms. Were they really arranging to plant less opium? Yes, they were. Reports came to me from every side, and all to the same effect. West and northwest of T’ai Yuan-fu many of the farmers had announced that they were planting no poppies at all. This, remember, was in April: planting time was near; it was a practical proposition to those Shansi peasants. In other regions men were planting either none at all, or “less than last year.” The reason generally given was that the closing of the dens in the cities had lessened the demand for opium.

The officials were planning not only to make poppy-growing unprofitable to the farmers, they were planning also to advise and assist them in the substitution of some other crop for the poppy. But here they encountered one of the peculiar difficulties in the way of opium reform, the transportation problem. All transportation, off the railroads, is slow and costly. No other product is so easy to transport as opium. A man can carry several hundred dollars’ worth on his person; a man with a mule can carry several thousand dollars’ worth. That is one of the reasons why opium is a more profitable crop than potatoes or wheat. But the law descends without waiting for solutions of all the problems involved. The closing of the opium dens all over Shansi had the immediate effect of limiting the crop. It also had the effect of driving out of business a great many firms engaged in the manufacture of pipes and lamps. Sixty-two manufacturing houses in one city, Taiku, either went out of business altogether during the spring months, or turned to new enterprises. I add an interesting bit of evidence as to the effectiveness of the enforcement. It is from a missionary.

“I was calling on one of the foreigners in T’ai Yuan-fu and found a beggar lying on one of the door-steps, with his pipe and lamp all going. I told him to clear out. I asked him why he was there, and he told me he had nowhere else to go, now that the smoking-dens were all closed, and that he had to find some sheltered nook where he could have his smoke.”

It was not the plan to close the opium sale shops; theoretically, it will take nine or ten years to do that. But after closing all the places where opium was smoked socially and publicly, it should become possible to register all the individuals who buy the drug for home consumption. It was the closing of the dens, the places for public smoking, in all the cities of Shansi, which had the immediate effect of limiting the crop and the manufacture of smoking instruments. The one hundred and twenty-nine dens of T’ai Yuan-fu were all closed before I arrived there. In T’ai Yuan-fu, as in Peking, you could buy an opium-smoker’s outfit for next to nothing. Cloisonné pipes, mounted with ivory and jade, were offered at absurd prices.

One of the saddest features of the situation in Shansi is the activity of the opium-cure fraud. The opium-smoking habit can be cured, once the social element is eliminated, as easily as the morphine or cocaine habits – more easily, some would claim. I do not mean to say that a degraded, degenerate being can be made over, in a week, into a normal, healthy being; but it does not seem to be very difficult to tide even the confirmed smoker over the discomfort and danger that attend breaking off the habit. In Shansi, as in all the opium provinces, “opium refuges” are maintained by the various missions. The usual plan is to charge a small fee for the medicines administered, in order to make the refuges self-supporting. It takes a week or ten days to effect a cure by the methods usually followed. The patient is confined to a room, less and less opium is allowed from day to day, stimulants (either strychnine or atropine) are administered, and local symptoms are treated as may seem necessary to the physician in charge. Some of the missions at first took a stand against the reduction method, believing that medical missionaries should not administer opium in any form; but after a death or two they accepted the inevitable compromise, recognizing that it is not safe to shut down the supply too abruptly. But the number of these refuges is pitifully small beside the extent of the evil. They have been at work for a generation without bringing about any perceptible change in the situation. There are now fewer refuges than formerly in Shansi Province, for none of the missions is fully recruited as yet, after the terrible set-back of 1900.

The opium-cure faker in China, as in the United States and Europe, usually sells morphia under another name. Dr. Edwards, the author of “Fire and Sword in Shansi,” last year spent five weeks in travelling northwest of T’ai Yuan-fu, and reported finding a great many men employed in selling so-called anti-opium medicines. The demand for cures existed everywhere. Now that the popular sentiment is setting in so strongly against the opium habit, the Chinese are peculiarly easy prey for these rascals. They have no conception of medicine as it is practiced in Western countries, and eagerly take whatever is offered to them in the guise of a “cure.” The following, told to me by an Englishman who lives in the province, illustrates this:

“There is a lot of mischief being done in Shansi just now by men who have bought drugs in Tientsin, are selling them at random, and making a good thing for themselves. I was travelling one day and was taken violently ill, and I happened to reach a place where I knew a man who had some drugs, so I sent for him and asked him to bring me some medicine. He came along with three bottles, none of which was labelled. He could not tell me what any one of them contained. He said they were all good for stomach-ache, and proposed to mix the three up and give me a good, strong dose. It is needless to say I refused. That man is running a proper establishment and making a lot of money on the drugs he sells, and that is all he knows about the business.”

The upshot of my investigations and inquiries in Shansi was that the anti-opium edicts were being enforced to the letter. This conclusion reached, I naturally looked about to find the man behind the enforcement. Judging from the work done, he should prove worth seeing. Further inquiries drew out the information that he was one of the three rulers of the province, with the title of provincial judge, and that his name was Ting Pao Chuen.

Calling upon a prominent Chinese official is, to a plain, democratic person, rather an impressive undertaking. The Rev. Mr. Sowerby had kindly volunteered to act as interpreter, and him I impressed for instructor and guide through the mazes of official etiquette. It was arranged that I should call at Mr. Sowerby’s compound at a quarter to four. From there we would each ride in a Peking cart with a driver and one extra servant in front. There was nothing, apparently, for the extra servant to do; but it was vitally important that he should sit on the front platform of the cart.

A Peking cart is a red-and-blue dog house, balanced, without springs, on an axle between two heavy wheels. The sides, back, and rounding roof are covered with blue cloth. A curtain hangs in front. In the middle of each side is a tiny window, and it is at such windows that you occasionally get the only glimpses you are ever likely to get of Chinese ladies. There is no seat in a Peking cart; you sit on the padded floor. When you get in, the servant holds up the front curtain, you vault to the front platform, and, placing your hands on the floor, propel yourself backward, with as much dignity as possible, taking care not to knock your hat against the roof, until you have disappeared inside. If you are long of leg, your feet will stick out in front of the curtain, leaving scant room for the two servants, who sit, one on each side, with their feet hanging down in front of the wheels. The two carts, two drivers, and two extra servants, set out from the Baptist Mission compound, to convey Mr. Sowerby and me to the Yâmen, or official residence, of His Excellency.

Every Yâmen has three great gates barring the way to the inner compound. If the resident official wishes to humiliate you, he has his man stop your cart at the first gate and compels you to enter on foot. Fortunately for us, since it was raining hard, His Excellency had chosen to treat us with marked courtesy. The carts halted at the second gate while Mr. Sowerby’s servant ran in with our red Chinese cards. There was a brief wait, and then we drove on through a long courtyard to the inner or screen gate, where massive timbered doors were closed against us. Soon these swung open; the carts crossed a paved yard and pulled up under the projecting roof of the Yâmen porch; and we scrambled down from the carts, while two tall mandarins, in official caps and buttons, dressed in flowing robes of silk and embroidery, came rapidly forward to meet us. One of these, the younger and shorter, I recognized as Mr. Wen, the interpreter for the Shansi foreign bureau.