was obliged to pick my way among piles of cases of Yün-nan and Ssŭch'uan opium which had come down from the poppy-fields of the west, and it has been estimated by Sir Alexander Hosie that the province of Ssŭch'uan alone "annually produces more than double the quantity of Indian opium introduced into the whole of China."[1] Western China is, in fact, a dominating factor in the situation, since the two provinces of Ssŭch'uan and Yün-nan—it is said that half the arable area of the latter is under opium—are the largest-producing centres of the drug in China, and since its cultivation is the source of considerable wealth to their people, and, be it added, to their officials also.
That Indian opium is to all intents and purposes unknown in Western China is an indisputable fact. "Two decimal four piculs of Patna opium," wrote the Commissioner of Customs at Ichang in his report for 1906,
- ↑ The official estimate of the production of the province of Ssŭch'uan at the present time is given in the paper presented to Parliament in February 1908 [Cd. 3881] as 200,000 piculs, or approximately four times the amount of Indian opium imported into the whole of China.
