opium-pipes are stacked in hundreds upon hundreds. Opium is one of the
staple products of this rich province, and one of the chief sources of
wealth of this flourishing city.

During the nine months that I was in China I saw thousands of
opium-smokers, but I never saw one to whom could be applied that
description by Lay (of the British and Foreign Bible Society), so often
quoted, of the typical opium-smoker in China "with his lank and
shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice, and
death-boding glance of eye, proclaiming him the most forlorn creature
that treads upon the ground."

This fantastic description, paraded for years past for our sympathy, can
be only applied to an infinitesimal number of the millions in China who
smoke opium. It is a well-known fact that should a Chinese suffering
from the extreme emaciation of disease be also in the habit of using
the opium-pipe, it is the pipe and not the disease that in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred will be wrongly blamed as the cause of the
emaciation.

During the year 1893 4275 tons of Indian opium were imported into China.
The Chinese, we are told, plead to us with "outstretched necks" to cease
the great wrong we are doing in forcing them to buy our opium. "Many a
time," says the Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, "have I seen the Chinaman point
with his thumb to Heaven, and say, 'There is Heaven up there! There is
Heaven up there!' What did he mean by that? You may bring this opium to
us; you may force it upon us; we cannot resist you, but there is a Power
up there that will inflict vengeance." (_National Righteousness_, Dec.
1892, p. 13.)

But, with all respect to Dr. Hudson Taylor and his ingenious
interpretation of the Chinaman's gesture, it is extremely difficult for
the traveller in China to believe that the Chinese are sincere in their
condemnation of opium and the opium traffic. "In some countries," says
Wingrove Cooke, "words represent facts, but this is never the case in
China." Li Hung Chang, the Viceroy of Chihli, in the well-known letter
that he addressed to the Rev. F. Storrs Turner, the Secretary of the
Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, on May 24th, 1881, a
letter still widely circulated and perennially cited, says, "the poppy
is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China,
notwithstanding the laws and frequent Imperial edicts prohibiting its
cultivation."

Surreptitiously grown in some parts of China! Why, from