Tachienlu is a border town and is the centre of a large tribal district. No-one, for some reason or other, will claim this border town as his home and birthplace. It is not simply a question of: Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? It is something much deeper than that: it is a question of mixed blood, as very few Chinege have any ambition whatever to be either connected or related to the frisky, wild and woolly nomad.
The bulk of the inhabitants in the city come from Szechuen and Tibet, while the merchants come from other provinces. The opium dealers are from Yunnan, silversmiths come from Kiangsi, shopkeepers from Szechuen and the musk merchants hail from Shensi. The actual business of the town is largely in the hands of the Lao Shans who come from Sian; and these merchants give Tachienlu whatever wealth and stability it possesses. Without them and the Yunnan opium dealers the city would be almost entirely in the hands of the Szechuen shopkeepers. There is, however, another stabilize ing force along the border, namely. the Chinese tea merchants who come from Yachow, Tienchuen and Yuinching.
From 50 to 100 thousand catties of Chinese tea come into Tachienlu for the Tibetan market every day; and so keen are the Tibetans to get this Yachow tea that there is frequently a free-for-all fight just inside the t gate when the tea coolies arrive. A Chinese coolie entering Tachienlu will carry on his back several hundred catties, while the Tibetan yak leaving the city for the Land of the Lamas will only carry 108 catties.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.