Every shop in cities and towns provides opium for its customers Just as shops in other provinces serve tea or offer. clgnrettes, This the writer Knows from frequent experiences. Most of the shopkeepers themselves are smokers; a pipe and burning lamp are the most conspicuous articles as a stranger enters the door. Each opium smoking set, that Is a pipe and lamp, must be istered with the government, and pay a monthly fee of from $1 to $5. (This sounds very high, translator). Since the coolies cannot afford to pay' this registration It is obvious that, they are forced to use the public! smoking dens.
Public opium shops are very common, and tenerally make sales to be taken home, and single pipefuls for use-In the back of the shop. Take Chininghsion for example; in this istrict there are more than 60 shops, with hundreds of registered pipes for public use. The shop receives a cence for each Individual pipe, which must be produced for inspec: lon whenever a government inspec-for drops in.
The native symbol for these opium shops is very clever: it is a bamboo: tubs, perhaps a foot long and three: finches in diameter, dipped in fresh onium, and then hung up over the door. The odor is one advertisement) while the inscription upon the bamboo reads, "This opium Is boiled with pure water:
So much for the general condi-_ 15 of the opium trade. Next Mr. Fang turned a more careful eye upon Kucisui, the capital, and most important' commercial centre west Kalgan, There the traveller found that although every other type of business was suffering from depres-_ sion, the opium trade was thriving. He found no great interest in the! small shops, which catered to local smokers, but gave considerable time to investigating fifteen large shops, which are wholesalers, importers and exporters, The owners are the! opium magnates of the northwest. They not only control the total production of Suiyuan, but direct the ports from Kansu and Ninghsia, and re-export the product to Tientsin.
Camel Caravans For the transportation work from Kansu and Ninghsia, only camels can be used. Each of the fifteen shops has about 108 camels, some more, some less. Each camel carries 326 catties on a single trip, or 5,120) ounces, In other words, if one shop sent Its caravan of camels to Ninghsta or Kansu on a single trip, it could transport half a million ounces of finished opium. Mr. Fang was unable to learn the present rate of im-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.