Although at first the home-grown product was considered inferior to Indian opium, it was cheaper, and its quality rapidly improved. In many areas it sold for less than half the price of the foreign smoke (22) and the fact that it could be resmoked more times than prepared Indian opium further enhanced its consumer appeal. In addition, poppy was a valuable crop for peasants, since raw opium sold for wholesale prices two to four times those paid for wheat. (23) And the low weight and bulk of opium made it easier to transport over rough terrain and thus tempting to produce, particularly in areas whose trade routes consisted largely of narrow, winding trails.

The mountainous provinces of Szechwan and Yunnan lay more than a thousand miles from the weakened central government at Peking. Both were well suited for poppy growing. The southern province of Yunnan, which borders Burma, Laos, and Tonkin (now part of northern Vietnam), became an opium producer second only to the western province of Szechwan. While the central government received relatively little from taxes on the cultivation and sale of domestic opium, revenue from the drug became a mainstay of provincial budgets. (24) In addition to filling a large local demand, opium was Szechwan's major export: over twothirds of its harvest went to other parts of China. (25) While Yunnan produced less than Szechwan, the economic function of its opium was just as important. In 1875 fully one-third of the arable land of the province bloomed with poppy. (26) The drug was Yunnan's most important product, amounting to L 1.2 million of L 1.7 million in total exports by 1903. (27)

Until the Europeans began to colonize mainland Southeast Asia, there was no concept of rigid border demarcation among the local kingdoms and tribes. From Burma to Tonkin the China-Southeast Asia frontier region was sparsely inhabited by a variety of groups distinct both from the ethnic Han Chinese and from the dominant Southeast Asian ethnic groups, whose capitals lay further south. It is impossible to say precisely when tribal groups along this frontier first began producing opium, but it became important in the world's drug traffic only after World War II. Opium poppy cultivation in the area was largely unnoticed until the late nineteenth century, and then it was dwarfed by Chinese and British Indian production.

China rather than Southeast Asia remained the focus of the Asian drug traffic. By the early 1900s there were roughly 15 million addicts. (28) For Chinese addicts, their habit came from the need to forget or ignore the painful realities of their lives. The craving to continue smoking, regardless of the cost, added yet another element of misery. Although some very rich habitues could afford both opium and food, many lesser family fortunes literally went up in smoke. (29) Poorer addicts often died of starvation. The Chinese government was unable to solve the problem within its own ranks: candidates for office were reported to have died from the effects of withdrawal during the arduous three-day examinations. (30) A Western observer on a trip to Szechwan complained that all but 2 of her 143 official escorts were on the pipe. And twice she was forced to wait to have her passport copied while the scribes recovered from their narcotic siesta. (31) However, if opium caused extensive anguish, it was also an ultimate cure; swallowing an overdose was a popular method of committing suicide. (32)

As opium addiction spread, not only in Asia but in Europe and the United States as well, organized opposition to Britain's part in the trade grew stronger. Western missionaries complained that addiction among 3 the "heathen" Chinese rendered the task of conversion more difficult. (33) But to many Chinese, both missionaries and foreign drug merchants were intruders selling goods that disrupted their society and violated their ideals. Thus the problem was not only one of curing before conversion; missionaries and opium were linked in the minds of increasing numbers of Chinese as different aspects of a single, foreign menace. (34)

Pressure from missionaries and others on the English government led to the creation of the British Royal Commission on Opium, which gathered evidence during 1893 and 1894. The commission concluded that prohibiting cultivation would place a considerable financial burden on the Indian taxpayer, who would have to compensate for the loss of the opium revenue. And it would do no good for Britain to halt production, the commission argued, as long as China's government was too weak to suppress the vice. Denunciations of the traffic by those familiar with the Chinese situation were largely ignored. The question, as the commission saw it, was not how to eliminate Indian production but whether to do so, and the answer, as usual, was no-it was still too profitable to be abandoned. (35) These conclusions hardly satisfied the antiopium movement. Nor could the commission's findings alter the fact that Chinese production was forcing the British out. The House of Commons, which had not pronounced the trade immoral until 1891, did so again in 1906, this time unanimously. (36)

China's political situation changed dramatically toward the end of the nineteenth century. Humiliating defeat by Japan in the war of 1894-1895 led to urgent demands for sweeping government reform. Western retaliation against the Boxer Rebellion of 18991900 saw China once again beaten militarily and burdened financially. This newest degradation, the latest in a series extending back to the original Opium War, finally convinced the imperial court as well as the growing numbers of progressive Chinese that China must undergo reform if she were to survive. (37) Opium was a clear-cut symptom and symbol of foreign intrusion and national decay. If China were to become strong again, she must rid herself of the "flowing poison.''