Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1911 — Opium Smuggling. [ARTICLE]

Opium Smuggling.

The infinite patience of the Chinese, says a writer in the Wide World magazine, is well illustrated in a smuggling story which I heard from an imperial maritime customs official at one of the barriers on the Upper Yangtse. The incident occurred several years ago in an attempt to avoid duty on a small amount of Szechuan opium that was headed for Shanghai. “An important article of down-river trade,” said the official in question, “is the, little belled and spangled cap worn by the Chinese children of from two to six years of age. In passing a number of boxes of these in the spring of 1906, I chanced to notice that the tinkle from the little bell in the center of the cap I was examining was rather muffled. Forcing it open, purely out of curipsity, I was astonished to find a tiny pellet of opium, hardly a quarter of an inch in diameter, which had been substituted for the clapper, Of course we had to jjearch the whole lot, and our aggregate haul from about 5,000 caps-—a couple of days’ work for us—was less than ten pounds of opium ”