Show L AN OPIUM PALACE I A Look at the Biggest Opium Den of the World i SHANGHAI THE PARIS OF ASIA r i fen sail Women Rolled for Drugs Chinese f Dentists and the Worms which Cause the Toothache SitAXGim December 31 1SS3 Special Uorreipondcuco of TUB HEItlLIJI visited last night the biggest opium den of the world It is situated on tho edge of this great cosmopolitan city of Shanghai in which Chinese rowdies from all parts of the empire congregate and where tho Chinaman has learned to play billiards to drink whisky and to practice tho refinements refine-ments of wnffTEKX AS WELL AS HiSTEKX VICE The palatial saloons of New York the barroom bar-room of the Hoffman House and the gilded palaces of sin in San Francisco havo cost hundred of thousands of dollars This opium den of tho Chinese has likewise eaten nn a fortune and it is more like a palace than an opium smoking joint for pigtailed pig-tailed Celestials Three stories high and covering what would be nearly half anA an-A crican block its entrance is lighted with the electric light and its interior is furnished fur-nished in the most extravagant Chinese fashion The ceilings are of richly carved wood and the finest of Chinese lamps each nf which cost hundreds of dollars throw a oft light over the hazy smoking crowd within The painted walls are inlaid with ourious marble the grain of which is such as to give the idea of landscape sketches and the finishing of the rooms is in carved teak wood which oiled and colored shines ike ebony There were perhaps a thousand I thou-sand smokers in this opium den when I visited it last night and I pushed my way Into it through a throng representing every i Joss of Chinese life There was the pompous pomp-ous mandarin in gorgeous silks beside the halfnaked cooley in ragged cotton There were loose women and desperatelooking men quiet intellectual scholars and wealthy Chinese merchants All stopped under the electric light to buy little pots of opium as thkk as molasses and each holding hold-ing ab ut what could be croded into the smallest of our American individual salts The cooley and the mandarin are charged the same for their opium but they paid IfoleTeut prices according to the rooms which they occupied and the pipes which they used in smoking The cheapest cost about 10 cents a smoke and the dearest was sold for not much more than 15 cents The pipes however were different They were about twa feet long with a big round bowl et into the handle The mandarins smoked ipes of ivory some of which were elaborately elabor-ately carved while the coolies were satisfied with plain pipes of wood The receipts of his opium den are said to be more than 41003 a day and I am told it is always fcU VUIEltC THE SMOKE Passing the electric light you cutter hall after hall filled with hazy fumes of sickly smelling vapor through which the rays of iprgeous lamps straggling find their way and cast a wierd ghostlike air over the smokers resting below The smoking com wtinents are divided into cells open at the front and separated from one another by gorgeous carvings of teak wood which olflred with the smoke of thousands has turned from a rich brown into an oiled jet Each cell accommodates two or more people and the most of the men I saw smoking were in couples On each side of a little Class lamp the men lay on red cushions sonjit me dropping their feet upon a chair nd resting their heads upon blue pillows rich about a foot square and a foot long The most expensive of the compartments Sad cushions of fine velvet and the frames of some couches were inlaid with motherof pearl tad jade In some of the private rooms I noticed women smoking with the men They were not I was told the wives of the smokers and it is no more creditable f jr a Chinese woman to smoke opium than It is for an American girl to drink whisky Opium smokers always lie down while Smoking They bend themselves spoon fsshioiT as they manipulate the opium Orawit into their lungs and blow it out of heir nostrils In some cases I noted large rooms in which private parties seemed to have assembled for an opium smoke together to-gether and I passed through every hall of his large opium joint and did not see a bit of disorder Your opium smoker is different differ-ent from the drunkard The opium calms nstead of excites I was treated with politeness everywhere and tho drowsy I sleepy crowd did not seem to care that I stopped and looked at them THE ClUSE OF THE PEOPLE This is however only one of hundreds 3f opium shops in Shanghai I visited another den upon leaving this big one and I found it nearly as large It is said that China uses about 300000000 worth opium o-pium every year and it is rightly called he curs of the people Opium is now grown in every province in China The seed of the poppy is sown in November and its juice is collected in February and March The opium is gotten by cutting the capsule of the poppy flower with a notched ron instrument at sunrise and by the next Horning a drop or so of juice has oozed out This is scraped off and saved by the grower and after ho has a vessel full of it it is strained and dried It takes a great many poppies to make a pound of opium and itS it-S through a number of processes before t is ready for the market In a liquid state it looks like a dark strawberry jam and when prepared for shipment it is put into clients each of which contains about forty balls of opium These balls are rolled in dried poppy leaves and here in China the duty on opium is so heavy that the customs officers watch these chests very closely At Shanghai there are a lumber bf large ships which look like float I ng swimming baths or naval training ships a which the opium passed upon by the Customs is stored and by which method smuggling is somewhat prevented The Chinese are the greatest smugglers in the world and it is only by the aid of foreigners foreign-ers that they are able to have a good customs cus-toms service And their rccipts from foreign for-eign customs are now four times as great js they were several decades ago rOUEIOKEPS TACOIIT THEM The Chinese are naturally opium smokers but it is due to the foreigner that tho drug oas become a national evil The omcials and the emperor saw the danger before it sate and they tried to keep the opium out of the country The English however who wort bringing in large quantities from India Tvpre making too much money out of it to let it go and one of the most disgraceful disgrace-ful pages of history is the record of how John Hull philanthropic and moral as ho pretends to be forced China to take a poison which its officials knew would degrade de-grade its people The Emperor of China at tho start taxed the ccnsimers ofopium and threat > ned them with death Opium smugglers were seized and tortured and the native dealers were executed The t Chinese however could do nothing with the foreigners and they became the smugglers smug-glers The government then appealed to the foreigners and one of the government commissioners asked the English merchants to give up their opium that it might be destroyed de-stroyed They gave up 20000 chests worth 11000000 China refused to pay for it on i the ground that it had not authorized its 1 commissioner to demand it and that the opium was smuggled For this the British wont to war with China and through this war opened most of the ports They made a treaty in which opium was not mentioned j but at the making of which the Chinese undoubtedly asked them to prohibit it and which they refused At present the United 1 States is the only country which has made treaty by which it is unlawful for its citi A a and the zens to sell opium to the Chinese poison is now brought into China by the Millions of pounds a year The Chinese finding that they coud not froaibit it Have to raise it themselves and as above stated i > cnn it is now grown in every one of the Chinese provinces VUAT OPIUM DID Still in tho great work of civilizing Asia I < the opium war did much for China It opened this great port of Shanghai gave Great Brit ln the island of Hong Kong and showed the Chinese that tho foreign devils wero stronger and mightier than themselves them-selves They paid the 11000000 which represented the demands of the British and thereafter gave the foreigners tho right to trade and settle at Canton Amoy Fuchau and Shanghai The United States soon after this made her first treaty with China which was made by Caleb Cushing in 1844 and sinco that time foreign trade with China has steadily increased There are now twentytwo open ports in the empire and the foreign trado amounts to more than 373000000 a year European American goods are now found in every province of China and our missionaries have penetrated pene-trated to the wildest regtons of the Celestial Celes-tial land The growth of the foreign influence in-fluence and its effect upon China can nowhere no-where be better seen than right hero at Shanghai Hero is the largest foreign colony in China and there are from 5000 to 7000 Europeans who have their homes hero and who are engaged in business with the Chinese The foreign settlement of this Paris of tho Pacific looks more like a slice taken out of ono of tho rich cities of tho United States or of Europe than a city in Asia The wide river front is lined with big threestory buildings and a beautiful public garden runs between these and tho water Tho streets of this part of tho city jiro well paved and you will meot as finely dressed men and women upon them as you will find in Washington or Paris The crowd is however a much more cosmopolitan cosmopoli-tan one The French and the English are mixed with Americans and Germans and the servants of all aro tho yellowfaced celestials Tho policemen are East Indians tall well formed darkfaced blackbearded men dressed in tho uniform of our police save that they have red turbans a foot high on their heads instead of helmet caps and they do not carry the ebony club They are used chiefly in arresting the Chinese and foreigners have to bo arrested by foreigners for-eigners Thoy are among tho finest men I have overseen and they contrast strikingly with the delicate slender aristocratic limbed Chinese TUB GK VXD 111 VEIL Shanghai is about midway on the Pacific coast between tho northern and southern boundaries of China It is near tho mouth of though not on the great river the Yang tsukiaug which divides the empire into two equal portions and which forms the great central avenue of trade This is one of the greatest and one of the longest rivers of the world and it vies with the Nile in the rich deposits which it carries down from the mountains of Thibet and speads over the rich plains of China Its waters where it enters the sea are as yellow as clay and their contents are I am told as rich as guano They form a fertilizer which the Chinese use by irrigation so that it is spread over much of the 549000 square miles which forms its basin and makes this land produce from two to three crops per year The Yangtseldang has a fall nearly double that of the Nile or the Amazon It is so wide at its mouth that when wo sailed up it in coming to Shanghai we for a long ways were hardly able to see the banks and this width extends up the river for hundreds of miles It is navigable for ocean steamers to Hankow the city of the size of Chicago which is situateu on its banks GOO miles above Shanghai and river steamers can go 13 JO miles up its winding course Above this there are gorges and rapids which the foreigners now think can be passed and there will then be an opening open-ing into the interior of China by this means for more than 2000 miles The Yangtse kiang is so long that it would reach from San Francisco to New York and push its way out into the Atlantiq if it could be stretched out upon a plane of the face of the United States It is longer than the distance from New York to Liverpool and it is said to be the best stream in the world as to the arrangements of its branches Its boat population is numbered by hundreds hun-dreds of thousands and it is a city hundreds of miles in length made up of junks ships and barges These Chinese junks are gorgeously gorge-ously painted and carved They have the same style of sails and masts that were used thousands of years ago and their sails are immense sheets of cotton pthed together and stretched on rods of bamboo which look like fishing poles The sailors are pigtailed pig-tailed men in fat clothes of cotton who sing in a cracked gibberish as they work and who understand how to manage their rude sails so well that they can often pass ships of more modern make All of the Chinese boats have a pair of eyes painted on the sides of their prows and the Chinese sailor would no more think of navigating without these than he would think of eating without with-out chopsticks If asked the reason he re pliesNo No have eyes no can see No can see no can go Bishop Fowler while sailing up the Pie Ho to Peking happened to sit with his legs hanging over the boat so that they covered up one eye He noticed that the sailors uneasy and they at last came to him and asked him to move his legs as the ship could not sea to go ST1USGE SUPERSTITIONS The Chinese arc full of superstitions and many of them firmly believe that the foreigners make medicines out of human beings The massacre at Tientsin in 1870 ik t d1 f taf in which twenty foreigners i were killed and among them a number of French nuns was caused by the report that the sisters were killing children to get their hearts and eyes for medical purposes and tho trouble in Korea last spring was caused by the circu lation of the stories that the missionaries were grinding up childrens bones to make medicine This report was started by the Chinese and the latest attempt of the kind I find to day here at Shanghai It appears in a trimonthly illustrated magazine which the Chinese publish and which sells for 5 cents a copy This contains a full descriptIOn descrip-tIOn of how the foreigners make their medicine icine with ghastly illustrations of the severed trunks and the cut up limbs of human beings In one cut men in American Ameri-can clothes are bending over great furnaces in which the heads and legs of men are boiling and beside which great baskets and tubs of cut up humans lie The men are stirring the steaming mass and the picture makes one think of the witches cauldron in Macbeth In another cut is shown the machinery ma-chinery for the grinding up of the bones and flesh A dozen old skeletons lie upon the floor and a man with a shovel puts the ghastly mass upon the scales for weighing In another room the medicine is packed up to be sent away and young ladies in American Ameri-can dress with waterfalls and French heels are busy at It I asked the manager of the magazine whether he believed in such stuff and he replied that he did not know and asked if it was not really true WHAT THE HEATHENS BELIEVE The Chinese themselves do not believe in dissection and there is no bodysnatching here They believe that the heart is the seat of thought that the soul exists in the liver and that the gall bladder is the seat of courage For this reason the gall bladder of tigers are eaten by soldiers to inspire them with courage The Chinese doctor ranks no higher than the ordinary skilled workman He gets from to to JO cents a Visit and he often takes patients on condition condi-tion that he will cure them within a certain time or no pay He never sees his female patients except behind a screen and he does not pay second visit unless he is invited His pay is called golden thanks and the orthodox way of sending it to him is wrapped wrap-ped in red paper The dentists look upon pulled teeth as trophies and they go about with necklaces of decayed teeth about their necks or with them strung upon strings and tied to sticks Toothache is suppose < to come from a worm in the tooth and there are a set of female doctors who make business busi-ness of extracting these worms When the nerve is exposed they take this out and call it the worm and when not they use a slight of hand by which they make their I patients believe certain worms which they show them came from their teeth I have heard persons tell Chinamen who claimed to have had ten worms taken from their mouths in a single day and I saw a woman actually at work upon a patient in the street here China is as full of superstitions as the West India islands and the people like to be humbugged quite as well here as we do in America FKANK G CAUPEXTEB |