CHAP. IX - OPIUM SMOKING

Summary

Nearly every stranger who visits a Chinese city considers his round of sight-seeing incomplete until he has witnessed the process of opium smoking. The dens in which the drug is doled out to its victims, although numerous enough in every city, are not easily distinguishable, its vendors not having yet got over the fear of penal consequences, which, until the import and sale of opium were legalized, always attended any connection with the traffic. The vice, therefore, has not the concomitants of glitter and gewgaw to assist in attracting its victims, which are found associated with the similar bane of drinking in our own country. The reader will, perhaps, be interested in visiting in imagination one of these establishments, and observing for himself what is to be seen therein. Although situated in a main thoroughfare with pretentious shops and buildings on either hand, the opium den is usually remarkable for the mean filthy front which it presents to the street, and the only sign or mark which betokens its existence to the uninitiated is a diminutive dirty paper lantern over the doorway, bearing the inscription “As you like it,” or sometimes the announcement “Foreign earth” is ventured upon in small characters upon a card stuck in a window. A step further over the threshold reveals a dilapidated paper screen or two, placed athwart the room so as to cut off the interior, as far as possible, from outer observation.