CHAPTER V

Summary

Kwei-fu is the great Li-kin “barrier,” which taxes all the trade, passing by the Yang-tse route between the “Four-streams” province—with its population of 35,000,000, and its fertile territory as large as France—and Eastern China. The local Li-kin office or Custom-house is thus, next to that of Canton, the most valuable post of the kind in the empire. The transit tax averages about five per cent. on the value of the goods, which are all carefully examined by gaugers attached to the Ya-men, whereby a delay of three or four days is entailed on every junk passing up or down, their number amounting in the year to over 10,000. Hence, although situated in a poor mountain district, a large population finds subsistence and the town is studded with the numerous mansions of the wealthy officials and their dependents. These Customs form the main source of revenue of the Szechuen province, the land-tax having been almost totally abolished, to attract immigrants after its depopulation at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and having been never reimposed. But now a blight has fallen over the place, due to the machinations of the intruding foreigner, who has insisted upon passing up his goods from Hankow to Chung-king under a transit duty of two and a half per cent., the transit pass for the purpose being taken out in Hankow and the duty paid there instead.