At Wuchai, the last stage before reaching Chao-t’ong-fu, the room of the inn had three walls only, and two of these were composed of kerosene tins, laced together with bamboo stripping. (Probably the oil tins had been stolen from the mission premises at Chao-t’ong.) Through the whole night it rained as it had never rained before, but, instead of feeling miserable, I tried to see the humor of the situation.  One can get humor from the most embarrassing circumstances, and my chief amusement arose from a small business deal between one of my coolies, who had sublet his contract to a poor fellow returning in the rain, who had arranged to carry the ninety catties ninety li for a fourth of the original price arranged between my coolie and myself.  For one full hour they argued at a terrible speed as to the rate of exchange in the Szech’wan large and the Yuen-nan small cash, and this was only interrupted when a poor man, deaf and dumb, and of hideous appearance, seeing the foreigner in his contemptible town, rushed in with a carrying pole and felled his grumbling townsman at my feet.

My intervention probably averted murder—­at any rate, it seemed as though murder would have taken place very soon but for my interference.  The whole populace gathered, of course, and the fight waged fiercely until well on into the night.  But wrapping myself in my mackintosh, and putting my paper umbrella at the right angle, I went to sleep with the rain dripping on me as they were indulging in final pleasantries regarding each other’s ancestry.

The first thing I saw at Chao-t’ong the next day was the foreign cigarette, sold at a wayside stall by a vendor of monkey nuts and marrow seeds.  No trade has prospered in Yuen-nan during the past two years more than the foreign cigarette trade, and the growing evil among the children of the common people, both male and female, is viewed with alarm.  From Tachien-lu to Mengtsz, from Chung-king to Bhamo, one is rarely out of sight of the well-known flaring posters in the Chinese characters advertising the British cigarette.  Some months ago a couple of Europeans were sent out to advertise, and they stuck their poster decorations on the walls of temples, on private houses and official residences, with the result that the people were piqued so much as to tear down the bills immediately.  In Yuen-nan, especially since the exit of opium, this common cigarette is smoked by high and low, rich and poor.  I have been offered them at small feasts, and when calling upon high officials at the capital have been offered a packet of cigarettes instead of a whiff of opium, as would have been done formerly.  One is not, of course, prepared to say whether such a trade is desirable or not, but it merely needs to be made known that towards the middle of the present year (1910) a proclamation was issued from the Viceroy’s yamen at Yuen-nan-fu speaking in strongest terms against the increasing habit of smoking foreign cigarettes, to show the trend of official opinion on the subject.  After having referred to the enormous advances made in the imports of cigarettes, the proclamation deplored the general tendency of the people to support such an undesirable trade, and exhorted the citizens to turn from their evil ways.  We cannot stop the importation of cigarettes, it read, but there is no need for our people to buy.