THE FATAL POPPY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1390, 16 March 1912, Page 13

THE FATAL POPPY.

CHINESE METHODS OF REFORM. The methods adopted by tho Chinese Government in stamping out the growth of opium within the Empire are to bo mildly described as drastic. A returned missionary, speaking at the meeting of tho Now Zealand Anti-Opium Association last night, described a case which had come under his notice. A Chinese farmer obstinately refused to obey the mandate of the Viceroy of his province that' all crops of poppies should bo destroyed, and treated the whole matter as a huge joko. At an early date the farmer was visited by a company of soldiers, who gave him .short shrift. Ho was taken out into his own field, ivhero the poppies were growing, and, in eifflit of his relations and friends, beheaded. The members of Itiis family were driven out and forbidden to ever again occupy the holding on which the} had lived and laboured. The annual report of tho association states that, "in many instances the military havo been sent into districts in China whore it was reported opium was still being cultivated,, and the farmers have been compelled to uproot the poppy. High officials in the district who acquiesced in the trade, have been severely dealt with, and where the military have been resisted, pitched battles havo resulted, in which numbers of the natives have been shot, and tho leaders decapitated. "In some instances," the report continues, "those who allowed thoir poppy crops to stand till the soldiers arrived either had had their heads tjvken off or their ears. The ears they strung upon sticks, and the heads were carried in cages, many of them being sent round to the village" headmen to be-redwmed, nor would the soldiers move on till a price satisfactory to them had been paid. For journeys of three or four days they carried many of the head?, till they reached the residence of someone with a reputation for wealth, and the man was made upliappy till lie redeemed the head at the figure named by the soldiers."