Tobacco

Nicotiana tabacum, IMG:p571_5.png:Chinese characters yen. It is supposed to have been introduced to China about 1530, but later dates are also given, up to 1600; and it is not known whether it came by Japan or the Philippines. The earliest characters used for it were ik E IMG:p571_6.png:Chinese characters or?I4 Q IMG:p571_7.png:Chinese characters, the Amoy pronunciation of which is tam-pak-co. Its use was stringently prohibited by the last Ming Emperor Ts'uNG CHENG, but in vain. The plant is now cultivated in every part of the country. In the rice-belt it is a spring crop, in the colder regions it is grown in summer. In some parts of the Yangtze Valley three crops are raised. In Kuangtung" 1,800 tobacco plants are planted per mou, yielding IMG:p571_8.png:Chinese characters pels, of leaves, requiring an outlay of Tls. 30, while the market value of the best leaves ranges from Tls. 12 to Tls. 25 per pel. In this district the preparation of the leaves ii as follows: — first the ribs are removed, then the leaves are sprinkled with ground-nut oil and mola es and pre ed into packs, which are first cut into squares and later into shreds of great finene . On the Yangtze there are three types; (1) The large leaves are dried on screens, kept flat, and packed into bales to form Ta yen IMG:p571_9.png:Chinese characters, large tobacco; (2) the smaller leaves are dried in the same way to form erh-yen Zl IMG:p571_10.png:Chinese characters second-cla tobacco; which when treated with rape-oil and red earth hung-Vu JlC jt is pre ed and shaved into fine shreds and used for smoking in water-pipes. This is the well known shui-yen IMG:p571_11.png:Chinese characters; (3) So-yen IMG:p571_12.png:Chinese characters or cord tobacco is prepared by cutting off the leaves with a piece of the stem and hangins them up on the rafters to dry. They are IMG:p571_13.png:Chinese characters rolled into rough cigars and smoked in long pipes. The principal exporting ports are Hankow, Hangchow, Wenchow, Amoy, Swatow, and Canton. Nicotiana rustic a is cultivated up to 9,000 feet altitude in W. Ssuch'uan. The foreign tobacco imported to China in 1916 was:— Cigarettes, Hk. Tls. 25,998,080, and tobacco, Hk. Tls. 3,275,760; and the export was cigarettes, Tls. 489,128; tobacco leaf, Tls. 1,136,516; tobacco (prepared), Tls. 1,908,255.