Chapter XXVIII

Taiwan is not merely a military and commercial outpost of the empire; it is also very much of a closed corporation, a greatly exploited island, “both legally and illegally,” an observing missionary puts it. In the slang of the day—unless the expression has died of old age since I left my inventive native land—“exploit is the middle name” of the modern Japanese. Perhaps he does it even unconsciously, as when he standardizes the existence of tourists passing through his country and sees to it that they pay and tip as much as the traffic will bear. All the important industries of Formosa are government monopolies, and the second-rate ones are strictly controlled by Japanese interests. Opium has been a monopoly of the government since 1896, camphor and salt since 1899, tobacco since 1905, and liquors since 1922. Even sugar is virtually so, though the Hakkas up in the foot-hills still operate crude sugar-mills of the iron-roller type, propelled by water-buffaloes. “All these monopolies,” says a government organ, “are for the good of the public, to check speculation, and to maintain a high uniform quality. As a matter of fact these monopolies have made considerable revenue for the government of Taiwan, though that was not the main object in establishing them.”

Fortunate accident, surely; for we read further on that during the first year of the newly established liquor monopoly the government lost 1,250,000 yen in liquor taxes—do not burst yet into tears of sympathy—but gained 5,500,000 yen on the monopoly. An improvident and impractical people, indeed, to have overlooked such an advantage until it was accidentally called to their attention! There are some things to be said in favor of government monopolies, as of most human or divine contraptions; but the trouble with them, as far as my inexpert experience goes, is not merely that they offer government officials strong temptation to peculation, but that each bureau burns with eagerness to push the sale of its product, however detrimental it may be to the consumer.

The Government Monopoly Bureau in Taihoku, where nearly all the world’s supply of camphor is refined, and where the opium smoked on the island is prepared, is worthy of a visit—provided one can get into it. Personally I could not gain admission to the opium section, and I have yet to meet a foreigner who has been more fortunate. I must take on hearsay also the assertion that the Japanese are stamping out opium smoking throughout the island.

How China was forced by Western nations to open her ports and markets to the opium trade is too old and discreditable a story to need repeating. Chinese immigrants brought the habit to Formosa, and when the Japanese took over the island a considerable percentage of the Formosan Chinese were users. The Japanese licensed smokers, provided severe penalties for those who indulged in the stuff without a license, and fixed a certain date after which no new licenses would be given out. Even this happy scheme was probably not entirely an original idea with them. Somewhere in the East, in a once well-governed province of China, I think, the authorities long ago provided each opium smoker with a license—in the form of a board several feet long on which the evidence of his weakness was set forth in large red characters, and which the licensee was forced to carry himself, uncovered, to the licensed opium establishment whenever he wished to smoke, even the most wealthy or influential not being permitted to let a servant do so. This admirable scheme, doubly effective in a land where “face” is lost with such poignant regret, has naturally been allowed to fall into desuetude, like so many excellent things in China. I will not go so far as to suggest that the idea might be of use in a land where costly efforts are being made to stamp out the use of intoxicating liquors, but there is no international copyright on ideas of government.

The Japanese did not carry things that far in Formosa, but by refusing new licenses and constantly raising the price of the drug they are reputed to be doing away with the habit. Unfortunately even officials cannot deny that cocaine, morphine, and opium products which are more injurious than the pure stuff are manufactured—in England and the United States, for instance, as well as in Japan—and smuggled by Japanese into Taiwan in large quantities.

Tobacco is used by both sexes, almost all ages, and all races in Formosa. Quite aside from whatever evil effects this dreadful weed may produce on the physical, mental, and moral system—you can see that I have been hobnobbing with Protestant missionaries—more money is spent on it by a people who could easily find a better use for their limited wealth than on opium at its worst. The Government Monopoly tobacco factory in Taihoku is a model establishment—though not so much can be said of the employment of hundreds of very young Formosan girls in it—hence it is one of those things which the “foreign office” is glad to show. Two Filipino youths do their best to make the cigars which issue from it a trifle less deadly than those to be had in Japan proper, but this is a mere side-line in a land where cigarettes and smoking-tobacco are an almost universal form of indulgence. Perhaps there is really nothing suspicious at all in the curious fact that Japanese cigarettes, which have a hollow mouthpiece that requires them to be made by hand, can be sold in Formosa at a considerably lower price than the machine-made cigarette, in which peanut-oil is mixed with the tobacco to comply with Chinese taste, that are manufactured there for the non-Japanese Formosans.

Many of the foot-hills of Taiwan are dotted with compact little bushes that at first glance are interesting only for the regularity with which they are spaced. Then one is reminded that between nine and ten million pounds of “Formosa oolong” go to the United States each year, though most of us supposed that tea is by no means the favorite American stimulant. Japanese transpacific ships stop at Taiwan for tea in the season, but just why this important Formosan product has remained merely a Japanese rather than an official government monopoly does not appear on the surface. Possibly it is because the Nipponese lack one of the faculties essential to its preparation, either by an oversight on the part of their ancestral gods or from overindulgence. At any rate the official tea-taster of one of the most important Japanese firms, whose daily chore it is for six months out of the year to sample scores of tray-loads of tea-leaves raw, infused, and in some strange concoction, comes from “the Bronix,” to the luxuries of which he retires during the other half of the year.

Though much coal is mined in Formosa, it is poor and full of sulphur, which makes it fortunate that unlimited electric power can be developed. One of the most agreeable trips into the interior under genuine Japanese control brings one to Lake Candidius, named for a former Dutch missionary, a beautiful sheet of water at a considerable elevation, amid delightful mountainous surroundings. A tunnel has been opened which lets into the lake a mountain stream that raises it sixty feet above its natural level, and with a drop of a thousand feet in the first two miles of the outlet it is planned to electrify the whole island. Just now the scheme is held up for lack of funds, like so many things, excellent and otherwise, in this expensive after-war world. The Japanese, by the way, show little respect for the foolish Chinese superstitions of the Formosans when they interfere with developing the natural resources of the island. Slowly, too, the Formosans learn, advancing beyond their continental relatives. The Japanese were digging for water in Taihoku some years ago, for instance, when the workmen unexpectedly struck gas. An old Formosan lady naturally supposed that this came from the nether world, and burned joss before it. It is reported that her startling experience has cured no small number of persons of being too hasty in concluding that infernal forces can always be propitiated in the orthodox manner.

The most valuable resource so far discovered in the great mountainous interior of Formosa is the immense camphor-trees. One sees them here and there in southern China, but usually in splendid isolation in a temple compound, or with a little shrine at the foot of the enormous trunk to show that the venerable growth is inhabited by benevolent spirits and is therefore sacred. But no such kindly superstitions spare those of Formosa from destruction; hence in this case the Japanese have a genuine monopoly. The production of camphor in Taiwan began two centuries ago, but it is only under the new rulers that this splendid source of revenue has been exploited in much more than a desultory manner. To-day Formosa produces nine of the twelve million pounds of camphor with which the world is yearly supplied, and Japan proper yields two millions more, leaving a bare million to be credited to China and to synthetic processes. Thus it is not difficult to figure out why you are almost forced to patronize the Japanese, whether you like them or live on the Pacific Coast, whenever you need moth-balls or an eye-shade, perfume or a “tortoise-shell” comb.

Let us descend for a moment frankly into statistics and see what becomes of the world’s twelve million pounds of camphor a year. Official Japanese records report that it is consumed by:

Celluloid manufacture 6,000,000 pounds
Religious uses 2,000,000 „
Perfumery 1,500,000 „
Drug purposes 1,000,000 „
Other uses 1,500,000 „

In other words, if the Far East were not so devoted to its gods the price of smelling-salts might be several points lower—if the Japanese Government chose to have it so.

A visit to one of the camphor stations in savage territory can be arranged through the “foreign office” of Formosa, as the cheerful guide-book has it, “for the visitor who is willing to run the risk of leaving his head there.” Beside the little narrow tracks along which Formosan coolies push those to whom the loss of a head is no very serious matter two-bushel bags of camphor-chips, the not unpleasant smell of which strikes the passing nostrils, lie here and there at the foot of the steep, narrow paths down which they are carried on men’s backs to await wheeled transportation. The entire tree is chopped up with a little hollowed-out ax that makes the chips look as if they had been dug with a sugar-scoop. Little push-car loads of these come down to the railway, but a large quantity of the chips are boiled in the field, at camphor camps consisting principally of several mounds of earth and mud bricks resembling Chinese brick-kilns, with bamboo pipes for carrying the water of mountain streams through them, and others for drawing off the product. This almost colorless camphor oil is put in tins identical with those in which American gasolene and kerosene come to the Orient, and is shipped down to the capital. Private companies engage in the sometimes dangerous work of camphor-gathering, but they must sell all their product to the government, and not argue the price. The necessity of protecting the camphor camps from raids by head-hunters, however, requires a government police force and certain administrative buildings, so that all of them have a more or less official character. Down at the Monopoly Bureau in Taihoku the refined camphor, looking like snow-drifts, or, more precisely, like a lifetime supply of the purest white sugar on a very damp day, lies in great bins, and the densely camphorated air is so hard to breathe that one marvels at the endurance of the Formosan coolies who shovel the stuff back and forth for hours at a time.

While they are not necessarily monopolies, there are other Formosan products which are worthy of mention, and other dangers than head-hunters to dull the pleasures of life in this Beautiful Island of Somewhere. It is rich in aggressive venomous snakes, for instance. A man of altruistic tendencies has compiled a big volume filled with colored copies, as nearly life-size as possible, of all the deadly reptiles so far discovered by the new rulers, so that even he who cannot read may recognize them as he runs; and under each is the antidote to be used in case one is bitten by that particular species. Unfortunately, it is often a long way between drugstores in Formosa. White ants destroy one’s furniture, leaving a splendid-looking shell that is as hollow within as New Year’s resolutions; floods sometimes turn Taihoku itself into a lowland rival of Lake Candidius. Earthquakes are so common that no one but the newly arrived or the abnormally timid thinks anything of them. There are often several a day; nine hundred have been registered in a single recent year. “I’ll see you after the afternoon shake,” is said to be one of the fixed forms of rendezvous among the residents of the island—though they are not strong and frequent enough to save bartenders one of their principal exertions, as even a brief visit to the cozy foreign club of Taihoku, redolent mainly of tea export, will demonstrate. But, then, there would be little reason to travel if the dodging of untamed motorists were the chief peril the world over.