Will you ride with me (by rickshaw) along the International Bund at Shanghai--beyond the German Club and the Hongkong Bank--over the little bridge that leads to Frenchtown--past a half mile of warehouses and chanting coolies and big yellow Hankow steamers--until we turn out on the French Bund? It is a raw, cloudy, March morning; the vendors of queer edibles who line the curbing find it warmer to keep their hands inside their quilted sleeves. [Illustration: AN OPIUM RECEIVING SHIP OR "GODOWN" AT SHANGHAI The Imported Indian Opium is Stored in These Ships Until it Passes the Chinese Imperial Customs] [Illustration: THE OPIUM HULKS OF SHANGHAI "They Symbolize China's Degredation"] It is a lively day on the river. Admiral Brownson's fleet of white cruisers lie at anchor in midstream. A lead-gray British cruiser swings below them, an anachronistic Chinese gunboat lower still. Big black merchantmen fill in the view--a P. and O. ship is taking on coal--a two-hundred-ton junk with red sails moves by. Nearer at hand, from the stone quay outward, the river front is crowded close with sampans and junks, rows on rows of them, each with its round little house of yellow matting, each with its swarm of brown children, each with its own pungent contribution to the all-pervasive odour. Gaze out through the forests of masts, if you please, and you will see two old hulks, roofed with what looks suspiciously like shingles, at anchor beyond. They might be ancient men-of-war, pensioned off to honourable decay. You can see the square outline of what once were portholes, boarded up now. The carved, wooden figure-heads at the prow of each are chipped and blackened with age and weather. What are they and why do they lie here in mid-channel, where commerce surges about them? These are the opium hulks of Shanghai. In them is stored the opium which the government of British India has grown and manufactured for consumption in China. They symbolize China's degradation. III A GLIMPSE INTO AN OPIUM PROVINCE