Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, Volume 2

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Dairy and grease clog their intestines and stomachs; only rhubarb and tea leaves are hailed as miraculous for purging and cleansing the system. If they go without these for even a short time, they immediately fall into distress and illness.

In former times, when the border at Kyakhta original: "Qiaketou"; a key trading post on the border between the Qing Empire and Russia was closed to trade with Russia, various Western nations purchased rhubarb at Guangdong Canton. Each nation was restricted to five hundred catties a unit of weight, roughly 600 grams to prevent the supply from leaking into Russia. Later, when the customs gates opened as usual, the leaders of the Red-Haired original: "Hongmao"; a common Qing-era term for the British and the Flowery Flags original: "Huaqi"; a term for Americans, referring to the stars on the United States flag joined together in a petition, pleading that no limit be set on the quantity.

From this, we can see that the health of their chronic abdominal ailments cannot be managed without these medicines. The use of "flags and spears" original: "qiqiang"; a technical term for high-quality tea leaves, where the bud is the "spear" and the young leaf is the "flag" is equally essential to them. Currently, the annual export of tea amounts to four or five hundred thousand catties. Through many years of trade, they have certainly built up stockpiles.

However, tea is a substance that easily spoils and molds; after three years, it is no longer fit for consumption. We hear the English barbarians original: "Yingyi" boasting that they have a thirty-year reserve, but the falsehood of this claim is self-evident. If a ban on exports were established, internal panic and unrest would surely erupt among them. This is the first reason why they must depend upon our resources.

These foreigners pursue profit and value achievement, treating maritime commerce as their hereditary profession. At every coastal port, they compete to establish monopolies, turning...