ABSTRACT
The commodities were brought down from and taken up to the mountains by traditional means. A waterway system and a road system were therefore absolutely essential for the highlanders' survival and development. The marketing systems, too, remained predominantly traditional. The systems were traditional because, with the exception of the timber trade, all of them began from the small producer and the independent small buyer. Local gazetteers published in the second half of the nineteenth century referred to the opium being grown in this corner of Sichuan. By the 1920s it was being planted almost everywhere, causing a food shortage. The enormous volume of trade naturally required the port city to become also a financial center. By 1934— 35 it had eight branches of the national, provincial, and private banks, twenty-six money shops, and fourteen silversmiths. It had grown to be so influential that its speculative operations caused a serious crisis in the province.
