More on China's wacky weed

A foreign reader who lives in China sent in an interesting email about marijuana, responding to the item yesterday about the tomb that contained the world’s oldest stash.

He’ll remain anonymous because of the nature. He said he traveled down to Dali and Shangri-la in Yunnan Province last summer, and this is what he found:

“To my great surprise, marijuana was EVERYWHERE down there.  I was told by the folks in the Tibetan medicine shops that pot has been used as medicine in Tibet, Yunnan and the whole region for thousands of years. The medicine shops had it under the counter for special customers. They said it was widespread and accepted until Mao. Even today, you see folks on the streets smoking their bongs and you see pot sold in the countryside markets. They smoke it, eat it and brew a tea. It's growing everywhere in the foothills and mountains.”

The reader sent along a couple of photos, which you see above and below.

In a follow-up email, the reader said: “I was told they smoke a blend of what they call angel hair tobacco from the region and marijuana. Many just smoke all pot. They also make a black paste from the pot (we'd call it hashish) and mix it with the tobacco. Those folks were the Bai minority from Dali I understand.  The pot pic is from Tiger Leaping Gorge...another reason the area is so popular with Western backpackers. A friend told me Dali is known as the Amsterdam of China. I totally understand why.”

As most readers should know, penalties are harsh in China for marijuana usage, so don't take this as an endorsement to stray from the straight and narrow...

 

Comments

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Is this marijuana he smoking? :)

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Hello guys in other countries like people use this drug as a medicine for example Tibetan people use it like a medicine but in my country it is used like drug.

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Looks like very early residents of China had a penchant for smoking what we used to vernacularly call wacky tabackey.

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Where are you planing to go? City?

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I'm going to visit China this year

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Looks like very early residents of China had a penchant for smoking what we used to vernacularly call wacky tabackey.

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Why do we as Americans think we invented everything.

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penalties are harsh everywhere... but that just show the human's mind involution againts progess and future

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Wowwwwww, big joint chinese friend!!!

used as medicine in Tibet, we need to learn the good things about all of our plants...

[Sujan Patricia]

Looks like very early residents of China had a penchant for smoking what we used to vernacularly call wacky tabackey. Yup, marijuana.

Archaeologists who dug up a 2,700-year-old tomb of a shaman near Turpan out in far west Xinjiang province found a curious pouch. Inside was the wacky weed. News reports call it the oldest stash of marijuana on Earth.

[Mark]

Kunming? Dali and lijaing yes. but kunming, where? or was this before the olimpiks?

[Derek]

Remember Arthur, only users lose drugs...

[Arthur Borges]

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT do drugs outside of Dali and perhaps Lijiang.

Controlled substances make officers really narrow-minded here.

[Arthur Borges]

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT do drugs outside of Dali and perhaps Lijiang.

Controlled substances make officers really narrow-minded here.

[Arthur Borges]

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT do drugs outside of Dali and perhaps Lijiang.

Controlled substances make officers really narrow-minded here.

[Xiefeilaga]

I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. The locals don't actually smoke the stuff. They breed it for seed and fiber, for which there is a long tradition. That would explain the low quality.
Weed and hashish got big when the backpackers showed up. Dali is still a place where a lot of urban Chinese first come into contact with the stuff.
Though I'm sure people used to use it around here for psychoactive properties, the vast majority of the crop was hemp for practical applications.
I've never seen any local minorities stuffing it in their bongs.
However, there is another herb smoked by the folks near the Burmese border. It's a green leaf with mild stimulant properties that they call "lan yan" - blue smoke. It smells kind of like weed, which is probably where the rumors came from.

[Jim]

Drugs were always freely available in Beijing when I was there- usually delivered by a Nigerian on the back of a moped.

Like most things in China, I don't think that the government really cared what foreigners got up to so long as they were quiet about it but the penalties for mixing up drugs and local Chinese were very harsh.

The weed was always of dismal quality according to my weed smoking friends (weed was never my thing) but Chinese ecstasy was supposed to be in a whole new league of strong. Rumour had it that some very skilled chemists were churning it out somewhere out west of Beijing.

I suspect it has all changed now and China is clamping down as more and more foreigners arrive.

[daliren]

According to my friend, who tried the weed in Lijiang, it was in "very poor" quality. It only gave him sore throat, no effect on his head at all. By the way, I had lived in Yunnan for 15 years, and my friend is an american.

[William Goit]

Why do we as Americans think we invented everything. We have been around for a very breif 200 years. People have enjoyed cannabis since the beginning of time. Beads, beards and long hair are just bad fashion and have nothing to do with the state of mind after THC links up with the pleasure centers in the mind. Flower Power indeed!

[Papawhale]

...for thousands of years.

[Baoru]

Walao~~ Cough, cough. This is really crazy!