18

Flowers and opium, opium and flowers!

　　It is odd to think that this city, which has absorbed so much of the world’s evil, has given, in return, so much beauty. Reading your letters, I am amazed to think of all the flowers it has sent out into the world: chrysanthemums, peonies, tiger lilies, wisteria, rhododendrons, azaleas, asters, gardenias, begonias, camellias, hydrangeas, primroses, heavenly bamboo, a juniper, a cypress, climbing tea-roses and roses that flower many times over – these and many more. Were it in my power I would enjoin upon every gardener in the world that they remember, when they plant these blooms, that all of them came to their gardens by grace of this one city – this crowded, noisome, noisy, voluptuous place we call Canton. 

评价甚高！作者应该来广州考察过吧？