The Best House in London (1969)

Wolfe Morris: Chinese Trade Attache

Quotes 

• Sir Francis Leybourne : [the Attache is sobbing]  I thought you people were supposed to be inscrutable?

  Chinese Trade Attache : Please, Sir Francis, China doesn't want any more opium.

  Sir Francis Leybourne : Oh, do be sensible. You chaps have already lost one war with Great Britain about this.

  Chinese Trade Attache : But to force us to buy it...

  Sir Francis Leybourne : Well, you signed a treaty agreeing to!

  Chinese Trade Attache : Your gunboats were right up our Yangtze!

  Sir Francis Leybourne : No use getting hysterical, Mr Feng.

  Chinese Trade Attache : Then let me appeal to our friendship; those happy weekends I used to spend at your townhouse; your late wife was always so kind to me. More than kind. She...

  Sir Francis Leybourne : She was an eccentric about the inferior races. My dear fellow, I've put a lot of money into that opium plantation. Damn it, it's hard enough to get the Indians to harvest the stuff. Blasted natives! You pay them two pounds ten a year and they're useless.

  Chinese Trade Attache : If you could see what the opium does to our people; they lie about the streets like dead flies.

  Sir Francis Leybourne : Well, get them to use a little self-discipline, man. Self control - works wonders. Look at the English!

• Chinese Trade Attache : Miss Pacefoot, I beseech you, in the name of 40 million suffering Chinese, do not set that vile plantation to work again.

  Josephine Pacefoot : Mr. Feng, if those properties Uncle left me are to be used to finance my industrial training home, what alternative have I? A Belgravia Hall, that is already doing noble work for deprived humanity. So, all I can use are the profits from the opium crop. I'm sorry, Mr. Feng, but England's social problems must come first.