The allied counterattack might have vanquished Cao Cao and his forces entirely.

However, the crossing of the Yangtze River dissolves into chaos as the allied armies converge on the riverbank and fight over the limited number of ferries.

To restore order, a detachment led by the allied general Gan Ning establishes a bridgehead in Yiling to the north, and only a staunch rearguard action by Cao Ren prevents further catastrophe.

China is probably growing twice as much opium as it is importing by 1885, although estimates vary widely.

The British consul at Yichang in 1881 had estimated the total opium production in the southwest at thirteen thousand five hundred and twenty-five tons, a figure that at first seems exaggerated. (Twenty-five years later, however, the first official statistics will show that Sichuan and Yunnan were in fact producing nineteen thousand one hundred tons tons, equivalent to fifty-four percent of China's total harvest.)