Tag: China

That Great and Reviled Tradition of the Opium Den

Trade with China became a crucial component of the British economy at the beginning of the 18th century when demand for tea among the fledgling English bourgeoisie suddenly exploded. The necessity of dealing with China for Britain’s tea was problematic to European merchants who could only trade silver in Chinese markets. Ships bound for China would leave port empty, save for a chest of silver ingots and ten tons of sand loaded into their hulls for ballast. The British East India Company discovered that they could grow opium with their plantations in India, smuggle it into China by bribing port officials and use this to trade for tea at a favorable rate. Opium use was fashionable in China at the time. It was banned by the emperor and so very scarce and expensive. Opium was thought of as a luxury enjoyed only by the leisure classes. Once it was introduced by the East India Company into the import market, it became available to everyone. Some estimate that by the end of the 19th century more than a quarter of all men in China took opium habitually. Inasmuch as the British became infatuated with tea, the Chinese grew addicted to opium.

Opium use was so commonplace in China that one encountered opium dens in Chinese towns the way one might have found coffeehouses in Europe around the same time. Normally we think of the opium den as a squalid, sweaty little room like the one pictured above. This might accurately reflect what they were like in America and Europe, which were frequented almost exclusively by poor coolies and garden-variety degenerates, but in China, opium dens were opulent and tasteful. They were staffed by servers who tended to guests in various states of swoon and who saw to the den’s upkeep. People would visit opium dens in old China the way they would bars today.

Opium was prevalent among all classes in society. The quality of the opium den one frequented reflected his or her wealth and social standing. Some of the very rich had rooms in their abodes devoted to opium smoking. The picture below is of a replica opium room crafted by a master dollhouse maker who goes by Sweetington on flickr. It is not an actual room but rather a model room that Sweetington assembled as part of a miniature Chinese palace project he is currently working on.
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Opium culture in China was effectively eliminated by the communist government in the 1950s. The borders were closed to most foreign imports and of course, opium was among these. All domestic cultivation was suspended and made illegal. Chairman Mao had hundreds of known opium dealers put to death and placed ten million citizens in compulsory treatment programs.

Paraphernalia from old Chinese opium dens are still pretty widely available today. I found this very nice Qing Dynasty opium bed being auctioned at Christies of London. The closing bid was just £2,375, surprisingly low, in my opinion, given the detail and elegance of the piece. Evidently these things are fairly easy to come by.

Haijin

At various points in China’s history, the Haijin order has been placed on peoples of the coastal. Haijin is a restriction on maritime activity. It means literally “sea ban.” The entailments of these bans would change from age to age. In some cases it meant prohibitions against owning ocean-going vessels and putting them to sea. Less strict Haijins sought only to regulate maritime shipping. The ostensible purpose of the policy was to deter piracy and smuggling. Some have speculated that the underlying intent was to mitigate the development of coastal economies so as to preserve the supremacy of the imperial capital. Haijin certainly had the practical effect of devastating China’s ports and of keeping the coastal border weak and unfortified.

The most traumatic Haijin was instituted in 1661 under Emperor Kangxi’s reign. Since the Emperor was only a boy king at the time, the policy was actually executed by Guwalgiya Oboi, one of four regents appointed by the previous Emperor to administer the government until his son reached maturity. Oboi was a successful Manchurian general who had been instrumental in deposing the Ming and installing a Manchu Emperor on the throne. He regarded the Chinese as enemies and even though he was appointed to govern the country, he had no sympathy for its people and no interest in its enrichment. Oboi suspected certain factions on the southern coast of harboring loyalties to the Ming. Remnants of the old Ming armies were still operating out of Taiwan. To make sure that the people on the mainland could not aid them in making landfall, Oboi ordered by imperial edict that inhabitants of the coastal regions of Guangdong Province abandon their dwellings and move no less than 50 li (25 km) inland. Oboi dispatched a sizable force to enforce the edict. The general who oversaw the operation had is soldiers build a small earthen wall to mark the restricted area. Anyone caught on the other side of the wall was to be beheaded.

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This sweeping Haijin would become known as the Great Clearance. It dragged on for 8 years, the entire duration of Guwalgiya Oboi’s regency. When the Kangxi Emperor reached the age of fourteen, he took power and discharged Oboi from office. He had him arrested and later executed. That same year, Kangxi lifted the edict of the Great Clearance and withdrew the armies that were enforcing it. History tells us that it was the court officials Zhou Youde and Wang Lairen who persuaded Kangxi to lift the ban. The nondescript building pictured above is the Chou Wong Yi Kung Study Hall, erected in 1685 by the sea in honor their honor.

During the years of the Great Clearance, Xin’an and surrounding counties had become a wilderness. Several clans returned to the area after the ban was lifted, but it would be many years before the area would again rise to prominence as British Hong Kong.

Marginalization of European Mercantilism in China

The members of the first Portuguese embassy to arrive in China in the early 16th century were arrested and beaten to death by the imperial authorities of Canton. The mouths of their corpses were stuffed with their own genitals, and their heads were then sawn from their bodies and strung up in the city square. This was done in response to Portugal’s military activities in Malaysia. Being an imperial power themselves, the Chinese understood colonial expansion and recognized that the Portuguese were clumsily and brutally carrying out just such a venture in the Indian Ocean. Expecting a reprisal for the slaughter of their emissaries, the Chinese Emperor ordered the construction of a war fleet to repel a Portuguese counter attack. None came. Portugal in the 1520’s hadn’t the strength to challenge the JiaJing Emperor. It remained in the East Indies and consolidated its power there.

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Chinese Nail Houses

In rapidly developing China, it is apparently common to see old ramshackle housing sitting unperturbed amid intense construction. The Chinese call these properties nail houses. They are often the only standing structure on a block that has been completely demolished, making them look like nails sticking out of a flat board. The analogy also suggests that the property owners themselves are like nails who the hammer has missed and who stubbornly refused to be pounded down. Since most of the large-scale real estate development projects in China are commissioned by the government, developers are able to be a lot more coercive with holdout residents. They begin carrying out projects around an occupied domicile knowing that eventually the resident will be forced to leave and construction will be allowed resume as usual. I’m not sure what recourse property owners have available to them in the Chinese courts. There are evidently scenarios in which residents have secured the right to remain in their homes. The lengths to which developers will go to compel holdouts to leave are rather striking:

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This crater in Shenzhen (mainland Hong Kong) is supposed to be the site of an 88-storey financial center. 389 other property owners accepted compensation for their land. The 340th refused. He claimed that his building was worth more that what they were offering him. The developer argued that when Hong Kong merged into the People’s Republic of China the land reverted to state property and that he no longer held any claim to it. The Chinese government refused to intervene on the matter, so the developer began removing earth around the house and effectively isolating it from the rest of the city. After 11 days, the property owner and the developer finally came to an agreement over compensation.
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It is only within the last 30 years that people in China were even allowed to own land. If someone owns land it is usually to conduct business on. Many small shopkeepers own the land upon which their stores sit. Because of this one will see dilapidated newsstands and restaurants sitting in the middle of shiny, new public plazas.

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This house in Chongqing and its owner became famous as eminent domain holdouts. The house sat right in the middle of a block where developers wanted to build a high-rise apartment building. The owner of the house wanted an apartment in the building of comparable size to her current house. The developer of the apartment building offered her a small sum of money instead, which she vocally refused. To this the developer and construction company isolated the house and its resident by digging out a ten-meter deep pit around the property. They did not even leave her with a causeway to the street. With no electricity gas or running water, the owner had supplies like food and propane hoisted up to her. She resisted seizure of her house for 2 years before finally settling with the developer in 2007 for 3.5 million yuan (US$453,000).