HONG KONG VICE
Even at its height in the 18th century, China’s government could not resist the sheer force of free trade. To be specific, free trade as practised by enterprises such as the British East India Company and various Western merchants who roved the world dealing in commodities. Chinese attitudes to foreign intrusion, which shaped their own laws, managed to restrict business activities with expatriates to the Canton enclave where licensed traders could operate from walled compounds. Since Canton was located at the mouth of the Pearl River, foreign-owned vessels bearing goods could anchor offshore and declare their cargo. No outsiders were allowed to set foot anywhere beyond Canton unless they were official diplomatic missions.
By 1830, just a decade and a half since the Battle of Waterloo, a tantalising commerce in byproducts from the flowering plant papaver somniferum flourished between the foothills of the Himalayas and China’s southern coasts. A new lifestyle had swept China’s guarded port cities by then. Men of all classes enjoyed their narcotic vice in parlours and backrooms to smoke gummy balls extracted from the poppy bulb, which produced a soothing effect and had some medicinal properties.
Packaged in wooden chests and delivered by steamers across the Bay of Bengal, through the Singapore Strait, and unloaded at
