“We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience?” Lin Zexu, 1839. From a letter addressed directly to Queen Victoria and published in Canton, and later in The Times. I Shanghai, November 1856. Rain and gloom passed over the town skies and the smell of fish accompanied by the sound of fishermen playing dice by the clanging wooden boats echoed from the docks. The dawn was lukewarm and the sun started to shine through the unsettling, grey clouds. The town had been asleep; the first to awaken were the fishermen. The others of the civilisation would be waking up to this soon. However, there were some that had sat through the night in this cut-throat port town, participating in the decadent recreations of its time: Scents of opium and the perfume of women of the red candle could be smelt when passing by many windows. The cries of children in the back rooms of brothels were the melody before the birds began to sing. Falling coins followed men grunting, and fights broke out over lost bets; the knife was no stranger here. Bodies lay in puddles in the morning civil twilight, as passers by looked on with little regard for whether the subjects were breathing or not. For all its madness and deterioration, Shanghai was growing. Some were attracted by work, others by debasement. Espirit de corps was never prevalent amongst its people; more so the thievery of possessions and dignity. During this particular November morning, close to its docks, sat two men in a subterranean, sybaritic room.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 21:55:52 +0000
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