Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘The art of alchemists, sex and court ladies’
- 2 As the empire changed hands
- 3 ‘The age of calicoes and tea and opium’
- 4 ‘A hobby among the high and the low in officialdom’
- 5 Taste-making and trendsetting
- 6 The political redefinition of opium consumption
- 7 Outward and downward ‘liquidation’
- 8 ‘The volume of smoke and powder’
- 9 ‘The unofficial history of the poppy’
- 10 Opiate of the people
- 11 The road to St Louis
- 12 ‘Shanghai vice’
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - ‘The volume of smoke and powder’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘The art of alchemists, sex and court ladies’
- 2 As the empire changed hands
- 3 ‘The age of calicoes and tea and opium’
- 4 ‘A hobby among the high and the low in officialdom’
- 5 Taste-making and trendsetting
- 6 The political redefinition of opium consumption
- 7 Outward and downward ‘liquidation’
- 8 ‘The volume of smoke and powder’
- 9 ‘The unofficial history of the poppy’
- 10 Opiate of the people
- 11 The road to St Louis
- 12 ‘Shanghai vice’
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter studies women and how opium affected their social life. The future of the Qing dynasty looked bleak in 1861. When western powers coerced China into unequal treaties at the end of the second Opium War, three major rebellions raged. As if this wasn't enough, the Xianfeng emperor died in August and left the throne to his 6-year-old son. From 1861 to 1908 the Qing dynasty would see three more boy emperors and the Empress Dowager Cixi. Many have blamed Dowager Cixi for the downfall of imperial China, but in reality she helped the Qing survive another half-century. A parallel study of Queen Victoria and Dowager Cixi still awaits to be written. Their empires were different indeed, but both were strong and capable women. England seemed to thrive on female monarchs, yet the Chinese empress dowagers ruled ‘from behind the curtain’.
Opium use had started with the ‘court ladies’ of the mid-Ming. It would thrive among ordinary women during the late Qing, at which time it galvanised the sex recreation industry, saw ‘the explosion of common prostitution’ and ushered in the golden age of smoking. Opium created jobs for women. It also intensified their subjugation. Yet we must not generalise the circumstances under which women succumbed to opium, as this chapter will explain.
BOREDOM KILLER AND APHRODISIAC
The union of women and opium has a linguistic aspect. Yan originally meant smoke from burning, vapour from heating or natural mist. It came to mean tobacco when it was introduced.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Social Life of Opium in China , pp. 116 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005