Page 223 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

CHAPTER V

OPIUM: THE AMERICAN CONNECTION

Opium (Ya-p'ien or Yang-yen) first appeared

in China as a medicine, beneficial for its analgesic and

soporific qualities. Although the opium poppy was indigenous

to China, Turkish and Arab traders imported the drug as early
1
as the fourth century. At first the drug was swallowed raw.

Not until the seventeenth century did the Chinese smoke opium,
which they crudely mixed with tobacco. Starting in Taiwan,

the habit quickly spread through the southern Chinese prov­

inces of Kwangtung and Fukien. The Chinese soon discovered

refining processes which permitted its use without any addi­

tives such as tobacco. Within a few decades the demand for

opium in southern China made importation of the drug quite

profitable. Detecting such opportunities at Canton, European

traders entered into the opium trade. Although the Portugese

apparently were the first Westerners to import opium into

China, beginning in the late eighteenth century they faced

1
The Chinese had several terms for opium, most of which
could be translated as dirt or tobacco as well as opium (yen­
t'u and ta-yen). Opium was also known by terms which connoted
a foreign origin of the drug (Yang-yen or foreign tobacco and
yang-yao or foreign drug). The most common term became the
Chinese transliteration ya-p'ien (untranslatable). This term
replaced all others, especially after 1840.

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